Solo (13 page)

‘You took a lot of money off me as well,’ Bond said.

‘I lost that in the firefight, unfortunately,’ Breed said, dabbing at his eye with his shirtsleeve cuff. ‘Must’ve fallen out of my pocket. Sorry about that.’

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘See you,’ Breed said, bluntly, moving to the door. Then added, remembering he was meant to be amiable now, ‘Oh, yeah. Let me know if I can help with anything.’

He left and Bond unpacked his bag. He checked that everything was there – his shirts, his underwear, his panama hat and his pigskin toilet bag. He unzipped it – everything in its place. He took the panama out of its tube and unrolled it, pulling and tweaking it back into its hat-shape. Then he slipped out the cardboard lining of the tube and unpeeled the twenty new $20 bills that were rolled neatly around it in the interstice. His own idea for a hiding place – Q Branch would be proud of him. He was solvent again.

He gathered up his razor, soap and shaving cream and went down to the shower room at the end of the corridor and cleaned himself up thoroughly – a long shower, a hair wash and a close shave. Then he changed into a clean shirt and began to feel human again. He slipped his Rolex back on his wrist. Ten past six. The bar would be open – time for a drink.

The journalists’ bar at the Port Dunbar Press Centre served beer, gin, whisky and various soft drinks. Bond changed $20 at reception for 380,000 Dahumian sigmassis and went back to the bar, where, entirely alone, he drank two large whisky and sodas with untypical speed. He also bought a packet of Boomslangs and, with his whisky in front of him on the table and a cigarette lit, felt his mood improve. The mission was full-on, all systems ‘go’ once more, he realised. He had infiltrated himself into Dahum, his cover was solid and his special equipment was intact. The fact that he had almost died, that Blessing Ogilvy-Grant, Zanzarim head of station, was almost certainly dead, and that he’d spent forty-eight hours lost, walking through virgin forest, seemed almost irrelevant, somehow. He could hear M’s voice in his ear: ‘Just get on with it, 007.’ So he would – phase two was about to commence.

A young man in his late twenties, wearing a crumpled, grubby linen suit, wandered shiftily into the bar. He had a patchy beard and long greasy hair that hung to his collar. He gave a visible start of surprise on seeing Bond and came over, his eyes alive with welcome.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Digby Breadalbane – the freelance.’ He had a weak handshake and a slightly whiny London accent.

‘I’m Bond, James Bond. Agence Presse Libre.’

‘Oh, they’ll love you here,’ Breadalbane said with some bitterness. ‘They love anything French, this lot.’ He sat down. ‘I’ve been here three months but because I’m freelance they don’t rate me.’ He leaned closer. ‘Thank God you’ve arrived. There’s just a Yank and a Kraut and me, the Anglo – it’s like a bad joke, isn’t it? – the foreign press in Port Dunbar.’ He rummaged in a pocket for a cigarette but the pack he found was empty. Bond offered him a Boomslang and asked him what he’d like to drink. A beer, Breadalbane said, thanks very much. Bond signalled the barman and a Green Star was brought over. Clearly the beer in Zanzarim didn’t distinguish between rebel and federalist.

Breadalbane continued his moaning for a while and Bond dutifully listened. Then the two other journalists appeared, both older men in their fifties. They introduced themselves – Miller Dupree and Odon Haas. Dupree looked fit and had a close-cropped
en brosse
haircut like a marine. Haas was corpulent and his grey hair fell down his back in a ponytail. He also had many strings of beads around his neck and wrists, Bond noticed. Both of them asked him if he knew Thierry Duhamel.

‘Ah, Thierry,’ Bond said, forewarned by his encounter with Geoffrey Letham. ‘He’s a legend.’ They all agreed on this and that was an end to the matter.

Bond fired questions at them, asking them about the war from the rebels’ side and the situation in Port Dunbar. They all confirmed that the city was surprisingly safe – and efficiently run. Postal services worked; public servants were paid; only when you went beyond its precincts did things change – the random danger and meaningless chaos of the civil war reasserted its dominance. No one knew where the front lines were, or where the opposing forces were manoeuvring, or might attack or mysteriously retreat. Bombing and artillery were completely indiscriminate: one village might be razed, another left untouched. Janjaville airstrip was the place to visit, they said. Once you saw what happened there – with the flights arriving after dark – then you could begin to make some sense of this conflict.

