Solo (21 page)

May arrived and took over, telling Bond crossly that he looked ‘awfy peely-wally’ and that he should take better care of himself, eat three square meals a day and so on. Bond agreed, and promised to do his best. She watched him throw his suitcase into the back garden, say goodbye and climb out of his drawing-room window as if it were the most natural way in the world of leaving your house.

The AfricaKIN sign had been removed and the poster had been replaced with a ‘TO LET – ALL ENQUIRIES’ notice in the grimy window, now barred with a sliding iron grille. Bond stood across from the parade of shops in Bayswater feeling frustrated. This had been his key line of investigation; he recalled the shock he’d experienced on seeing the AfricaKIN logo on the nose of the Super Constellation at Janjaville airstrip. He had felt sure that Gabriel Adeka would – unwittingly or not – be the route to Hulbert Linck and then to Breed, or whoever else was behind the whole plot. Bond paced around. With the AfricaKIN door closed maybe Blessing – or Aleesha Belem – was the person to search for, but where would he begin to pick up that trail?

Then the door to the shop opened and a young man came out – a young black man – carrying a typewriter. He chucked the typewriter on the back seat of a Mini parked outside and was about to climb in and drive away, when Bond stopped him with a shout and crossed the road to introduce himself – without giving his name – as a friend of Gabriel Adeka and a long-time donor to AfricaKIN.

The young man – who said his name was Peter Kunle – spoke like an English public schoolboy. He let Bond into the shop so he could have a look around. Everything had gone on the ground floor, even the linoleum, leaving just an empty expanse of noticeably clean concrete amidst the general grime, almost as if it had been freshly laid; and upstairs in Adeka’s former office there was only a curling yellowing pile of posters that signalled the place’s previous function.

‘So did Gabriel close everything down when the civil war ended?’ Bond asked Peter Kunle, who had followed him up the stairs.

‘Oh, no. AfricaKIN still exists. He’s just moved everything to America.’

‘America?’ Bond was astonished.

‘Yes,’ Kunle said. ‘He’s set the whole charity up there – AfricaKIN Inc. He’s got major backers, apparently, very big sponsors.’

‘When did all this happen?’ Bond paced around, picking up a poster and dropping it – a starveling fly-infested child, all too horribly familiar now.

‘Maybe a few weeks or so ago,’ Kunle said. ‘Maybe a bit longer, actually. We all had this round-robin letter explaining what was happening.’

‘So everything changed just as the war was ending,’ Bond said, trying to get a sense of a narrative.

‘Yes. The charity now focuses on the entire continent. Not just Zanzarim – or Dahum, as was. You know, famines, natural disasters, disease, revolutions, anti-apartheid. The whole shebang.’

Bond was thinking hard. ‘Where’s he gone in America? Do you know?’

‘I think it’s Washington DC,’ Kunle said, adding, ‘I didn’t know Gabriel that well. I used to help out as a volunteer a little in the early days but there was too much harassment. It was quite frightening sometimes.’

‘Yes, he told me,’ Bond said.

‘He forgot that I’d lent him the office typewriter,’ Kunle said. ‘That wasn’t like Gabriel.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was very scrupulous,’ Kunle laughed. ‘Self-destructively honest. He even offered to rent the typewriter off me – one pound a week. I said no, of course. So it was odd that he just left it here and didn’t tell me. I had to ring up the landlord to get the keys and retrieve it.’

‘So, it’s now called AfricaKIN Inc.’

‘Yes . . . I suppose the offer was too good to refuse. Too much money on the table – a bright shiny future. A shabby rented shop in Bayswater hardly impresses.’

Peter Kunle could tell him little more and apologised as he locked up the place. Bond shook his hand and thanked him for his help.

‘Sorry – what was your name again?’ Kunle asked as he opened his car door.

‘Breed,’ Bond said. ‘Jakobus Breed. Do tell Gabriel I called round if you ever speak to him.’

They said goodbye and Bond wandered off up the road, pondering his options in the wake of all this new information. So: Gabriel Adeka had upped sticks for the USA and reinvented AfricaKIN in Washington DC as a global philanthropic concern overseeing the entire continent. Perhaps it was all perfectly legitimate and full of charitable integrity. He recalled his meeting with Gabriel Adeka and how impressed he’d been with the force of his quiet zeal and humanity . . . But Bond needed to ask him one pressing question: why was his charity’s name on the side of an aeroplane delivering weapons and ammunition to a war zone? What had that to do with his African kinsmen? If he couldn’t answer the question he might be able to point Bond in the direction of someone who would.

