Crisis Four

She looked up at me.

"Listen, Nick, London has got it wrong. This isn't about embarrassment, for Christ's sake. It's about assassination." I must have had that vacant expression on my face again, because she reverted to her kindergarten teacher voice.

"The team in the house; they were planning a hit on Netanyahu."

To be honest, I didn't really give a shit about Netanyahu, so I couldn't help a grin.

"The hit has failed. They're all dead, apart from one."

Her head started shaking like a mechanical toy. She was deadly serious, or as serious as you can be when all your extremities are purple, including your nose.

"No, you're wrong. There are still two more members of the cell. They were going to RV with us at the house today. You don't understand, Nick; it's not a job to them, it's a quest. They will carry on." There was real frustration in her voice.

"Believe me, ifNetanyahu dies, you will give a shit. It will change the way you live, Nick. That is, if you do."

I hated all this beating around the bush; it was like being in the middle of a conversation with Lynn and Elizabeth again.

"What the fuck are you on about, Sarah?"

She thought for a while as she buried her head back into the jacket collar.

The sound of the rotor blades kicked in to join the wind above us, then died as quickly as it came.

"No, not yet. I'm going to keep that as my insurance; I need to make sure you get me out of here. You see, Nick, I don't believe you're here to take me back to London. It must be more important than that, or they wouldn't have sent you."

She was right, of course. I would do exactly the same if I were in her position.

"Look, Nick. Keep me alive and get me out of here, and I'll tell you everything. Don't let them use you; give me time to prove it."

I hated not having control. I wanted to know more, but at the same I wasn't so desperate that I would lie awake at night with worry. I didn't reply;

I had to think. And I was going to take her out of there anyway, whether she liked it or not.

She adjusted her body on my legs, and looked up again and stared into my eyes.

"Nick, please believe me. I've got involved in something where nobody can be trusted and I mean nobody."

She kept her eyes locked on mine. She had just opened her mouth to speak again when we both heard the sound of somebody crashing through the trees.

Whoever it was wasn't having much luck with their footing. They hit the ground with a loud curse.

"Shittt!" It was a man's voice.

I didn't need to say anything to Sarah. She jumped away from me and my hand reached for the pistol.

The man must have got up, only to fall down again immediately with a grunt as he scrambled to recover.

"Oh, fuck, fuck ..."

On my hands and knees, I moved slowly to the edge of our hide and pushed my face against the branches. It was the American. He was stumbling around in the mud, his clothes soaking, his mustache looking like a drowned rat. He was heading in our general direction, looking as bedraggled as we were. But he wasn't just running, he was looking for ground sign. He was tracking us.

I crawled back to Sarah and whispered in her ear, "It's your American.

Go bring him in."

She shook her head.

"It won't work."

"Make him."

"He won't fall for it."

"You're the one that needs his clothes, not me."

She thought about it, then nodded slowly and took a deep breath. I watched as she turned away from me and crawled out of the hide.

I heard her call, "Lance! Over here! Lance!"

I moved to the opposite side of the tree, pushing back under the branches, just in case Sarah decided to become Lance's best friend again.

I lay down and brought my pistol up into the aim, the barrel just clearing the branches.

I could hear her talking to him as they got nearer. It was Arabic, but spoken rapidly. She was still gob bing off to him at warp speed as she shuffled backward into the hide. I started to feel vulnerable now. Why was she talking to him like this? I'd already heard him speak English. It could only mean trouble. But fuck it, whatever she was planning was about to happen.

H9

The first things to appear were his hands, the backs of which were covered in hair and looked way too big for his wrists. Then his head and shoulders, face down to avoid the low branches as he pushed his way in. He was nodding and agreeing with whatever it was that Sarah was saying as she followed him in.

e didn't look up until he was right inside the shelter. When he did, he saw me crawling out of the branches opposite him. His eyes widened as he saw the weapon, and he shot a glance back at Sarah, looking for some kind of clarification or reassurance. He looked back at the weapon, then at her again, trying to work it out. After a couple of seconds he gave a deep sigh and lowered his head, rocking it slowly from side to side.

Sarah was level with him now, and jerked her head to indicate for him to crawl forward a bit more; he did as he was told. She ran her hands underneath his jacket. I watched her like a hawk, ready to react if she tried to grab his weapon and draw down on me.

She looked at me and shook her head.

I motioned him to move to the left of the hide and he shuffled over on his hands and knees. I stopped him before he was too close to me, in case he fancied his chances.

The black bomber jacket he was wearing had a Harley Davidson motif on the left-hand side and looked warm. I motioned with the pistol.

"Clothes."

Still on his knees, bent over with his back parallel to the ground, he started to remove the jacket. His gaze switched between me and Sarah; he didn't say a word, still trying to work it all out. Sarah was sitting against

the tree with her hands in her jacket pockets and her knees against her chest.

I grabbed the American's jacket and started to put it on, making sure I put Sarah's bag back over my shoulders.

"Now the rest of your stuff," I said.

"One hand."

He put his left hand on the ground and fiddled with his belt buckle with the other. Sarah was impatient and very cold, and she snapped at him in Arabic. She must have been feeling grim, covered from head to toe with mud, leaves and pine needles, and her legs were wet, dirty and bleeding.

Lance was wearing Nike trainers, and Sarah decided to help him by pulling them off from behind. His Levis were next, and when he'd finished she stretched out on the ground, arched her back and raised her backside to get the big jeans on. She was doing up the belt and he was pulling off his T-shirt when I heard the helicopter again. The two of us looked up, which was pretty fruitless considering the tree's canopy meant we couldn't see anything. Lance's T-shirt was over his head but not his shoulders.

I put my left hand on the back of his neck and rammed his face into the mud, the barrel of my pistol pressing into his neck.

The throbbing of the rotors was virtually overhead. The heli was hovering.

It stayed there for several seconds, the trees flexing under the downwash.

Shape, shine, shadow, silhouette, spacing and movement: those are the telltales that can betray your location. But we were in good cover;

Sarah knew that, too, and continued slowly pulling on the warm clothes.

The heli moved away about fifty meters, hovered again, then moved on.

The sound of its rotor blades disappeared completely. I took the muzzle away from the American's neck and told him to carry on. He finished taking off his T-shirt. Sarah took off the jacket, put on the T-shirt, and replaced the jacket. All that was left were his socks and boxers. It was Lance's turn to shiver, the thick hair on his back plastered flat by the rain.

I could see in his eyes that he was starting to flap. He must have thought he was going to be killed, and started mumbling some sort of prayer to himself. But it wasn't a plea, the tone was more of acceptance.

I said, "It's OK, Lance, you don't need Allah yet, you're not going to die. Just shut the fuck up."

Sarah was sorted, kneeling with her hands in her jacket pockets, wearing size eleven trainers and jeans with the gusset hanging halfway down to her knees, with turn ups so big they looked like some sort of fashion statement.

The boy was still mumbling away to himself on his knees, bent forward with his forearms resting on the ground, his hands clasped together in prayer. He was trying his best to be the gray man.

Sarah looked at me.

"What about him?"

I said, "Let's get moving while the heli's gone. I'll tie him to the tree with my belt. He'll be fucked off, but he'll live."

She shook her head.

I said, "No, just leave him. Come on, let's go. We need to make distance."

She gave a sigh as I took the belt from the bag and kicked Lance over to the tree and began to secure him to it. An hour or two and he would free himself; if not, he deserved to die anyway. He was still muttering to himself, and as I tightened the knot he blurted out some insult to Sarah in Arabic.

He was probably telling her what a bitch she was for fucking him over like this, after all they had been through together and all that shit. She ignored it. I felt like telling him I knew how he felt.

I had a quick look around to check we hadn't left anything, and started to crawl out of the shelter. Sarah followed, or at least I thought she did.

The Arabic mumblings got fainter.

I was still on my hands and knees, my head just emerging from the branches, when the loud report of a weapon came from behind me. Instinct flattened me to the ground. In almost the same instant I realized it wasn't me who'd been shot and slithered out of the way.

My first thought was that he'd somehow got Sarah. I jumped to my feet and ran around the tree to approach him from the other side. I started to crawl in, weapon at the ready. Pushing through the branches on my stomach, I saw him. He was still being held up by his secured hands, but his body was sagging and his legs were splayed, like the crumpled victim of a firing squad. There was no way Lance would be feeling the cold anymore.

Sarah had head-jobbed him with a semiautomatic. She was on her knees, putting the weapon into her jacket pocket.

What the fuck was it with this woman? Every time she was left alone with a man she landed up killing him.

"Give me the gun, Sarah ... Give it."

She looked up into the sky, as if I were being boring, pulled it from her pocket and threw it over to me. I crawled back out. It was pointless keeping a low voice now; half the state would know where we were. I snapped, "What the fuck are you doing?"

"He wouldn't stop, believe me. He would try and join up with the other two or carry on himself. I know these people. I know Lance very well.

Look, the other two they know where, how and when to do the hit. What you did this morning won't stop them." Her face had taken on a manic look.

"For rack's sake, Nick, I'm beginning to wish I'd just killed you and opted to carry on with him."

There was no time for debate. We'd been compromised. We had to be like animals now and run as fast as we could; it didn't matter where, we just had to get out of that immediate danger area. Only when we were a safe distance away could I stop and assess.

Assuming the shot had been heard, there would be chaos at the police control center as it was reported over the radio net. They would just have been starting to work through all their post-incident procedures when, literally, bang!" another problem. Initially they'd be confused, but they'd soon figure out where it had come from, and direct the helicopter and follow-up our way.

We legged it. We could move much faster now than before, even with Sarah wearing her size-eleven Nikes. I was severely pissed off with her for what she'd done, but fried to control it. Once you allow yourself to get angry, you stop concentrating on the aim, which in this case was to make distance. Whether or not she was lying wasn't an issue at the moment, I didn't care. The only thing that mattered right now was escape.

The helicopter swooped over the canopy. We stopped in our tracks and took cover beneath the trees. But the aircraft wasn't hovering this time, it was moving fast and low. It crossed directly overhead, blasting torrents of rain water from the trees onto our heads, then roared away at speed.

I decided to keep going in the same direction, a straight line away from the house. I wanted to find a road or some habitation. A house should mean a vehicle.

It was fully light now. Our faster pace had got some body warmth going, and if anything I was starting to overheat. Just like me, Sarah was puffing and panting as we scrabbled up the rises and stumbled headlong downhill. There was no need to explain to her what I was doing. She was actually a help, because it was so much easier to have two sets of eyes and ears.

After thirty minutes of hard running we finally hit a road. It was a single carriage way potholed and no more than three or four meters wide. I paralleled it to the right, running through the trees about ten meters to its side. We hadn't gone far when I heard a vehicle. We stopped, got down, and I rested on my elbows and knees to keep myself out of the mud and preserve body warmth. It was approaching fast from behind us, engine roaring and tires splashing on wet tarmac.

A blue and white appeared and sped past, its roof-mounted red and blue light bar flashing brighter than was normal in daylight because of the cloud cover. The police would have things squared away by now; they were probably placing a cordon around the whole area. They'd then either wait for us to emerge, or come in and flush us out.

The moment the cruiser disappeared from view we got up and started moving. The wind had strengthened and I could see waves of heavier rain coming in ahead. After twenty minutes of running through deeply rutted, puddled ground we came to a large open area, a perfect square of about five acres cut out of the forest, with a white cattle fence around the perimeter. Sitting in the middle, and approached by a driveway from the road, was a two-story ranch house built of wooden slats, with a pitched roof, tiled with gray slates. A square extension had been added onto the far end, and I could see an open garage at ground level. Inside were a pickup truck, two other cars and a small powerboat on a trailer. The building and two of the three vehicles looked as if they'd seen better days.

There was no approach to the garage that avoided open ground. I guessed there would be windows on every side of the house, to take advantage of the views. Six or seven horses were loose in the field, but there was no evidence of dogs and the house itself seemed quiet enough. Maybe everybody was still tucked up in bed.

"You stay here," I whispered to Sarah.

"I'm going to go and get a wagon. When you see me drive out, move up to the road."

"Why aren't I coming over with you?" She sounded suspicious, as if she thought I'd get in a vehicle and just leave her stranded. If only she knew.

She was in no position to question my decisions, but I answered.

"Number one, it's quieter if I go on my own I know what I'm doing, you don't. Number two, I don't want you killing anybody else. And number three, you have no choice. I have your documents in here." I half turned to show her the bag on my back.

"You want me to help you, you wait here."

The plot of land was as flat and green as a pool table, not a single fold in the ground. Checking the road for vehicles and the sky for helis, I set off across grass that was about three inches high and full of moisture, running but trying to keep as low as possible. I didn't know why, because it didn't make me any less visible, but it just seemed the natural thing to do. I was leaving a clear track in my wake through the wet grass, but I couldn't do anything about that.

I kept looking at the windows for movement. As I got closer I could see that the upstairs curtains were drawn. I wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Redneck were sitting in bed watching the news about last night's events down the road. For sure, there'd be more news crews at the lake by now than there were police.

Reaching the house, I bent down below a side window with open curtains.

In this weather there would have been a light on if people were up and about, and there wasn't, but even so I didn't chance looking inside. I held it there for a few seconds and listened. Nothing. Now that I was close up to them I could see that the slats weren't wood at all, but aluminium painted to look that way, and the roof was just felt, masquerading as tiles.

I moved around to the opposite side of the house, toward the garage extension, making sure that I kept low to avoid the windows.

I shook my head to get the rain out of my face. There were no wet tire marks on the garage floor or rain on the wagons. There had been no movement since at least last night.

The first thing to do was check whether any of the vehicles were alarmed. I couldn't see any warning signs, flashing LEDs, or other telltales.

An alarm would probably have cost more than the two cars anyway.

I tried all the doors on the vehicles, starting with the pickup truck, then the two others a small, rusting red Dodge, a bit like a bottom-of-the range Rover, and an elderly, olive-green estate car, with fake wood paneling along the sides that made it look like a stagecoach. Everything was locked. The rain was drumming on the garage roof as I went back to the muddy white Nissan pickup. It had a double cab, with a flat bed on the back, protected by a shaped, heavy plastic liner. I had a quick mooch in the boxes next to it against the wall, then moved aside the plastic bottles of two-stroke mix for the boat engine, looking for something to jimmy the door open with.

I found a toolbox and was bending over it, moving the tools really slowly and carefully so I didn't make any noise, when there was a shout that made me jump.

"Don't move! Freeze, yo' sum of a bitch!"

Whoever it was, he must have spent his life stalking animals in the woods, because I hadn't heard a sound. I didn't move a muscle.

"Keep still or I'll shoot yer so'ry ass," he said in a really cool, calm, deep Southern drawl. He was directly behind me.

Fucking right I stood still. I also made sure he had a good view of my hands. I had a pistol tucked down the front of my jeans, and another in my jacket, but they were staying where they were. I didn't know what he was pointing at me, or even whether he had anything at all, but I wasn't going to take the chance. I stayed bent over the toolbox and kept my mouth shut;

I didn't want to say anything that might antagonize him, especially in my bad American accent.

I could hear his feet scraping on the concrete floor of the garage. I listened intently; I wanted to estimate how far away he was.

"Sum of a bitch, stay whar yare." He sounded an oldish man, maybe in his early sixties.

He was shuffling toward me. I moved my eyes so that I could catch his reflection in the door window of the pickup. As he moved closer I could clearly see an outstretched hand holding a snub-nosed revolver.

"D'ya know whose truck this here's is, feller?"

I shook my head very slowly.

"Muh sum's. Muh sum's a state trooper. He's out thar lookin' fer yer ass right now. But yer in muh house. You belong time. Sums o' bitches, shit, dammit..."

Either I was right they had been watching breakfast TV or Mr. and Mrs. Redneck's little boy had been on the telephone to fill him in on events.

He carried on.

"The troopers is comin' now t'drag yer ass in, feller.

Shit, thet's muh sum's truck, he worked dadbumed hard fer thet .. .

mutherfucker, shit..."

I kept watching the reflection in the window. He took another couple of steps toward me, but he shouldn't have done; you never get too close to someone when you're holding a pistol what's the point, it's designed to kill at a distance.

Another step and I could see the detail of the weapon. It was a .38, the same type as the young black guy had been buying at Jim's. As the salesman had told him, "Just point it like your finger at the center mass and it will take them down." The hammer was back, which wasn't good for me.

Revolvers work on a double action: to fire, you have to make a very positive squeeze on the trigger, which works both actions, pulling the hammer all the way back, and letting it then go forward. That serves as the safety device on a revolver, instead of having a safety catch, which you get on most semiautomatics. But he'd cocked it; the hammer was pulled back, the first action had already been taken up all he had to do now was gently squeeze that trigger with less than seven pounds of pressure and the thing would go off. A year-old baby can exert seven pounds of pressure with his index finger, and this was a big old boy who was pissed off and sparked up.

I remained passive. He had me; what could I say?

The reflection moved and he was almost on top of me, and then I felt cold metal in the back of my neck. He jabbed the pistol, moving it up and down, and, knowing that he had his finger on the trigger, I started to flap. I closed my eyes, ready to die.

"Fuckin' sums o' fuckin' bitches," he ranted.

