Silhouettes: A James Bond Story

Silhouettes Part 11

"This is your idea of a safehouse?" Indira fumed incredulously as Bond tipped the bellman of the Ritz-Carlton and asked for the front desk to send up the same brandy he'd ordered the previous evening.

"It's safe," Bond said easily after the bellman had left. "It has its own security system, and most importantly it's public. The many, many people who want you dead or in their custody won't be able to get away with a fire team armed with automatic weapons coming after us in the lobby. Not with the conference still going on."

"So you're taking me back to England?" Indira asked warily, and Bond felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. His hand twitched, seeming to want to move of its on accord to the holster with the Walther.

"Unless you'd prefer I leave you here with a bullet in your skull," he said. "That was my other option. The preferred option by some at Vauxhall, I think, but I believed you're owed some professional courtesy for your services."

Indira's eyes bored into his, and she exhaled through her nose like an athlete in the moment before the starting gun. "I didn't kill him, Bond."

"You know there's video, don't you? There were cameras in the suite."

"Of course there were camera's in the suite!" She spat. "I was the one who flattered the CIA station chief until he agreed to install the bloody things! I'm saying it wasn't me on that video."

"It was."

"It was an image of me, but I never said that. I never did any of that. I wasn't even in the building at the time. I was at bloody KLCC park, meeting a contact."

"And this contact will back your story?"

"No, because my contact was hanging from a tree by his neck. That was when I ran and the news alerts began blowing up my mobile. I was set up."

Bond frowned. "You're going to have to do better than that. We're trying to prevent a war between India and Pakistan, and conspiracy theories aren't going to accomplish that."

"Well what the hell and I supposed to do!" she raged, throwing her bag on the floor. "You want me to take a fucking polygraph exam?"

"Give me an explanation," Bond said sharply. "Tell me why someone set you up-we'll ignore the how for now. I can ask my Quartermaster about that later and get a painfully-long explanation of the possibilities. No, just tell me the why."

Indira sighed and slumped onto the couch. "Breckinridge," she said quietly. "I've been asking myself the same question since that park where I found a noose around Rayat's neck, and That's all I can come up with. Breckinridge."

"That's a name, not an explanation."

"Look, Bond, I don't know why, but Breckinridge knew I was out to nail Muqam-god, did we fight over that-and he also knew Rayat. I had to log all my intelligence contacts. And that video, I think it's a repurposed version of one I did for my cover at the embassy. It was supposed to be dire warning about the deforestation of Malaysia or some such. Breckinridge had a copy. He wanted to try and embed encrypted messages in it for deep-cover operatives. Use it as a way to pass messages to them. He or someone who works for him must have altered it. They got the voice almost right."

"You're asking me to believe a great deal."

She looked up at him, her curls sticking to the drying perspiration on her brow. "Then why didn't you kill me at the safehouse?"

"I have an aversion to killing our people on political whims. At least not when I can bring them in alive." Bond shrugged out of his damp batik shirt, trying to look nonchalant, but he could feel Indira's eyes appraising him.

"You don't disbelieve me, though."

"I believe they have poor champagne in First Class and it's a long flight home, so I would just as soon get started."

"They'll take out the plane, Bond," she said urgently. "Once they know we're on it."

Bond unclipped the holster containing the Walther placed it on the desk beside the couch. "To be clear: you are accusing a member of MI6 of high treason and terrorism. Seemingly without motive."

"Breckinridge set up the surveillance on Muqab. There was no order from London, but he bloody well insisted on it. After months of refusing my ops against the Pakistanis, suddenly he's going to the CIA for a surveillance package."

"That's not proof."

"Then bloody ask him!" Indira shouted exasperatedly, throwing up her hands. "He's on his way to Bangkok right now, but you're welcome to go there and ask him. And while you're at it, you can ask him why he's abandoning his station in the midst of a major conference and now an international crisis."

Bond looked at her.

"But first ask him why he booked this travel under a different name-not one of the cryptonyms he's registered with London."

"That," Bond said, "is a very good question."

"So, you believe me now?"

Bond felt it: he at the moment he'd always suspected he'd arrive at when he accepted this mission. It was the moment where he he'd take a leap of faith on the word of fellow agent, or stuff it all and simply follow orders. "Something more is clearly going on here," Bond said as he sank into a chair. "The men we left at the safehouse were on me last night, but before I left London I confirmed with my contact in the CIA that they hadn't yet dispatched a team to take you out. They do have a capture-or-kill order out for you, but they're content to let us handle it. Those men were sent by someone else. Also, they sent a woman to kill me. Malaysian. It's not CIA protocol to utilize a third-country national to work in concert with a hit team. They worked for someone else."

Indira leaned forward, her face a mask of raw urgency. "Something is very wrong here, Bond, and it's at the heart of intelligence operations in this region."

"I need to take you back to London," Bond said. "By way of Bangkok." The doorbell rang, followed by the faint call of the bellman. "Oh good, the brandy's here."