Solo (26 page)

He stayed in his room until it was dark and, every ten minutes or so, would wander out to the parking lot at the rear to see if the lights were on in Suite 5K. On his eighth visit to the parking lot he saw that the room was finally occupied and the curtains were drawn. He caught the silhouette of a figure crossing in front of a window. Blessing . . . ? Bond went back to his room and slipped his Beretta into his jacket pocket – he was taking no chances.

He knocked on the door of suite 5K and called out ‘Engineer.’ It was always better than ‘Room service.’

He heard Blessing come to the door and say ‘Please come back tomorrow.’

Bond put on a Mexican accent. ‘The man below he say you got a leak comin’ from you bathroom. I gotta check it, Mam.’

‘OK, OK.’

He heard the lock turn and he took his gun out of his pocket and held it behind his back. Blessing opened the door and gasped. Bond had his gun in her face and was inside in a second, closing the door behind him. He took the gun from her hand – she was taking no chances either, clearly – and tossed it on the sofa, pocketing his own. Blessing had regained her composure, smiling, shaking her head.

‘Yep, “Engineer” is good. I’m going to remember that one.’

She was wearing an eau de Nil satin blouse with balloon sleeves and tight, bell-bottom pale blue jeans. Her feet were bare. She watched, amused, as Bond quickly checked the suite.

‘I’m alone, don’t worry, James.’

Bond glanced in the bedroom. Suite 5K was deluxe and smarter than his room, designed in the Scandinavian style – all curved pale wood, the bed lower than normal, a thick pile navy rug on a slate-grey carpet, a console stereo, black and white photographs of DC’s historic buildings on the walls.

‘What do I call you?’ Bond asked. ‘Blessing or Aleesha?’

‘What do I call you? James or Bryce?’ She smiled. ‘Blessing will do fine. It’s actually my middle name, James.’

Bond began to relax. They were on the same side, after all.

‘We’ve got a bit of catching up to do,’ Bond said. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

‘What’re you drinking?’ she asked, going to the phone.

Bond took the receiver out of her hand.

‘Let me do it,’ he said. ‘Bourbon good for you?’

He ordered a bottle of Jim Beam, two glasses, a bucket of ice and a carafe of branch water and told room service to bill his room – Mr Fitzjohn.

‘You’re staying here?’ Blessing said, astonished. ‘Does Brig Leiter know?’

‘Not yet. I wanted to have some time alone with you.’ He smiled. ‘I like your hair like that.’

‘Thank you, kind sir.’

The bourbon arrived and Bond mixed them both a strong drink. They clinked glasses and Blessing curled up on the sofa with her legs folded under her. Bond sat in an armchair opposite.

‘See if this makes any sense,’ Bond said. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. You were never recruited by MI6 at Cambridge. Instead you were recruited by the CIA when you went to Harvard. Maybe they paid for your graduate studies, just so the cover was good.’

‘You’re getting warm,’ Blessing said.

Bond smiled and continued.

‘Then, after your training you were sent to Zanzarim and you got a job with Edward Ogilvy-Grant, UK head of station.’ Bond took a slug of his bourbon. ‘I would have hired you. Who wouldn’t, with your qualifications? You’re half-Lowele, you speak the language, your family live in Sinsikrou. Perfect. Somehow I doubt your father was a Scottish engineer.’

‘Hotter.’

Bond stood up, lit a cigarette and began pacing around the room.

‘For some reason,’ he went on, ‘the CIA wanted to know what the British were up to in Zanzarim and you became their source. Spying on your ally – we all do it, by the way.’ He smiled drily. ‘Then you told them I was coming and was to be infiltrated into Dahum. What happened next?’

Blessing reached for her pack of cigarettes, her blouse falling forward for a moment, and Bond saw that she was wearing no brassiere.

‘I shouldn’t really tell you anything,’ she said.

‘Then Felix Leiter will tell me when he gets to town. You might as well.’

She sighed and lit her cigarette. ‘I miss Tuskers. Lucky Strikes don’t do it for me any more.’

‘I suppose they ordered you to come with me.’

‘Yes. It was a perfect opportunity. They wanted me to get close to Brigadier Adeka – to offer him asylum in the USA. A safe home, money. Everybody could see the war was ending – he had to go somewhere.’

‘Why were they so interested in Adeka?’

‘I don’t know.’

Bond looked sceptical.

‘Seriously, I don’t – all I had to do was make the offer to him. Make it seem real.’

