Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [80]
Theron had made money by providing the means of destruction. Now he wanted to make money by removing the evidence of their use.
‘It seemed to me an interesting solution,’ Theron continued. ‘But I wouldn’t know how to go about it. Your . . . interests in Cambodia and your recycling business here told me that perhaps this is something you had thought of, too. Or would be willing to consider.’ His cold eyes regarded Hydt. ‘I was thinking maybe concrete or plaster. Or fertiliser?’
Turning the bodies into products that ensured they couldn’t be recognised as human remains! Hydt could hardly contain himself. Utterly brilliant. Why, there must be hundreds of opportunities like this throughout the world – Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Latin America . . . and there were killing fields aplenty in Africa. Thousands. His chest pounded.
‘So, that’s my idea. A fifty-fifty partnership. I provide the refuse and you recycle it.’ Theron seemed to find this rather amusing.
‘I think we may be able to do business.’ Hydt offered his hand to the Afrikaner.
35
The worst risk of James Bond assuming the NOC – nonofficial cover – of Gene Theron was that Niall Dunne had perhaps got a look at him in Serbia or the Fens, or had been given his description in Dubai – if the blue-jacketed man who’d been tailing him was in fact working for Hydt.
In which case when Bond walked brazenly into the Green Way office in Cape Town and sought to hire Hydt to dispose of bodies hidden in secret graves throughout Africa, Dunne would either kill him on the spot or spirit him to their own personal killing field, where the job would be done with cold efficiency.
But now, having shaken hands with an intrigued Severan Hydt, Bond believed his cover was holding. So far. Hydt had been suspicious at first, of course, but he had been willing to give Theron the benefit of the doubt. Why? Because Bond had tempted him with a dangle, a lure he couldn’t resist: death and decay.
That morning, at SAPS headquarters, Bond had contacted Philly Maidenstone and Osborne-Smith – his new ally – and they had data-mined Hydt’s and Green Way’s credit cards. They’d learnt that he’d not only travelled to the Killing Fields in Cambodia but to Krakow, Poland, where he’d taken several tours of Auschwitz. Among his purchases at the time were double-A batteries and a second flash chip for a camera.
Man’s got a whole new idea about porn . . .
Bond decided that to work his way into Hydt’s life he would offer a chance to satisfy that lust: access to secret killing fields throughout Africa and a proposal to recycle human remains.
For the past three hours Bond had struggled, under the tutelage of Bheka Jordaan, to become an Afrikaner mercenary from Durban. Gene Theron would have a slightly unusual background: he’d had Huguenot rather than Dutch forebears and his parents favoured English and French in the household of his youth, which explained why he didn’t speak much Afrikaans. A British education in Kenya would cover his accent. She had, however, made Bond learn something of the dialect; if Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon had mastered the subtle intonation for recent films – and they were American, for heaven’s sake – he could do so too.
While she’d coached him on facts that a South African mercenary might know, Sergeant Mbalula had gone to the evidence locker and found an incarcerated drug dealer’s gaudy Breitling watch, to replace Bond’s tasteful Rolex, and gold bracelet for the successful mercenary to wear. He’d then sped to a jeweller in the Gardens Shopping Centre in Mill Street, where he’d bought a gold signet ring and had it engraved with the initials EJT.
Meanwhile, Warrant Officer Kwalene Nkosi had worked feverishly with the ODG’s I