Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [51]
The technician manipulated the controls. There was an image of Hydt and the others walking to a private jet.
‘Bring up the registration number. Run it.’
To his credit Deputy-Deputy already had. ‘Owned by a Dutch company that does recycling. Okay, got the flight plan. He’s headed for Dubai. They’ve already taken off.’
‘Where are they now? Where?’
‘Checking . . .’ The assistant sighed. ‘Just passing out of UK airspace.’
Teeth clenched, Osborne-Smith stared at the still video image of the plane. He mused, ‘Wonder what it would take to scramble some Harriers and force them down?’ Then he looked up to note everyone staring at him. ‘I’m not serious, people.’
Though he had been, just a little.
‘Look at that,’ the male technician interrupted.
‘Look at bloody what?’
Deputy-Deputy said, ‘Yes, somebody else is watching them.’
The screen was showing the entrance to the private jet terminal at Gatwick. A man was standing at the wire fence, staring at Hydt’s plane.
My God – it was Bond.
So, the bloody clever ODG agent, with a fancy car and without permission to carry a firearm in the UK, had tailed Hydt after all. Osborne-Smith wondered briefly who’d been in the Bentley. The ruse, he knew, had been not only to fool Hydt but to fool Division Three.
With considerable contentment he watched Bond turn from the fence and head back to the car park, head down and speaking into his mobile, undoubtedly enduring a verbal lashing from his boss for having let the fox slip away.
23
Usually we never hear the sound that wakes us. Perhaps we might, if it repeats: an alarm or an urgent voice. But a once-only noise rouses without registering in our consciousness.
James Bond didn’t know what lifted him from his dreamless sleep. He glanced at his watch.
It was just after one p.m.
Then he smelt a delicious aroma: a combination of floral perfume – jasmine, he believed – and the ripe, rich scent of vintage champagne. Above him he saw the heavenly form of a beautiful Middle Eastern woman, wearing a sleek burgundy skirt and long-sleeved golden shirt over her voluptuous figure. Her collar was secured with a pearl, which was different from the lower buttons. He found the tiny cream dot particularly appealing. Her hair was as blue-black as crow feathers, pinned up, though a teasing strand fell loose, cupping one side of her face, which was subtly and meticulously made-up.
He said to her, ‘Salam alaikum.’
‘Wa alaikum salam,’ she replied. She set the crystal flute on the tray table in front of him, along with the elegant bottle of the king of Moëts, Dom Pérignon. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bond, I’ve woken you. I’m afraid the cork popped more loudly than I’d hoped. I was just going to leave the glass and not disturb you.’
‘Shukran,’ he said, as he took the glass. ‘And don’t worry. My second favourite way to wake up is to the sound of champagne opening.’
She responded to this with a subtle smile. ‘I can arrange some lunch for you too.’
‘That would be lovely, if it’s not too much trouble.’
She returned to the galley.
Bond sipped his champagne and looked out of the private jet’s spacious window, the twin Rolls-Royce engines pulsing smoothly as it flew towards Dubai at 42,000 feet, doing more than 600 miles an hour. The aircraft was, Bond reflected with amusement, a Grumman, like Severan Hydt’s, but Bond was in a Grumman 650, the faster model, with a greater range than the Rag-and-bone Man’s.
Bond had started the chase hours ago, with the modern equivalent of a scene from an old American police movie, in which the detective leaps into a taxi and orders, ‘Follow that car.’ He’d decided that the commercial flight would get him to Dubai too late to stop the killings so he’d placed a call to his Commodore Club friend, Fouad Kharaz, who had instantly put a private jet at his disposal. ‘My friend, you know I owe you,’