One round, one round.
Where was Dunne?
Sneaking up behind them?
Then silence again, though silence filled with ringing in their ears and the internal bass of heartbeats. Jordaan was shivering. Bond eyed the Bushmaster, the rifle that the injured guard had dropped. It lay around ten yards away.
He studied the scene around them carefully, the landscape, the plants, the trees.
Then he noted tall grasses swaying fifty or sixty yards distant; the two guards, invisible in the thick foliage, were moving in, keeping some distance between them. In a minute or two they’d be on top of Bond and Jordaan. He might take one out with his last bullet but the other guard would be successful.
‘James,’ Jordaan whispered, squeezing his arm. ‘I’ll lead them off – I’ll go that way.’ She pointed to a plain covered with low grass. ‘If you fire, you can hit one and the other may take cover. That’ll give you a chance to get to the rifle.’
‘It’s suicide,’ he whispered back. ‘You’d be completely exposed.’
‘You really muststop your incessant flirting, James.’
He smiled. ‘Listen. If anybody’s going to be a hero, it’s me. I’m going to head towards them. When I tell you, go for the Bushmaster.’ He pointed to the black rifle lying in the dust. ‘You’re qualified to use it?’
She nodded.
The guards moved closer. Thirty yards now.
Bond whispered, ‘Stay low until I tell you. Get ready.’
The guards were making their way cautiously through the tall grass. Bond surveyed the landscape again, took a deep breath, then rose calmly and walked towards them, his pistol pointed down at his side. He raised his left hand.
‘James, no!’ Jordaan whispered.
Bond did not respond. He called to the men, ‘I want to talk to you. If you help me get the names of the other people involved, you’ll receive a reward. There’ll be no charges against you. You understand?’
The two guards, about ten paces apart, stopped. They were confused. They saw that he couldn’t hit them both before the other shot him, yet he was walking slowly in their direction, calm, not lifting his pistol.
‘Do you understand? The reward is fifty thousand rand.’
They stared at each other, nodding a little too enthusiastically. Bond knew they were not seriously considering his offer; they were thinking they might draw him closer before they fired. They faced him.
And as they did so the powerful gun in Bond’s hand barked once, still pointed downward, letting go its final bullet into the ground. As the guards crouched, startled, Bond sprinted to his left, putting a row of trees between him and the guards.
They glanced at each other, then ran forward to where they had a better view of Bond, who dived behind a hill as their Bushmasters began to clatter.
It was then that the entire world exploded.
The muzzle flashes from the men’s rifles ignited the methane spewing from the fake tree root, transporting the gas from the landfill beneath them to Green Way’s burn off facilities. Bond had ruptured it with his last bullet.
The men now vanished in a tidal wave of flame, a roiling thunderhead. The guards and the ground they’d stood on were simply gone, the fire widening as panicked birds fled into the air, the trees and brush bursting into flames as if they were soaked in incendiary accelerant.
Twenty feet away Jordaan rose unsteadily. She started towards the Bushmaster. But Bond ran to her, shouting, ‘Change of plan. Forget it!’
‘What should we do?’
They were thrown to the ground as another mushroom cloud of flame erupted not far away. The roar was so loud Bond had to press his lips against her sumptuous hair to make himself heard. ‘Might be a good idea to leave.’
61
‘You are making a terrible mistake!’
Severan Hydt’s voice was low with threat but a very different state of mind was revealed in the expression on his long, bearded face: horror at the destruction of his empire, both physical, from the fires in the distance, and legal, from the special-forces troops and police descending on the grounds and office.
There was nothing imperious about him now.
Hydt, in handcuffs, and Jordaan, Nkosi and Bond were standing amid a cluster of bulldozers and lorries in the open area between the office and Resurrection Row. They were near the spot where Bond would have been killed… if not for Bheka Jordaan’s dramatic arrival to arrest the ‘poachers’.
Sergeant Mbalula handed Bond his Walther, extra clips and mobile phone from the Subaru.
‘Thank you, Sergeant.’