Bond paused to light a cigarette and noticed he was standing outside the cinema where Bryce Fitzjohn alias Astrid Ostergard’s vampire film had been playing the last time he’d been here in Bayswater. What had it been called? Oh, yes:
The Curse of Dracula’s Daughter
. It seemed like a year ago, not weeks, Bond thought, smiling to himself as he pictured Bryce’s unknowing, innocent striptease for him that night he’d broken into her house. Bryce Fitzjohn – yes, he’d be very happy to see her again, one day.

He wandered on, up towards Hyde Park, still ruminating. There was a trail, thankfully, but it led to America, to Washington DC . . . And thereby lay a major problem. He could buy a plane ticket but could hardly use his own passport to travel. He was meant to be convalescing in South Uist, not taking international flights across the Atlantic. One way or another word would get out and he’d be in trouble.

Bond crossed the Bayswater Road and strolled into Hyde Park. What he needed was a fake passport and he needed it fast – in a day, two days, maximum. This was the major disadvantage about going solo – lack of resources. Normally, he’d call Q Branch and have a perfect used passport – full of stamps and frankings from foreign journeys – with his new name in an hour. He thought about the numbers he’d jotted down from the contact list in his flat. No, there was no one who could do a complete job like that in the short time necessary. Bond sauntered on. Maybe he could steal someone else’s? He started glancing at passers-by, looking for men of his age who vaguely resembled him and then realised that most people didn’t conveniently carry their passport on them, unless they were foreign visitors. Perhaps he’d need to go to an airport. No, it wouldn’t be—

He stopped. It had come to him like a revelation. All you had to do was give your brain enough time to work. A solution always presented itself.

Amerdon Studios was situated on the banks of the Thames between Windsor and Bray and consisted of a large rambling red-brick Victorian country house with a couple of sound stages built on what had been a parterred garden modelled on Versailles. Around the sound stages there was the usual cluster of wooden shacks and Nissen huts that contained storage rooms for props and equipment and the various technical workshops that a modern film studio required.

He told the surly man supervising the visitors’ car park that he was Astrid Ostergard’s agent and was sent to sound stage number two, where
Vampiria, Queen of Darkness
was shooting.

Bond headed over, briskly, a man with purpose, on important business. A couple of phone calls – one to the distributor of Bryce’s last film,
The Curse of Dracula’s Daughter
, and then to the office of her talent agent, a company called Cosmopolitan Talent International – had elicited the information that Astrid Ostergard was not available to open Bond’s new department store in Hemel Hempstead because she was busy filming
Vampiria, Queen of Darkness
at Amerdon Studios. No, absolutely impossible, thank you very much, Mr Bond, nothing you can say will make any difference, goodbye.

As Bond approached sound stage number two he saw groups of extras in dinner suits and evening dress lounging around chatting and drinking tea out of wax-paper cups. One of them left her folding canvas chair and Bond swiftly purloined the script that she’d neglected to take with her. He asked a fat man coiling lengths of electric cable where he could find the production offices and was directed to a long caravan parked beside the sound stage.

Bond knocked on the open door and a harassed-looking woman glanced up crossly from an adding machine into which she’d been ferociously tapping figures.

‘Yes?’ she said. Tap-tap-tap.

‘Randolph Formby,’ Bond said in a patrician accent, holding up his script distastefully. ‘Equity. I need to see Astrid Ostergard. She’s two years behind on her payments.’

Bond had once enjoyed a short affair with an actress who’d told him that every theatrical, televisual and cinematic door opened when the word ‘Equity’ was pronounced, such was the power and sway of the actors’ trade union. Bond was pleased he’d remembered and curious to see if it actually worked.

‘Bloody Astrid!’ the woman exclaimed. ‘So sorry. Typical. Jesus Christ!’ She carried on muttering swear words to herself as she walked Bond around sound stage number two to where a row of caravans was parked.