"Why dim't you fucks git a job like ev'ry other mutherfucker? .. . Shit.. . not jest come an' take .. .

yer not gonna take here ..."

I opened my eyes and looked in the window. He had his arm fully extended and the muzzle was still in contact with my neck. Either he was going to kill me by accident if that second pressure was pulled, or I was going to get fucked over well and truly once the son and his trooper mates arrived on the scene.

If I was quick enough on the initial move, I'd be safe for a second; it was what I did afterward that would decide whether or not I lived. I was going to get caught or I was going to die, so anything I did before that was a bonus.

I didn't want him to see me taking the three deep breaths to fill my lungs with oxygen, so I just let him get on with jabbing the muzzle into my neck while I closed my eyes and got ready. He cackled at his own humor as he said, "Muh sum's gonna kick yer sorry ass, you fuck." He was getting more angry as he gained confidence.

"Why is you here doin' yer kinin'? Git home an' do yer kinin' thar ... shit..." He was thinking of something to add. He found it: "sums of bitches."

I took the final breath and opened my eyes. Fuck it, just go for it.

ARRGGGHHHHHH!

Stepping forward with my right foot, and at the same time swiveling left on the other, I raised my left arm, bellowing like a lunatic. I was hoping for two things: that it would confuse him, and that it would also spark me up. It didn't matter to me which part of my left arm hit his weapon arm, as long as it did. My arm connected and I could no longer feel cold metal against my head.

My left forearm now had to keep contact with his weapon arm as I carried on swiveling around so that I was facing him. He was bigger than I'd expected. His unshaven face looked like crinkled leather and it was topped with a riot of uncombed gray hair. I grasped the material of whatever he was wearing on his weapon arm, trying to keep the .38 facing anywhere but at me.

A round went off, and the report echoed around the garage. He probably didn't even realize he had pulled the trigger.

I kept turning, and he started to scream back at me and holler for "Ruby." His face was no more than six inches from mine, and I could smell his bad breath and see his toothless mouth, wide open.

For the full two seconds my move had taken, my eyes had never left the pistol. In theory, the rules of squash apply: never take your eye off the ball. But I'd always found it hard; sometimes I reckoned it was just as effective to look at the other player, because just before he hits the ball his eyes will tell you if he's bluffing a hard one and is in fact going to hit it gently. It wasn't something I'd been taught, it was just something I found myself doing instinctively in that situation; maybe that was why I was such a crap squash player.

As I turned farther, so did he. The look on the old boy's face was not a happy one. A couple of seconds ago things had been going really well for him, and yet now he thought he was about to meet his maker. His head and body were turning away from me, presenting his back, and with my right hand I was able to slam his head against the wagon. There was a thud on the window as he made contact, with me still gripping what I could now see was the blue overall sleeve on his left arm. I pushed him hard against the pickup with the weight of my whole body, knocking the air out of him. I pushed with my right knee against the back of one of his kneecaps and he buckled. I held his head to control his fall.

I didn't say a word. I didn't have to. He was on his knees, spreadeagled against the wagon, his face pressed against the door. I gripped his weapon arm and shook it. The .38 clattered to the floor.

But that wasn't the end of it. This boy wasn't giving up. Spit and blood flew out of his mouth as he raged, "You sum of a fuckin' bitch, thet's all yer want t'do, come here an' take .. . shit."

I was worried about his wife; was Ruby on the phone to the police, or getting out the shotgun? I stepped back and drew my own pistol, kicking his left arm to get him right down on the floor. Then I delivered a couple of persuaders for him to get under the pickup. Now what? I ran.

I sprinted out of the garage, turned left past the front of the house and legged it across the grass, following the track I'd made on the way in. The rain was pelting down.

I heard a woman shout behind me, but I didn't look back. There were no shots.

I vaulted the fence and made my way through the woods to Sarah. She was on her haunches, against a tree. I collapsed next to her, panting on my hands and knees. I looked up and we exchanged a glance. What could I say? I'd fucked up. You can be so close to civilization, yet when you're wet, cold, hungry and don't exactly know where you are, it can seem so far.

There was a gap that she filled.

"What now?"

"Let me think ..." I looked back at the house. There was no movement.

Ruby was probably in the garage, dragging her husband out from under the pickup before heading back to the phone.

My mind was racing through all the options, but the decision was made for me. A cruiser ripped along the road from the opposite side of the house, a blue and white blur in the driving rain. No sirens, no lights, just a foot flat down on the gas pedal. If it was Mr. and Mrs. Redneck's little boy responding to the call, he wasn't going to be happy with the way I'd abused his father's Southern hospitality.

I got up and started to move. They would be following up big time, tracking the sign I'd left in the grass. I ran back the way we had come, then hung a right toward the road. At that moment I heard the helicopter rattling through the sky. We got into tree hugging again. The moment it had flown past, and not even bothering to look behind me to check for Sarah, I started motoring through the forest. She would just have to keep up.

Reaching the edge of the wood near the road, I dropped onto my hands and knees, watched and listened. The only sounds I could hear were my own labored breathing and the rain hammering on the tarmac and leaves.

Sarah flopped down beside me.

I crawled to the very edge of the tree line and looked out. The wet, potholed, single-carriage way road was deserted.

e both lay there in the mud, lifting our heads and checking for movement like a pair ofmeerkats. I couldn't see anything, just solid walls of rain.

Finally I nodded to her. She acknowledged. I got up and sprinted across the road, but instead of going into the tree line, I cut left and started following the edge of the tarmac.

She shouted, "Nick, what are you doing? Come on, let's get under cover!"

I turned and waved her toward me.

She hesitated a moment, then understood and ran to join me. I kept to the roadside for another thirty meters, checking backward, forward and upward for movement. I chanced about ten meters more and knew I was tearing the ass out of it. I ducked to the right and moved into the tree line.

Even if they followed up with dogs, it would take them a while to reestablish our trail, for the surface scent would be washed off the tarmac by the heavy rain, slowing the dogs down severely. It would then be up to the trackers to cast for sign in both directions and along both sides of the road, because for all they knew I might have doubled back. Only when, or if, they refound our trail could they get the dogs back on the scent.

For the next half hour I picked my way through dense forest. The ground was undulating and littered with knolls; it was hard going, but excellent cover, the sort of terrain that a light aircraft might crash into and never be found. I was heading in this direction for no other reason than that I wanted to; sometimes there is no absolutely correct answer.

Every ten minutes or so the heli clattered across the sky, casting around for movement or visible sign. This time it got a bit too near. We stopped and hid, using the chance to catch our breath. Both of us were still soaked to the skin with rain and sweat. As the heli came in low over us, the trees swayed with the downwash and another sixty gallons of rain cascaded through the canopy. My throat was dry and rasping as my chest heaved, the only positive thing being that all this effort was keeping my body core nicely heated.

Still the helicopter didn't move out of the area. He was there, somewhere;

low and slow. I looked back the way we'd come and saw the ground sign we'd left. It would be easy enough even for the untrained eye to follow, but for anybody who knew what they were doing, possibly with dogs, it was a floodlit motorway.

Deep down, I knew it wouldn't take them long to find where we'd crossed the road. From there it would be simple; we were traveling through wet forest, over stinking ground, in rain and fog perfect terrain and conditions for keeping a scent glued in position. What was more, they would be following on fresh legs and able to call up reinforcements at will, and after a while they'd be able to predict our direction of travel so that others could intercept us. Then again, maybe they didn't have dogs or trackers on the case yet; it wasn't as if such things were on twenty-four hour standby. Visual tracking is not the most popular skill for a person to take up, and exponents are in short supply; maybe it would take them hours to mobilize somebody, and maybe they lived on the other side of the state. Maybe ... maybe. Whatever, every man, but hopefully not his dog, would be out looking.

I had to admit to myself that I had no idea where we were going, and we were gradually exhausting ourselves. A decision had to be made: Did we hide up and wait until dark to move out of the area, preferably by vehicle?

Or did we take our chances now?

The heli's blades chopped the air above us. It didn't seem to be going anywhere. This was strange; it wouldn't be able to see a thing under the canopy, and in a backwoods area like this it was unlikely to be fitted with thermal-imaging equipment. It was a full ten minutes before I heard a change in engine pitch, and the aircraft rattled off into the distance. I moved from under the tree and continued running. Our pace was slowing perceptibly. I was fucked. My footprints were getting closer and closer together as my strides shortened: to a visual tracker or trained dog it would be the encouraging sign of a slower-moving quarry. I glanced behind me.

Sarah looked like death on legs.

I tried to think of positives. If you run at 10 mph for one hour in an unknown direction, you could be anywhere in a circle of just over 300 square miles. An hour later that will have become an area of 1,256 square miles.

In The Lone Ranger, Tonto used to stop and say, "Five wagons, two hours ago. That way, kemo sabe." Luckily, real life isn't that easy and Tonto lives in Arizona.

I decided to lie up and wait until last light. With no compass or stars to guide us, I could be going around in circles for weeks. During darkness, the plan would be to move to a known quantity the road and parallel it until I could get my hands on a vehicle.

I carried on for another ten minutes or so, with Sarah now up with me.

About sixty or seventy meters away to my half right, there was something that looked as if it could work: a fallen tree on higher ground, its branches still intact but decaying. It had fallen down a sharp bank. It would give us ideal cover from view from the air as well as the ground and, just as important, it would give us cover from the elements. If the police didn't get hold of us, I didn't want the weather to finish us off. It wouldn't be long before exhaustion and cold would take their toll.

"What are we doing now?" Sarah asked.

"Why have you stopped?"

I didn't bother replying; I was looking back at the route we'd taken.

Then I turned around again and looked forward at the tree, off to my half right. The ground ahead was the same as behind, rises, with lots of dead ground beyond.

I turned half left and started kicking my feet, leaving obvious sign. I wanted them to see my direction change away from the fallen tree. Sarah followed on behind, puffing and panting, struggling to keep the size eleven trainers on her size-five feet.

Over a rise, and in the dead ground beyond, was a stream a couple of meters wide. I headed down and waded straight into the freezing water. I checked behind me and couldn't see the tree.

Sarah stood her ground on the bank.

"What are you doing?"

"Get in."

The water came over my knees. I turned left and moved downstream, stopping every dozen or so paces and looking back to make sure I couldn't see the tree. I had trudged about fifty meters, with Sarah splashing along behind me, before I decided this was far enough. I didn't know why, it just felt right. I got out on the far side of the stream and stood still. I could hear Sarah's trainers squelching as she came up beside me, visibly thankful for the rest.

I gave myself a minute to collect my thoughts, looking at her, soaked and bedraggled, fir needles splattered on her face, twigs in her hair. Not exactly how she'd choose to appear at one of her embassy parties, but she was doing well; she'd obviously kept herself in shape.

"Ready?"

She nodded and took a deep breath to prepare.

We moved up and down for another 300 meters or so, in a direct line away from the stream. Sarah was starting to feel the strain, and I could move only at her speed. I decided that this was far enough; it was time for one last bit of deception. I stopped and moved over to an outcrop of rock.

Sarah came up level with me, and we both had our hands on our knees, panting for breath as if we'd just finished a 200-meter sprint.

"Sarah, take off your underwear."

She looked at me blankly. She'd heard me say that before, but not in a situation like this.

"What?"

"Your panties, I need them." I'd already taken off my jacket and was pulling off my shirt. I was after the T-shirt underneath. Her expression told me that she wasn't sure about this.

"Sarah, trust me. They must have dogs." She didn't bother to ask, just moaned to herself about getting undressed.

In any other situation it would have been quite nice to watch her drop her jeans and peel off her underwear, but that was the story of my life: wrong time, wrong place.

I got my shirt back on and shivered as it touched my skin. Sarah was busy doing up her jeans. I picked up her panties and placed them with my T-shirt between the rocks and a bush. If we were being tracked visually or by dogs they would get to this point. The mutt doesn't know what's really happening and what exactly he's looking for; to him it's just a game. A dog can confuse an item of clothing with the quarry and assume victory with its find. Then the handler has to get the dog sparked up again before it will continue.

Dogs pick up scent in two different ways: from the air, and from contact with the ground, trees, plants and buildings. Airborne scents don't last long; they are quite quickly blown away by the wind. Ground scent, however, can be obvious to a dog for anything up to forty-eight hours, and can be generated not only by leaving your smell on things you touch, but by your movement itself. If you're walking on grass, or pushing through vegetation, you'll crush leaves and stems with every step.

Even on bare ground your footprints will release air and tiny quantities of moisture that have been trapped in the earth, and they smell quite different from the air above ground. From your "scent footprints," a dog can even tell which direction you are moving in, because as you push off each step with your toes, the front of the scent print is more obvious than the heel, and it doesn't take long for a well-trained dog to work out what that means.

Just as each person's footprints look slightly different to the human eye, so does the mixture of scents in a smell footprint to a dog. If he's really switched on, he might even be able to track one individual where there are a number of people traveling together.

A dog could out-hear, out-smell and out-run me. But I could outthink him.

"The strongest odor is from the sweat glands," I said to Sarah.

"But at the moment I think your underwear will smell more than your T-shirt." I grinned.

"Nothing personal."

She thought about it and nodded; she had to agree on that one.

"OK, follow me. Step by step. Don't touch anything, not even to lean on." I started to pick my way over the outcrop, sticking to the highest rocks to keep out of any areas where scent could be trapped. Hopefully, they would be washed clean by the rain.

We moved into dead ground, carefully picking our way to prevent leaving sign. I started to move back down to the river. I got seventy-five meters short of the water and moved left until I saw the fallen tree.

From nowhere, the heli reappeared.

We hurtled under the trees, hugging them as if they were long-lost relations.

I heard the groan of the rotors again, moving deliberately over the top of the canopy. It got so close I could feel the downwash. I suddenly made sense of what it was doing it was following the line of the stream, maybe patrolling any exposed waterways because that was all they could see down here. It moved off and so did we.

The fallen tree looked quite promising. There were enough branches to hide under, and we could even get under the trunk where it lay clear of the ground. It was going to be a squeeze, but we'd be needing to huddle together anyway to share body heat.

Sarah was down on her knees trying to catch her breath. She searched my face as I motioned her in.

"Why aren't we running?"

"I'll explain later, just get under cover."

She squeezed in and I followed. The underside of the trunk was just as wet and cold as the open air, but we were hidden and had a chance to rest.

I wasn't too sure anymore if this was a good decision, but it was too late to worry now.

I made sure I could see the first turning point before the stream by scraping away the mud between the trunk and the ground. I'd used the same tactic time and again in the jungle, where it was standard procedure to "loop the track" and put in an instant ambush on your own trail. If we were being followed, they would pass no more than sixty or seventy meters away and move half left, away from us and into the dead ground.

There they'd find the stream, and start trying to cast over the other side to pick up our scent or ground sign again. That would give us vital time in which to act; if I saw dogs while lying up, I'd just have to make a run for it.

The heli passed overhead yet again, this time at speed, but we were well concealed. It could stay there all day if it wanted to, it wouldn't make any difference. Sarah was looking at me, waiting for an explanation.

"We wait until last light and go back toward the road." I pointed uphill.

"That way."

She wasn't enjoying this outing, but she cuddled into me. I was wedged against the trunk, looking out; she was behind me, her body spooned against mine with her arms around my chest. I could feel her warmth. I tried hard not to think about how much I liked her depending on me. Continuing to look out, I tilted my head toward her.

"Concealment is our best weapon. It's going to be cold, and you'll think you're about to die, but you won't as long as we keep close and keep each other warm. Do you understand that?"

I felt her nodding, then she squeezed herself a little more tightly against me. Even in these circumstances, I had to admit it felt good.

There were three situations I'd hated all of my life: being wet, cold or hungry. Four, if you included having to shit in the field. All our lives, even as children, those are the three things that most of us try to avoid, but here I was, doing it again, and I couldn't help feeling that, at thirty-eight, I should be seriously concentrating on getting a life. The one I had seemed to be going nowhere fast.

As the minutes ticked by my body started to cool, even with Sarah snuggling in behind me, and the ground itself seemed to become colder and soggier. I could feel her body warmth at the points where she was making contact with me, but the rest of me was freezing. Every time she fidgeted to get comfortable, I could feel the cold attack the newly exposed area.

She fidgeted again and muttered, "Sorry, cramp," as she tried to stretch out her leg and tip up her feet in an effort to counter it.

I kept stag, listening to the stream, the wind in the treetops, the rain dropping onto the leaves and debris on the forest floor. There was a murky, calf-high mist permeating the woods that reminded me of stage smoke. That could work either for us or against us: it would give us some visual cover if we were forced to move, but it was also good for the dogs.

As time passed without any hint of a follow-up, I started to feel better about our situation. I looked at my watch: seven forty-six. Only another twelve hours or so until last light. Doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself? At least the Baby-G surfer was keeping cheerful.

Sarah had settled down and wanted to talk.

"Nick?"

"Not now." I needed time to think. I wanted to take a long hard look at what she'd told me, and to think about all that had happened. Was she bluffing about the Netanyahu plot? How did they plan to kill him? How had she been planning to stop them?

