Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [97]
After fifteen minutes Bond said, ‘Now, there are things I would like to know. First, your operation here. I’d like to see it.’
‘I think you should.’
When he didn’t suggest a time, Bond said, ‘How about tomorrow?’
‘That might be difficult, with my big project on Friday.’
Bond nodded. ‘Some of my clients are eager to move forward. You are my first choice but if there’ll be delays I’ll have to . . .’
‘No, no. Please. Tomorrow will be fine.’
Bond began to probe more but just then the lights dimmed and a woman ascended the raised platform near where Hydt and Bond were standing. ‘Good evening,’ she called out, her low voice glazed with a South African accent. ‘Welcome, everyone. Thank you for coming to our event.’
She was the managing director of the organisation and Bond was amused by her name: Felicity Willing.
She wasn’t, to Bond’s eye, cover-girl beautiful, as was Philly Maidenstone. However, her face was intense, striking. Expertly made up, it exuded a feline quality. Her eyes were a deep green, like late summer leaves caught in the sun, and her hair dark blonde, pulled back severely and pinned up, accentuating the determined angles of her nose and chin. She wore a close-fitting navy-blue cocktail dress that was cut low at the front and lower still at the back. Her silver shoes sported thin straps and precarious heels. Faintly pink pearls shone at her throat and she wore one ring, also a pearl, on her right index finger. Her nails were short and uncoloured.
She scanned the audience with a penetrating, almost challenging gaze and said, ‘I must warn you all . . .’ Tension swelled. ‘At university I was known as Felicity Wilful – an appropriate name, as you’ll find out later when I make the rounds. I advise you all, for your own safety, to keep your chequebooks at the ready.’ A smile replaced the fierce visage.
As the laughter died down, Felicity began to talk about the problems of hunger. ‘Africa must import twenty-five per cent of its food . . . While the population has soared, crop yields today are no higher than they were in 1980 . . . In places like the Central African Republic, nearly a third of all households are food insecure . . . In Africa iodine deficiency is the number-one cause of brain damage, vitamin A deficiency is the number-one cause of blindness . . . Nearly three hundred million people in Africa do not have enough to eat – that number equals the entire population of the United States . . .’
Africa, of course, was not alone in the need for food aid, she continued, and her organisation was attacking the plague on all fronts. Thanks to the generosity of donors, including many here, the group had recently expanded its charter from being a purely South African charity to an international one, opening offices in Jakarta, Port-au-Prince and Mumbai, with others planned.
And, she added, the biggest shipment of maize, sorghum, milk powder and other high-nutrient staples ever to arrive in Africa was soon to be delivered in Cape Town for distribution across the continent.
Felicity acknowledged the applause. Then her smile vanished and she gazed at the crowd with piercing eyes once more, speaking in a low, even menacing, voice about the need to make poorer countries independent of Western ‘agropolies’. She railed against the prevailing approach of America and Europe to end hunger: foreign-owned megafarms forcing their way into third-world nations and squeezing out the local farmers – the people who knew how to get the best yield from the land. Those enterprises were using Africa and other nations as laboratories to test untried methods and products, like synthetic fertilisers and genetically engineered seeds.
‘The vast majority of international agribusiness cares only about profit, not about relieving the suffering of the people. And this is simply not acceptable.’
Finally, having delivered her assault, Felicity smiled and singled out the donors, Hydt among them. He responded to the applause with a wave. He was smiling too, but his whisper to Bond told a different story: ‘If you want adulation,