Carte Blanche

time.” Bond reiterated the plan. In the police car they would follow the Irishman’s Mercedes out of the drive and along the road until he was a mile or so from the restaurant. The Serbian agents would then pull the car over, telling him it matched a vehicle used in a drug crime in Novi Sad. The Irishman would be asked politely to get out and would be handcuffed. His mobile phone, wallet and identity papers would be placed on the boot of the Mercedes and he’d be led aside and made to sit facing away from the car.
    Meanwhile Bond would slip out of the backseat, photograph the documents, download what he could from the phone, look through laptops and luggage, then plant tracking devices.
    By then the Irishman would have caught on that this was a shake-down and offered a suitable bribe. He’d be freed to go on his way.
    If the local partner left the restaurant with him, they’d execute essentially the same plan with both men.
    “Now, I’m ninety percent sure he’ll believe you,” Bond said. “But if not, and he engages, remember that under no circumstances is he to be killed. I need him alive. Aim to wound in the arm he favors, near the elbow, not the shoulder.” Despite what one saw in the movies, a shoulder wound was usually as fatal as one to the abdomen or chest.
    The Irishman now stepped outside, feet splayed. He looked around, pausing to study the area. Was anything different? he’d be thinking. New cars had arrived since they’d entered; was there anything significant about them? He apparently decided there was no threat and both men climbed into the Mercedes.
    “It’s the pair of them,” Bond said. “Same plan.”
    “ Da .”
    The Irishman started the engine. The lights flashed on.
    Bond oriented his hand on his Walther, snug in the D. M. Bullard leather pancake holster, and climbed into the backseat of the police car, noticing an empty tin on the floor. One of his comrades had enjoyed a Jelen Pivo, a Deer Beer, while Bond had been conducting surveillance. The insubordination bothered him less than the carelessness. The Irishman might grow suspicious when stopped by a cop with beer on his breath. Another man’s ego and greed can be helpful, Bond believed, but incompetence is simply a useless and inexcusable danger.
    The Serbs got into the front. The engine hummed to life. Bond tapped the earpiece of his SRAC, the short-range agent communication device used for cloaked radio transmissions on tactical operations. “Channel two,” he reminded them.
    “ Da, da .” The older man sounded bored. They both plugged in earpieces.
    And James Bond asked himself yet again: Had he planned this properly? Despite the speed with which the operation had been put together, he’d spent hours formulating the tactics. He believed he’d anticipated every possible variation.
    Except one, it appeared.
    The Irishman did not do what he absolutely had to.
    He didn’t leave.
    The Mercedes turned away from the drive and rolled out of the car park on to the lawn beside the restaurant, on the other side of a tall hedge, unseen by the staff and diners. It was heading for a weed-riddled field to the east.
    The younger agent snapped, “ Govno! What he is doing?” The three men stepped out to get a better view. The older one drew his gun and started after the car.
    Bond waved him to a halt. “No! Wait.”
    “He’s escaping. He knows about us!”
    “No—it’s something else.” The Irishman wasn’t driving as if he were being pursued. He was moving slowly, the Mercedes easing forward, like a boat in a gentle morning swell. Besides, there was no place to escape to . He was hemmed in by cliffs overlooking the Danube, the railway embankment and the forest on the Fruška Gora rise.
    Bond watched as the Mercedes arrived at the rail track, a hundred yards from where they stood. It slowed, made a U-turn and parked, the bonnet facing back toward the restaurant. It was close to a railway work shed and switch rails, where a second track peeled off from the main line. Both men climbed out and the Irishman collected something from the boot.
    Your enemy’s purpose will dictate your response—Bond silently recited another maxim from the lectures at Fort Monckton’s Specialist Training Center in Gosport. You must find the adversary’s intention.
    But what was his purpose?
    Bond pulled out the monocular again, clicked on the night vision and focused. The partner opened a panel mounted on a signal beside the switch rails and