Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [89]
‘Oh, the Lodge Club. It’s all right. Used to be exclusive but now they let in everybody . . . Hey, I saw that look. I didn’t mean what you think. I just have a low opinion of the general public. I do more business with blacks and coloureds than whites . . . There’s that look again!’
‘“Coloureds”?’ Bond said sourly.
‘It just means mixed-race and it’s perfectly acceptable here. No one would take offence.’
Bond’s experience, however, was that people using such terms weren’t the ones likely to be offended by them. But he wasn’t going to debate politics with Gregory Lamb. Bond looked at the Breitling. ‘Thanks for your thoughts,’ he said, without much enthusiasm. ‘Now, I’ve got work to do before my meeting with Hydt.’ Jordaan had sent him some material on Afrikaners, South African culture and conflict regions that Gene Theron might have been active in.
Lamb rose and hovered awkwardly. ‘Well, I stand ready to assist. I’m at your service. Really, anything you need.’ He seemed painfully sincere.
‘Thanks.’ Bond felt the urge, absurdly, to slip him twenty rand.
Before he left, Lamb returned to the minibar and relieved it of two miniatures of vodka. ‘You don’t mind, do you? M’s got a positively massive budget; everyone knows that.’
Bond saw him out.
Good riddance, he thought, as the door closed. Percy Osborne-Smith was a charmer by comparison with this fellow.
39
Bond sat at the expansive desk in the hotel suite, booted up his computer, logged on via his iris and fingerprint and scrolled through the information Bheka Jordaan had uploaded. He was ploughing through it when an encrypted email arrived.
James:
For your eyes only.
Have confirmed Steel Cartridge was a major active measure by KGB/SVR to assassinate clandestine MI6 and CIA agents and local assets, so that the extent of Russian infiltration would not be learnt, in attempt to promote détente during fall of Soviet Union and improve relations with the West.
The last Steel Cartridge targeted killings occurred late ’80s or early ’90s. Found only one incident so far: the victim was a private contractor working for MI6. Deep cover. No other details, except that the active measures agent made the death appear to be an accident. Actual steel cartridges were sometimes left at the scenes of the deaths as warning to other agents to keep quiet.
Am continuing investigation.
Your other eyes,
Philly
Bond slouched back in the chair, staring at the ceiling. Well, what do I do with this? he asked himself.
He read the message again, then sent a brief email thanking Philly. He rocked back and, in the mirror across the room, caught a glimpse of his eyes, hard and set like a predator’s.
He reflected: so, the KGB active measures agent killed the MI6 contract op in the late eighties, early nineties.
James Bond’s father had died during that period.
It had happened in December, not long after his eleventh birthday. Andrew and Monique Bond had dropped young James off with his aunt Charmian in Pett Bottom, Kent, leaving behind the promise that they would return in plenty of time for Christmas festivities. They had then flown to Switzerland and driven to Mont Blanc for five days of skiing and rock and ice climbing.
His parents’ assurance, however, had been hollow. Two days later they were dead, having fallen from one of the astonishingly beautiful cliff faces of the Aiguilles Rouges, near Chamonix.
Beautiful cliffs, yes, impressive . . . but not excessively dangerous, not where they had been climbing. As an adult, Bond had looked into the circumstances of the accident. He’d learnt that the slope they’d fallen from did not require advanced climbing techniques; indeed, no one had ever been injured, let alone died, there. But, of course, mountains are notoriously fickle and Bond had taken at face value the story the gendarme had told his aunt: that his parents had fallen because a rope frayed at the same time as a large boulder had given way.
‘Mademoiselle, je suis désolé de vous dire . . .’
When he was young, James Bond had enjoyed