Solo (7 page)

‘The daily briefing is in twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘Let me take you to your colleagues.’

The captain led Bond out through the back of the building where, at the edge of a beaten earth parade ground, a large canvas tent had been pitched.

‘Take a seat – we’ll be there shortly.’

Bond slipped in the back and sat down, looking around him. The filtered sunlight coming through the canvas was aqueous and shadowless. It was hot. Sitting randomly on rows of folding chairs were about two dozen journalists – almost all white – facing an empty dais beneath a huge map of Zanzarim. On this map, at the foot, a small bashed circle that was now the diminishing heartland of the Democratic Republic of Dahum was outlined in red chalk. Clusters of sticky-backed arrows threatening the circle indicated offensives by the federal Zanzarim forces, Bond supposed. He wandered down an aisle between rows of empty chairs to get a closer look.

The scale of the map revealed in great detail the massive and complex network of creeks and watercourses that made up the Zanza River Delta. Port Dunbar was at the southern extremity, the notional capital of the secessionist state. Above it, written on a card and stuck on the map, was the name Janjaville, where the vital airstrip was to be found. It was immediately apparent to Bond that bringing an end to Dahum would be no easy task. One main highway crossing many bridges and causeways led south into Port Dunbar and it was here, judging from the clustered arrows, that the main federal thrust into the heartland was taking place. All other roadways were symbolised by dotted red lines, meandering around the obstacles posed by the creeks, swamps and lakes, crossing hundreds of makeshift bridges, Bond imagined. You didn’t need to be a military genius to defend this small patch of territory, it seemed to him. Bond wandered back to his seat – his close look at the map had also allowed him to calculate the distance from Sinsikrou to Port Dunbar – some 300 miles, he reckoned. He began to wonder how Ogilvy-Grant planned to ‘infiltrate’ him – it didn’t seem that straightforward . . .

Suddenly there was a jaded tremor of interest amongst the waiting journalists as a bemedalled colonel in crisp, brutally starched camouflage fatigues pushed through a flap at the rear of the tent and took up his position on the dais, followed by the captain with the American accent, who was carrying a thin six-foot rod, like a billiard cue.

‘Good day to you, gentlemen,’ the colonel said. ‘Welcome to the briefing. We have interesting news for you today.’ The colonel took the pointing-stick from the captain and, indicating with it on the map, began to enumerate various federal victories and advances into the rebel heartland. Under his instructions the captain rubbed out a portion of the Dahum circle and redrew it with the red chalk so that a pronounced salient appeared on the main highway south. Bond sensed the minimal credulity in the room diminish, suddenly, like a balloon deflating.

‘With the capture yesterday of the village of Ikot-Dussa the Zanzari forces are now forty-two kilometres from Port Dunbar,’ the colonel said, triumphantly, turned and left the tent.

A journalist raised his hand.

‘Yes, Geoffrey,’ the captain said.

‘According to my notes,’ Geoffrey said, his voice flat, ‘the village of Ikot-Dussa was liberated ten days ago.’

‘That was Ikot-Darema,’ the captain said without a pause. ‘Maybe our Zanzari names are confusing you.’

‘Yes, that’s probably it – my mistake. Apologies.’ There was a subdued ripple of badly suppressed chuckles amongst the journalists and many knowing glances were exchanged.

Another journalist’s hand was raised.

‘You were predicting the unconditional surrender of rebel forces five weeks ago. What’s happened?’

The captain leaned the stick against the wall.

‘You may have noticed, John,’ the captain said, not quite managing to disguise his weariness, ‘now you’ve been in the country for so long, that it’s been raining rather heavily these last couple of months. And now it’s stopped raining and the dry season has begun – therefore military operations are resuming at full strength.’

And so the briefing continued for another listless twenty minutes as each loaded question was either batted away or rebuffed with confident fabrication. Bond found he rather admired the captain’s tireless ability to lie so fluently and with manifest conviction. He was good at his job but no one was fooled. This war had ground to a semi-permanent halt, no doubt about it. Bond stood up and slipped out of the tent. He had learned a surprising amount on his first day as an accredited journalist for APL. It was time, he felt, to make contact with the British Secret Service’s head of station in Zanzarim.