SAPS officers and South African special forces roamed through the facility, looking for more suspects and collecting evidence. In the distance, fire crews were struggling – and it was a struggle – to put out the methane fires, as the western edge of Elysian Fields became just another outpost of hell.
Apparently the corrupt politicians in Pretoria, the ones in Hydt’s pocket, had not been so very high up, after all. Senior officials stepped in quickly and ordered their arrest and full back-up for Jordaan’s operation in Cape Town. Additional officers were sent to seize Green Way’s offices in all South African cities.
Medics scurried about here too, attending to the wounded, which included only Hydt’s security staff.
Hydt’s three partners were in custody, Huang, Eberhard and Mathebula. It was not clear yet what their crimes were but that would be established soon. At the very least they had all smuggled firearms into the country, justifying their arrest.
Four of the surviving guards were in custody and most of the hundred or so Green Way employees who’d been milling about in the car park had been detained, pending questioning.
Dunne had escaped. Special-forces officers had found evidence of a motorcycle, which had apparently been hidden under a tarp covered with straw. Of course, the Irishman would have kept his lifeboat ready.
Severan Hydt persisted, ‘I’m innocent! You’re persecuting me because I’m British. And white. You’re prejudiced.’
Jordaan could not ignore this. ‘Prejudiced? I’ve arrested six black men, four whites and an Asian. If that’s not a rainbow, I don’t know what is.’
The reality of the disaster kept coming home to him. His eyes swivelled away from the fires and began taking in the rest of the grounds. He was probably looking for Dunne. He would be lost without his engineer.
He glanced at Bond, then said to Jordaan, his voice laced with desperation, ‘What sort of arrangement could we work out? I’m very wealthy.’
‘That’s fortunate,’ she said. ‘Your legal bills will be quite high.’
‘I’m not trying to bribe you.’
‘I should hope not. That’s a very serious offence.’ She then said matter-of-factly, ‘I want to know where Niall Dunne has gone. If you tell me, I’ll let the prosecution know that you helped me find him.’
‘I can give you the address of his flat here-’
‘I’ve already sent officers there. Tell me some other places he might go to.’
‘Yes… I’m sure I can think of something.’
Bond noticed Gregory Lamb approaching from a deserted part of the grounds, carrying his large pistol as if he’d never fired a weapon. Bond left Jordaan and Hydt standing together between rows of pallets containing empty oil drums and joined Lamb near a battered skip.
‘Ah, Bond,’ the Six agent said, breathing heavily and sweating despite the chilly autumn air. His face was streaked with dirt and there was a tear in the sleeve of his jacket.
‘You caught one?’ Bond nodded at the slash, caused, it seemed, by a bullet. The assailant had been close; powder burns surrounded the rent.
‘Didn’t do any damage, thankfully. Except to my favourite gabardine.’
He was lucky. An inch to the left and the slug would have shattered his upper arm.
‘What happened to the guys you went after?’ Bond asked. ‘I never saw them.’
‘Got away, sorry to say. T
hey split up. I knew they were trying to circle back on me but I went after one of them anyway. That’s how I got my Lord Nelson here.’ He touched his sleeve. ‘But dammit, they knew the lie of the land and I didn’t. I got a piece of one of them, though.’
‘Do you want to follow the blood trail?’
He blinked. ‘Oh. I did. But it vanished.’
Bond lost interest in the adventurer’s excursion into the bush and moved aside to call London. He was just punching in the number when, a few yards away, he heard a series of loud cracks he recognised instantly as powerful bullets finding a target, followed by the booms of a distant rifle’s report.
Bond spun round, his hand going for his Walther as he scanned the grounds. But he saw no sign of the shooter – only his victim: Bheka Jordaan, her chest and face a mass of blood, clawed at the air as she stumbled backwards and rolled into a muddy ditch.
62
‘No!’ Bond cried.
His inclination was to run to her aid. But the amount of blood, bone and tissue he’d seen told him she could not have survived the devastating shots.
No…
Bond thought of Ugogo, of the fiery orange gleam in Jordaan’s eye as they’d taken on the two guards in Elysian Fields, the faint smile.