My head was full of questions, but no answers. Now wasn't the time to ask. Tactically, noise had to be kept to a minimum, and besides, I needed to keep my head clear for the task in hand. I had to get out of here alive, preferably with Sarah still alive, too, for there was still another job to do.

n hour later Sarah and I were chilled to the bone and shivering violently.

I tried to combat the cold by tensing up all my muscles and then releasing them; that worked for a while, but I was soon shaking again. I didn't have a clue how Sarah was coping, and I didn't care now; my head was in hyper mode trying to work out my options. Was she telling the truth? Should I call London if I got out of this? Should I get help from within the U.S.? From Josh, maybe? No, he wouldn't be back from the U.K. yet.

I heard a noise and hoped that I hadn't.

Peering through the mud hole, I opened my jaw to improve my hearing.

My heart sank. I turned my head to look at Sarah, who was just about to tell me that she'd heard the dogs, too. The sounds were coming from the direction of our approach. I couldn't see them yet, but they would be on us. It was only a matter of time.

My eyes and puckered lips told her to stay quiet, then I moved my head back to the hole in the mud.

Sarah put her mouth against my ear.

"Come on, let's go." I whispered for her to shut the fuck up; they were coming over the brow of the rise.

There was a gang of them. The first thing I noticed was the two big snarling dogs on long leads, steam rising off their wet coats, their handler fighting to keep control. The good thing was that they were German Shepherds;

they weren't tracker dogs, but "hard" dogs--there to bridge the gap between us and the pursuers if we were spotted. The other good thing was that they didn't look quite so big with their coats wet against their skin.

The pursuit consisted of a six-man police team. One of them had a

springer spaniel on a lead, its nose to the ground, loving the whole business.

Apart from the tracker-dog handler, none of them was dressed for the hunt; they were wearing just their normal brown waterproof jackets, and two of them were even in shoes, with mud splattered up their pressed brown and yellow-striped trousers.

They passed us in a haze of dog noise and steam as our tracks took them half left, away from us and toward the stream. The moment they were in dead ground I turned to Sarah.

"Now we go."

I squeezed under the trunk and immediately broke into a run in a line directly away from the river. Maybe my hide-until-dark plan hadn't been such a good idea after all. The only option now was to outrun the team. It was unlikely the dogs would tire, but they could go only as fast as their handlers, so I would just have to get them exhausted. The police had looked wet and hassled, and were breathing hard. Even in our shit state we should be fitter than they were.

I pushed on, looking for a point where we could hide a change in direction.

It might not stop them, but it would slow them down. After close to thirty minutes of hard running through thick woodland I had to stop and wait for Sarah to catch up; she was panting deeply, clouds of her breath fusing with the steam coming off her head. When we moved off again I checked my watch. It was ten thirty-nine.

We went for it for another solid hour. Sarah was lagging farther and farther behind, but I pushed the pace. I knew she would keep going. When we used to train together in Pakistan she would never give up, even on a silly fun run. And then it was only her pride at stake; now it was a bit more than that.

We were in low ground and I could see sky about 200 meters in front of us, through the tree trunks. I heard the sound of a car, and then splashing on tarmac.

I crawled up to the tree line. It wasn't a major road, just a single carriage way in each direction, and not particularly well kept, probably because it wasn't used that much the sort of backwoods road that looked as if the tarmac had just been poured from the back of a slowly moving truck and left to get on with it. It might even be the same road as the last one, there was no way of telling. The rain wasn't firing down like a power shower anymore, just a constant drizzle.

I still didn't have a clue where we were, but that didn't matter. You're never lost, you're only in a different place from the one you wanted, and at a different time. Sarah had crawled up next to me and was lying on her back. Her hair had clumped together, so I could see the white skin of her skull. We looked as if we both had our personal steam machines strapped to us.

I decided to turn right it could have been left or right, it didn't really matter and just follow the road; at some stage we'd find a vehicle, or at least discover where we were, then work out what we were going to do.

"Ready?"

She looked up and gave a nod and a sniff, and we crawled backward, deeper into the tree line. I got to my feet and she accepted my outstretched hand. I hauled her upright and we started running again, paralleling the road. After only a minute or two I heard a car; I got down and watched as it splashed through the potholes, lights on dipped, side windows misted up and the wipers on overtime. As soon as it had disappeared from view we were up and running.

The next vehicle was a truck loaded with logs; its wheels sank into an enormous pothole and threw up a wall of water that fell just short of us.

There seemed to be a vehicle of some description every five minutes or so. Most were going in our direction, which was a good sign. I didn't know why, but it felt that way.

After another two kilometers or so I began to see lights forward of us and on the opposite side of the road. As we got closer, I could see that it was a gas station-cum-small general store with a tall neon sign saying, "Drive Thru Open" in orange letters. It was a one-story, flat-roofed, concrete building with three pumps on the forecourt, protected by a high tin canopy on a pair of steel pillars. The place had probably been state of the art when it was built in the Sixties or early Seventies, but now the white paint was gray and peeling, and the whole fabric of the building was falling apart. I knew how it felt.

There were windows on the three sides of the shop that I could see;

above the ones at the front were large, red, raised letters telling me the place was called Happy Beverage & Grocery. Faded posters advertised coffee and corn dogs, Marlboro and Miller Lite. They were all the same, these sorts of places, family-run as opposed to franchised mini-markets, and I knew exactly what this one would smell like inside a mixture of stale cardboard and cona coffee, fighting with the aroma of the corn dogs as they rotated in their glass oven. All rounded off, of course, with a good layer of cigarette smoke. The main sound effect would be the hum of fridges working overtime.

Even the pumps outside were early Seventies. This place was in decline;

maybe years ago, when the road was first built, it was a major hot spot, but once the freeways had been laid to move the growing population of North Carolina, the traffic went elsewhere. Happy Beverage & Grocery looked like it was already history.

I stopped just short of the Drive Thru sign on the other side of the road and got down. Sarah joined me, and I told her to wait where she was. I crawled forward. I'd been right; now that I could see through the windows my eyes hit on packets of everything from Oreos to Cheerios, and a line of glass-doored fridges which were less than a quarter full of milk cartons and Coke cans. A large glass pot of coffee was stewing away on a hob, alongside a whole range of polystyrene cups, from two pints down to half a pint, depending on how awake you wanted to be. If you wanted cream, it would be powdered, without a doubt.

On her own, as far as I could see, and sitting down behind the counter, was a large woman in her mid-thirties. I could see only her top half; she had peroxide-blond "big hair," which was probably kept that way with a can of lacquer a day; she must have been one of those Southern women the radio program had been talking about. The T-shirt was probably her daughter's, going by its tightness. I couldn't see her bottom half, but no doubt she'd be wearing leggings that were about four sizes too small. She was eating a corn dog and reading a magazine, and somehow managing to smoke at the same time.

I crawled back to Sarah.

"Can we take a vehicle?" she said.

"Not yet. It doesn't look as if she has one."

Beyond the shop was another tarmac road that met this one at a T-junction. The only thing that interested me was that where you have junctions, you nearly always have signposts.

We headed for the junction. The neon light was reflecting off the rainswept road and the hard standing of the pump area. I had to remind myself that it was still daytime. The sign said, "Drive Thru," and I'd do just that, given half a chance.

I started to envy the woman with big hair. She was sitting in there with a TV or radio on, and the heaters would be blasting away to keep the condensation off the windows; in fact, she was probably keeping so hot that she might need to knock back a Coke after the corn dog. I wondered how she'd keep the cigarette in her mouth.

We passed the shop and carried on to the junction. I motioned for Sarah to wait, but she'd got her breath back, and with it some of her old habits.

She'd never liked being ordered around and not being part of the show.

She came with me.

I moved forward the last ten meters and spotted a signpost, green tin on a tin stake. To my left, the way we had come, wasn't signed; to my right was a place called Creedmore, which was no good to me I didn't know it from a hole in the ground. But I knew where Durham was. It was just west of the airport; lots of people and traffic, somewhere we could get lost. The sign said that the road facing me was going that way.

It passed the gas station at the junction on the left, went uphill for about half a mile, with muddy drainage ditches on each side, then disappeared to the right behind a line of tall firs. That was where I wanted to go once I'd lifted a vehicle, but before I did anything I had to make sure the woman couldn't call for help. My eyes followed the phone lines from the building across the junction. They paralleled the road running from my left to right.

I moved in the Creedmore direction, about twenty meters beyond the junction, and crawled back up to the road, looked and listened. Absolute silence. I got to my feet, nodded at Sarah and we sprinted across. Once back in the trees, I followed the phone lines until I found a pole about five meters short of the junction.

I started taking my belt off, and asked Sarah for hers. This time she didn't question me. She followed the line of my gaze as I studied the top of the pole.

"Are you going up there?"

"I want to cut the line to the gas station."

"Are we going to rob it?"

Sometimes she had only a nodding relationship with reality. I stopped pulling my belt off and looked at her.

"Are you serious?" I wondered about what had happened to all those expensive years of university training. She had enough brain power to move a glass without even touching it, but sometimes she didn't seem to have even an Eleven Plus in common sense.

"We're just going to get a car and get the fuck out of here," I said.

"We have guests arriving, remember?" I mimed a dog biting with my hand.

I took her belt and buckled the two together to make one big loop. Hers was the American's heavy biker's belt, with a Harley-Davidson logo that said, "Live to ride, ride to live." I dropped the loop at the bottom of the pole, hooked my feet inside either end, gripped the pole with my hands, and started to climb. I'd learned how to do this from a documentary on the South Pacific, when I'd seen blokes use similar devices to climb coconut trees. You slid your feet up as high as you could, keeping the strap taut, then pressed down until it gripped. It was then a matter of reaching up and gripping the pole with both hands, lifting your feet again, and so on. That was the theory; the pole was so wet and slippery, however, that it took me several attempts to master it. At the end of the day, though, I was rather impressed with myself; if ever I was marooned in Polynesia, I wouldn't go hungry.

I heard the hiss of tires and the drone of an engine getting closer. My heart missed a couple of beats while I wondered how I'd explain myself, then both sounds changed direction and died as the car turned and headed toward Durham. It happened twice more. Each time, I stopped and waited until the vehicle had gone. At least the treetops gave me some cover.

I had just another couple of feet to go when I heard a fourth vehicle approaching, but this time from the direction of Durham. It was going slowly and coming close.

I looked down for Sarah, but she was already moving away from the pole and into cover.

The car drew up at what I guessed was the junction and stopped. I heard a door open and the sound of radio traffic. It had to be a police cruiser.

I couldn't reach down for my weapon, because it was taking all my strength and grip just to stop myself sliding back down the pole. I wondered about climbing up the last couple of feet so I could rest on a cross spar, but the way my luck was going I'd probably fuck it up and come hurtling down like Fireman Sam and land on their heads.

I heard a burst of laughter and looked down again. Sarah was nowhere to be seen, but a Smokey Bear hat was, covered in clear plastic, shaped so it kept the felt dry. It moved into the woods, above a dark-brown raincoat that stuck out at the sides. State troopers have zips up the sides of their coats to enable them to draw their pistols easily, but this guy wasn't doing that, he was undoing his front zip. I saw his knees jerk as he released himself, then the sound of piss hitting the tree just a few feet below me. Steam rose in front of the hat. I didn't want to make the slightest sound. I didn't even want to swallow. My fingers were starting to lose their grip on the rain-slicked pole.

I searched frantically for the trooper's mate. I couldn't see him; he must have stayed in the car, as you do when it's raining. I could see raindrops ricocheting off the garage roof, glistening in the light from the Drive Thru sign. The stream of urine against the tree subsided as he finished off, then he let go a resounding fart.

I started sliding. I pressed down hard on the belt with my feet, and gripped the pole like a drowning man. The sounds below had stopped, and I watched him jigging up and down to shake off the drops. He packed himself away, checked his coat, and strode off.

I heard the troopers joking to each other. The car door slammed, and then they drove off. I let out all the air I'd been holding in my lungs, inching myself farther up the pole to increase my range of vision. The cruiser was finally driving into the gas station. Why the fuck didn't he go in there in the first place? Maybe he was trying to chat up the woman and the last thing he wanted was for her to hear him farting away and stinking the place out.

I reached the top and hooked my left arm around the cross spar. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself down, then looked for Sarah. She was emerging from the bush she'd been hiding in, and I wondered if she knew how lucky she'd been: it looked a very inviting bush, and she might easily have got drenched by old fartypants.

I followed the telephone line to make sure it was the one to the gas station, reached down and retrieved the Leatherman from my pocket. Where these lines come in to a pole, they get hooked up to take the tension from the line, and then there's a nice little loose bit that carries on through. I leaned out, squeezing hard with the mbber soles of my feet, got the pliers part of the Leatherman over the line, and snipped. Then it was just a case of sliding down the pole nice and slowly so I didn't land up with half a ton of splinters in my arms and legs.

Sarah was straight in at me: "Give me a gun, Nick. What if he'd seen you?"

It made sense but I felt uneasy. Giving Sarah a weapon seemed to be a lot like giving Popeye spinach. On the other hand, if he'd spotted me she could have done something about it. I still wasn't sure whether she would fuck me over, but decided she still needed me too much. I'd let her have it for now.

I got Lance's semiautomatic, 9mm Eastern-bloc thing out of my jacket and handed it over. She said a sincere "Thanks" as she pushed back the top slide half an inch and checked to see if there was a round in the chamber.

The cruiser was driving out of the gas station and coming back in our direction. We both got down, and she used the time to put her belt back on. The blue and white passed us heading toward Creedmore; maybe they were helping to man a roadblock or something farther up the road.

I wanted her to stay where she was while I went back to the gas station to hijack a vehicle. She insisted on coming with me.

"Listen," I said, "a man and a woman turning up at a gas station, stealing a vehicle don't you think there's a bit of a chance they'd make a connection with the lake?"

"Nick, I'm coming with you. I'm not going to take the chance of us getting split up and this all going wrong. We're going to stay together."

She was right; without realizing it, she had reminded me what I was here to do. If there was a drama with the police or whoever, and it was obvious I was about to lose control, I would have to kill her before they could get her. Not the ideal option, but at least she'd be dead. Looking at her with my not-happy-about-it face on, I gave in to her demand.

"Fuck it, come on then."

We finished doing up our belts, moved back up the road for more distance and crossed. We turned right and paralleled to a point where I could get a clear view of the pumps and the shop again.

One car, a white Nissan sedan, was already on the forecourt, but it was four up, with two couples in their mid-twenties. The driver had just started the engine and out he rolled. I heard a distinctive ding-ding as the tires ran over a rubber tube sensor. He got to the road, stopped, turned his wipers and dipped lights on, laughing with the rest of them probably about the woman with the corn dog turned left and off they went. We lay there, waiting in the rain.

During the next ten minutes, two news vans with satellite dishes scuttled past along the road, headlights blazing, windshield wipers working furiously, on their way to get the story.

Another car rolled onto the forecourt. It was a Toyota, full of a family. I was half up, ready to go for it, like a big cat watching the herd. The car was ideal, a normal family sedan. Dad got out and, avoiding the rain, ran straight into the shop. I saw him give Big Hair a few bills, then he came out again and filled up. I decided against. I was looking at the family two kids in the back, window half steamed up, the kids beating each other up, the mother turning around and shouting at them. There were just too many people in the car. It would be a nightmare to drag two screaming kids from the car.

Ding-ding. They took the Durham road.

Sarah looked over at me.

"I thought we were in a hurry?"

Big Hair was walking across to the machine to get herself another bucket of coffee. She went and sat back by the till, next to the window, looking out, wistfully stirring her bucket with a spoon. I was right, it was packet creamer. Perhaps she dreamed that one day Clint Eastwood would drive onto her forecourt, come in to pay for gas, and bang, The Bridges of Happy Beverage County. Until then, nice work if you can get it.

A sign to the left of the shop entrance announced, "24 Hour Video Surveillance," together with the fact that they carried only fifty dollars in the register and the rest was slipped into a night safe that the attendant didn't have access to. I turned to Sarah.

"When we go to lift the wagon, I want you to get your T-shirt and pull it over your head, so you can only just see out of it."

Ding-ding. Another vehicle drove in toward the pumps from our left.

This time it was a really old van, late Seventies, early Eighties, the sort of thing Mr. T and the A-Team used to run around in, but a very tired gray.

The windows were half steamed up, so I couldn't see how many were inside, but as soon as the driver opened the door I knew this was the one.

He was in his early forties, and the important thing was that he got out and didn't take the ignition key with him, but just waved at the woman.

He must be a local, because he was trusted enough to nil up and pay afterward.

We got back into our big-cat positions, and I studied our prey. He was wearing a pair of green overalls that had seen better days, with oil stains and rips in the knees. His baseball cap should have been white but needed burning more than bleaching now. He was skinny and of average height, with about three days' stubble and four years' worth of wet or very greasy hair over his shoulders.

The tank was fall, the filler cap went back on. I whispered, "You ready?"

She nodded. He turned and, with his hands working their way into his overalls for money, jogged toward the shop. I jumped to my feet and started to run. With my left hand I pulled my T-shirt up over my face, and so did she. We must have looked like a couple of sperm. I kept my eyes moving between the van and the shop. I didn't really bother about what Sarah was doing; the plan was for her to go to the near side of the van, to the passenger door; I was to go around the rear, because I wanted to hide myself as much as possible, then get in the driver's seat and go for it.

