Carte Blanche

by Jeffery Deaver

  Nkosi said, ‘We have a saying. “With many opportunities come many operatives.” We keep that always in mind at the SAPS and look over our shoulder often. You would be wise to do the same, Commander Bond. Without doubt.’

  33

  The central police station in Buitenkant Street, central Cape Town, resembled a pleasant hotel more than a government building. Two storeys high, with walls of scrubbed red brick and a red-tiled roof, it overlooked the wide, clean avenue, which was dotted with palms and jacaranda.

  The driver paused at the front to let them out. Jordaan and Nkosi stepped on to the pavement and looked around. When they saw no signs of surveillance or threat the warrant officer gestured Bond out. He went to the back for his laptop bag and suitcase, then followed the officers inside.

  As they entered the building Bond blinked in surprise at what he saw. There was a plaque that read ‘ Servamus et Servimus ’, the motto of the SAPS, he assumed. ‘We protect and we serve.’

  What gave him pause, though, was that the two principal words were eerie, and ironic, echoes of Severan Hydt’s first name.

  Without waiting for the lift, Jordaan climbed the stairs to the first floor. Her modest office was lined with books and professional journals, present-day maps of Cape Town and the Western Cape, and a framed 120-year-old map of the eastern coast of South Africa, showing the region of Natal, with the port of D’Urban and the town of Ladysmith mysteriously circled in ancient fading ink. Zululand and Swaziland were depicted to the north.

  There were framed photographs on Jordaan’s desk. A blond man and a dark-skinned woman held hands in one – they appeared in several others. The woman bore a vague resemblance to Jordaan, and Bond assumed they were her parents. Prominent also were pictures of an elderly woman in traditional African clothing and several featuring children. Bond decided that they weren’t Jordaan’s. There were no shots of her with a partner.

  Divorced, he recalled.

  Her desktop was graced with fifty or so case folders. The world of policing, like espionage, involves far more paperwork than firearms and gadgets.

  Despite the late autumn season in South Africa, the weather was temperate and her office warm. After a moment of debate, Jordaan removed her red jacket and hung it up. Her black blouse was short sleeved and he saw a large swath of make-up along the inside of her right forearm. She didn’t seem like the tattoo sort but perhaps she was concealing one. Then he decided that, no, the cream covered a lengthy and wide scar.

  Gold Cross for Bravery…

  Bond sat across from her, beside Nkosi, who unbuttoned his jacket and remained stiffly upright. Bond asked them both, ‘Did Colonel Tanner tell you about my mission here?’

  ‘Just that you were investigating Severan Hydt on a matter of national security.’

  Bond ran through what they knew of Incident Twenty – a.k.a. Gehenna – and the impending deaths on Friday.

  Nkosi frowned ridges into his high forehead. Jordaan took in the information with still eyes. She pressed her hands together – modest rings encircled the middle fingers of both hands. ‘I see. And the evidence is credible?’

  ‘It is. Does that surprise you?’

  She said evenly, ‘Severan Hydt is an unlikely evil. We are aware of him, of course. He opened Green Way International here two years ago and has contracts for much of the refuse collection and recycling in the major cities in South Africa – Pretoria, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Joburg and, of course, throughout the west here. He’s done many good things for our nation. Ours is a country in transition, as you know, and our past has led to problems with the environment. Gold and diamond mining, poverty and lack of infrastructure have taken their toll. Refuse collection was a serious problem in the townships and squatters’ settlements. To make up for the displacement caused by the Group Areas Act under apartheid, the government built residences – lokasies, or locations, they are called – for the people to live in instead of shacks. But even there the population was so high that refuse collection could not be performed efficiently, or sometimes at all. Disease was a problem. Severan Hydt has reversed much of that. He also donates to AIDS and hunger-relief charities.’

  Most serious criminal enterprises have public-relations specialists on board, Bond reflected; being an ‘unlikely evil’ did not exempt you from diligent investigation.

  Jordaan seemed to note his scepticism. She continued, ‘I’m simply saying that he does not much fit the profile of a terrorist or master criminal. But if he is, my department stands ready to do all it can to help.’

  ‘Thank you. Now, do you know anything about his associate, Niall Dunne?’