Bond was intrigued and, to his vague surprise, found himself enjoying the worldly company of his new ‘colleagues’. He bought round after round of drinks with his copious supply of sigmassis and encouraged them to talk. Dupree and Haas were ageing socialists writing for left-wing magazines in their respective countries. Still avid for the cause, they unequivocally supported Dahum’s right to secede from Zanzarim. Bond was pleased to note how secure his APL cover was and he began to think that perhaps this mission was not as haphazardly planned as he had once thought. Perhaps this mission was achievable, in spite of everything – all he had to do was find a way of getting close to Brigadier Adeka. Perhaps his new ‘friend’ Kobus Breed was the man to help him out there.

Bond had an uneasy sleep, despite all the whisky he’d consumed with his new colleagues. His dream-life was full of the clamour of the firefight in the forest and Blessing’s terrible panic, all merging with images of the dead children in the hut in Lokani, stirring, rising, pointing their bony fingers at him in reproach.

At first light he went and had a cold shower and forced himself to do half an hour of callisthenics – star-jumps, press-ups, running on the spot – to clear his mind and make him feel alert. He strolled down to the bar – now functioning as a dining room – and ate the breakfast that was provided: orange juice, an overcooked omelette and watery coffee. He had lit his first cigarette of the day when a young man came into the room and walked over to him, smiling broadly.

‘Mr Bond, good morning, sir, I am Sunday. I am your assistant.’

I am your minder, Bond thought. Dupree and Haas had told him about the Ministry of Interior minders that they were provided with. Not for Breadalbane, of course, to his shame and chagrin. These minders also provided transport and accompanied you everywhere.

Sunday was in his early twenties, short and muscle-bound with a cheerful, easy manner and a near-constant smile. His car was a large but bashed-about cerise Peugeot 404. One headlight was missing and there was a neat row of bullet holes punched along the left-hand side.

‘The MiGs do this,’ Sunday explained. Then laughed. ‘But they miss me.’

First stop on their agenda was at the Ministry of the Interior – housed in a former community centre with a chequerboard tile facade, and a lobby filled with empty pinboards. He had a meeting with the Minister of the Interior herself, a handsome, serious-looking woman called Abigail Kross, who had been Zanzarim’s first woman judge after independence. Her brother was Minister of Defence in the Dahumian government and, during their conversation, Bond gained a clear impression of the absolute strength of Fakassa tribal loyalties – loyalties and bonds that seemed far stronger than anything equivalent in Western Europe.

Abigail Kross smiled at him.

‘I’m counting on you, Mr Bond, to make sure your French readers fully understand our terrible situation here,’ she said. ‘If the French government could recognise Dahum then everything would change. I know they’ve been close to this decision – perhaps one more gentle push . . .’

Bond was diplomatic. ‘I promise you I’ll report what I see – but I have to say I’m very impressed so far.’

‘You’ll see more today,’ she said. ‘Our schools, our civil defence, our militia training.’ She looked at him shrewdly. ‘This is not about stealing oil, Mr Bond, this is a new country trying to shape its own destiny.’

And so Sunday dutifully took him to a school, to the central hospital, to the barracks and a fire station, to underground bunkers and experimental agricultural enterprises. Bond saw workshops where local blacksmiths reconstituted crashed and wrecked cars into hospital beds and office furniture. More intriguingly he saw there was a burgeoning defence industry fabricating their own hand grenades and anti-personnel mines from the most humdrum materials. By the end of the day’s touring around, Bond was exhausted. He had deliberately taken notes – acting the journalist – but something about the desperation inherent in all these activities had depressed him. This was a country – barely a country – clinging on to its existence with its fingernails, desperate to survive through its talent for improvisation and inspired gimmickry. But Bond had seen the forces massing against them and knew how doomed and forlorn their efforts were. A hand grenade forged from bits of an old sewing machine and a lawnmower wasn’t going to stop a Centurion tank or a canister of napalm dropped from a low-flying MiG.

‘Take me back to base, Sunday,’ Bond requested after half an hour of watching smartly uniformed schoolchildren marching to and fro with wooden rifles over their shoulders. ‘Oh, yes,’ he added. ‘I want to go to the Janjaville airstrip tonight. Can you arrange that?’