The glass panels had been smashed out of the back doors and were covered with cardboard, and the whole thing was a rust bucket. I turned the corner of the van and moved along the side toward the driver's door. I had to skip over the loop of the pump lines and slipped on the diesel-stained floor. I recovered without falling and got to the door. Still holding the T-shirt over my head with my left hand, I got hold of the door handle in my right. It was a rickety, rusty old thing, hardly any chrome left on it; I pulled and it all but came away in my hand, hanging on by one edge.

The window on the other side was misted up and I couldn't see what Sarah was doing. All I knew was that she wasn't getting in. She must have the same problem; her handle must be busted.

The driver's window was down about three-quarters of the way. That must be how he got in--just reach in and open up from the inside. I jumped up slightly, got my right hand in ... and then chaos. The furious barking from the back of the wagon made me jump back as if I'd been given the full twenty seconds with a Tazer.

I glanced toward the shop. The guy was staring out, mouth wide open.

Someone trying to nick his van must have been the last thing he expected.

The black thing in the back of the van was leaping up and down, going ballistic. I had to put my hand inside again; it had to be done, I was committed now. I reached in, yelling for Sarah to do something.

I was jumping up and down, trying to find and grab the inside handle, the dog was reacting as if it had had to wait three days for lunch, and to the left of me the distraught owner was coming out of the shop shouting, "My dawg! My dawg!"

"Sarah, fucking do something!"

She did. I heard a loud, quick double tap from Lance's 9mm.

It couldn't get worse than this. I jumped away from the window, leaving the dog in the van going ape shit and ran around to the front of the vehicle.

"Sarah, fucking stop shooting! Stop!" Then I realized she wasn't firing at the driver, she was drawing down on the two German Shepherds that had come out of the tree line and were now about five meters away from giving us the good news. It had just got worse.

She took one down; it fell over itself and kicked around on the ground, yelping. The other one kept coming. Sarah turned to fire but it was too close to me now. My right hand flew down to draw my weapon at the same time as my left went to pull up my bomber jacket so that I could get to the pistol. It was too late for both of us.

It's pointless trying to evade an attacking dog so close; without a weapon, you can't do anything about immobilizing the fucker until it's committed itself to an attack. You've got to let the thing sink its teeth into you, and take it from there.

I had to get him onto me. I turned half left, let go of the bottom of my jacket and presented my forearm, still trying to get to my pistol with my right.

He didn't want to miss this. He leapt up, his jaws opening with a deep growl, his lips pulled back to bare his teeth so he got a good bite first time.

I saw his eyes roll back as he launched himself at me.

I stood my ground and braced myself for the hit. I felt his saliva fly onto my face as he opened up and his head flicked back.

There were probably other things going on, but they were lost on me now. I couldn't hear anything but the snarling of my attacker. I felt the weight of the dog hit me, and then him closing his jaws on my arm. His teeth sank straight through the jacket into the skin of my forearm and I started to shout.

"Sarah! Sarah!" I wanted her to come and shoot this fucking thing.

"Sarah!"

I staggered backward with his weight, and he came with me. I got my hand around the pistol grip; not completely, but enough to pull it out of my jeans. The dog was jumping up on me, trying to get me to the ground, his hind legs scrambling against my legs and waist. His legs hit my hand and the weapon fell.

"Sarah!"

There was fearsome pain as his teeth tore into my skin. It was like having multiple injections with pen-sized syringes. I had to let it happen. I had to make sure the dog had confidence in himself, that he sensed an easy victory. If I went with the flow, he'd keep his teeth in one place, thinking he had me, he wouldn't thrash around all over the place. Forget the old wives' tales about grabbing a foreleg in each hand and splitting them apart: it only works with chihuahuas--and that's assuming you can catch the little shit in the first place. In real life dogs are like monkeys, they're much stronger than they look.

I continued to move back under its weight as the German Shepherd jumped up and snarled. I could smell his raw-meat-eating breath mixed with mud and the shit on his coat from the follow-up. He took a deeper grip on my arm and I screamed out for Sarah again as I felt more flesh being mangled. She was nowhere to be seen.

I heard several gunshots as I staggered back toward the driver's side of the van. I was trying to look and act submissive; I didn't want to fight this fucking thing, I just wanted Sarah to come around and hose him down.

The dogs' handler and the police wouldn't be far behind. We needed to get moving.

The animal's growl changed tone as he shook his head from side to side like a mad thing, trying to get a deeper grip. His rear legs were now on the floor, with his front pads on my chest, walking back with me like a circus performer, still attempting to join his jaws together, but through my arm.

Now the black thing inside the van sparked up again as I heard more gunshots, but there was no instant, miraculous release of the grip on my arm.

It wasn't going to happen. I'd have to do it on my own.

The dog was feeling really confident now; he knew he'd got me. I bent down and, with my right hand, grabbed hold of his left rear leg. The limb twitched as if he were doing an Irish jig as he tried to kick away.

I started to pull the back leg up toward me. The dog was confused and pissed off, biting more and moving his head from left to right. I was grappling to keep hold of his leg. It was dancing away like Michael Flatley on speed.

I got a firmer grip on the spindly bit at the bottom of the dog's leg and, with my right arm, pulled it up as hard as I could toward my chest, at the same time starting to turn. The dog yelped with surprise, and I started to pirouette, as if I were spinning a child in a game. I did three, four, five turns, and the dog started to rise with the centrifugal force, anchored by its teeth in my arm and my hand on his leg. He had to make a decision, and he did: he let go of my arm. I didn't reciprocate by letting go of the leg; I kept hold now with both hands and swung him around and around as violently as I could. Still spinning, I managed to take two steps toward one of the concrete pillars supporting the forecourt canopy. On the third step, the dog's head connected with the pillar. There was a thud and a weak yelp and I let go. My own momentum carried me on around for another one and a half turns. My head was spinning as I tried to get my bearings.

I found the van. Sarah was sitting in the cab, firing out of the window. I screamed at her, "The door! The door!" She leaned across and opened it up. I looked down; my pistol was by the pump line. Bending down to pick it up, and keeping bent to avoid getting hit, I half jumped, half collapsed, into the driver's seat and slammed the door closed. As I did, the black thing in the back tried to scramble over the driver's seat.

Sarah shouted, "Let's go. Come on, let's go!"

1 was still in a semi stoop over the steering wheel, trying to present a smaller target, when the police started firing back at us.

All the windows were steamed up, probably from the dog's panting, which was good for us, because at least it hid us from the video. Just as well, as the T-shirt ploy had gone to rat shit the moment the dogs arrived on the scene.

I hit the ignition and the engine turned over, but it failed to engage. It sparked up on the second go. Sarah fired a few more rounds toward the tree line. The mutt behind me wasn't biting, but it was making more noise than the weapon reports.

The shots that hit the van reminded me of being in a helicopter under fire; because it's so loud inside the aircraft, you don't know you're being attacked until you see holes suddenly appearing in the airframe, accompanied by a dull ping as the rounds penetrate.

The driver was screaming his head off inside the shop, jumping up and down, but no way was he coming out until the shooting stopped. The woman was on the phone, shouting into the useless receiver, and as we rolled off the forecourt the driver started running along inside the shop, keeping up with us, his arms waving in the air as he screamed at the top of his voice. It was wasted on us. He was inside the shop and his fucking dog was making enough noise to drown the roar of a helicopter.

Ping. Sarah was still screaming, "Come on, come on, come on!" And the dog was adding his tuppence worth. He wanted out. Didn't we all.

I turned left onto the road. There was a coffee-holder on the dash, with a half-full poly cup of coffee in it, a cigarette butt floating on the top. As the van lurched, the whole lot went over my jeans. Then, surreally, the radio suddenly came on of its own accord. Sarah fired a few more rounds into the tree line. There was a return.

I looked in the wing mirror. The police were on the road, assuming proper firing positions. I put my foot down.

I jerked my thumb at the dog and shouted at Sarah, "Sort that nicking thing out!"

I turned left again and started to drive up the hill. I looked behind me and saw this big black mangy thing. Fuck knows what it was, just a wet, dank dog in the back, jumping up at the newspaper Sarah was trying to hit and distract it with, barking and yelping away at us both.

We started to take the right-hand bend in the road. The moment we were out of sight of the junction and shop I hit the brakes. I yelled, "Get that fucking thing out!"

"How?"

"Just get it out!"

She opened the door and tried to grab hold of the dog, but it was already scrabbling its way out, its claws tearing against her seat. It clambered over and fucked off. It probably hadn't been trying to have a go at us at all, it had just been frantic to get back to its owner.

She closed the door and I hit the gas pedal. I'd noticed some bags and stuff in the back.

"Why don't you check that out?"

She didn't need telling again. She was straight in there.

"Is there a map?" My arm was killing me as I gripped the steering wheel.

The wagon's heating system wasn't up to it, so I used my sleeve to wipe the condensation from the windshield. Even the wipers only worked on half speed. At least now I could sort of see where I was going, even if I wasn't too sure where that was.

The bend eventually straightened out and trees loomed up on either side. Above them, all I could see was thick gray cloud. Great; the worse the weather, the less the chance of the heli still operating.

"Nothing, just crap." Sarah was back in her seat. She wound down the window and started to adjust the wing mirror to keep a check behind us. I kept my foot down, but the vehicle was making only about 60 mph with the wind behind it, the threadbare tires not exactly gripping the road big time. All the shit in the back was rattling, and bits of paper were flying around in the draft rushing through the open windows. I just hoped the brake pads were in better shape than the bits of the wagon I could see.

She tried to pull open the glove compartment on her side, which probably hadn't been done for years. It gave way, and out spilled bits of fishing wire, lighters, greasy old garage receipts, all sorts. But no map. She shouted, "Shit, shit, shit!" I kept quiet, letting her frustration play itself out.

I drove on for about three miles, during which we didn't say a word to each other. We got to a T-junction with the same sort of road. There were no signposts. I turned right.

I was feeling exposed. I didn't know if the police back at the gas station had com ms which would depend on whether they had relay boards in the

area to bounce radio signals off. I couldn't help a smile: Metal Mickey's head would have come in handy.

I shouted at her so I could be heard above the noise of the wind.

"Did you drop any of the police?"

She was wiping the wing mirror. She seemed to have calmed down a bit.

"I don't know, I don't think so. Maybe."

I started to feel even more depressed. Whatever had happened, if we didn't get out of the area very soon and hide up, we'd be in a world of shit.

Less than two minutes later the chance came when I saw dipped headlights in front of us.

"I'm going to take it, Sarah. Make sure you don't say a word, OK?"

She nodded.

"What do I do?"

"Just point the gun at whoever's in there. Do not shoot anyone. Just keep your finger off the trigger .. . please."

I slowed down to about 20 mph and swung the van left, blocking the road. The car kept coming toward us. I couldn't see how many were in it, but it was a blue four-door sedan.

Sarah was waiting for instructions.

"Come out this side and follow me.

We have broken down, OK?"

I jumped out, trying to watch the car as well as listen for a heli. The car slowed. It was a Mazda, one up, and going by the big hair blocking half the windshield she was the twin sister of the woman at the gas station.

She wasn't too happy about what was going on. I had to be quick, in case she reached for a weapon; for all I knew, she might be one of Jim's best customers.

The car stopped. I ran over to the driver's side with a very thankful face on. She hit her window button and let it down only a couple of inches, but at least she wasn't going for her handbag or the glove compartment.

I got to the window and drew down on her, screaming, "Look down!

Look down!" My accent was getting worse.

She was maybe in her thirties. Her hair must have taken all day to tease into that beehive. Her makeup was about two millimeters thick and looked like wet cement now she'd started to cry.

I yelled, "Out, out!"

The door was locked. I kicked it and made out like a madman, which wasn't far from the truth. She finally relented; Sarah heard the clunk of the central locking and started moving toward the car as the woman got out. I motioned with my hand for Sarah to take the driver's seat; she passed the woman, who was standing on the road sobbing her heart out.

"I

have babies. Please don't kill me, please. Take the car, take the car. Take my money. Please don't kill me."

I wanted to tell her, Shut up. You're not going to die. I'm playing the madman because I want to scare you; that way you don't go for a weapon, and we all stay alive.

Sarah was in, door closed; I ran around to the other side and joined her.

Before I'd even shut the door she was slamming the car into a three-point turn. I looked under my legs to see what I was sitting on. It was Big Hair's bag. No point in fucking her up completely; I got the barrel of the pistol hooked in the bag and threw it out to her, just as Sarah finished a really bad turn with lots of braking and tires screaming in the wet.

"Get your foot down."

She didn't need any prompting for that.

The car interior smelled of fresh perfume and coffee. A large polystyrene cup with a lid was resting in the console holder; I lifted it out and gave it a shake. It was half full and the contents were still warm. I took a couple of sips and handed it over. The air conditioning was on; I turned a couple of dials and it soon changed to hot, hot, hot.

"Where to, Nick? Where am I going?"

I wasn't sure.

"Just keep going until we see a sign."

Ten minutes later we hit a main drag and were welcomed to Route 98 Raleigh was to the left, Durham to the right.

"Go left, left!" It was still a single carriage way but wider than before and with houses dotted along the way.

Before long we were joining other vehicles on their daily migration toward the city, and in no time we were in mainstream traffic and had some cover.

I said, "Have you got any rounds left?"

She gave me her weapon. I checked and refilled her mag from the spares in my pockets, and passed it back. She placed it under her right thigh with a "Thanks."

I started to recognize our surroundings. Traffic was starting to slow up;

every time we hit a major intersection there was another bunch of lights letting people out from all the suburbs around the city. We couldn't see any of the houses, though, because of the trees and low-level industrial units that hemmed us in on either side.

We had stopped at a set of lights alongside some other people drinking their breakfast. Some of them had big paper cups from drive-ins, some had mugs that looked like Apollo space capsules, really wide at the bottom so they didn't fall over in the car, then narrow at the top with a nozzle to drink through. All of a sudden I saw people in different cars around us smiling or laughing out loud to themselves. Sarah saw what was happening and she wanted to listen in. She hit the radio buttons on preset and cruised through the stations. Three goes and she got it. A man and a woman were talking about people's choices of bumper stickers. The woman said, "One is OK, but hey, more than that reads a ten on my geek meter."

The guy replied, "Have you seen the one that says, "A mind is like a parachute. It only works when it's opened ..." Come on, man, that's like, off the scale!" There was some canned laughter, then he quickly returned to the airwaves.

"Hey, morning! It's Q98 comin' attchaaa ..." The ads started to roll.

Everyone was laughing with us in the traffic. Then it got worse as they saw the same thing we did. The van four or five vehicles ahead had that very sticker in its rear window. I couldn't stop laughing as we started to move on green. I looked over at Sarah, who was joining in the fun; it wasn't that the joke was that funny. I think we were just so relieved to be back in civilization.

We hit the belt line saw signs for the airport and swung right at the intersection onto the highway. About halfway around we were on an elevated section, and down below us were low-level square buildings, mostly motels and burger joints, islands in a sea of neon. The rain had slackened to a drizzle.

I directed Sarah off the ramp and we cruised around, looking for a motel that would work for us. She drove past a Days Inn, standing in its own lot. It was a T-shaped building, with the reception at the top and three stories of brown doors making up the stern. It had seen better days, but was just what was needed. I let Sarah carry on past it so I could check out the area. That way I knew which way to run if we got bumped once we were inside.

"Turn left here."

She drove into the parking lot of an adjacent single-story sportswear outlet. There were about 200 cars in the 400-capacity car park; she found a space in the middle and parked. We wiped the car interior of our prints, got out and did the same to the outside--not that it mattered that much, as they would have our prints from the van; it would just slow them up a bit.

Walking back toward the motel, we made an effort to clean ourselves up, brushing the mud and pine needles off our clothes. It didn't seem to make much difference. We got a few strange looks in the car park, but nothing too serious; Americans know better than to stare at disheveled strangers. The motorway roared above us with the morning's traffic, and a truck's brakes hissed loudly as it stopped to make a delivery.

As I peeled the gloves and plastic wrap from the docs, I gave Sarah our story.

"OK, we're Brits--boyfriend-girlfriend, traveling up from the Cape Fear coast, had a puncture. We've been out in the rain trying to fix it, and all we want to do now is sort our shit out."

She thought for a few seconds.

"Got it."

I cleaned up the jacket sleeve the dog had ripped as best I could, wiping the dried blood on my hand against my jeans. A last quick spit and rub on the more stubborn stains did the trick.

We'd put our hands through our hair in a last-minute effort to sort ourselves out as we went through the door. We still looked rough, but so did the motel. The carpet in reception needed replacing and a new coat of paint wouldn't have gone amiss. To my left, a TV blared by the coffee and vending machines as the glass doors closed behind us.

The receptionist went through the automatic company welcome: "Hi, how are you today?" still looking down at something more important. She was about seventeen or eighteen, and wore a maroon polyester vest and skirt, with a white blouse. Her name tag said she was Donna. She was a black girl with relaxed hair put into a side parting, a big, round pair of glasses and, now that she was actually pointing it at us, a great big brilliant smile. It might not be sincere, but at least she was the first person we'd been close to for a while who wasn't shooting at us.

