Marquis grabbed the black box and Harding took the attaché case. They backed down the stairs, pouring petrol as they went. They made their way to the lower, vacant level, through the darkness to the exit, where they dropped the empty cans. Harding punched in the code that opened the trick door and held it open. Marquis paused long enough to remove a handkerchief from his pocket and set it on fire with a lighter. He calmly tossed it onto the floor behind him. The petrol immediately ignited and the flames spread quickly.
The two men shut the door behind them and walked to a BMW 750 that was parked twenty yards away from the building. Marquis got behind the wheel and they drove toward London. No one saw them.
Firefighters were alerted to the emergency within five minutes, but by then it was too late. The flames had spread into the laboratory, where the concentration of petrol was most intense. The building became a fireball. The firefighters did everything they could, but it was no use. Within fifteen minutes the secret DERA facility in Fleet was completely destroyed.
In the BMW, Harding reached for a mobile phone. “I need to call my headquarters,” he said.
Marquis put a hand on his arm. “Not on my mobile. Use a pay phone at the station.”
Marquis dropped Harding off in front of Waterloo Station. Harding took the attaché case and a bag that was already in the trunk. He had already purchased a ticket on the last Eurostar of the day to Brussels. Before boarding the train, he entered a phone booth and called a number in Morocco.
As he waited for someone to pick up, he thought about how much money Skin 17 was going to make for him. The plan had gone smoothly so far.
After several pips, a man finally answered. “Yes?”
“Mongoose calling from London. Phase One complete. I have it. Commencing Phase Two.”
“Very good. I’ll relay the message. You have a reservation at the Hotel Métropole in the name of Donald Peters.”
“Right.”
The man hung up. Harding sat for a few seconds, tapping his fingers on the attaché case. Then he picked up the phone again, put in some coins, and made one more call before getting on the train.
The number he dialed was a private line at SIS headquarters.
FOUR
EMERGENCY
JAMES BOND walked briskly past Helena Marksbury’s desk on the way to his office. Usually she greeted him with a warm smile in the mornings, but today she swiveled her chair around so that her back was to him. He was sure she had heard him coming. Bond thought that their unscheduled coupling yesterday after the golf game had perhaps confused and upset her.
“It was my understanding that we were supposed to ‘cool it’ while we’re in London,” she had said. He reiterated that indeed they should do so, but he also convinced her that she was just as hungry for him as he was for her. In the privacy of her flat, what harm could be done? They had thrown caution to the wind and allowed their passion to overwhelm them.
Afterward, however, Bond brought up the subject of their relationship again. Feelings were hurt, emotions were frayed, and this time it ended in a terrible fight. Helena accused him of “taking what he wanted, when he wanted,” and he admitted that there was some truth to that. She called him a “selfish bastard.”
He knew then that their affair had to end, especially if he wanted to keep her in place as his personal assistant at MI6.
“Do you want to continue working for me?” he had asked her.
Yes, of course,” she replied.
“Then you know as well as I that we can’t keep doing this.”
“You’re the one who surprised me at my door.”
He couldn’t argue with that. He had been a bloody fool. He had let his loins do his thinking for him once again.
They had agreed to end their romantic involvement—again—and, with tears in her eyes, she had sent him packing. Now he only hoped that they could get past it and that things at the office would be normal again, if such a thing was possible, without anyone losing their job.
He closed the door to his office and found a notice from Records indicating that the updated file on the Union was ready for his review. It was the information he had been waiting for. At least that would kill some time.
Bond sat down at his desk, took a cigarette from his gunmetal case, and lit it. Dammit all, he thought. How could he have been so bloody stupid? He should have realized that she was becoming more emotionally involved in the relationship than he wanted her to be. She would just have to get over it.
Lost in thought, he sat in the quiet solitude of his office and finished his cigarette.
One of the many improvements M made after she took charge was in the area of information technology. Old Sir Miles Messervy had been completely computer illiterate and hardly ever approved funding to update technology at MI6. Barbara Mawdsley, the new M, was all for it. The most controversial thing she did during her first year in office was to spend nearly a half million pounds to upgrade the computer equipment and network systems. Part of this money went to Records, where a state-of-the-art multimedia center was developed and built. The “Visual Library,” as it was called, was a computerized encyclopedia on a grand scale. One merely had to punch in a topic and the Visual Library would find every file available on the subject and organize it into a cohesive multimedia presentation. A full-time staff maintained the various sound, photo, video, and music files so that information was constantly kept up-to-date. Hard copies of the text could be printed and distributed as well, but it was infinitely more instructive when one could sit and view information in much the same way as one watched television.
Bond thought it would be appalling, until he saw the Library in action. It was an impressive feat of design and engineering. Now he enjoyed locking himself in one of the cubicles, putting on the headset, and watching the large wall-sized monitor in front of him. All he had to do was type the commands on a keypad and watch. He didn’t have to take notes; a “memo” button on the keypad automatically saved any particular segment and printed it.
After getting a cup of SIS’s mediocre coffee, he made himself comfortable in one of the Visual Library booths and punched in the code for the new file on the Union. The lights dimmed as he put on the headset.
Using a mouse, Bond clicked on the “intro” main menu button. The presentation began much like a newsreel of old. There was a bit of military music, a quick series of logos and credits, and the show began.
A familiar male narrator from the BBC began to speak over a montage of famous terrorist scenes from history: Nazis with concentration camp prisoners; the American embassy crisis in Iran; a hooded man holding a gun to an airline pilot’s head; the Ku Klux Klan; and Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
“Terrorists have been with us since the dawn of man. When we think of terrorists, we imagine groups of men and women who will do anything for a cause. They almost always have a political agenda and perform acts of violence to further their aims. But there is another kind of terrorist that has been cropping up more and more in the past thirty years. We have seen the rise of nonpolitical, commercial terrorists, or, to put it another way, terrorists who are in it only for the money. The difference between a political terrorist and a commercial one is important in our analysis, for the reasons that motivate these individuals are the keys to understanding them. Whereas a political terrorist may be willing to die for what he believes, a commercial one may not be so inclined. Usually very intelligent, the commercial terrorist will weigh situations as they occur and decide whether it’s worth continuing in his present course of action.”