Solo (23 page)

He had booked himself a room in a large hotel called the Fairview near Mount Vernon Square, between Massachusetts Avenue and G Street. He wanted a busy hotel with many rooms, to be just one transient individual amongst hundreds of anonymous guests. As he headed into the city he began to recognise the odd landmark. He didn’t know Washington well – it was a place he had passed through over the years, spending the occasional night, mainly in transit for meetings at the CIA headquarters at Langley. He remembered from his reading somewhere that Charles Dickens had called Washington a ‘city of magnificent intentions’. A somewhat loaded phrase – seeming at first glance like a compliment – though it could actually be interpreted as a rebuke: why hadn’t those magnificent intentions ever been realised? For all its pre-eminent role and status in the nation’s political life, Washington, he thought – outside the pomp and grandeur of its public buildings or the tonier neighbourhoods – appeared a run-down, poor-looking, dangerous place. Every time he told people he was going there he received the familiar warnings about where not to go, what not to do. Consequently, his impressions of the city were coloured by this note of caution and edgy guardedness. For most of the time you were in Washington DC you never really felt fully at ease, Bond thought.

His hotel was ideal. The Fairview was a tall featureless modern block with a middle-distance view of the Capitol’s dome on its hill. His room was large and air-conditioned, with a colour TV, and the bathroom was clean and functional. He sat down on his bed and flicked through the telephone directory and then Yellow Pages, finding nothing that led him to AfricaKIN Inc. Then it struck him that Gabriel Adeka had only arrived a few weeks ago. So he called information and was given a number. This second call elicited an address: 1075 Milford Plaza in the Southwest district, south of Independence Avenue. He would check it out in the morning. At least he had found the beginning of his trail.

He unpacked his clothes and toiletries and felt the creeping melancholy of hotel life infect him. The bland room, replicated in thousands of hotels worldwide, made him sense all the drab anomie of the transient, the temporarily homeless – just the number of your room and your name in the register the signal of your ephemeral identity. He thought of Bryce, inevitably, her ripe beauty and their night together and experienced a brief ache of longing for her. Maybe he should never have embarked on this whole business – he should have spent his month’s leave in London and come to know her better. It might have been a more therapeutic course of action than revenge . . . He shook himself out of his mood – self-pity was the most rebarbative of human emotions. He had chosen to come here; he had a job to do. He looked at his watch – early evening but midnight for him. Still, he couldn’t go to bed.

He went down to the dark loud bar in the lobby – all the other transients drowning their melancholy – and drank two large bourbons and branch water. Then in the half-empty hangar of a dining room he ate as much as he could of a vast tough steak with some French fries. Back in his room he took a sleeping pill: he wanted a full ten hours’ unconsciousness before he set about investigating the new configuration of AfricaKIN Inc.

Milford Plaza was a new development and had pretensions. Three six-storey glass and concrete office blocks had been positioned round a large granite-paved public space – the ‘plaza’ – set out with stone benches and a generous planting of assorted saplings. An oval pool with a fountain and a plinth-mounted piece of modern sculpture – three outsized girders painted in primary colours leaning against each other – contributed to its striven-for airs and graces. AfricaKIN Inc. was on the second floor of the central block.

Bond stood in the filtered neutral light of the building’s tall marbled lobby – more plants, a giant suspended mobile twirling gently – and pretended to study the gilt-lettered columns of companies that were renting space. He thought about taking the elevator and actually seeing what the AfricaKIN premises were like but he sensed it might be both premature and possibly dangerous. He needed some time – to watch and evaluate, see who came and went, assess the risk factor. There was no hurry, he told himself; he had time on his side; his name was Bryce Fitzjohn.

He strolled outside. The Plaza was let down somewhat by the buildings opposite, across the street – a row of assorted pre-war brownstones showing signs of their age faced the pristine glass and granite. There was a temperance hotel – the Ranchester – a thrift shop, an A&P grocery, a Seventh Day Adventist chapel, a Chinese laundry, a jewellers and assorted eating places and a couple of small convenience stores with boarded-up windows.