Her smile evaporated as she took in our appearance.

"What's happened to you folks?"

I did my best stupid English tourist impression.

"We had a puncture this morning and the car went off the road in all this rain. Look at us. It's been a nightmare; we just want to clean up and sleep." I stopped my waffle and looked sorry for myself while showing her the state of my jeans.

She agreed, we were in shit state.

"Wow!" She looked down at the computer and hit the keys.

"Let me see .. ." She didn't sound too hopeful.

"It's early and I don't know if any rooms will be ready yet." She smiled as she read the screen, and I knew we were in luck.

"Hey, you know what? I have a double room but it's smoking." The way she said it, I knew that when the time came for her to have a child, she'd sue someone lighting up even two states away. She looked up, waiting for us to share her distaste.

I said, "That will be fine, thank you." She looked at us as if we were somewhere below subhuman.

"We don't smoke, but at the moment anything will do." I smiled. We became normal again and were given a big smile back.

She continued to hit the keys.

"Sure. I have a special at the moment:

thirty-nine dollars ninety-nine, plus tax." Her expression now said that I should be jumping up and down with joy. I took the hint.

"That's great!" I pulled out my wallet and gave her my credit card. She could have been asking for $139.99 plus tax, I wouldn't have given a shit.

"Thank you" she studied the card "Mr. Snell."

She swiped the plastic and the machine clicked and hummed as I filled in the registration form. I put down any shit I could think of for the vehicle registration. They never look at it anyway, and if she did, I'd just say, sorry, Hugh Grant-type character Brit abroad.

"OK, you're room two sixteen. Where are you parked?"

I pointed out and to the left. She started to direct with her hands.

"OK,

go around back to the left, up the first flight of stairs, and it's there on the right-hand side."

"Thanks a lot."

"You're welcome. Y'all have a good one."

We walked out of reception and I placed my arm around Sarah, talking shit about what a night it had been. We turned left to go to our non-car and worked our way around the motel to our room. There was a chance that anyone putting two and two together after watching the news might call the police, especially if the gas station was already news. But this girl looked as if she didn't even know what day it was. There had to be a point where I had to accept I'd done all I could for now. It was time to clean up, get our act together and then move on.

It was a typical, low-rent motel room that could have been anywhere in the world, with a queen-sized bed, faded flower-pattern cover and white melamine-veneered chip board furniture. The curtains were closed and the air conditioner was off to save electricity.

I took the Do Not Disturb sign from the inside handle and put it on the outside as I fiddled around trying to find the lights. Sarah passed me as I closed the door and pulled the latch across. I went over to the air conditioner and, leaving the curtains closed, switched it to full-blast heat.

Sarah was sitting on the bed, pulling her trainers off. I walked back to the other side and checked the window, a sealed, double-glazed unit that overlooked the landing. The only way out was by the door. I visualized my escape route. There were two staircases; I could either get down to the ground or onto the roof. Once on the ground I would head back to the car park and hijack a vehicle. If push came to shove, I'd kill her here beforehand. I picked up the remote from the bedside cabinet it was attached to a curly bit of wire so I couldn't nick it and started flicking through the channels trying to find some news. The faded silver plastic TV must have been about ten years old so were most of the programs.

Sarah went toward the air conditioner, pulling off her jacket and muttering, "I need a shower." She started to take off the rest of her clothes, placing them item by item on the heater, then weighting them with ashtrays and a telephone directory to keep them in place. The air was blowing them about as if they were on a clothesline in a gale.

I watched her undress as I lay on the bed. I couldn't stop thinking about what she'd said the guys in the house were planning, and about how lucky we'd been to get away. I just hoped she hadn't killed any police; even if she was telling the truth about the assassination plot, we'd be in deep shit over that.

I'd made a conscious decision to let her keep the weapon; if any police had been killed, she had the weapon that linked her to that, and to the Lance killing. London would have to do a mega deal with the Americans.

I watched her naked body walk across in front of me, heading for the bathroom. She'd always been at ease with nudity, almost nonchalant, in the way models are. Her body was beautiful and still well trained. I watched her thigh muscles flex as she moved; her skin was usually so healthy it glowed, but with those cuts and bruises she wouldn't be showing her legs off in short skirts for a while.

As the shower started splashing I lay back against the headboard, flicking through the channels with the sound on mute. I couldn't see anything of use yet, like the news, but if I'd wanted to buy a diamond necklace and earrings or an ab-cruncher, it was my lucky day. My chin was resting on my chest, my back propped up by the pillow. I could smell myself: wet, mushy and, like her, in need of a shower. Looking in the mirror to the left of the TV, I saw a scarecrow who needed a shave.

I finally hit a news channel that was showing pictures of forests, then the lake. I didn't bother turning it up. This must be it; we were famous.

There was film of different emergency vehicles toing and froing, police and ambulance crews running around with waterproofs over their uniforms.

Then a policeman gave an interview with the same sort of thing going on in the background. I really didn't want to know what he was saying.

If there were dead police, a picture of them would soon be onscreen.

It wouldn't change what I had to do, even though it might make it harder.

The news was replaced by a commercial. I was in a semi daze trying not to nod off. My eyes were stinging as much as my forearm now; at least that had started to scab up a bit. I'd sort it out later. If I'd got tetanus I'd be finding out very soon. I smiled at myself in the mirror as I thought, I could always sue the police department. This was America, after all.

I watched a child's toy commercial, where two small girls were playing with dolls. Shit! I leaned over to the bedside cabinet that held the phone and a Days Inn notepad and pen combo, and wrote a big "K" on my left wrist. Next to the pen was a small book of matches; I put it in my jeans pockets, along with the mags.

My body was aching all over. I forced myself up, and pulled the phone book off Sarah's jeans. They fell to the floor and I couldn't be bothered to pick them up.

I trawled through the Yellow Pages, looking for car hire, called a toll free number, and was told that, for a charge of $43 a day, plus tax and insurance, they'd be with me inside an hour and a half.

Sarah came out of the shower just as I was putting down the receiver.

She had a large towel wrapped around her, and a smaller, still-folded one in her hands. As she walked across to check her clothes I could smell the soap and shampoo.

"Who was that?" she demanded as she threw the towel by the TV and bent down to pick up the jeans and put them back on the heater.

"I've hired a car."

"Excellent. How long before we move?"

I didn't know why she was so pleased. We weren't going anywhere she wanted.

"We?" I said.

"What the ruck's with this we business?" I always seemed to regress to South London gob by twang when pissed off.

"All the bollocks you're on about is your problem, not mine. The only we about this, Sarah, is that we we got the North Carolina police, FBI and whoever else wants overtime looking for us, and if you have killed a policeman and they catch up with us, we're in a very big world of shit. Take my word for it, we won't survive any containment; they'll hose us down on sight.

"We are going to do nothing. What I am going to do is, first, get us out of this shit; then I am going to get us both back to the U.K. End of story. I don't care what is happening elsewhere, or what you want to do about it. I have enough shit here to deal with. Fuck Netanyahu."

She sat on the end of the bed and looked at me. I knew she was going to give me a sales pitch, but tough, I wasn't going to let her get to me.

"Nick, I'm going to tell you anyway. It's important. I need your help."

I cut in.

"Sarah, I'm not interested in your stories. Not now, OK?"

She wasn't going to give up.

"Look, I am the U.K. liaison in a contact group set up by the CIA. It's called the Counter-terrorism Center, and we're based at Langley. Our general remit is to disrupt terrorist--" "Sarah, I told you, shut the fuck--" Her voice got a bit louder. "--to disrupt terrorist operations; my particular cell is coordinating a U.S. effort with European and African nations to roll up Osama Bin Laden's networks."

"Bin Laden? What the fuck .. ."

She looked at me, waiting for me to continue. I didn't, but she knew I was now starting to take an interest. She drew a breath and continued.

"Yes, Bin Laden. We had a common cause while he was fighting in Afghanistan, that's true. But the problems began after the 'eighty-nine Russian withdrawal and his return to Saudi. As far as he was concerned, Nick, Afghanistan wasn't destroyed by the Russians, but by Afghans who had turned their backs on their religion and their country for money and power. Once he returned home, he saw the same corruption in all the Arab nations that had adopted Western values--above all, in Saudi, the land of the two most holy places, Mecca and Medina."

I looked at her blankly, wondering if she would be saying all this if she knew her life depended on it.

"The whole situation was made worse by the Gulf War. To him, the presence of hundreds of thousands of American and other foreign troops on Saudi soil was a desecration of Islam, the return of barbarian Crusaders to defile Islam's holy places. He vowed to wage war against their presence in Saudi and against the Saudi leaders who had brought them into the country. As far as he was concerned it had become an American colony. He wanted to strike back at the West--in fact, at anyone who was non-Muslim and in Saudi.

"The thought that former mujahedin would one day come to the United States and conduct operations didn't enter anyone's head at the time." She allowed herself a small smile.

"The CIA has a word for it: blowback--a poisonous fallout, carried on political winds, drifting back home from a distant battlefield." The corners of her mouth went serious again as she added, "Bin Laden has become, over the last several years, the international terrorist posing the most serious threat to Western interests. He has an incredibly effective infrastructure and, of course, he has lots of money to fund it all himself. The ASU at the lake was funded by him.

That's why I was there."

I shrugged.

"Listen, if there's shit on, call Washington, London, whatever.

Let them sort it out. There's the phone, call them."

She looked across at the bedside cabinet, but made no movement toward it. Her eyes stayed fixed on mine. I wasn't too sure if she was actually listening, or just waiting for me to say more.

I got up and went over to the vanity unit outside the bathroom. It had a sink, mirror, shaving plug, soap and hand towels; it was time to clean up my arm. If she were telling the truth, all she had to do was pick up the phone.

I took off my jacket, pulled up the shirtsleeve, and surveyed the damage:

two rows of nice clean puncture wounds that any German Shepherd would be proud of. If I collected any more scarring I'd start to look like the Cabbage Patch doll Kelly said I was. I turned on the taps and Sarah remained silent for a few seconds as I rinsed the dried blood and mud off my arm. The puncture wounds were deep, but less jagged than I'd expected.

"Nick, don't you imagine that I've already thought of that?"

I glanced in the mirror and saw her sitting on the bed.

"Making contact with anyone is not an option, because it's not a solution."

I washed the wound slowly with soap and waited for that first horrible stinging to die down, trying to work out if what she'd said was any more than her usual cocktail-party performance. The room heater was working overtime and making my eyes sting.

"Nick, how do you think the ASU was going to get close to their target here in the U.S.? Just walk up and give him a little tap on the shoulder?"

I shrugged. It didn't matter if I knew or not, she was going to tell me.

It came at me in a flood.

"Nick, Bin Laden has a highly placed source.

We think it's possibly as high as the National Security Council. Think about what that means: the group that blew up the World Trade Center ... and Khobar Towers in Saudi, remember? Nineteen American servicemen dead. They also did the 'ninety-five bomb in Saudi. Another five Americans killed.

"Those are the people who have someone within the administration.

That's why I can't just pick up the phone and get inside help: the source would find out, then close down for a few years and never be found. He is the key to stopping Bin Laden."

I could see the passion in her eyes as she continued.

"Nick, the source has access to Intelink. Not only does that mean he would know before virtually anyone else of any contact I made, but just think about what information is being passed on to Bin Laden and anyone else he then decides to sell or give it to. Don't you think I would love to call this in?"

Well, if all this was true, that was the phone call question taken care of.

Intelink is a top secret network, through which all the U.S. and some Allied intelligence agencies share information, very much like their own private Internet. Within it, all agencies also have their own intra nets separated by fire walls from the main system. There are about a hundred sites that need top secret security clearance to get access to. Whoever the source was, if he or she had access to it, then they must be big time.

I washed, thought and said nothing. If she was telling the truth and Netanyahu was killed and the source did exist, it would be a drama, but it wouldn't make much of a dent in my life. Come to think of it, would it affect anyone else's very much?

I could still see her reflection in the mirror.

"Hey, kill one Israeli prime minister," I said, "another pops up. So what?"

It seemed that something I'd said had amused her, because her nose twitched and a big smile lit up her face.

"They're not going to kill just Netanyahu, Nick. The main target is Arafat. Bin Laden hates him hates him even more than Netanyahu, for reining in Hamas and other Islamic fundamentalists and supporting the peace process."

I looked down at my arm, trying to hide my smile.

"He's not too keen on making friends, old Bin boy, is he?"

My joke wasn't appreciated; she just carried on as if she were Elizabeth giving me a brief.

"For Bin Laden, the important thing about this attack is what it will say to the world. When CNN asked him about his plans, he said, "You'll see them and hear them in the media, God willing." Since then, the Islamic Jihad group has sent the United States a warning: that they would soon deliver a message to Americans 'which we hope they read with care, because we will write it, with God's help, in a language they will understand."

"His message is that nowhere is safe for United States citizens and their friends. It's the logical extension of the bombing of American interests overseas. The one place that should be safe here in the U.S. isn't. Think about it, Nick. Two world leaders killed while guests of the most powerful nation in the world. A perfect demonstration that Allah's avenger can strike wherever and whenever he wants. Just think what a boost that would be for the fundamentalists. As you would say, there'd be shit on. And the source is there, Nick, every step of the way."

She stood up and started to walk toward me. I concentrated on dealing with my arm. I said, "And what about the guy we were sent in to lift in Syria? Where does that fit in?" I hoped I wasn't sounding too interested.

"And you changed the data. London told me everything."

She was now standing next to me.

"Ah, London again. I killed him because I had to, Nick. He knew the real data. If he'd come back to the U.K.

the corrupt stuff I gave them wouldn't have stood up."

"Why change it in the first place?"

She sighed.

"To try to confirm if the source really existed, and where in the NSC food chain he was. Those were early days, Nick, nothing was confirmed. At that point he was just a myth."

She clearly felt more had to be said.

"Look, I needed to do it so that when the source if he existed got a look at the data, he would have to inform Bin Laden that everything was OK, nothing had been compromised.

That way, not only did it confirm he existed, but meant that perhaps he could be tracked down. Whoever sent you here will not know everything, Nick."

There was a lull. I knew she was waiting for me to ask another question.

I patted my arm with a hand towel, turned and leaned back against the sink. I looked at her, two feet away.

"We should have been told there was a change of plan once on the ground. You fucked a job up that killed Glen" She looked at me, confused.

"Reg Three, remember?"

There was no reaction in her face.

"Yes, of course. I'm sorry about that." I knew she really didn't give a shit about Glen. Come to think of it, nor did I anymore. It was a long time ago. Even in the Regiment he would have been long forgotten, apart from by his family and a few close friends on Remembrance Day. His wife would probably have married another member of the Regiment and would be getting on with her life.

I got back into the present.

"So why are you in the shit about all this, if it was part of the job?"

She looked at me with her small-child-in-trouble face.

"That's the problem." She hesitated.

"They didn't know. I thought that if no one was aware there would be no leaks." She was starting to look depressed, as you would if you'd severely fucked up.

"In fact, it was a cock-up from start to finish. The FBI confirmed shortly afterward that the source did exist. They call him Yousef, but they didn't know at what level of the NSC he was. I decided not to tell them about anything I was doing. In fact, they don't even know about what I was doing at the lake."

It was all making sense now. It was so typical of Sarah to be going it alone, hoping to collect all the Brownie points and smooth her way up another rung of the career ladder.

"So now you want me to help you get out of your fuckup." I couldn't help smiling. Actually, it felt good.

"I couldn't tell anyone, Nick. If I had, the whole thing might have been compromised. I wouldn't couldn't risk it." But she was risking it with me. That also felt very good, which was making things even more difficult for me.

She turned back toward the bed, sat down and hit the "off" button on the TV remote control, knees drawn up and her arms around them, counting the number of piles there were per square inch of carpet.

"The problem is, Nick, I still don't know the identity of the source no one does.

No matter how I did it, that has been the aim of this last four years: to find him, and to force the whole network down."

She had finished with the carpet and turned back to me as I continued to tend my arm.

"The two others who were arriving at the lake today are the only ones here in the U.S. who know who he is. I've met them only once. I don't know their names, contact details, nothing. But my plan was to play along with the hit, and get them lifted I wasn't quite sure how.

But once we had those two, we'd get the source as well. It won't stop at Netanyahu and Arafat, unless we can neutralize the top man."

She brushed back her hair with her fingers as it was drying. My breathing was very slow and heavy as I tried to think of questions to help me feel right about what I was thinking.

"Nick, you are the only " The phone rang. Sarah jumped up and started to throw her things on, picking up her weapon and checking the chamber. With her jeans halfway up her legs, she pulled the curtain slightly to see outside. She shook her head. I picked up the phone. She carried on dressing.

It was reception; we exchanged a few words and I replaced the receiver.

"It's the car. Take everything, get into the shower room and wait." She picked up the rest of her clothes, towels and bag and took them with her. I put my jacket back on to hide the wound and the fact that my shirtsleeves were missing and changed channel, checking it wasn't on a news program.

I turned up the volume to cover Sarah.

