High Time To Kill Read online

  Harding pushed the button and a portion of the building’s back wall opened just enough for a man to slip through. A passage led through a vacant ground floor that had been treated with dust and cobwebs, then up a flight of stairs to a false wall. By slightly rotating an electrical fixture hung there, a visitor could open the wall and get inside the DERA laboratory. Marquis had been there several times, so he knew the way. In a few moments Harding got up and went to the lab door to let their visitor in.

  Group Captain Marquis was dressed in full uniform and was carrying a small black box. He was a physically imposing man in his own right—but when he wore his RAF uniform, he always commanded attention. The epitome of a disciplined British officer, he looked sharp, stern, and efficient.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. “Sorry to barge in on you like this, but I have new orders. I’ll explain after you tell me about your test results, Dr. Wood.”

  “New orders?” Wood asked. “What do you mean? How did you know we were testing tonight?” He looked at Harding.

  Harding’s beady eyes widened as he shook his head.

  “Dr. Harding didn’t tell me,” Marquis said. “I knew. It’s my job.” He placed the black box on a counter.

  Wood looked uncertain. Marquis had visited the office a few times over the last year, but it was always during the day and with a specific administrative agenda.

  “All right,” he said, “but I find this highly irregular.”

  “Dr. Wood, you’re among friends,” Marquis said. “I, too, have an emotional investment in the success of your project—our project.”

  “You’re right,” Wood said, relaxing a little. “Steven, why don’t you tell our friend what we’ve just learned.”

  Marquis looked at Harding, who grinned and said, “We did it. Tom did it. Skin 17 is a success.”

  “Unbelievable!” Marquis said. “Well done, Dr.Wood! This calls for a celebration,” Marquis said. “Where’s that wine you said you had?”

  Wood pointed to the kitchen. “It’s in the—” He stopped abruptly and looked at Marquis. “How did you know I said anything about wine?”

  Marquis reached into his jacket with his right hand and pulled out a 9mm Browning Hi-Power pistol. He revealed a small black rectangular object with a short antenna in his left hand.

  “I heard you, of course,” he said. “This is a two-channel UHF receiver. And the transmitter is over there in Dr. Harding’s wristwatch. I was right outside the building all the time, listening to your conversation. I only had to wait for my cue. Dr. Harding was certain you would strike gold tonight, and you did.”

  Wood looked at Harding, but the traitor couldn’t look his colleague in the eyes.

  “I don’t understand,” Wood said. “What’s going on? Steven?”

  “I’m sorry, Tom,” Harding said.

  Before Wood could move, Marquis shot him in the right thigh. Wood screamed and fell to the ground. Howling in pain, he writhed and squirmed on the wood floor. Blood poured from a huge hole in his leg.

  Marquis calmly stood over Wood and said, “Mmmm, bad luck, eh, doctor? Now, about those new orders. Dr. Harding is to take the formula for Skin 17 and see that there are no copies left. I’m to make sure he does.” He handed the gun to Harding. “He’s all yours.”

  Harding squatted down to Wood. He waved the gun barrel at his colleague’s head and said, “I’m sorry, Tom, but you have to give me the combination to the safe. I need that disk.”

  Wood was in agony, but he managed to spit out, “You … traitor!”

  “Come, come,” Harding said. “Let’s not be like that. I’ll make sure you still get the credit for developing Skin 17. It’s just not going to be Great Britain that uses it first.”

  “Go to hell,” Wood cried.

  Harding sighed, then stood up. He held on to the edge of a counter for leverage, then placed his shoe on Wood’s wounded thigh.

  “The combination, Tom?” he asked one more time.

  Wood glared at Harding but said nothing. Harding thrust all his weight onto the physicist’s leg. Wood screamed horribly.

  “Yes, yes, go ahead and scream,” Harding said. “No one can hear you. The warehouse is closed, it’s night, the street is deserted. We can go on for hours like this, but I’m sure you’d rather not.” He continued to apply pressure to the wound.

  Marquis stood idly by, examining the computer monitor and trying to make sense of the hieroglyphics displayed on the screen.

  Two minutes later Harding had the answer he wanted. Wood curled up in the fetal position on the floor, sobbing. Harding wiped the blood from his shoe on Wood’s trousers, then went to the safe. Using the combination Wood had given him, Harding had it open in seconds. He removed the Skin 17 master disk and all the backup copies of the previous versions of the specification. He placed everything except the master disk into a plastic bag, then went to the physicist’s desk and rummaged for specific file folders. He found what he was looking for, took the new printout, and stuffed all of it into the bag as well.

  “Make sure there are no copies of anything,” Marquis said.

  Harding went back to Wood and knelt beside him. “Tom, we have to make sure there are no traces of the formula left. Now, tell me. Do you have any copies at home? Where are the backups?”