Bond lit a cigarette and crossed the street wondering if there was somewhere that he could establish a semi-permanent viewpoint. He could have rented a room in the temperance hotel – it was perfectly positioned – but he refused to humiliate himself by staying in such an establishment. However, a little further along and at an oblique angle to the plaza he saw a building, grandly named the Alcazar, with a faded sign saying ‘Office Suites To Let. One, Two, Three Rooms. All Conveniences.’ Bond looked up at the five-storey facade. If he could rent somewhere high up at the front he’d have a good view of everyone going in and out of number 1075.

An eager young man in a shiny suit who introduced himself as Abe tried to persuade him to take their deluxe suite at the back of the building, which came with two reserved parking spaces in the lot at the rear. Bond insisted on the front. All that was available was a three-room suite on the fourth floor. Abe showed him around as Bond peered out of the windows checking the sight lines. Perfect. Abe wanted three months’ rent in advance but Bond, taking out his fat wad of dollars, offered him just one month in advance – with a private, personal bonus of a hundred for Abe himself, for being so extremely helpful. ‘It’s a deal,’ Abe said, trying to keep his smile of joy under control. Bond duly paid his deposit, slipped Abe his inducement, signed the lease and was given a set of keys. ‘Welcome to the Alcazar,’ Abe said, and shook his hand.

There were dirty, vertical plastic strip-blinds at the windows, no furniture and stained carpet tiles on the floor. The third and smallest of the rooms gave him the best view. All Bond needed was a seat and a pair of binoculars – then he could survey Milford Plaza to his heart’s content. It was time to equip himself.

Bond drove west and crossed the Potomac to a suburb outside DC in Virginia. He cruised the shopping malls and the streets until he found what he was looking for. He parked outside a large, brash-looking store painted canary yellow with, along the facade, huge red letters outlined in neon that said ‘SAM M. GOODFORTH. GUNS ’N’ AMMO’. Beneath that, in a cursive copperplate, a line read ‘Your Firearm Dreams Answered’.

Bond pushed open the door and browsed for a while, checking the place out. All the lethal hardware was contained in locked wire-grilled cabinets behind the long sales counter. The rest of the store was filled with army surplus and hunting and fishing equipment and accessories. Bond chose a folding canvas stool and a soft rubber mattress that could be rolled up. He approached the counter with his purchases.

The thin, muscled man who served him was smoking a cigarette and had his hair shaved almost bald in a severe crew cut with a curious tuft at the forelock. Various crests and emblems were tattooed on his pale arms. Despite his martial air his voice was oddly high-pitched and he had a half-lisp.

Bond also bought a pair of binoculars, ex-US Navy, Zeiss lenses.

‘Are you the owner?’ he asked.

‘I’m his brother, Eugene,’ he smiled, showing a black tooth. ‘Sam’s got an appointment with a lady friend.’

‘I need a handgun,’ Bond said. ‘Have you got a Walther PPK?’

‘I got thomething better, thir,’ Eugene lisped. ‘Thmall but thtrong.’

He opened a drawer and brought out a Beretta M1951. Bond liked Berettas, in fact he sometimes regretted giving up his old Beretta for his Walther. He turned it over in his hand, checking it – it was a ‘third series’ with the smaller sights – cocking it, squeezing the trigger, ejecting the empty clip – it would take eight rounds of 9 mm Parabellum – and slapping it back in.

‘Ain’t the first time you had a gun in your hand, I can see that,’ Eugene said.

Bond liked the weight of the gun. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said, his eye ranging over the rifles, the M5 carbines, machine guns and shotguns racked behind the grilles. Maybe he needed something for longer ranges . . . And then he suddenly thought that powerful telescopic sight might be a real advantage – a sniper-scope – from his room high up in the Alcazar. Something that could zoom in – better than binoculars.

‘I might be doing a bit of hunting,’ Bond said. ‘I want something with a bit of beef – and that can take a strong scope.’

Eugene Goodforth presented him with a choice of powerful hunting rifles – a CZ-550 with a Mannlicher stock, a Mauser Karabiner and a Springfield 1903 in beautiful condition. Bond was more interested in the sights that he was shown and took the latest model Schmidt & Bender scope to the door to see how it worked at long range.

He looked at passers-by down the street. The zoom magnification was very effective and the little calibrations and illuminated cross-hairs reticle could be changed at the flick of a switch at the side.