There was a knock on the door. As I walked across the room, even I couldn't help noticing how dank the room smelled. I looked through the spy hole It was a young black guy wearing a blue T-shirt. He had all the forms on a clipboard under his left arm, and a runner for the credit card in his hand.

I sat down with him on the bed to fill out the forms. Showing my driving license was always a bit of fun, as most people outside the U.K. don't have a clue what they're looking at a damp piece of pink paper that says nothing much at all, and doesn't even have a picture. He was turning the page over for the details he needed, trying to appear as if he knew what he was about. I couldn't bear to see him in pain.

"The number's there." He smiled at me in relief.

As he got up, I could see him trying to work out the smell. I laughed.

"We were using a friend's car for our holiday. It broke down last night in the middle of nowhere."

He nodded, not really caring. When he left, Sarah came out of the bathroom, taking her jeans off again to dry.

If she were telling the truth, maybe I would take her back to London.

The problem was that although I hardly knew where I was with Sarah, I did with Lynn and Elizabeth. It might be G&Ts at seven, dinner at eight for them, but if I didn't carry out my job they would fuck me over big time, maybe even organize my own personal T104. I needed more information from Sarah; the fact that she'd killed the American gave me a pretty clear idea of whose side she was on, but I needed solid evidence. I sat on the bed as she finished undressing and put her clothes back on the heater.

"When are they going to do the hit?"

She came and sat next to me. She looked up at me with excitement, then her face changed.

"You still don't believe me, do you, you bastard?"

She gripped my arm with her hand.

"You must help me. I'm the only one who can identify the two who are left, and I know them, Nick. They won't rest until they've finished the job." She stared at me. I didn't answer; I knew she was going to continue.

"What are we here for, Nick? How will you look at yourself in the mirror if you don't help me to stop it?"

Mr. Spock would have been proud of her. The emotional stuff didn't work too much for me, but the story did sound logical. But she'd already fucked me over once, and looking at myself in the mirror had never been high on my list of priorities.

I got to my feet and went toward the door.

"I'm going for a cruise around to see if I can get us some clothes. What size are you?"

"Eight U.S." shoes six. Why don't I just come with you?"

"They're looking for a couple now. They may even have a video grab from the gas station. Sit here, I'll be back."

Out in the corridor, I closed the door behind me but didn't walk away immediately. Ripping two matches from the book I'd picked up I wedged them between the door and the frame, one a foot above the lock, one below.

I heard the locks being closed from the inside as I went downstairs.

The rain came down in a constant drizzle as I got into the car, a red Saturn, and turned over the ignition. The heater blew at its highest setting, the radio blared and the windshield wipers thrashed from side to side. The urgent bing bing bing told me to put my seat belt on. I did, inhaling the new car smell, put it into drive and headed for the road.

In case she was watching, I drove out of her line of sight before going around the back of the motel, crossing over the main drag and parking up in the lot for Arby's, a hot sandwich shop. Looking through the power, telephone and stop-sign lines that hung above the main drag I now had a trigger on the motel door; I'd even be able to see where she walked to, as I had the stairs and ground floor in view. If she did something that showed she was lying, at least I'd know, and then I'd have control again. Plus, I could see if the police turned up. What Sarah was going to do once that happened I didn't know, and I wouldn't wait to see. If she followed her usual pattern, she would probably kill a couple of them and hopefully get killed herself. It was a risk, not keeping her with me, but worth it. Besides, there was something I had to do alone.

I kept watching the motel door as I turned on the power of the mobile, hit the PIN and eventually keyed in three digits. An operator answered.

"Yes, please," I said.

"North Carolina, Century Twenty-one Realtors, on Skibo Road, Fayetteville."

Century 21 was a family-owned estate agency franchise, letting out apartments. I'd gone there once when I was in the Regiment, when a couple of us were staying in Fayetteville for six weeks. We spent one week in Moon Hall, a military hotel on the base, which was fine enough, but with the allowances we'd been given we decided to treat ourselves to an apartment.

The only reason I could remember the name was that the "Ski" in "Skibo" was pronounced "Sky" and I always got it wrong.

I kept the engine running so the window wouldn't fog, and my eyes on the trigger. As I waited, I hit the wiper arm to clear the windshield. The number was given to me and I dialed.

The call was quickly answered by a female voice in turbo mode.

"Century Twenty-one, Mary Kirschbaum and Jim Hoeland Property Management Inc. How may I help you?"

I switched to my bad American.

"Hi, I'm looking for an apartment to rent--three bedrooms, maybe." The bigger it was, the more chance there was of the kitchen having the facilities I was going to need.

I heard the sound of a keyboard being tapped at warp speed, and within a nanosecond she replied, "I have only one or two bedrooms available.

Do you require furnished or unfurnished?" She gave me the feeling this wasn't her first day on the job.

"Two bed, furnished, would be fine."

"OK, how long do you require the property for? I need a day's notice for weekly rentals and a week's notice for monthly rentals."

She had obviously decided that for someone like me, who didn't seem to have a clue what he wanted, it would be better to explain right away instead of wasting her time.

"Two weeks, but could I get it today?"

There was a pause. I'd fucked up the procedure, but she recovered with style.

"Right now I have a two-bedroom apartment available to rent for one seventy-five a week or five fifty a month, plus electric and tax. If you decide to stay longer the monthly rental rate would start on month two."

Once I'd heard the first nine or ten words I didn't even listen to the rest.

"OK, that sounds great. What's the kitchen like? Does it have a freezer?"

I thought she was going to ask if I'd just arrived from Mars.

"Yes, they all have a full kitchen. Freezer, dishwasher, range--" I cut in before I got the whole list.

"And I can definitely have it today?"

There was another pause.

"Sure." The computer keys were going into meltdown.

"You need to come into the office today before five thirty so I can book you in. It will be a two-hundred dollar deposit in cash, plus one week's rental, plus tax in advance, cash or card only. Can I have your name?"

The keyboard was given another brief respite as I slowed the process down by talking at a normal speed.

"Snell. Nick Snell."

By the time I'd finished, it was on the hard disk.

"OK, I'm Velvet, the rental assistant. I'll see you here before five thirty."

I came off the phone feeling dizzy. I had to hit the wipers again as I kept both eyes on the motel door. I looked at the half washed-out "K" on my wrist, then at my watch. It wasn't too early I dialed call number two and got the answer, "Hello, lower school office."

"Hello, Mr. Stone here. I'm sorry to call outside of social hours, but is it possible to talk to Kelly? I'm working and I " Before I'd even finished a very prim and proper voice, straight out of a 1950s black and white film, said, "That's perfectly all right, Mr. Stone.

One moment."

I was treated to an electronic version of "Greensleeves." I'd thought that had been banned by the music police years ago.

I knew it wasn't "perfectly all right." The secretary would have to drag her out of class, or whatever goes on in boarding schools at that time of the evening. Him calling again, the wrong line, wrong day and always with excuses but I paid the bills, and on time. It must piss her off. I made a mental note to find out who this woman was and what she looked like next time I visited. I imagined a cross between Joyce Grenfell and Miss Jean Brodie.

She came back on the line.

"Can you ring back in a quarter of an hour?"

"Of course."

"Not bad news, I hope. She's been so excited today, because they sang a belated "Happy Birthday' in assembly. She's feeling a very special young lady indeed."

I turned off the power with fifteen minutes to kill, while keeping my eye on the motel and listening to the radio, feeling really pleased that I'd got it together to call. It would surprise her. I was cut out of the daydream by a news headline.

".. . the deadly gun battle only minutes away from vacationing families.

We'll bring you more from the scene after these messages .. ."

Once I'd listened to an important announcement about this week's sportswear specials at Sears, a very serious voice tried to give weight to the popcorn-style report he was presenting. They had found bodies at the house, and they were thought to be Middle Eastern. However, police were not yet releasing further details. His voice dropped an octave for extra gravitas. Unconfirmed reports suggested that the dead men could be terrorists.

At least there was no mention of any dead police, which meant no pissed-off cops hunting for the Bonnie and Clyde who'd murdered their best mates. I sat and listened to the rest of the news, very aware of the uncomfortable dampness of my jeans.

It was about seventeen minutes past twelve. I powered up the phone and called the U.K. again, nicking my eyes between the keypad and the motel door. I got the ringing tone and turned off the radio.

Our conversations when she was at school were normally quite strained, because she was in the office and people were listening in, and, like the grandparents, they still didn't understand how someone as erratic as me could be in charge of a child's welfare.

It rang, she answered.

"Hello?"

"Hi, how are you today!" I always tried to sound really happy to put her at ease.

"Fine. Where are you?"

I could hear phones ringing and Miss Grenfell-Brodie fussing around in the background.

"I'm in London, still working. How's school?"

"Fine."

"And Granny and Grandad? Did you have a good time?"

"It was OK." Her tone suddenly shifted.

"Hey, Nick, it's really cool you called!"

It was great to hear her voice as well.

"See, I promised I'd ring you, and I have, haven't I? You see, a normal person's promise. Are you impressed, or what?"

She started to spark up.

"Yes, and do you know what? The whole school sang "Happy Birthday' to me today in assembly. Well, Louise, Catherine and me. They had birthdays in the holidays, too. Are you impressed, or what?"

I imagined Miss Grenfell-Brodie giving Kelly a disapproving look.

"We don't say 'or what," remember? Anyway, was it embarrassing?"

"No! My class has bought a present for me. A book of amazing facts;

it's really cool."

"Wow!" I said, trying to work up some enthusiasm.

"So what have you been doing today?"

"Hmmm, mostly the Geography project, I guess."

"That's good. I used to love that at school." I looked skyward in case a bolt of lightning was heading my way.

"We had wet breaks all day today," she chatted on.

"Is it raining in London?"

"Pouring, I got soaked. It was raining cats and dogs. Especially dogs."

We both laughed. She said, "Have you talked with Josh yet? Are they back home?"

"No, they won't be home until tomorrow."

"Oh, OK. We need to send a card to say thank you for them coming to see us."

I thought I was the one who had to come up with the grown-up, parent type stuff.

"OK. Can you be in charge of that? It would be a really nice surprise for them. Tell them a few amazing facts while you're at it."

"I will, during Letters."

"Great, they'll love that." Letters was an hour set aside each Saturday after study time, when the kids who were boarders had to write to their parents. Or, if you were Kelly, guardian and grandparents.

A truck parked between me and the motel. She was still prattling on while I moved in my seat to keep the trigger, and at the same time used the opportunity to adjust my damp jeans.

"I wished we could have stayed with them, Nick. Can we go back to the ship?"

"Yeah, no problem." I realized I was still feeling guilty. She could have asked for anything at that moment and I'd have agreed to it. The traffic was still screaming past between the target and me, throwing up clouds of water.

"Can Josh and everyone come?"

"Of course. As soon as we go on the next long holiday. Make sure you ask Josh in the card, OK?"

Even as I heard myself saying it, I knew it wasn't going to happen. The chances of Josh being able to get over to the U.K. with his kids again were slim because of the expense. I said, "I've got to go now. You have a really, really happy birthday time tonight."

"OK, are you going to ring me again soon?"

"I hope so. I won't be able to this week, but I'll definitely call after the weekend, promise. NPP. Are you seeing Granny and Grandad at all?"

"Yes. There's no Drama on Saturday, so after Study Time and Letters Granny said I can go stay with them."

I was pleased about that, because if they weren't able to have her some weekends she didn't get to leave the school grounds.

"OK, listen, have a great day."

"I will. I love you."

It always felt weird when she did that. I liked it, but I could never say it unless she did first. If I did, it made me feel like I was intruding.

"I love you, too. Now there's another amazing fact! OK, back to class. I'll speak to you soon, all right?"

She laughed and the phone went dead. I guessed she knew she had to make the first move.

She was happy that I'd called and I was happy that I'd remembered to.

What was more, it was a lot easier to do now that I knew the Firm knew about her. I didn't have to get out of the car and use a public call box. I cleared both numbers from the recall menu and closed down.

The truck had moved, so I no longer had to sit like a contortionist to keep the trigger. I sat there for a minute just looking at the motel door and the traffic cruising between us, feeling very pleased with myself.

I switched back into work mode, pulled $5 out of my wallet and went and bought a Coke, trying my best to "keep dog" on the target through the windows. Once out on the forecourt with my pint and a half of Coke and ice in my hand, I went to the bank of four phones that stood beside the Burger King next door.

I pulled out the handset to its full extent so that I could still see the motel. The roar of the traffic was almost deafening. I put my money in to call directory assistance. Pushing my finger in my ear and pulling on the handset for that last inch of line to keep the trigger, I shouted, "Washington D.C." British Embassy, Massachusetts Avenue, please." I had to say it again because of the traffic, plus she couldn't understand my Australian accent.

I dialed the number and finally got through to who I wanted.

"Michael, it's Nick. I need some help, and I've decided to take you up on your offer."

There was a slight pause as Metal Mickey mulled this one over.

"Well, that depends on what exactly the offer was." I could imagine the smile on his face.

"It's just some questions that need answering, nothing that'll get you into trouble." I could hear myself shouting down the phone to overcome the traffic noise.

"Good. I would just hate to be a naughty boy."

I bet he would.

"No, mate, no trouble. Have you a pen?"

He gave a slow, "0-K," as he looked for it.

"I need anything that you can find on a handling name Yousef. Anything you can get."

He sounded surprised at my plain speech on the phone.

"Nick, aren't you the naughty one! You're supposed to be the one concerned with security."

He giggled like a schoolboy.

"I know, mate, but this is important and I haven't any time to mess about. The other thing I need to know is what exactly Sarah's been working on these last two years in the U.S." plus, what did she do the two years before that? I know you don't know now, but I just know you'll be able to find out."

"Why, Nick, you old flatterer, you." He started to laugh as he wrote a note to himself.

"Aren't you supposed to be the one in the loop?"

I let out a sigh.

"Yeah, I know, mate, but I've fucked up and got myself in a muddle. I don't really want to call London and get it sorted out. First time doing this sort of job, and all that. It would be very embarrassing."

He let out a squeal of delight.

"Oh, tell me about it!"

I didn't have a clue what he was on about and just carried on before he had the chance to tell me.

"Finally, I need to know what Netanyahu and Arafat are getting up to this week. You know, times, places, that sort of thing" "0-K. You are a busy boy, aren't you?"

"Oh, and one last thing. I need to know the names and backgrounds of the four men killed last night at a place called Little Lick Creek in North Carolina."

There was a pause; I could almost hear the cogs churning as he linked this to Sarah and her country breaks. I was expecting a reply along the lines of, "I don't feel comfortable with this, Nick," but instead got a very nonchalant, "When do you need this by?"

"Later this afternoon would be great. Do you think you can?" I had to turn back toward the booth to hear him as three trucks thundered past.

"No, but I know a man who might. I can't wait to call him."

"Thanks for that, Michael, I really appreciate it. There is no one else I can ask you know how it is. But I would like this one to be just between you, me and the gate post, OK?"

"You, me and the gate post, mmm, sounds interesting. Byeee!"

I stepped back into the booth and hung up. I would rather have been talking with Josh, but I couldn't until he got back from the U.K." Metal Mickey would have to do.

The rain had given me a new layer of wet on the shoulders of my jacket and hair. My forearm was starting to sting again. Walking to the car, I lifted up my jacket cuff to investigate. Not good. There were scabs forming, but the bites were deep and needed cleaning and dressing by someone who really knew what they were doing. At least when it scarred I wouldn't have to explain anything. The teeth marks said all there was to say.

I did a drive-past of the motel, checking to see if there was anything abnormal, such as sixteen police cars and twice as many shotguns, ready to pounce. Nothing. I parked up and walked past the reception. Looking through the glass doors, I could see that Donna was still at reception, still reading whatever was so riveting below the desk. There was a tray of Danishes next to the coffee machine for the guests, and a bowl of big red apples.

Everything looked absolutely normal.

I put my relaxed face on and headed through the door. Three children were fighting over who was going to carry what bag. I smelled the coffee and remembered I was hungry. Leaving the family to sort out its shit, I walked over to the machine, picked up coffees, four apples and the same amount of pastries, and then went back over to Donna.

"We've decided to check out early now we have a replacement car," I said, breaking the corner off one of the Danishes and taking a bite.

"Sure, no problem, but I'm afraid I'll have to charge you full price."

She printed out the bill and I checked it to see if there were any phone calls logged. There weren't. I signed the card counter foil

I went to the room. The two telltales were still in place. Knocking on the door, I made sure she could see me through the spy hole as I pulled them out.

The heat was stifling, and the moisture from the drying clothes and bodies had made it as humid as a greenhouse. She'd gone back to watching Tv sitting on the edge of the bed, still with a towel around her. She took her plate and coffee without looking at me, her eyes glued to the screen.

"It's the third bulletin I've seen."

As I joined her on the bed, I could see that it was a rerun of what I'd heard on the radio. A reporter was talking with a background of police cars and vans, and then the woods. He was wearing a brand-new blue Gore-Tex jacket, probably bought on expenses at Sears on the way to the lake; the hood was down so that you could see his very perfect, plastic hair and face, and he was talking in that earnest here-weareatthe-scene tone of voice. The shootings had happened hours ago, but he had to make it sound like the bad guys could reappear any minute.