They have a number of guns and we only have one. That’s not fair. We must take one away from them …
‘Captain!’ Nkosi cried, from his position behind a skip nearby. Other SAPS officers were firing randomly now.
‘Hold your fire!’ Bond shouted. ‘No blind shooting. Guard the visible perimeter, look for muzzle flashes.’
The special forces were more restrained, watching for targets from good cover positions.
So the engineer didhave an escape plan for his beloved boss. That’s what Hydt had been looking for. Dunne would keep the officers pinned down while Hydt fled, probably to where the other security guards were waiting in the woods nearby with a car or perhaps even a helicopter hidden on the grounds. Hydt had not started his sprint to freedom yet, though; he’d still be hiding between the rows of pallets where Jordaan had been questioning him. He’d be waiting for more covering fire.
Crouching, Bond began to make his way there. Any minute now, the man would make a run for the brush, protected by Dunne and perhaps other loyal guards.
And James Bond was not going to let that happen.
He heard Gregory Lamb whisper, ‘Is it safe?’ but couldn’t see him. He realised the man had dived into a full skip.
Bond had to move. Even if it meant exposing himself to Dunne’s fine marksmanship, he wouldn’t let Hydt escape. Bheka Jordaan would not have died in vain.
He sprinted into the shadowy space between the tall pallets of oil drums to secure Hydt, his gun raised.
And froze. Severan Hydt was not about to escape anywhere. The Rag-and-bone Man, the visionary king of decay, the lord of entropy, lay on his back, two bullet wounds in his chest, a third in his forehead. A significant part of the back of his skull was missing.
Bond slipped his gun away. Around him the tactical forces began to rise. One called that the sniper had left his shooting position and vanished into the bush.
Then a harsh sound behind him, a woman’s voice: ‘ Sihlama! ’
Bond spun around to see Bheka Jordaan crawling from the ditch, wiping her face and spitting blood. She was unharmed.
Either Dunne had missed completely or his boss had been his intended target. The gore on Jordaan was Hydt’s – it had spattered her as she stood beside him.
Bond pulled her to cover behind the oil drums, smelling the sickly copper scent of blood. ‘Dunne’s still out there somewhere.’
Nkosi called, ‘You are okay, Captain?’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said dismissively. ‘What about Hydt?’
‘He’s dead,’ Bond said.
‘ Masende! ’ she snapped.
This brought a smile to Nkosi’s face.
Jordaan tugged her shirt off – underneath she wore body armour over a black cotton vest – and wiped her face, neck and hair with it.
A call came in from officers on the ridge that the perimeter was clear. Dunne, of course, would have had no interest in staying; he’d accomplished what he needed to.
Bond regarded the body once more. He decided that the tight grouping of the shots meant that Hydt had indeed been the intended target. Of course, this made sense; Dunne had had to kill the man to make sure he told the police nothing about him. Now he recalled several glances that Dunne had cast towards Hydt over the past few days, dark looks, hinting at… what? Irritation, resentment? Almost jealousy, it seemed. Perhaps there was something else behind the murder of the Rag-and-bone Man, something personal.
Whatever the reason, he’d certainly done a typically proficient job.
Jordaan hurried into the office building. Ten minutes later she emerged. She’d found a shower or tap somewhere; her face and hair were damp but more or less blood-free. She was furious at herself. ‘I lost my prisoner. I should have guarded him better. I never thought-’
A ghastly wail interrupted her. Someone was speeding forward, ‘No, no, no…’
Jessica Barnes was running towards Hydt’s body. She flung herself to the ground, oblivious to the grotesque wounds, and cradled her dead lover.
Bond stepped forward, gripped her narrow, quivering shoulders and helped her up. ‘No, Jessica. Come over here with me.’ Bond led her to cover behind a bulldozer. Bheka Jordaan joined them.
‘He’s dead, he’s dead…’ Jessica pressed her head against Bond’s shoulder.
Bheka Jordaan lifted her handcuffs out of their holster. ‘She tried to help me,’ Bond reminded her. ‘She didn’t know what Hydt was doing. I’m sure of it.’