He returned to the counter and told Eugene that he needed a rifle that would fit this scope – but one that could be broken up and carried in a bag of some sort.

‘Have I got just the baby for you, sir,’ Eugene said and went into a room behind the counter emerging with what looked like a black plastic attaché case. He flipped it open and showed Bond the contents.

‘Just arrived – a Frankel and Kleist S1962,’ Eugene said with reverence in his voice. He took the separate stock, breech and barrel out of their recessed velvet moulds and fitted them together, sliding the scope on top. ‘Single shot, bolt action. Point five zero calibre bullet, two-stage trigger set to four pounds.’ Bond picked it up and raised it to his shoulder. It was matt black and surprisingly light. Bond fitted his cheek to the cheek rest and drew a bead through the window on a shop sign across the street.

‘You turn down the reticle illumination all the way on that scope you can shoot this mother at night, I swear,’ Eugene said.

‘Perfect,’ Bond said. ‘You made another sale.’

‘What’re you after?’ Eugene asked with a knowing smile. ‘Neighbours?’

Bond laughed. ‘Elk,’ he said, spontaneously.

‘Don’t got much elk around these parts,’ Eugene said. ‘Still, you may get lucky.’

‘I’ll look hard,’ Bond said.

He bought the guns and their relevant ammunition, showed his Bryce Fitzjohn passport, filled in the documentation – giving as his address his hotel, the Fairview – and marvelled, not for the first time in his life, just how easy it was to arm yourself in the land of the free.

The next morning Bond parked his Mustang in an underground garage near the Federal Warehouse and walked the three blocks to the Alcazar, attaché case in one hand, a canvas grip in his other, containing the binoculars, the mattress, three packs of cigarettes and a vacuum flask filled with a weak solution of bourbon and iced water. He could always pop out for a sandwich or a dreaded burger or hot dog if he grew hungry, he reasoned.

Secure in his room, the main door locked, he pulled the little circular chain that turned the blind sideways on to the windows. He set up his folding stool and unrolled his mattress. He sat down and picked up the binoculars. He had an ideal oblique line of sight on to the plaza and anyone entering or leaving number 1075. The binoculars allowed him an initial identification and the sniper-scope provided a genuine close-up with the aid of the zoom-magnification device. However, with the zoom at maximum the hand-shake distortion was sizeable. He needed a tripod, Bond thought – or, even better, the rifle it was designed for.

He assembled the Frankel and fitted the scope. By resting the barrel on the windowsill he achieved perfect stability. Peering through the sight with the distance calibration and the cross-haired reticle in operation made him feel like an assassin. Just as well the gun wasn’t loaded, Bond thought: if he saw Kobus Breed crossing the plaza the temptation might prove too hard to resist.

After a couple of hours’ watching, Bond began to feel himself stiffening up. He took off his jacket and did some un-strenuous exercises just to keep the blood flowing. He was feeling stronger every day but didn’t want to put any undue strain on his healing tissues. He smoked a cigarette, had a swig of his bourbon and water and sat down again.

Through his binoculars he saw a glossy town car pull up in the indented drop-off spot at the edge of the plaza. A black man in a dark suit stepped out and leaned forward to have a quick word with the driver. Adeka, Bond wondered? He picked up his rifle and zoomed in with the scope.

No – even more interesting, and someone else he’d met before: Colonel Denga, lately commander-in-chief of the Dahumian armed forces. There was the handsome face with the matinee-idol moustache. Bond watched him stroll across the plaza to 1075. He was dapper – the suit jacket was cut long and was waisted and the trousers fashionably flared. Just visiting, or was he now something to do with AfricaKIN Inc?

Bond lunched on a ham and cheese sandwich in a diner, had a badly made dry martini in a bar and, curiosity getting the better of him, once again went into the lobby of 1075 and stood by the elevators wondering whether to chance a visit to the office itself. But if Denga was there, he’d be recognised, and – just so he could gain a sense of the lie of the land – he thought it might be more effective to disguise himself somehow, initially. There are disguises and disguises, Bond knew. He could grow a beard and shave his head and no one would think he was James Bond. But the short-term, provisional disguise had its own particular methodology. The key aim was to focus attention on one or two elements of the disguise so that they obscured the other, more familiar ones. Time for some more shopping, Bond thought.