  She said, ‘I had never heard the name until this morning. I’ve looked into him. He comes and goes here on a legitimate British passport and has been doing so for several years. We’ve never had any problem with him. He’s not on any watchlists.’

  ‘What do you know of the woman with them?’

  Nkosi consulted a file. ‘American passport. Jessica Barnes. She’s a cipher to us, I’d say. No police record. No criminal activity. Nothing. We have some photos.’

  ‘That’s not her,’ Bond said, looking at the images of a young, truly beautiful blonde.

  ‘Ah, I am sorry, I should have said. These are old shots. I got them off the Internet.’ Nkosi turned the picture over. ‘This was from the ’70s. She was Miss Massachusetts and competed in the Miss America contest. She is now sixty-four years old.’

  Bond could see the resemblance, now that he knew the truth. Then he asked, ‘Where is the Green Way office?’

  ‘There are two,’ Nkosi said. ‘One nearby and one about twenty miles north of here – Hydt’s major refuse disposal and recycling plant.’

  ‘I need to get inside them, find out what he’s up to.’

  ‘Of course,’ Bheka Jordaan said. There came a lengthy pause. ‘But you are speaking of legal means, correct?’

  ‘“Legal means”?’

  ‘You can follow him on the street, you can observe him in public. But I cannot get a warrant for you to place a bug in his home or office. As I said, Severan Hydt has done nothing wrong here.’

  Bond nearly smiled. ‘In my job I don’t generally ask for warrants.’

  ‘Well, I do. Of course.’

  ‘Captain, this man has twice tried to kill me, in Serbia and the UK, and yesterday he engineered the death of a young woman and possibly a CIA asset in Dubai.’

  She frowned, sympathy evident in her face. ‘That’s very unfortunate. But those crimes did not happen on South African soil. If I’m presented with extradition orders from those jurisdictions, approved by a magistrate here, I will be happy to execute them. But barring that…’ She lifted her palms.

  ‘We don’t want him arrested,’ Bond said, with exasperation. ‘We don’t want evidence for trial. The point of my coming here is to find out what he has planned for Friday and stop it. I intend to do that.’

  ‘And you may, provided you do so legally. If you’re thinking of breaking into his home or office, that would be trespass, subjecting youto a criminal complaint.’ She turned her eyes, like black granite, towards him, and Bond had absolutely no doubt that she would enjoy ratcheting the shackles on to his wrists.

  34

  ‘He has to die.’

  Sitting in his office at the Green Way International building in the centre of Cape Town, Severan Hydt was holding his phone tightly as he listened to Niall Dunne’s chilly words. No, he reflected, that wasn’t accurate. There was neither chill nor heat. His comment had been completely neutral.

  Which was chilling in its own way.

  ‘Explain,’ Hydt said, absently tracing a triangle on the desktop with a long, yellowing fingernail.

  Dunne told him that a Green Way worker had very likely learnt something about Gehenna. He was one of the legitimate workers in the Cape Town disposal plant to the north of the city, who had known nothing of Hydt’s clandestine activities. He’d accidentally got into a restricted area in the main building an
d might have seen some emails about the project. ‘He wouldn’t know what they meant at this point but when the incident makes the news later in the week – which it’s going to, of course – he might realise we were behind it and tell the police.’

  ‘So what do you suggest?’

  ‘I’m looking into it now.’

  ‘But if you kill him, won’t the police ask questions? Since he’s an employee?’

  ‘I’ll take care of him where he lives – a squatters’ camp. There won’t be many police, probably none at all. The taxis’ll look into it, most likely, and they won’t cause us any problems.’

  In the townships, squatters’ settlements and even the new lokasies, the minibus companies were more than just transport providers. They had taken on the role of vigilante judge and jury, hearing cases and tracking down and punishing criminals.

  ‘All right. Let’s move fast, though.’

  ‘Tonight, after he gets home.’

  Dunne disconnected and Hydt returned to his work. He’d spent all morning since their arrival making arrangements for the manufacture of Mahdi al-Fulan’s new hard-drive destruction machines and for Green Way’s sales people to start hawking them to clients.