Jordaan put the cuffs away. ‘We’ll drive her down to the station, take a statement. I don’t think we’ll have to pursue it beyond that.’
Bond detached himself from Jessica. He took her by the shoulders. ‘Thank you for helping me. I know it was hard.’
She breathed in deeply. Then, calmer, she asked, ‘Who did it? Who shot him?’
‘Dunne.’
She didn’t seem surprised. ‘I never liked him. Severan was passionate, impulsive. He never thought things through. Niall realised that and seduced him with all his planning and his intelligence. I didn’t think he could be trusted. But I never had the courage to say anything.’ She closed her eyes momentarily.
‘You did a good job with the praying,’ Bond told her.
‘Too good,’ she whispered.
On Jessica’s cheek and neck were stark patches of Hydt’s blood. It was the first time, Bond realised, that he’d seen any colour on her. He looked her in the eye. ‘I know some people who can help you when you get back to London. They’ll be in touch. I’ll see to it.’
‘Thank you,’ Jessica murmured.
A policewoman led her away.
Bond was startled by a man’s voice nearby: ‘Is it clear?’
He frowned, unable to see the speaker. Then he understood. Gregory Lamb was still in the skip. ‘It’s clear.’
The agent scrambled out of his hiding-place.
‘Mind the blood,’ Bond told Lamb, as he nearly stepped in some.
‘Oh, my God!’ he muttered and looked as if he was going to be sick.
Ignoring him, Bond said to Jordaan, ‘I need to know how extensive Gehenna is. Can you get your officers to collect all the files and computers in Research and Development? And I’ll need your computer-crimes outfit to crack the passwords.’
‘Yes, of course. We’ll have them brought to the SAPS office. You can review them there.’
Nkosi said, ‘I’ll do it, Commander.’
Bond thanked him. The man’s round face seemed less wry and irrepressible than earlier. Bond supposed this had been his first firefight. He’d be changed forever by the incident but, from what Bond was seeing, the change would not diminish but rather would enhance the young officer. Nkosi gestured toward some SAPS Forensic Science Service offic
ers and led them inside the building.
Bond glanced at Jordaan. ‘Can I ask you a question?’
She turned to him.
‘What did you say? After you climbed out of the ditch, you said something.’
With her particular complexion, she might or might not have been blushing. ‘Don’t tell Ugogo.’
‘I won’t.’
‘The first was Zulu for… I guess you’d say, in English, “crap”.’
‘I have some variations on that myself. And the other word?’
She squinted. ‘That, I think, I will not tell you, James.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it refers to a certain part of the male anatomy… and I do not think it wise to encourage you in that regard.’
63
Late afternoon, the sun beginning to dip in the north-west, James Bond drove from the Table Mountain Hotel, where he’d showered and changed, to Cape Town’s central police station.
As he entered and made for Jordaan’s office he noticed several pairs of eyes staring at him. The expressions were no longer curious, he sensed, as had been the case upon his first visit here, several days ago, but admiring. Perhaps the story of his role in foiling Severan Hydt’s plan had circulated. Or the tale of how he’d taken out two adversaries and blown up a landfill with a single bullet, no mean accomplishment. (The fire, Bond had learnt, was largely extinguished – to his immense relief. He would not have wanted to be known as the man who had burnt a sizeable area of Cape Town to its sandstone foundation.)
He was met by Bheka Jordaan in the hall. She’d taken another shower to clean off the remnants of Severan Hydt and had changed into dark trousers and a yellow shirt, bright and cheerful, perhaps an antidote to the horror of the events at Green Way.
She gestured him into her office. They sat together in chairs before her desk. ‘Dunne’s managed to get to Mozambique. Government security spotted him there but he got lost in some unsavoury part of Maputo – which, frankly, is most of the city. I called some colleagues in Pretoria, in Financial Intelligence, the Special Investigations Unit and the Banking Risk Information Centre. They checked his accounts – under a warrant, of course. Yesterday afternoon two hundred thousand pounds were wired into a Swiss account of Dunne’s. Half an hour ago he transferred it to dozens of anonymous online accounts. He can access it from anywhere so we have no idea where he intends to go.’
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