‘We get you special pass,’ Sunday said. ‘They will issue it at Press Centre.’

They drove back through Port Dunbar’s busy but ordered streets. Sunday leapt out of the car and opened the door for him.

‘You know what you can do for me, Sunday,’ Bond said. ‘I need a jacket, a bush jacket, lots of pockets.’ He handed over a few thousand sigmassis.

‘I get one for you, sir,’ Sunday said. ‘One fine, fine jacket.’

Bond went to the Press Centre’s administration office where a young lieutenant provided him with the special pass that would allow him entry into Janjaville airstrip.

‘While we have Janjaville, there is hope,’ he said, with evident sincerity.

It sounded like a slogan, Bond thought, something to shout at a rally – but the man’s self-belief made him even more curious to see the place and what went on there. He suspected that the placid near-normality of life in Port Dunbar meant that the real target of Zanza Force’s efforts would be directed at the airfield. Janjaville seemed the strategic key to the whole war. He reminded himself of the strategic key to his mission.

He smiled at the lieutenant.

‘I’d like officially to request, on behalf of the Agence Presse Libre, an interview with Brigadier Adeka.’

‘It’s impossible, sir,’ the lieutenant said. ‘The brigadier does not talk to the foreign press.’

‘Tell him we’re a French press agency. It could be very important for Dahum in France—’

‘It makes no difference,’ the lieutenant interrupted. ‘Since the war began we’ve had over one hundred requests for interviews. Every newspaper, radio station, TV channel in the world. The brigadier does not give interviews to anyone.’

Bond went back to the bar, perplexed. Perhaps he’d have to try gaining access through Abigail Kross. Breadalbane was sitting in the bar and asked if there was any chance that he could borrow some money, running out of funds and all that. Bond gave him a wad of notes and bought him a cold beer.

Sunday’s Peugeot bumped over potholes as it approached the perimeter fence of Janjaville airstrip. He had switched off his one headlight as there was a strict blackout imposed. Here and there at the side of the road were little flasks of burning oil providing a dim guiding light – enough to know you were on the right track. Bond looked at his watch. The journey had taken forty minutes, east out of Port Dunbar.

At the gate Bond showed his pass and they were waved through. The perimeter fence was high and heavily barbed-wired, Bond saw, as Sunday parked up behind the airstrip buildings. There was a concrete blockhouse with a towering radio mast and wires looping from it to a mobile radar dish that spun steadily round on its bearings. There was a corrugated-iron hangar, and a few low wooden huts made up the rest of the airstrip’s buildings. On the grass by the blockhouse several dozen soldiers sat patiently waiting beside a row of assorted lorries and trucks, all empty.

Bond was wearing the bush jacket Sunday had acquired for him – in fact it was an army-surplus combat jacket with a patched bullet hole in the back and the Dahum flag sewn on its right shoulder – the red sun in its white plane casting its black shadow below. Had it been stripped from a corpse, Bond wondered, cleaned and resold at a profit? He didn’t particularly care.

Bond stepped out of Sunday’s car and looked around. The runway was closely mown grass but there seemed to be orthodox landing lights, though currently extinguished. In front of the hangar were three Malmö MFI trainers painted in camouflage green and black – single-engined, boxy-looking aircraft with oddly splayed tricycle undercarriages that had the effect of making them look as if they were about to fall back on their tails. Technicians were working on them and Bond saw the spark-shower of oxyacetylene. To his eyes it looked like they were attaching .50-calibre machine guns on to pylons beneath the wings.

‘This will be our new air force,’ Sunday said with manifest pride. ‘Madame Kross, she ask for me to introduce you to Mr Hulbert Linck. Please to follow me, Mr Bond.’

Bond walked with Sunday towards the hangar. As he drew near he saw that there was a very tall European man supervising the work on the Malmös. Sunday approached him, gave a small bow and indicated Bond standing a few paces away. Very tall indeed, Bond realised, as the man turned to look at him. Six foot six, perhaps, like a basketball player, and he had all the lanky awkwardness and ungainliness of the very tall. He was in his fifties and his thinning, fine white-blond hair was blown into a kind of hirsute halo by the evening breeze. He wore faded jeans and canvas boots, his shirt had a tear at the elbow. He looked more like some crazed inventor than a shrewd international businessman and multimillionaire.