Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [35]
A pause. ‘Ah.’ The Division Three man laughed, though the sound seemed devoid of humour. ‘So you’d misread the clue when we were chatting earlier. And was the infamous number seventeen tomorrow’s date, by any chance?’
Whatever else, Osborne-Smith was sharp. ‘Possibly. When I got up there, the place was being demolished.’ Bond added evasively, ‘It turned up more questions than anything else, I’m afraid. The techies are looking at some finds. A few small things. I’ll send over their reports.’
‘Do, thanks. I’m peering into all things Islamic here, Afghan connection, spikes in SIGINT, the usual. Should keep me busy for a while.’
Good. Bond couldn’t have asked for a better approach to Deputy Senior Director of Field Operations Mr Percy Osborne-Smith.
Keep him busy . . .
They rang off and Bond called Bill Tanner to brief him about what had happened in March. They agreed to do nothing for now about the body of the man who had attacked Bond at the hospital, preferring to keep his cover intact rather than learn anything about the corpse.
Mary Goodnight stuck her head through the door. ‘Philly called when you were on the phone. She’s found a few things for you. I told her to come up.’ His PA was frowning, her eyes turned to one of Bond’s dim windows. ‘A shame, isn’t it? About Philly.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I thought you’d heard? Tim broke it off. He sat her down a few days ago – they even had the church booked, and her hen do was planned. A girls’ weekend in Spain. I was going.’
How observant am I? Bond thought. That’s what was missing from her desk on the third floor. The pictures of her fiancé. Probably the engagement ring had gone MIA too.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘I suppose it’s always more than one thing, isn’t it? They hadn’t been getting on well recently, more than a few bad patches – rows about her driving too fast and working all hours. She missed a big family reunion at his parents’. Then, out of the blue, he had the chance of a posting to Singapore or Malaysia. He took it. They’d been together for three years, hadn’t they?’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
The discussion of the drama ended, though, with the arrival of the person in question.
Not noticing the still atmosphere into which she’d walked, Philly strode past Goodnight with a smile and into Bond’s office, where she dropped breezily into a chair. Her sensuous face seemed to have narrowed and her hazel eyes shone with the intensity of a hunter picking up sure track. It made her even more beautiful. A hen party in Spain with the girls? God, he simply could not picture that, any more than he could see Philly lugging home two Waitrose carrier bags to assemble a hearty dinner for a man named Tim and their children Matilda and Archie.
Enough! he upbraided himself and concentrated on what she was telling him. ‘Our people could read one scrap of the ash. The words were “the Gehenna plan”. And below that “Friday, 20 May”.’
‘Gehenna? Familiar, but I can’t place it.’
‘There’s a reference to it in the Bible. I’ll find out more. I only ran “Gehenna plan” through the security agencies and criminal databases. It returned negative.’
‘What’s on the other piece of ash?’
‘That was more badly damaged. Our lab could make out the words “term” and “five million pounds” but the rest was beyond them. They sent it to Specialist Crime at the Yard, under an eyes-only order. They’ll get back to me by this evening.’
‘“Term” . . . terms of the deal, I’d guess. Payment or down payment of five million for the attack or whatever it’s to be. That suggests Noah’s doing it for money, not for the sake of politics or ideology.’
She nodded. ‘About the Serbian connection: my Hungarian ploy didn’t work. The folk in Belgrade are really quite cross with you, James. But I had your I Branch set me up as somebody from the EU – the head of the Directorate of Transportation Safety Investigations.’
‘What the hell’s that?’
‘I made it up. I did a pretty good Swiss-French accent, though I say it myself. The Serbs are dying to do anything they