  “All the backups … are with the DERA …” Wood gasped.

  Harding looked at Marquis. Marquis nodded and said, “Yes, I already got those. They’ve been destroyed.”

  “Nothing at your house?” Harding asked again.

  Wood shook his head. “Please …” he muttered. “I need a doctor.…”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Tom,” Harding said. He stood up and walked away to his own desk. He began to pack, placing personal items and other file folders that he might need in a brown attaché case. Wood began to moan loudly.

  After a few minutes Marquis said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Harding! Don’t leave him like that!”

  Harding stopped what he was doing and looked at Wood. The traitor nodded grimly, then stepped over to Wood and pointed the gun at his head.

  “Thanks for all your hard work, Dr. Wood,” Harding said. He fired once, and the moaning ceased. He then set down the gun on a counter and extracted a long, thin dagger from his attaché case. Harding squatted down, trying his best not to get blood on his clothes, grabbed Wood’s hair, and pulled back his head to expose his neck. Harding positioned the blade against the dead man’s skin as Marquis said, “Oh, must you do that?”

  Harding replied, “It’s our way. I know it seems rather superfluous at this point, but I have my orders, too.” He swiftly slit Wood’s throat from ear to ear. The deed done, he dropped the man’s head and stepped away with a disgusted look on his face. Harding wiped the dagger on Woods trousers and put it away, then picked up Marquis’s gun and gave it back to him.

  Marquis holstered the pistol and said, “Doctor, make sure you delete all the files from that hard drive. Give me the master disk.”

  Harding handed him the disk and began to work on the computer. Marquis opened the black box he had brought with him. It was a peculiar but efficient device with a laptop computer, CD-ROM drive, microdot camera, and developer. He inserted the disk into the machine, adjusted tiny knobs, and closed the cover. He pressed a button and copied the disk’s files onto the hard drive. Marquis punched in more commands, then carefully removed a glass slide from the edge of the developer. He placed it in a tray and maneuvered a magnifier over the slide. A tiny microdot, produced on positive-type film and practically invisible to the naked eye, was now on the glass. Marquis took a piece of thin, transparent film from the black box and pressed it smoothly over the glass slide. The microdot was transferred from the slide to the film. Marquis placed the film in a small plastic envelope and sealed it. He then removed the Skin 17 master disk from the machine, dropped it on the floor, and crushed it with his heel.

  The next thing Marquis did struck Harding as strange. He opened
the autoclave and removed the Skin 17 prototype—a small piece of rubberlike material stretched on a specimen tray. He placed it inside the jacket pocket on Wood’s body.

  “There,” Marquis said. “The only existing record of Skin 17 is now on this microdot. Take good care of it.”

  He handed the envelope to Harding, who took it and said, “Right, this hard drive is blank.” Harding put the envelope in his attaché case. “I’ll get the petrol.” He went out of the lab, down the stairs, and into a storage closet in back of the office space, where he had left two five-gallon cans of petrol. He carried them back up to the lab, opened one, and began pouring the petrol all over the floor and furniture. Marquis had placed the plastic bag full of the backup copies and printouts on the floor next to Wood.

  “Make sure you get the computers and the autoclave,” Marquis said, taking the other can, and he poured petrol over the other side of the room. He made sure the body and the prototype were completely covered. The smell was overpowering, but the traitors continued until the containers were almost empty.

  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 Hôtel 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 ther
e 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.”

  Shots of large amounts of money; hunters in the wild; a soldier walking alone in a jungle …

  “However, the lure of big money is a powerful enough temptation for the commercial terrorist to take a risk. If this enticement is combined with certain psychological factors in specific individuals, they may be persuaded to do anything. We believe these people possess an inherent desire for high adventure, danger, and excitement. Profit is the primary reason for their actions, but they also have a strong desire to do something that ‘normal’ people don’t do. This makes the commercial terrorist totally unpredictable, and, therefore, extremely dangerous. The Union are the most recent group of commercial terrorists to come to the attention of SIS and other law enforcement agencies around the world. They are not the first nor will they be the last. But at the moment they could very well be the most influential.”

  Bond stilled a laugh. The report had been rushed. The narration was terribly clichéd, but it was the truth. He clicked on the “history” button.

  “They began innocently enough.” A Hired Gun magazine appeared on the monitor. Inside was an advertisement showing a smiling man dressed in fatigues and holding a rifle. “ ‘Come join the Union and be a mercenary! See the world! Earn top dollar!’ These words appeared three years ago in magazines such as this one. The advertisements were printed in publications in the United States, most western European countries, the former Soviet Union, and throughout the Middle East. The union were the brainchild of an American named Taylor Michael Harris, an ex-Marine who worked as a security guard in the state of Oregon.”