Bond poured himself another drink. Blessing declined.

‘So you set up the fake office and intercepted me.’

‘It wasn’t difficult. I was Ed Ogilvy-Grant’s secretary. I told him you were coming a week later than you actually were. Set up the office, set up Christmas. Gave you the new address. Phoned in and said I was ill.’

‘It fooled me,’ Bond said, remembering. ‘I think the Annigoni portrait of the Queen was the master touch.’ He paused. ‘Were you told to seduce me?’

‘No. That was my own idea.’

‘Did you know that Kobus Breed was going to hit us?’

‘No. I was genuinely planning to come in with you by boat through the creeks. Kojo, the fisherman, didn’t speak English. You would’ve needed an interpreter, anyway. Then Breed showed up.’ Her face darkened. ‘It kind of threw me . . .’

‘So when you ran off in the firefight you’d decided to go it alone.’

‘Yes – in all that chaos it seemed the right thing to do at the moment.’

‘So who screamed – you?’

‘I didn’t hear any scream. Just gunfire, shouting, explosions. I found a thick clump of undergrowth and crawled in. Soldiers walked right by me. When dawn came it was all quiet. I was lost for a couple of days – couldn’t find my way out of the forest. Then I found a dirt track and I walked down it until I came across a half-ruined convent with three nuns left behind. They fed me and watered me and eventually I made it to Port Dunbar, about two days before the war ended.’

Bond smiled ruefully, thinking of his own fraught journey on the bush paths.

‘Yes, I had some fun in the forest as well.’

‘A letter of introduction had been sent to Adeka. In fact, I was expected,’ she said.

‘But the brigadier was dead by the time you arrived.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I never met him.’

‘I did,’ Bond said. ‘He gave me a medal.’

‘Sure,’ Blessing smiled. ‘But I did meet Colonel Denga – and Breed again. I made the same offer to them – come to the US. I made it very clear I had the power to bring all this about. My “letter of accreditation” was pretty explicit. When Adeka died I was told that his brother in London, Gabriel, had been contacted and was going to be set up here. They were prepared to spend a lot of money.’

‘They?’

‘The CIA.’ She paused. ‘Gabriel Adeka agreed and so the AfricaKIN operation was moved to DC.’

Bond frowned – the whole thing didn’t make much sense to him. He sat down again. He was confident that Blessing was telling him what she knew – but what she knew might be very limited.

‘Did Breed tell you I was in Port Dunbar?’ Bond asked.

‘Of course. I told him I wasn’t to be mentioned. Anyway, I hardly saw him – everything seemed to be falling apart.’ She smiled. ‘I’m good – but I don’t know how I would have reacted if you and I had met again, there. Best for you to think I was dead.’

Bond considered – there was logic to this. She was on her own mission; he would have been in the way. Too much confusion.

‘Why is the CIA so interested in this African charity?’ Bond asked, casually. ‘Why bring it to America, set them up in those swanky offices?’

Blessing didn’t reply immediately. She spread her arms – a gesture of uncertainty. ‘To be honest, I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘They only tell me what they think I need. But my feeling is that the person they’re really after is Hulbert Linck.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He flew out of Janjaville and nobody’s seen him since.’

‘Didn’t he fly out with you on that last Super Constellation?’

‘No. There was a DC-3 there as well. I don’t know if you saw it.’

‘Every detail of that night is burnt in my memory,’ Bond said with a cold smile.

‘Linck and Kobus Breed left in the DC-3. I flew out on the Constellation with everybody else.’

It still wasn’t making much sense to Bond so he changed tack.

‘Why did you shoot me?’

Blessing lowered her head, then looked him squarely in the eye. ‘Simple. To save you and to save myself. Did you see that hook Breed had with him? He was going to hang you from that, he told me – told me in some detail. Seems it’s his special trademark. Also, Breed was very suspicious of me – because I was with you at the beginning. I think he would have killed me that night, in fact.’ She smiled, apologetically. ‘Killed me and killed you . . . If I hadn’t shot you. I shot you exactly where I wanted to, James. We’re trained to know what shots will kill and what shots won’t. I knew it wouldn’t kill you. And Breed was very impressed. He knew I was serious.’

‘Does he know you’re with the CIA?’

‘No. I just represent interested parties with money and influence. He’s convinced – even though I wasn’t specific.’

