Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [150]
‘Fine. I’m going to look through everything we’ve collected from Hydt’s headquarters. I’ll call back when I’ve finished and brief M.’
They rang off and Bond started to lay out the Gehenna documents on the large desk in the office Jordaan had provided. He hesitated. Then, feeling ridiculous, he slipped on the blue gloves, deciding that at least they would provide an amusing story for his friend Ronnie Vallance of the Yard. Vallance often said that Bond would make a terrible detective-inspector, given his preference for beating up or shooting perpetrators, rather than marshalling evidence to see them in the dock.
He leafed through the documents for almost an hour. Finally, when he felt well enough informed to discuss the situation he telephoned London again.
M said gruffly, ‘It’s a nightmare here, 007. That fool in Division Three pushed a very big button. Got all of Whitehall closed up. Downing Street too. If there’s anything that plays badly with the tabloids, it’s an international security meeting being cancelled because of a bloody security alert.’
‘Was it groundless?’ Bond had been convinced that York was the site of the attack but that didn’t mean London wasn’t at some risk, as he’d told Tanner during his satellite call from Jessica Barnes’s office.
‘Nothing. Green Way had its legitimate side, of course. The company’s engineers were working with the police to make sure the refuse-removal tunnels around Whitehall were safe. No dangerous radiation, no explosives, no Guy Fawkes. There was a spike in Afghan SIGINT traffic, but that was because we and the CIA descended on the place last Monday. And everybody was wondering what the hell we were doing there.’
‘And Osborne-Smith?’
‘Inconsequential.’
Bond didn’t know whether the word referred to the man himself or meant that his fate was not worth discussing.
‘Now, what’s been going on down there, 007? I want details.’
Bond explained first about Hydt’s death and the arrest of his three main partners. He also described Dunne’s escape and Bond’s plan to execute the Level 2 project order from Sunday, which was still valid, for the Irishman’s rendition when they found him.
Then Bond detailed Gehenna – Hydt’s stealing and assembling classified information – the blackmail and extortion, adding the cities where most of his efforts had taken place: ‘London, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, New York and Mumbai, and there are smaller operations in Belgrade, Washington, Taipei and Sydney.’
There was silence for a moment and Bond imagined M chomping on his cheroot as he took it all in. The man said, ‘Damn clever, putting all that together from rubbish.’
‘Hydt said nobody ever sees dustmen and it’s true. They’re invisible. They’re everywhere and yet you look right through them.’
M gave a rare chuckle. ‘I happened to be thinking much the same myself yesterday.’ Then he grew serious. ‘What’re your recommendations, 007?’
‘I’d get our embassy people and Six to roll up all the Green Way operations as fast as they can before the actors start disappearing. Freeze their assets and trace all incoming monies. That’ll lead us to the rest of the Gehenna clients.’
‘Hmm,’ M said, his voice uncharacteristically light. ‘I suppose we could.’
What was the old man thinking?
‘Though I’m not sure we should be too hasty. Let’s arrest the principals in all the locations, yes, but what do you think about getting some double-one agents into their offices and keeping Gehenna going a bit longer in some places, 007? I’d love to see what GRS Aerospace outside Moscow throws away. And I wonder what the Pakistani consulate in Mumbai is shredding. Be interesting to find out. We’d have to pull in some favours with the press to stop them reporting what Hydt was really up to. I’ll have the misinformation chaps at Six leak word that he was mixed up with organised crime or some such. We’ll keep it vague. Word will get out at some point but