OG Palm Oil Export and Agricultural Services Ltd was to be found in a light-industrial estate halfway between Sinsikrou city and the airport. Bond had telephoned from Ridgeway Barracks, but there had been no reply, so he decided to pay a personal visit. Christmas drove Bond into the complex and stopped in the shade of a Bata Shoe warehouse. Opposite was a small row of premises with storage space below and offices above. OG Palm Oil Export and Agricultural Services was at the end.

‘I won’t be long,’ Bond said, opening the door.

‘I stay here, sar.’

Bond crossed the road to the OG section of the building. Sun-blistered metal blinds were padlocked down and the electric bell-push dangled from its flex by the door that accessed the stairwell. Bond rang the bell but it seemed dead to him. He pushed at the door and it swayed open. All very impressive, he thought: as ‘cover’ went, this might work – a tenth-rate palm-oil exporter on its uppers. He closed the door behind him and walked up the stairs to the offices. He knocked on the door but there was no reply, he tried the handle and the door opened – so, no locked doors at OG Palm Oil Export and Agricultural Services Ltd. Bond stepped into the office and raised his voice – ‘Hello? Anybody in?’ Silence. Bond looked around: a metal desk with a typewriter and an empty in tray, a wooden filing cabinet, a fan on a tea chest, last year’s calendar on the wall, a display table with various dusty sample tins of palm oil set out on it and – touchingly, Bond thought – hanging by the door, a faded reproduction of Annigoni’s 1956 portrait of the Queen, a small symbol of the covert business being done here.

Someone’s throat was cleared loudly behind him.

Bond turned round slowly. ‘Hello,’ he said.

A young African woman stood there – a pale-skinned Zanzari, Bond thought, slim, petite, pretty, her hair knotted in tight neat rows, flat against her skull, which had the curious effect of making her brown eyes seem wider and more alert. She was wearing a ‘Ban the Bomb’ T-shirt, pale denim jeans cut off raggedly at the knee and around her neck hung a string of heavy amber beads. Ogilvy-Grant’s secretary, Bond assumed. Well, he could certainly pick them – she was a beautiful young woman.

‘My name’s Bond, James Bond,’ he said. ‘I want to buy some palm oil. I’d like to arrange a meeting with Ogilvy-Grant.’

‘Your wish is granted,’ she said. ‘I’m Ogilvy-Grant.’

Bond managed to suppress his sudden smile of incredulity.

‘Listen, I don’t think you understand—’

‘I’m Efua Blessing Ogilvy-Grant,’ the young woman said, then added with overt cynicism, ‘oh, yes, I’m E. B. Ogilvy-Grant, managing director.’ She had a clipped English accent, rather posh, Bond thought, rather like Araminta Beauchamp’s.

‘Nice to meet you, Mr Bond,’ she said and they shook hands. ‘My friends all call me Blessing.’

‘A Blessing in disguise,’ Bond said without thinking.

‘Funny – I’ve never heard that one before,’ she said, clearly unamused.

‘I apologise,’ Bond said, feeling vaguely shamefaced that he’d uttered it.

‘I was waiting for you at the airport this morning,’ she said. ‘Didn’t London tell you I’d be there?’

‘They didn’t, actually . . .’ Bond watched her take her seat behind the desk.

‘We were meant to meet by the Independence Monument.’

‘No one told me.’

‘Standard London cock-up.’

She opened a drawer and took out a pack of cigarettes, offering it to Bond.

‘They’re our local brand,’ she said. ‘Tuskers – strong and oddly addictive.’

Bond took one, fished out his Ronson and lit her cigarette, then his.

‘So – you’re our head of station in Zanzarim.’

‘Go to the top of the class. That’s me.’

Her accent sat oddly with the radical-chic, love-in outfit, Bond thought.

‘When were you appointed, if you don’t mind my asking?’ he went on.

‘I don’t mind at all. Just over two months ago. Weirdly, we had no one here. Everything was run through the embassy.’ She smiled, relaxing a bit. ‘My mother is a Lowele. All her family’s here in Sinsikrou – my family. I speak Lowele. And my father was a Scottish engineer, Fraser Ogilvy-Grant, who helped build the big dam in the north at Mogasso just before the war. My mother worked as his interpreter – and they fell in love.’

‘A Scottish engineer?’ Bond said. ‘So was my father, funnily enough. And my mother was Swiss,’ he added, as if the fact that they were both of mixed nationalities would form an affinity between them.

In fact the information did seem to make her relax even more, Bond thought. That old Celtic blood tie established, the homeland noted – however fragile the connection, however meaningless – worked its temporary magic.