  But his mind wandered and he kept imagining the body of the young woman, Stella, now in a grave somewhere beneath the restless sands of the Empty Quarter south of Dubai. While her beauty in life hadn’t aroused him, the picture in his mind’s eye of her in a few months or years certainly did. And in a thousand, she’d be just like the bodies he’d viewed at the museum last night.

  He rose, slipped his suit jacket on to a hanger and returned to his desk. He took and placed a string of phone calls, all relating to Green Way’s legitimate business. None was particularly engaging… until the company’s head of sales for South Africa, who was on the floor just below Hydt’s, called.

  ‘Severan, I’ve got some Afrikaner from Durban on the line. He wants to talk to you about a disposal project.’

  ‘Send him a brochure and tell him I’ll be tied up till next week.’ Gehenna was the priority and Hydt had no interest in taking on new accounts at the moment.

  ‘He doesn’t want to hire us. He’s talking about some arrangement between Green Way and his company.’

  ‘Joint venture?’ Hydt asked cynically. Entrepreneurs always emerged when you started to enjoy success, and got publicity, in your chosen field. ‘Too much going on now. I’m not interested. Thank him, though.’

  ‘All right. Oh, but I was supposed to mention one thing. Something odd. He said to tell you that the problem he’s got is the same as at Isandlwana in the 1870s.’

  Hydt looked away from the documents on his desk. A moment later he realised he was gripping the phone hard. ‘You’re sure that’s what he said?’

  ‘Yes. “The same as at Isandlwana”. No idea what he meant.’

  ‘He’s in Durban?’

  ‘His company’s headquarters are there. He’s at his Cape Town office for the day.’

  ‘See if he’s free to come in.’

  ‘When?’ the sales manager asked.

  A fractional pause, then Hydt said, ‘Now.’

  In January 1879, the war between Great Britain and the Zulu Kingdom kicked off in earnest with a stunning defeat for the British. At Isandlwana, overwhelming forces (twenty thousand Zulus versus fewer than two thousand British and colonial troops) and some bad tactical decisions resulted in a complete rout. It was there that the Zulus broke the British Square, the famous defensive formation in which one line of soldiers fired while another, directly behind, reloaded, offering the enemy a nearly unremitting volley of bullets – in that instance, with the deadly Martini-Henry breech-loading rifles.

  But the tactic hadn’t worked; thirteen hundred British soldiers and allied forces died.

  The ‘disposal’ problem that the Afrikaner had referred to could mean only one thing. The battle had occurred in January, the fiercely hot dog days of summer in the region of what was now KwaZulu-Natal; removing the bodies quickly was a necessity… and a major logistical issue.

  The disposal of remains was also one of the major problems that Gehenna would present in future projects and Hydt and Dunne had been discussing it over the past month.

  Why on earth would a businessman from Durban have a problem along these lines that required Hydt’s assistance?

  Ten lengthy minutes later his secretary stepped into his doorway. ‘A Mr Theron is here, sir. From Durban.’

  ‘Good, good. Show him in. Please.’

  She vanished and returned a moment later with a tough-looking, edgy man, who glanced around Hydt’s office cautiously, yet with an air of challenge. He was dressed in the business outfit common to South Africa: a suit and smart shirt, but no tie. Whatever his line he must have been successful; a heavy gold bracelet encircled his right wrist and his watch was a flashy Breitling. A gold initial ring too, which was a touch brash, Hydt thought.

  ‘Morning.’ The man shook Hydt’s hand. He noticed the long yellowing fingernails but did not recoil, as had happened on more than one occasion. ‘Gene Theron,’ he said.

  ‘Severan Hydt.’

  They exchanged business cards.

  Eugene J. Theron

  President, EJT Services, Ltd

  Durban, Cape Town and Kinshasa

  Hydt reflected: an office in the capital of Congo, one of the most dangerous cities in Africa. This was interesting.

  The man glanced at the door, which was open. Hydt rose and closed it, returned to his desk. ‘You’re from Durban, Mr Theron?’

  ‘Yes, and my main office is there. But I travel a lot. And you?’ The faint accent was melodious.