But Bond wasn’t convinced. Breed may be a psychopath but he wasn’t stupid, he thought. He and Denga would be aware that there was a government agency working here, or something similar – too much money, too much power – and recognise it and exploit it. One thing nagged at him: in all their contacts during the final days at Port Dunbar Breed had never told him Blessing had survived the firefight in the forest. He was impressed with Breed’s ability to keep that information to himself. It seemed untypical . . .

He lit another cigarette. ‘So – the big surveillance at Milford Plaza is to try and nail Linck.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why? What’s so important about Linck for the CIA?’

‘I told you – I don’t know. Linck must have something we want. Information – some secret. In the end I don’t know. Honestly.’

Bond frowned. He had always had his doubts about Linck. ‘I never really thought he was just some crazy romantic millionaire who likes lost causes.’

‘I think that’s what he wants people to think. But there’s something more,’ Blessing added. ‘There’s a lot of pressure on me. Too much. It’s not normal and it’s not fair, to be honest. I’m right in the heart of AfricaKIN. I’m secure. But Brig and the others can’t understand why I can’t tell them where Hulbert Linck is – or if he’s even alive. Sometimes I think that maybe Breed killed him.’

‘It’s entirely possible,’ Bond said.

Blessing stood up. ‘Look, I’m going to have a shower. Maybe we can order up some room service, or something.’

‘Let’s go out and have a proper meal,’ Bond said.

Blessing smiled cynically. ‘I don’t think I should risk being seen dining out with you, James. What if Kobus Breed got to hear about it?’

‘Yes – you’re right. It’s just that I don’t fancy the room-service food in this motel.’

She went into the bedroom and soon Bond heard the shower running. He drank another bourbon while he waited, trying to see how the disparate pieces of this puzzle might fit together. And failed. AfricaKIN, Gabriel Adeka, Hulbert Linck, the CIA . . . Kobus Breed had flown out of Janjaville with Linck. More and more Bond felt that Breed was the key to all this.

Blessing came back into the room. She was wearing a boldly printed orange and black cotton dressing gown – short, cut to mid-thigh and belted at the waist. Bond assumed she was naked underneath. Concentrate, he told himself, retrieve as much information as you can.

‘Where’s Gabriel Adeka?’ he asked.

‘He runs everything from a big house in Orange County, Virginia, called Rowanoak Hall. It’s a kind of clinic – a medical sorting office. A clearing house for the children.’

‘What children?’

‘The children that the AfricaKIN flights bring in.’ She poured herself a tiny bourbon and sipped at it. ‘Interestingly, Adeka pays for the big house, not us.’ She said. ‘We only pay for the office space at the plaza.’

‘Have you been there? To this house in Orange County?’

‘A couple of times for meetings with Denga. It’s almost like a small hospital – state of the art.’ She put her glass down. ‘I’m hungry.’

‘Is Breed there?’

‘He stays there. He and Denga seem to work closely together.’

‘Old military buddies. Where do these flights arrive?’

‘Not in DC. There’s a small airport not too far away – Seminole Field, forty minutes from the house. The kids arrive on the flights and they’re taken to the house in ambulances and medically assessed and then they’re sent to specialist hospitals in DC, Maryland, Virginia, depending on their problems. It’s quite an operation.’

She sat down on the sofa, being careful not to let the hem of her dressing gown ride up. Bond tried to stop himself looking at her slim brown thighs.

‘There’s a flight tomorrow, in fact,’ she said. ‘Quite a big deal. We’ve got someone from the State Department meeting it. It’s good cover for us – government participating, approving.’

‘Maybe I should check it out.’

‘I thought you were going back to London,’ she said.

‘I am. But there’s no tearing hurry. I’m on leave. Convalescing. Somebody shot me in the chest.’

‘I feel I owe you an apology,’ she said, reaching for her drink and letting the front of her dressing gown gape for an instant before she closed it with a hand.

Bond took a big gulp of his bourbon – remembering her body, that night at Lokomeji in the rest-house.

‘I should go,’ he said, his voice hoarser than he would have wished.

‘Let me say sorry first,’ she said and stood up – unbelting her dressing gown, freeing it to fall from her shoulders and crumple on the carpet.

She allowed Bond to study her for a moment then stooped, picked up her dressing gown, slung it over her arm and sauntered into the bedroom, Bond following. She hung the dressing gown on the hook on the back of the door and smiled at him.

‘I’m sorry I shot you,’ she said and slipped into the bed. ‘But I did it to save your life.’