Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver Page B

Northumberland Terrace, Palmers Green on the North Circular Road, the now-vanished Pura oil works on Bow Creek in Canning Town and the Gothic Royal Arsenal and Royal Laboratory in Woolwich. His photos of Lovell’s Wharf in Greenwich, a testament to what aggressive neglect could achieve, never failed to move him.
    On his mobile, Niall Dunne was giving instructions to the driver of the lorry that had just left, explaining how best to hide the device. They were quite precise details, in accord with his nature and that of the horrific weapon.
    Although the Irishman made him uneasy, Hydt was grateful their paths had intersected. He could not have proceeded as quickly, or as safely, with Gehenna without him. Hydt had come to refer to him as “the man who thinks of everything,” and indeed he was. So Severan Hydt was happy to put up with the eerie silences, the cold stares, the awkward arrangement of robotic steel that was Niall Dunne. The two men made an efficient partnership, if an ironic one: an engineer whose nature was to build, a rag-and-bone man whose passion was destruction.
    What a curious package we humans are. Predictable only in death. Faithful only then too, Hydt reflected, and then discarded that thought.
    Just after Dunne disconnected, there was a knock on the door. It opened. Eric Janssen, a Green Way security man, who’d driven them up to March, stood in the doorway, his face troubled.
    “Mr. Hydt, Mr. Dunne, someone’s gone into the building.”
    “What?” Hydt barked, turning his huge, equine head the man’s way.
    “He went in through the tunnel.”
    Dunne rattled off a number of questions. Was he alone? Had there been any transmissions that Janssen had monitored? Was his car nearby? Had there been any unusual traffic in the area? Was the man armed?
    The answers suggested that he was operating by himself and wasn’t with Scotland Yard or the Security Service.
    “Did you get a picture or a good look at him?” Dunne asked.
    “No, sir.”
    Hydt clicked two long nails together. “The man with the Serbs? From last night?” he asked Dunne. “The private operator?”
    “Not impossible but I don’t know how he could have traced us here.” Dunne gazed out of the caravan’s dirt-spattered window as if he wasn’t seeing the building. Hydt knew the Irishman was drafting a blueprint in his mind. Or perhaps examining one he’d already prepared in case of such a contingency. For a long moment he was motionless. Finally, drawing his gun, Dunne stepped out of the caravan, gesturing to Janssen to follow.

Chapter 13
    The smells of mold, rot, chemicals, oil and petrol were overwhelming. Bond struggled not to cough and blinked tears from his stinging eyes. Could he detect smoke too?
    The hospital’s basement here was windowless. Only faint illumination filtered in from where he’d entered the tunnel. Bond splayed light from his torch around him. He was beside a railway turntable, designed to rotate small locomotives after they’d carted in supplies or patients.
    His Walther in hand, Bond searched the area, listening for voices, footsteps, the click of a weapon chambering bullets or going off safety. But the place was deserted.
    He’d entered through the tunnel at the south end. As he moved farther north and away from the turntable, he came to a sign that prompted a brief laugh: M ORTUARY .
    It consisted of three large windowless rooms that had clearly been occupied recently; the floors were dust-free and new cheap workbenches were arranged throughout. One of these rooms seemed to be the source of the smoke. Bond saw electricity cables secured to the wall and floor with duct tape, presumably providing power for lights and whatever work had been going on. Perhaps an electrical short had produced the fumes.
    He left the mortuary and came to a large open space, with a double door, to the right, east, opening to the parade ground. Light filtered through the crack between the panels—a possible escape route, he