I said, "Have they mentioned any details?"

She was sounding quite excited.

"Yes. They've all said it was two men at the gas station, but there are unconfirmed reports that one of them could be a woman. The FBI are at both scenes, but there's been no official statement yet." She took a bite of Danish and spoke through a mouthful of pastry.

"That woman in the blue Mazda must have been really scared if she couldn't see I was female."

I had to agree. But then again, maybe they were going on the dogs finding Sarah's underwear. After another mouthful she added, "There's been no mention of Lance."

I wasn't bothered by that; I knew they wouldn't be giving the media everything they knew. Unless they hadn't found him yet. The main thing was that no police had been killed.

I stood up and walked over to the window. Her clothes were mostly dry now.

"It's time to move. Get your kit on, let's go."

She pulled her jeans on, and I knew what they would feel like stiff and horrible. She got them on, bent her knees and did little squats to make them a bit more pliable, dusted off the mud and got her top back on. As she put on her size-eleven trainers she looked up at me.

"Where are our new clothes?"

"I forgot. Let's go!"

We got into the car and I drove. She didn't seem to notice to start with, because she was busy eating her apples and drinking coffee, but when we got onto the highway it was obvious we were driving away from the airport, not toward it. She frowned.

"Where are we going?"

"Fayetteville."

She picked up the map sheet of the state that the hire company had left for us.

"But that's even farther away from Washington. Why Fayetteville?"

"Because that's what I want to do: I want to be out of here and in a safe area that I know. Then I'll sort my shit out." I kept my eyes open for signs for the 401 south.

Her face fell.

"You are going to help me, aren't you, Nick?"

I didn't answer.

Keeping to the speed limit so as not to attract any police attention, I drove along the same road as before toward the city. Crossing the Cape Fear bridge, I noticed a car park on the other side, on the riverbank below the bridge, to allow fishermen and boats to get to the water. As we reached land and passed the exit down to it, I made a mental note.

Soon afterward we hit Fayetteville city limits, which seemed to consist entirely of fast-food joints.

"Why Fayetteville, Nick? Why are we here?"

It was the sort of America she'd never seen, nor wanted to, by the look on her face.

"This is the only place I know in North Carolina. I plan to stand off here until London decides how they're going to get you, and me, back to the U.K. They'll have to sort this gang-fuck out with the State Department before we go anywhere, or do anything. Until then, we need to keep out of the way of the police--in fact, everyone."

I glanced across and thought I saw her stiffen. I knew she was rattled about all this, but she was fucked if she was going to show it.

I drove down Skibo, and Century 21 was just as I remembered it, a logcabin-style converted home set amongst pine trees, with a small car park in front and a large neon sign jutting out from the side of the road. But I wasn't ready to go in yet; I needed to sort my act out and look at least halfway presentable.

I drove some more and found a shopping area set around an open square. Beyond that, way over to my left, I saw the "Pentagon," and realized that this must be part of the shopping mall I'd been to before. A large

banner hung from a York stone facade the size of a row of houses. It announced that Sears department store was ready and waiting to take my money any time with its fantastic sportswear sale. I pulled in and buried the car amongst a whole lot of other vehicles.

She was staring at me.

"What now?"

"Clothes. I'll go on my own. What size are you?"

"I've already told you I'm an eight, and my shoe is six, both U.S."

Then she gave me a look that said, Can't you remember? You used to know that stuff.

Looking at her as she smiled, I closed the door and walked toward Goody's Family Clothing Store.

Half an hour later I came back with two bulging nylon sports bags. We went into the Pentagon and changed in the public toilets. I washed my face and made an attempt to dress my arm injuries with some of Goody's finest dishcloths. I should have found a pharmacy, but I just couldn't be assed; there seemed to be more important things to do. Besides, I was the original one-stop shopper. Once washed and changed I waited outside the washrooms with my bag of old clothes. Nearby was a cell phone shop; I went in and bought two $20 call cards and stopped off at the ATM.

Sarah and I looked quite the devoted couple in our matching suburbanite jeans and sweatshirts, with neat nylon bomber jackets for the rain. It certainly made me feel a lot better to be out of my mingy old kit, but my eyes were stinging with fatigue and I had trouble focusing on anything for too long. We got back to the car and threw the old stuff in the trunk.

I was now into a new phase of the job.

"You drive," I said, throwing the keys at her.

"I'll tell you where."

We drove onto the Century 21 lot and parked up amongst the fir trees.

The engine was still running, and I looked across the carriage way toward a gas station, not really concentrating, but getting myself ready for the next few minutes. These things have to look natural, and that can happen only if you act natural. That takes just a bit of preparation.

She was confused.

"What are we doing now?"

"Like I said, we are doing nothing. / am getting us somewhere to stay.

The fewer people that see us together, the better. Wait here."

I left the keys with her again. It was no drama, she was going nowhere;

she wanted me to help her. Besides, she knew that if she drove off I'd have to call it in, and she would then be OTR (on the run) not only from me, but also from the police, and the Firm would have no option but to stitch her up.

I left her counting trucks and went inside the office. I recognized Velvet from her voice as she took another phone inquiry at the speed of sound.

Her hair was long, past her shoulders, and she had a dyed-blond perm that was long overdue for a refit. It had so much spray on it that the hairs looked like strands of nylon. The skin on her arms and hands showed that she was in her twenties, but her fingers were yellow and she already had crow's-feet from screwing up her face to stop the cigarette smoke getting in her eyes. She looked pretty enough on the outside, but I wouldn't have wanted to look down a fiber-optic scope into her lungs. My eyes were stinging more than ever.

She finished her call and looked up.

"Hi. How may I help you?"

"Hi, my name's Nick Snell. I booked an apartment with you this morning."

Before I'd finished she was already going into her files, and moments later she nourished a key.

"I'll need you to fill out this form. I forgot to ask if you have any pets. If so, they mustn't weigh more than twenty pounds each and you are only allowed two. How are you paying?"

"No, I don't, and cash."

At last, a reaction from her that wasn't fully automated; maybe she liked the way I pronounced the word "cash." Two minutes later I was heading back to the car.

I opened the map and looked for North Reilly Road, which Velvet had told me was only a few minutes' drive away. Stewart's Creek turned out to be a private "community" with just one road in and out; it opened up into an area of about forty acres, on which sat twenty or so blocks of green, wooden-facaded apartment blocks, three stories high. We observed the 15 mph limit as we entered our new neighborhood.

"It's apartment one seven one two," I said, looking from side to side.

"I

guess that's building seventeen." Sarah nodded and we splashed our way through the puddles, looking at the numbers on the large gray mail boxes arranged outside each block. We passed the community pool and tennis courts, beside which stood a row of call booths and Coke and newspaper machines.

"Got it." Sarah turned into number seventeen's parking lot.

We climbed the wooden stairs and entered the apartment. The first impression was, brown. There was a brown sofa and chair around a tv and a log fire in the fake-stone fireplace, with a chain-mail curtain to protect the brown carpet. The living area was open plan, with the kitchen area facing us as we went in. At the far end of the room was a set of sliding patio doors with insect mesh on the outer side, which led to a small balcony.

The place smelled clean and looked comfortable. In the bedrooms, blankets, sheets and towels were all laid out, ready for use. In the kitchen there was a welcome pack of coffee, powdered creamer and sugar. Sarah went into the bedrooms, closing the blinds. I slipped into the kitchen area and switched on the freezer, turning the dial to "rapid." The sound of the motor powering up was too noisy, so I put the fridge on as well.

She came back into the living room as I was putting the kettle on.

"Now what?" she asked, closing the patio-door blinds to cut out prying eyes.

"Nothing. You stay here, I'll go and get food. I'm starving. The kettle's on, why not make a brew?"

I drove to the nearest store, which was part of a gas station, and bought the normal supplies a couple of subs, chips, canned drinks, washing and shaving kit. Then I used my call card to dial Metal Mickey from a phone booth on the forecourt. There was no answer from his extension at the embassy, not even voice mail and the switchboard wouldn't take messages.

Baby-G told me it was 18:36. He must have finished for the day. I tried to remember his home number; I couldn't, shit. It got binned with the 3C.

I returned to the apartment. Sarah was lying on the sofa half asleep, TV on and with no coffee made. I threw her a sub and a bag of chips, and turned to reheat the water. The yellow freezer light told me it was still working overtime to achieve quick freeze.

Sarah eventually reached out and started to pull open her food. I poured water into the coffee mugs.

The annoying thing was that everything she'd said made sense; she'd done nothing to show she was lying. Why should she trust anyone back in London? I knew from firsthand experience that the Firm was as slippery as an eel in baby oil.

I turned around to face her as I placed the coffee on the breakfast bar.

She was lying back with the sub on her chest, one mouthful missing.

She'd closed down. I knew how she felt. I was knackered and my head was starting to spin. I desperately needed sleep. I checked that the front door was locked and crashed out on one of the double beds, on top of the piles of sheets, towels and blankets.

It was still dark when I woke. I turned and felt another body next to me. I hadn't heard or felt her come into the room.

As my eyes adjusted to the dull light from the street lamps through the blinds, I could make out her shape. She was facing me, curled up, her hands together, supporting her head. It sounded as if she was having a bad dream. She mumbled to herself and started to move her head against the folded blanket. She'd never appeared more vulnerable. I just lay there, looking at her.

Her skin glowed in the warmth of the room, but her brow was furrowed.

For a moment, she almost seemed to be in pain. I reached out to touch her, just as she gave a small cry, tossed and turned once, then settled again. I could still smell the scent of apple shampoo in her hair.

I figured I'd been pretty good at keeping people at arm's length ever since I was a kid. It didn't make life completely fucking brilliant, but it kept me going and it sure as hell helped avoid disappointment. This was different, though. Very different.

She murmured again and snuggled closer to me. I didn't know how to deal with this at all. First Kelly, now Sarah. Any minute now I'd be checking out real estate agents' particulars for the dream cottage with roses around the door. The full catastrophe. It scared the shit out of me.

I'd never been the world's best when it came to staying in one place, and I started to have this uncomfortable feeling that keeping on the move suited me so well because it meant I didn't have to think too much about what I was running away from, or what I was heading toward.

I could hear the TV still going in the next room. A woman was trying to sell us a great deal on a barbecue set. I rolled over, sat up and pulled at the corner of the blinds. It wasn't raining, but I could see from the rivulets on the windows that we'd had another downpour during the last few hours.

The back lighter of Baby-G told me it was 02:54.

I stood up slowly, trying not to disturb her, and made my way toward the kitchen. Rubbing my eyes back into life as I passed the mirror on the living room wall, I saw the face from hell; creases and blotches from sleeping on the towels, and my hair thick with grease, sticking up as if I'd had a good burst from a Tazer. I shuffled to the kitchen, scratching every fold of skin I could reach. It was coffee time.

Sarah must have heard me banging about. Her voice behind me matched the way I felt and looked.

"I'd like one of those, please." The TV went quiet as she hit "off" on the remote.

She sat on the sofa, looking sheepishly at the carpet, her arms between her legs, as if she'd been unmasked as human after all. I was expecting her to say, "Please don't tell anyone," but she didn't. Instead she said, "I'm sorry about that. Nick, I just felt so alone and scared. I needed to be close to you." She looked up at me. Her eyes were full of pain, and something else I couldn't quite identify, but found myself hoping was regret.

"You did mean a lot to me. Nick. I just didn't know how to deal with it at the time. I'm sorry for how I behaved then, and I'm sorry for being so stupid now." She paused, searching my face.

"I won't do it again, I promise."

I turned back to the coffee and tried to sound upbeat.

"That's OK, no drama."

What I really wanted to do was grab her, hold her tightly and pretend for a moment that I could make everything all right. But I was frozen between my memory of what she'd done to me in the past and what my orders were for the future.

I plugged in the kettle, feeling more and more confused. I had a crack at dragging myself back to the present.

"I need Michael Wamer's home number."

It didn't register with her at first.

"Who?"

"Michael Warner. I want his home number."

I turned and glanced at her. It dawned on her that I'd been to Washington.

She said, "What did you tell them?" I didn't think I'd ever seen her look more miserable.

"That I was reviewing your PV Anyway, I've talked only to Metal Mickey."

I tipped last night's mugs into the sink and started again.

"Metal Mickey." She started to laugh.

"Great name!" Then her mood changed again.

"Why do you need his number?"

I brought the coffee over to her, placing it on the low table in front of the sofa.

"I had some questions I wanted him to research. He might think it odd if I don't call to get the answers."

She thought for a while as she took her first sip, and then recited the number. I didn't have a pen, but scratched it onto the front of the phone book with my car key and ripped the piece off.

"I'll be back in a minute."

She put down her brew and stood up.

"It's a bit early, isn't it?" She was right, but I wanted to know.

"Fuck him. He's paid twenty-four hours a day, isn't he?"

The call boxes by the pool and courts were only about fifty meters away across the road. To the right of them were the newspaper vending machines, one with USA Today and the other with the Fayetteville Observer Times Under the street lighting I could just make out a picture of the forest on the front page of the Times. I couldn't be assed to find out what they were saying.

It really had been raining while we were asleep, and quite heavily, judging by the size of the puddles. It was warm and damp and my sweatshirt was starting to stick to my back. I wished this weather would make up its mind. I got out my bit of phone book and the call card and dialed.

There was a sleepy "Hello?" from Metal Mickey, very drowsy, but slow and wary.

"It's me. Nick. Sorry it's so early but I couldn't get to a phone. Have you had any luck?" I heard the rustling of bedclothes as he got comfortable with the phone in his ear.

"Oh, mmm yes, let me get my eyes on and I'm all yours." There was a gap as he fumbled around for his glasses.

I didn't want to be on the phone with him all night.

"Our two friends we spoke about, what are they up to for the rest of this week?" I turned around to check if anyone was watching. Not that it would be unusual to be out telephoning at this hour, as these apartments didn't come with a phone. You had to connect your own.

"Well, they've finished their work and will spend Wednesday and a bit of Thursday just pressing flesh and having photo opportunities to show how nice they are and how well things have gone during their visit. Isn't that nice?"

"I'm sure it is, but where? Where is all this happening?"

"Don't really know. In and around D.C." I suppose."

"OK, mate. Now what about our American friend?"

"Ah now, I think we need to meet for that one, Nick. I don't really want to discuss him on a land line, and a lot of paperwork has come my way that I think you may want to read. I also have the information you wanted about your other friend."

Had he found something sensitive, or was he just worried that when his PV review came up, gob bing off on the phone would reflect badly on him?

I said, "OK, mate, I'll tell you what. Same place as before, at 12:30 p.m.

today. You sponsor it."

"Lovely, I'll see you then." There was a pause.

"But what about... the others?" He was sounding more like the village gossip with every word.

"What?"

"About your other four friends. You know, the ones who go on holidays to the lakes."

"Oh, yes, those friends. I'd forgotten, I have so many."

"I know just what you mean, Nick. It's soooo hard to keep track." He paused again. I was going to have to work for this.

"Who are they?"

"Can't tell you! Well, not over the phone, Nick. I think you need to read what I have for you. It all links in very nicely with Girlie. It's like a great big jigsaw puzzle. Isn't it exciting! See you tomorr " "Remember, you sponsor." I had to cut in to make sure he knew.

"Byeee." I didn't know if he'd understood what I meant, but I'd find out soon enough.

I replaced the receiver and turned to walk back to the apartment. Sarah was halfway across the car park and storming toward me. I stayed where I was and let her come to me.

She was shaking with anger.

"Are you going to kill me?" She jabbed my chest with every word.

"Is that what the phone call's all about?"

"Don't be stupid," I said.

"Why would I drag you all the way here " "I saw the freezer light, Nick. Don't lie to me."

"What? It must have come on when I turned on the fridge."

"Bullshit! They're on separate plugs. Do I look stupid? You're lying to me. Nick!"

I looked around to make sure no one was watching. This wasn't exactly Times Square, and raised voices on the street in the early hours of the morning were sure to bring police or private security cars. I put my finger to my lips. She lowered her tone, but still laid into me.

"Why don't you believe me, for Christ's sake? Why don't you believe what I'm trying to tell you?" Her throat tightened and tears welled up in her eyes. It was the first time I'd ever seen her cry.

"I can't believe you were going to do that. I thought I meant something to you."

I discovered I was feeling guilty, probably as guilty as I ever had.

"What after you froze me, Nick? Was it the wood-shredder to grind me up, like you did with those two in Afghanistan? Bag me up, then down to the river and feed the fish? They ordered a T104, didn't they? Didn't they?"

I shook my head slowly.

"You're wrong, Sarah, you are--" She wasn't having any of it.

"You were going to do the same to me as you did to those two muj, weren't you? Weren't you. Nick?"

I held her by the shoulders.

"You're talking shit, the freezer must have been on already. Listen to me, I believe you, I really do, but it changes nothing. I am still going to take you back to London." The words were said with conviction; I wasn't lying about either of those things now. It made it easier as I looked into her eyes.

"But, Nick, if you believe me, you've got to help me. You're the only one I can trust." She shook her head and turned her back on me.

"Hah!

What a fucking irony!"

"Sarah, listen, I don't care what happens in Washington. The only thing I do care about is getting out of here with both of us alive."