  ‘London, Holland and here. I get to the Far East and India too. Wherever business takes me. Now, “Theron”. The name’s Huguenot, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We forget Afrikaners are not always Dutch.’

  Theron lifted an eyebrow as if he’d heard such comments since he was a child and was tired of them.

  Hydt’s phone trilled. He looked at the screen. It was Niall Dunne. ‘Excuse me a moment,’ he said to Theron, who nodded. Then: ‘Yes?’ Hydt asked, pressing the phone close to his ear.

  ‘Theron’s legit. South African passport. Lives in Durban and has a security company with headquarters there, with branches here and in Kinshasa. Father’s Afrikaner, mother’s British. Grew up mostly in Kenya.’

  Dunne continued, ‘He’s been suspected of supplying troops and arms to conflict regions in Africa, South East Asia and Pakistan. No active investigations. The Cambodians detained him in a human trafficking and mercenary investigation because of what he’d been up to in Shan, Myanmar, but let him go. Nothing in Interpol. And he’s pretty successful, from what I can tell.’

  Hydt had deduced that himself; the man’s Breitling was worth around five thousand pounds.

  ‘I just texted a picture to you,’ Dunne added.

  It appeared on Hydt’s screen and showed the man in front of him. Dunne went on, ‘But… whatever he’s proposing, are you sure you want to think about it now?’

  Hydt thought he sounded jealous – perhaps that the mercenary might have a project that would deflect attention from Dunne’s plans for Gehenna. He said, ‘Those sales figures are better than I thought. Thank you.’ He disconnected. Then he asked Theron, ‘How did you hear about me?’

  Although they were alone Theron lowered his voice as he turned hard, knowing eyes on Hydt: ‘Cambodia. I was doing some work there. Some people told me of you.’

  Ah. Hydt understood now and the realisation gave him a thrill. Last year on business in the Far East he’d stopped to visit several gravesites of the infamous Killing Fields, where the Khmer Rouge had slaughtered millions of Cambodians in the 1970s. At the memorial at Choeung Ek, where nearly nine thousand bodies had been buried in mass graves, Hydt had spoken to several veterans about the slaughter and taken hundreds of pictures for his collection. One of the locals must have mentioned his name to Theron.<
br />
  ‘You had business there, you say?’ Hydt asked, thinking of what Dunne had learnt.

  ‘Nearby,’ Theron replied with a suitable brush of evasion.

  Hydt was intensely curious but, a businessman first and foremost, he tried not to appear too enthusiastic. ‘And what do Isandlwana and Cambodia have to do with me?’

  ‘They are places where there was a great loss of life. Many bodies were interred where they fell in battle.’

  Choeung Ek was genocide, not a battle, but Hydt did not correct him.

  ‘They’ve become sacred areas. And that’s good, I suppose. Except…’ The Afrikaner paused. ‘I’ll tell you about a problem I have become aware of and about a solution that has occurred to me. Then you can tell me if that solution is possible and if you have an interest in helping me achieve it.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Theron said, ‘I have many connections to governments and companies in various parts of Africa.’ He paused. ‘Darfur, Congo, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, a few others.’

  Conflict regions, Hydt observed.

  ‘And these groups are concerned about the consequences that arise after, say, a terrible natural disaster – like drought or famine or storms – or, frankly, anywhere that a major loss of life has occurred and bodies have been buried. As in Cambodia or Isandlwana.’

  Hydt said innocently, ‘Such cases have serious health implications. Water supply contamination, disease.’

  ‘No,’ Theron said bluntly. ‘I mean something else. Superstition.’

  ‘Superstition?’

  ‘Say, for instance, because of a lack of money or resources, bodies have been left in mass graves. A shame, but it happens.’

  ‘Indeed it does.’

  ‘Now, if a government or a charity wishes to build something for the good of the people – a hospital, a housing development or a road in that area – they would be reluctant to do so. The land is perfectly good, there is money to build and workers who wish to be employed but many people would fear ghosts or spirits and be afraid to go to that hospital or move into those houses. It’s absurd to me, and to you too, I’m sure. But that’s how many people feel.’ Theron shrugged. ‘How sad for the citizens of those areas if their health and safety were to suffer because of such foolish ideas.’