‘You don’t sound Scottish,’ he said.

‘Neither do you.’ She smiled. ‘I was educated in England. Cheltenham Ladies’ College, then Cambridge, then Harvard. I hardly know Scotland, to be honest.’

Bond stubbed out his Tusker in the ashtray on her desk, his throat raw.

‘Did they recruit you at Cambridge?’

‘Yes. Then they arranged for me to go to Harvard. I think they had plans for me in America. But, because of my family connections, this was the perfect first assignment.’

Bond was trying to calculate her age – Cambridge then Harvard, born in the war, maybe twenty-six, or twenty-seven. She was remarkably assured for one so young; but he suspected this job was going to prove harder than he had ever imagined.

‘I’m staying at the Excelsior,’ he said.

‘Yes, I do know that,’ she said with elaborate patience. ‘And Christmas is your driver.’

‘Ah, so you must have arranged—’

‘I’m here to help, Commander Bond.’ She stood up. ‘I must say it’s a great privilege to be working with you. Your reputation precedes you, even out here in the sticks.’

‘Please call me James, Blessing.’

‘I’m here to help, James,’ she repeated. ‘Shall we have dinner tonight? There’s a good Lebanese restaurant in town. We can talk through everything then.’ She walked him to the door. ‘Make our plans. I’ll pick you up at the Excelsior at seven.’

Bond had ordered malfouf – stuffed cabbage rolls – followed by shish tawook – a simple chicken kebab with salty pickles. The food was good. Bond had spent three weeks on a tedious job in Beirut in 1960 and in his endless spare time had developed a taste for Lebanese cuisine. The wine list, however, was a joke, given that he had drunk excellent Lebanese wines in Beirut – all that was on offer here was Blue Nun Riesling and a red described as ‘Syrian Burgundy-type’ – so Bond played safe and ordered the local beer, Green Star. It was something of a first for him to drink beer with dinner, but the lager was light and very cold and complemented the strong flavours of the garlic and the pickles. Blessing had a cold lentil soup and a dried-mint omelette.

‘You’re not a vegetarian, are you?’ Bond asked, suspiciously.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Just not very hungry. Would it matter if I was?’

‘It might,’ Bond said, with a smile. ‘I’ve never met a vegetarian I liked, curiously. You might have been the exception, of course.’

‘Ha-ha,’ she remarked, drily. ‘By their food shall ye judge them.’

‘You’d be surprised, it’s not a bad touchstone,’ Bond said, and called for another Green Star. ‘Or so I’ve found in my experience.’

Since he had left her office she had had her hair redone. The plaited rows had gone and it was now oiled flat back against her head almost as if it was painted on. She had a shiny transparent gloss on her lips and was wearing a black silk Nehru jacket over wide flared white cotton trousers, and had some sort of crudely beaten pewter disc hanging round her neck on a leather thong. She looked very futuristic, Bond thought, with her perfect caramel skin, the colour of milky coffee, as if she were an extra from a science-fiction film.

The restaurant was in downtown Sinsikrou, near to the law courts and the barracks. It had a deliberately modest facade with a flickering neon sign that bluntly read ‘El Kebab – Best Lebanon’, but the first-floor dining room was air-conditioned and there were white linen cloths on the tables and waiters in velvet waistcoats and tasselled tarbooshes. Bond had spotted several high-ranking soldiers and also some of the journalists who’d been at the briefing earlier that day. El Kebab was obviously the only place in town.

They chatted idly as they ate, keeping off the subject of their business with each other – the tables were close and it would be easy to overhear or eavesdrop. Blessing told him more about the civil war and its origins from her perspective. Being half-Lowele, she explained, she thought that the Fakassa junta that had provoked and engineered secession were crazy. What did they think the rest of the country was going to do? Sit on their collective hands? Allow themselves to become impoverished? At least the British government had acted quickly, she said. If they hadn’t come down on the side of Zanzarim immediately and refused point-blank to recognise the new republic, perhaps Dahum’s de facto existence might have become a foregone conclusion. Alacrity was not normally a virtue of Her Majesty’s governments, Bond thought – there would be more at stake here than preserving the rule of international law.

‘Do you want a pudding?’ Bond asked, lighting a cigarette.

‘I’d rather have a proper drink somewhere,’ she said.

‘Excellent idea, Ogilvy-Grant. Let’s go back to the Excelsior.’