She turned back to me, tears streaming down her face, then wrapped both arms around my waist and buried her head in my chest. She started to cry even harder; I wanted to do something, but just didn't know what. I looked up at the clouds and let her get on with it.

The crying switched back to anger and she pushed me away.

"You used to care for me, Nick. Haven't you any fucking boundaries?" She covered her face with her hands, wiping away the tears.

"I can't believe you were going to kill me, or even think of it."

"No, Sarah, no ... I wasn't..."

The crying changed to convulsive sobs. It sounded as if she were haveing a breakdown.

"I got it so wrong, Nick, so fucking wrong ... I thought I had it all worked out... all under control... I even trusted you. How could I have been so stupid?"

I stroked her cheek wordlessly, then ran my fingers through her hair as she carried on.

"You were right... you were right. I wanted to be the one, I wanted to do it all myself... I wanted it so badly, it just got out of control. Once it started I couldn't go anywhere for help, I had to go it alone." She squeezed me hard and carried on sobbing.

"What am I going to do. Nick?

Or maybe you don't care?"

It was pointless asking me. I was still trying to get over my own guilt.

Fucking hell, I'd got so far down the line that I'd switched the freezer on. How could I have done that to her? Maybe I didn't have moral boundaries like normal people. Was I always going to be the freak without emotion?

She was still in remorse overload; it was as if she was talking to herself.

"I could have done something about it in the beginning, but no, I wanted to be the one to get the credit. I'm so sorry, so sorry. Oohhh, shit, what have I done, Nick?"

She squeezed her arms around me even more, desperately wanting support.

I put my arms around her and she sobbed her heart out. I wanted to give her the comfort she needed, but just didn't have the tools. I'd never really needed them.

"I don't know what to do, Sarah," I whispered.

"Just hold me. Nick, just hold me."

I hugged her tighter. I felt strangely good about what I was doing. We stood there for minutes, rocking gently in each other's arms, her sobs slowly subsiding. I doubted there were any more tears left for her to cry.

She wiped her face on my shirt. I tried to lift her chin, but she resisted.

"I'm sorry, Nick. I'm just so sorry..." She moved away from me and wiped her face with her palms, the sniffles starting to slow down in frequency as she regained some of her composure.

"Sarah, where are they going to make the hit?"

She looked up, breathless.

"The White House, tomorrow."

"How? How will they do it?" I needed to know for when I called London.

It would be my justification for returning with her alive. She was in the shit, I understood that, but so would I be if I helped her and hadn't prepared my tuppence worth for the inquiry that was bound to follow.

She sniffed loudly.

"There's a photo call on the White House lawn with Clinton, Arafat and Netanyahu. They'll give a press conference, then there'll be a ceremony with white doves and songs for peace, kids singing, all that sort of nonsense for the cameras. I don't know any more. The two that were arriving yesterday from Washington had all the details. The team works in just the same way as we do: no details until the last minute.

All we knew was that we were already accredited to enter the White House as news crew."

"So that's why the old guy had a suit?"

She nodded.

"We were going to be part of Monica Beach. Oh, shit, Nick, how did I ever think I could do this on my own?"

Monica Beach was what the media called the area of the White House that TV crews gave their reports from, because ever since the Lewinsky affair, it had been even more crowded than Santa Monica beach.

My first reaction was that it sounded more like something out of a B movie than a real plan.

"It wouldn't work; they'd never get out of there."

The tears started again.

"Nick, these people don't care. Survival isn't an issue. Look who they have for their inspiration. Bin Laden's devoted his life to driving the Russians out of Afghanistan, and is now doing the same to drive the Americans from Saudi. He both finances and inspires them. Pakistani, Palestinian, even Americans. Dying is not an issue with these people, you know that."

I found myself nodding.

"If you can't attack your enemy, you attack the friend of your enemy. And what better way to show the world that even the mighty U.S.A. can't protect anyone from Allah's vengeance, even in its own backyard." As I spoke, I realized what a fucking idiot I'd been, just keeping my head down, concentrating on the job, trying not to think about where all this was heading.

"Shit, Sarah, explain to me in detail, the kids singing and white doves bit."

I could see her scrolling through her memory for the information; she took a breath and wiped her nose as she gathered her thoughts.

"After a press conference, there's going to be a ceremony involving about two hundred kids. They'll present a peace quilt made from patches sewn in the U.S." Israel and Palestine to the three leaders on the White House lawn, in front of the North Portico. The kids will sing songs of peace and white doves will be released as Netanyahu, Arafat and Clinton hold the blanket for the cameras."

Now I knew what had been troubling me. My heart started pounding and I thought I was going to vomit. I sounded surprisingly calm for someone whose mind was working at warp speed.

"My friend's kids are going to be there ..."

There was a look of horror on her face.

"Oh, shit. Nick, one of the options was a bombing. It wasn't their first choice, but now, who knows?

Without the assault weapons, it will be the easiest way." She started to cry again.

I grabbed her and forced her to look me in the face. Her eyes were puffed up, her cheeks wet and red.

"Sarah, I've got to make a call."

She started to beg.

"Please don't, Nick. Calling won't solve it. Your friend's children might be saved, but the others will still die."

I put my hand up to her mouth. I understood what she was saying. I couldn't call Josh anyway: he would only get back just in time for the final rehearsal. Did I give a fuck about the other kids? Yes, of course I did, just not as much as I did about Josh's.

"I have to call someone to get his number, that's all."

I strode back to the bank of phones, got the phone card out and dialed.

Miss Grenfell-Brodie answered. I said, "Hello, it's Nick Stone again. I'm very sorry to bother you, but would it be possible to talk to Kelly? I'll phone back in fifteen minutes if that's all right."

She was obviously getting used to this. I could almost hear her sigh.

"Yes, of course, but please try not to do this too much, Mr. Stone. It disrupts her routine. Phone calls can be arranged through this office at a more convenient time for everyone concerned."

"Thank you for telling me, I wasn't aware of that. It won't happen again, I promise. Could you ask her to bring her address book with her?"

"Yes, of course. She will be brushing her teeth. She's just had breakfast.

I will fetch her."

"Thank you." I put the phone down. I did know about booking calls.

But then again, fuck 'em. Who was paying the bills?

Sarah arched an eyebrow.

"Who is Kelly?"

"Never mind."

We stood there waiting. I could see that she was dying to say something more, but she knew me well enough to know I wasn't in the mood to answer.

As I stood by the phones, more and more anxious about being seen, I realized that I no longer had to be. I could call Kelly from the mobile. We walked back toward the apartment in silence, Sarah still with her arm around my waist.

As I closed the door behind us, she went to wash her face. I put the kettle on. I thought about what Sarah had said. I didn't normally remember the deaths I'd seen, but I could see the body of Kelly's little sister as clearly as if she'd been slaughtered yesterday. Whatever happened, Josh's kids weren't going to go the same way. But should I tell him, and risk him doing his job and telling the Secret Service? I would in his shoes, but did it even matter? Would the ceremony go on if he did? Yes, of course it would. But what about the source? Would it affect the timing of the hit?

As the kettle did its stuff I bent down to pull the deep-freeze plug from its socket, then stopped myself. Things had changed, but pulling it would show her that she'd been right about me. I decided to leave it where it was.

I walked around the breakfast bar toward the sofa. What the tuck was I going to do about this situation? My first reaction was to tell Josh and get him not to tell a soul, but that wasn't going to work. Even if, like me, he didn't give a shit about the brass in the White House, he would about the kids. Then he'd be smack in the middle of the same predicament as me.

Some of them must be his friends' kids, and then friends of his friends.

Soon every fucker would know the score.

Sarah came from the bedroom, her eyes still red, even after her wash up

She saw the steam rising from the kettle and walked past me to make the brews. I checked my watch.

A different female voice answered this time.

"Oh, yes, she's on her way, she should be here any moment."

"Thank you." I cradled the phone in my shoulder, expecting a wait, but almost at once got "Hi! Why are you calling me again, what's up?"

At first I thought I should try not to sound as if I was talking to a child, then I decided not to bother.

"Nothing, just checking you've cleaned your teeth." It got a laugh out of her.

"Have you got your address book with you?"

"Sure have."

"All right then, I'm after Josh's number, because I'm going to the airport in a minute. Guess what? I'm going to Washington and maybe I'll get to see him."

"Cool."

"I know, but I need the phone number and I've left it at home."

"Oh, OK." I could hear the pages flicking in her Spice Girls address book. At the bottom of each page was a multiple-choice profile and a space to insert the "cool factor" of the person the page was about. I'd felt quite proud to see that she'd circled "funny and weird" as my description, and given me a OF of 8 out of 10. But that had all crashed before my eyes as I turned to the next page and saw her grandparents circled as "kind and gentle" and given a OF of 10. Perhaps I'd have to start tucking her pullovers into her jeans all the time if I wanted to up my cred.

She reeled off the number and I scratched it on the piece of phone book, then tapped it into the phone as we talked.

"Nick, why are you going to America?"

"I'm going with a friend. Her name is Sarah."

I looked over at her. She was staring quizzically, trying to work it out. I was sure she knew it was a child. Those things are hard to hide.

I said, "My friend Sarah is going to do some work in Washington and I'm going with her. Hey, would you like to speak to her?"

"OK." There was a slight reluctance in her voice. Maybe she sensed that things were about to get complicated. I didn't want to tell her they already were. Sarah came to the settee with two full coffee mugs.

I passed over the phone and said, "Sarah, this is Kelly. Kelly wants to say hello."

She fixed her eyes on me as she spoke.

"Hello?" There was a gap, then, "Yes, that's right. Sarah."

I kept looking at her and hoped this was the right thing to do. It might come in handy, later. Sarah was still talking.

"Yes, I'm going to Washington.

What do I do? I'm a lawyer. Yes, I'm just going over to work, just for a few days, and Nick is coming with me." She was obviously getting the third degree.

"Oh, yes, a long time, but I hadn't seen him for years. Yes, OK, I'll pass him back. Nice to talk to you, Kelly, goodbye."

"Will you still call me next week?"

"I promise. Don't worry, this isn't instead of next week's phone call. I'll see you soon, no worries." I was just about to carry out our normal routine at the end of a call, but checked myself. This one was different. Shit, this could be the last time I spoke to her.

"Hey, Kelly."

"What?"

"I love you."

She sounded slightly quizzed at me saying it first, but very happy nonetheless.

"I love you, too!"

"Bye bye." I slowly took the phone away from my ear and switched it off, not too sure how I felt about letting it all hang out.

"How old is she?"

"Nine last week" "You kept that quiet, didn't you?"

"She's a friend's child."

"Of course."

"No, she is." I thought about telling her about Kev and Marsha, but decided against it.

She sat next to me on the sofa and cupped both hands around her coffee, still puffy-eyed.

"You OK?"

She nodded, trying to regain some sort of composure.

"Yes. Look, thanks for ... I don't know what came over me."

As we drank our coffee I explained my plan. We would go to D.C." and I would look at what Metal Mickey thought was so worth looking at. Depending on what I found, I would then decide whether to tell Josh, or just go for it ourselves.

I was feeling uncomfortable about the Josh situation, but cut away by trying to justify it to myself by the fact that he wouldn't be back until early this afternoon, and by then I'd be with Mickey. So it wasn't as if I was abusing our friendship. I took another sip and decided that was bollocks.

Deep down, I knew I was.

Everything we did now would be paid for and ordered by Sarah, in the name of Sarah Darnley. It was part of her security blanket. There must not be any movement detected on my credit card or phone. We went back

down to the call box and called the ticket line. We were going to leave for Washington National on the 8:50 a.m. from Raleigh.

After showering and sorting our shit out we drove north, back toward Raleigh. There was a constant flow of early morning commuter traffic. It was cloudy, but no need for wipers yet. First light had passed us by as we headed out of the city, stopping only to buy some coffee and a plain blue baseball cap for Sarah from a gas station. I had one hand on the wheel and was sipping coffee through the gap in the top of the container when Sarah, who'd been keeping one eye on her wing mirror, turned off the radio.

"Nick, we have a problem."

Behind us, and to our right, was a Fayetteville blue and white. I stopped at the lights as Sarah started to draw her pistol, placing it under her right thigh. On the basis of her performance so far, the mere sight of it got me flapping.

"Sarah, let me do this."

She didn't reply. The cruiser came up level. My heart started to pound big time. Both of the patrolmen, one black, the other Hispanic, were wearing black, short-sleeved shirts and sunglasses, even at this time of the morning. Their chests looked bigger than they actually were, due to the protection they wore under their shirts. The driver was staring at us both, the Hispanic was facedown, looking at a screen attached to the dash, probably carrying out a plate check on our car. I smiled like an idiot at the driver. What was I supposed to do? He wasn't giving me any instructions.

It was Sarah who switched on. She opened her window, and at the same time I could see the black trooper doing the same. His mustache met his glasses, with acne-scarred cheeks each side. I couldn't see his eyes, only what he was looking at in his mirrored lenses, but his demeanor told me that I wasn't on his Christmas card list.

Sarah came to the rescue.

"Hello, Officer, can I help you? Is there something wrong?" Her voice was outrageous; it was the fluffiest damselin-distress impression I'd ever heard.

The policeman would have heard it many times before, only not in Cambridge English. He drawled, "Yes, ma'am. The driver of this vehicle is violating the Federal Highway Code by consuming a beverage while at the controls of a moving vehicle."

She said breathily, "I'm so sorry, Officer, we didn't realize. We're just on vacation from England and ..."

The black policeman got the OK from his mate. The check had come through. He nodded back at him, then turned toward us. He looked at me and jutted his jaw.

"Sir?"

The lights had changed to green, but no one was going to hit their horn.

I smiled like the dickhead tourist I was determined to be.

"Yes?"

"Sir, please don't consume beverages on the highway. It's an offense."

"I'm sorry, Officer, it won't happen again."

Trying hard not to let a smile reach his face he drawled, "Y'all have a nice day," and they drove off.

At the airport I abandoned the car in the long-term car park. Formalities such as handing it back to the rental company didn't figure on my list of things to do today.

I waited outside the terminal while Sarah went in and got the tickets. I needed to call Josh's number, hoping to leave a message. Getting it clear in my head what I wanted to say, I hit the keypad.

A heavily Hispanic female voice answered, "Heelo? Heelo?"

"Oh hi, is this Josh's number?"

"Jish?"

"Yes. Can I leave a message for him?"

"No Jish."

"Can I leave a message?"

"Jish no here."

"I know that. I want to leave a message."

"I say to Jish. Goodbye."

The phone went dead. I felt as if I'd wandered into Fawlty Towers. I redialed as Sarah came out of the terminal. She saw me and headed over.

She passed, handed me my ticket and carried on walking. We were going to travel as two separate individuals.

"Heelo? Heelo?"

I could hear a vacuum cleaner in the background. I said, "Please say to Jish, Nick is flying to Washington today."

"OK. Ees Nick."

We were getting warmer.

"What... time ... is ... he ... home?"

"He no home." Maybe not so warm.

"Muy bien, much as gracias, senorita," I said, using rusty stuff I'd learned while garrisoned on Gibraltar as a young squaddie. Then I added the only other Spanish phrase I knew: "Hasta la vista, baby."

I checked in and made my way to the gate area. The front pages of the state newspapers glared at me as I passed the newsstand. The main picture seemed to be a fuzzy black-and-white still from a CCTV video of Sarah and me lifting the van. She was still looking like a sperm, T-shirt over her head; I was side-on with my head uncovered. It must have been taken at the point when the dog and I were about to have a major disagreement.

I decided not to buy the paper or hang around. The newsstand was part of the shop where I'd bought the maps of the lakes; maybe it would be the same woman behind the counter, and she could put two and two together.

I walked to the gate area and waited.

The hour-long flight was late landing. The Ronald Reagan National Airport, Washington's main domestic terminal, is a stone's throw from the capital, on the west bank of the Potomac River and southwest of D.C." near the Pentagon. You can see the traffic jams around Capitol Hill as you land.

I disembarked behind Sarah, who was following the rest of the herd toward the baggage area. We'd both packed our weapons in our bags; being a domestic flight, there wasn't much of a risk. I collected my holdall from the carousel and walked off to the phones. It was 10:27 a.m.

My Mexican friend was quick to answer.

"No Jish," she said.

"Mas tarde. He home two o'clock." Then she put the phone down.

Getting anywhere in D.C. by taxi at this time of day is a wish. If you're in a hurry, the best bet is the Metro. As I headed toward the airport station, Sarah linked up with me with her head down, baseball cap on. At the machines I checked the map and put in two one-dollar bills for my ticket.

"RV back here, by the machines, at two o'clock?"

She shook her head.

"No, not here. I'll meet you somewhere in town.

There's more chance of me being seen here." It was clear by the way she studied the instruction panel that, in all the time she'd lived in this city, she'd never used the Metro. I took the change out of the cup with my ticket and put in some more money for her as she looked at the map.

"I

need to keep out of town for now," she said.

"No need to expose myself too much. I'll go south and hold off for a while."

"Do you know the Barnes and Noble on M, in Georgetown?"

Still studying the map, she nodded.

"Two o'clock."