‘Third on the right,’ she said. Then, adding nervously, ‘There’s not going to be a problem, is there? With Astrid, I mean. We’re already five days behind.’

‘I can’t guarantee anything,’ Bond said with a thin apparatchik’s smile. ‘She has to pay her dues.’

The woman left, still muttering, and Bond approached the caravan, designated by a scrawled sign stuck to the side with ‘Astrid Ostergard/Vampiria’ written on it.

Bond knocked on the door and uttered the magic word: ‘Equity.’

Seconds later Bryce Fitzjohn flung open her door. She was wearing fishnet stockings and a red satin bustier that pushed her breasts up and together to form an impressive cleavage. She looked at Bond blankly for a moment and then laughed – loudly, delightedly.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘James bloody Bond.’

‘Hello, Vampiria,’ Bond said. ‘I’m here to apologise.’

‘Come into my parlour,’ she said.

Bryce pulled on a silk dressing gown and Bond sat on a bench seat opposite a make-up table and mirror. He took out his cigarette case and offered it, Bryce selecting a cigarette and lighting it herself. She stared at him as she blew smoke sideways, eyes narrowing.

‘I still don’t know how you got into my house.’

Bond lit a cigarette. ‘It was wrong of me, I admit. I turned up for your party and there was no one there. I thought you were playing some kind of a game, winding me up. So I left you a note.’ Bond smiled. ‘You should get a better lock on your kitchen door. It was child’s play.’

‘So what are you? A professional burglar?’

‘I shouldn’t have done it,’ Bond continued, ignoring the question, ‘so I’ve come to say sorry and invite you to dinner. At the Dorchester,’ he added. ‘Tonight, if you’re free.’

Bryce crossed her long legs and Bond took her in. She was wearing a dense blonde wig with red stripes in it and he found her powerfully alluring. Nothing had changed, he thought, remembering their first encounters.

‘Well, it’s tempting, but I can’t go up to town,’ she said. ‘I’ve an early call tomorrow morning.’

There was a knock on the door. ‘We need you now, Miss Ostergard,’ a voice said.

Bryce stood up. Bond did so as well, and for a moment in the confined space of the caravan they were close. Bond sensed her interest in him, renewed. They were each other’s type, he realised, it was as simple as that. The attraction was very mutual, it had been from the beginning, from those first moments in the lift at the Dorchester.

‘I’ve got to go to work,’ she said. ‘You know where my house is in Richmond, don’t you? There’s a nice little place nearby we can go to. See you at eight.’

Bond slid very quietly out of Bryce’s bed and stood there for a moment, looking down on her as she slept deeply, lying on her side, one breast innocently exposed. She was a beautiful mature woman, Bond thought, pulling on his trousers and remembering the last time he’d made love – weeks and weeks ago – and how different in almost every degree his partner had been then. He moved to the door in bare feet and turned the handle slowly, thinking about the rest-house on the edge of the Zanza River Delta with Blessing Ogilvy-Grant in his arms. He smiled with a certain bitterness – that was when all his misfortunes had begun.

He left the bedroom door ajar by an inch and padded downstairs to Bryce’s study. He switched on the light and sat at her desk, sliding open the top drawer and taking out her passport. The date of birth pretty much fitted – and he was more than happy to shed a few years. The name was both masculine and feminine. All he needed to do was have the photograph and the gender designation changed – and he had exactly the man in mind who could do that. He would become Bryce Fitzjohn, ‘professional actor’. ‘Actress’ could be easily tampered with. He slipped the passport into the back pocket of his trousers and went through to the sitting room, where he poured himself an inch of brandy into a tumbler and sipped at it, turning his back to the warm embers still glowing in the grate of the fireplace, thinking back agreeably over their evening together.

Bond had arrived on time (in a taxi from Richmond station) and when Bryce opened the door to him she kissed him on the cheek – a good sign, Bond thought – and he smelled the scent of ‘Shalimar’ on her. She was wearing a black velvet dress to just above the knee with a low scoop neck. Two diamonds glittered at her ears and her thick blonde hair was brushed casually back from her brow. There was a bottle of Taittinger champagne waiting in an ice bucket on a table in the sitting room that she asked Bond to open. They toasted each other as they had done that evening across the dining room in the Dorchester.

‘Here’s to breaking and entering,’ she said.