Blood Hunt

ELEVEN

GORDON REEVE HAD BECOME INTERESTED in anarchism because he needed to understand the minds of terrorists. He had worked in the Counter-Revolutionary Warfare Unit of the SAS. They were happy to have him-he wasn’t the only one among them who’d specialized in languages during his early training, but he was the only one with so many.

“Including Scots,” one wag said. “Could come in handy if the Tartan Army flares up again.”

“I’ve got Gaelic, too,” Reeve had countered with a smile.

After he left the SAS, he retained his interest in anarchism because of its truths and its paradoxes. The word anarchy had Greek roots and meant “without a ruler.” The Paris students in ‘68 had sprayed “It is forbidden to forbid” on the street walls. Anarchists, true anarchists, wanted society without government and promoted voluntary organization over rule by an elected body. The real anarchist joke was: “It doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.”

Reeve liked to play the anarchist thinkers off against Nietz-sche. Kropotkin, for example, with his theory of “mutual aid,” was advocating the opposite of Nietzsche’s “will to power.” Evolution, in Kropotkin’s view, was not about competitiveness, about survival of the strongest individual, but about cooperation. A species which cooperated would thrive, and grow stronger collectively. Nietzsche on the other hand saw competitiveness everywhere, and advocated self-reliance and self-absorption. Reeve saw merit to both assertions. In fact, they were not separate, distinct arguments but parts of the same equation. Reeve had little time for government, for bureaucracy, but he knew the individual could go only so far, could endure only so much. Isolation was fine sometimes, but if you had a problem it was wise to form bonds. War created bizarre allies, while peace itself could be divisive.

Nietzsche, of course, could convince almost no one of his philosophy-give or take a tyrant or two who chose to misunderstand the whole. And the anarchists… well, one of the things Reeve found so interesting about the anarchists was that their cause was doomed from its philosophical outset. To grow, to influence opinion, the anarchist movement had to organize, had to take on a strong political structure-which meant taking on a hierarchy, making decisions. Everyone, from players of children’s games to the company boardroom, knew that if you took decisions by committee you came up with compromise. Anarchism was not about compromising. The anarchists’ mistrust of rigid organizations caused their groupings to splinter and splinter again, until only the individual was left, and some of those individuals felt that the only possible road to power left to them was the bullet and the bomb. Joseph Conrad’s image of the anarchist with the bomb in his pocket was not so wide of the mark.

And what of Nietzsche? Reeve had been one of “Nietzsche’s gentlemen.” Nietzsche had carried on the work of Descartes and others-men who needed to dominate, to control, to eliminate chance. But while Nietzsche wanted supermen, controllers, he also wanted people to live dangerously. Reeve felt he was fulfilling this criterion if no other. He was living dangerously. He just wondered if he needed some mutual aid along the way…

He was on a hillside, no noise except the wind, the distant bleating of sheep, and his own breathing. He was sitting, resting, after the long walk from his home. He’d told Joan he needed to clear his head. Allan was at a friend’s house, but would be back in time for supper. Reeve would be back by then, too. All he needed was a walk. Joan had offered to keep him company, an offer he’d refused with a shake of his head. He’d touched her cheek, but she’d slapped his hand away.

“I’ll only be a couple of hours.”

“You’re never here,” she complained. “And even when you’re here, you’re not really here.”

It was a valid complaint, and he hadn’t argued. He’d just tied his boots and set out for the hills.

It was Sunday, a full week since he’d had the telephone call telling him Jim had killed himself. Joan knew there was something he wasn’t telling her, something he was bottling up. She knew it wasn’t just grief.

Reeve got to his feet. Looking down the steep hillside, he was momentarily afraid. Nothing to do with the “abyss” this time; it was just that he had no real plan, and without a plan there would be a temptation to rashness, there would be miscalculation. He needed proper planning and preparation. He’d been in the dark for a while, feeling his way. Now he thought he knew most of what Jim had known, but he was still stuck. He felt like a spider who has crawled its way along the pipes and into the bath, only to find it can’t scale the smooth, sheer sides. There was a bird of prey overhead, a kestrel probably. It glided on the air currents, its line straight, dipping its wings to maintain stability. From that height, it could probably still pick out the movements of a mouse in the tangle of grass and gorse. Reeve thought of the wings on the SAS cap badge. Wings and a dagger. The wings told you that Special Forces would travel anywhere at any notice. And the dagger… the dagger told an essential truth about the regiment: they were trained in close-combat situations. They favored stealth and the knife over distance and a sniper’s accuracy. Hand-to-hand fighting, that was their strength. Get close to your prey, close enough to slide a hand over its mouth and stab the dagger into its throat, and twist and twist, ripping the voice box. Maximum damage, minimum dying time.

Reeve felt the blood rush to his head and closed his eyes for a moment, clearing them of the fog. He checked his watch and found he’d been resting longer than he’d meant to. His legs had stiffened. It was time to start back down the hill and across the wide gully. It was time to go home.

“Jackie’s got this really good new game,” Allan said.

Reeve looked to Joan. “Jackie?”

“A girl in his class.”

He turned to his son. “Playing with the girls, eh? Not in her bedroom, I hope.”

Allan screwed up his face. “She’s not like a girl, Dad. She has all these games…”

“On her computer.”

“Yes.”

“And her computer is where in the house?”

“In her room.”

“Her bedroom?”

Allan’s ears had reddened. Reeve tried winking at Joan, but she wasn’t watching.

“It’s like Doom,” Allan said, ignoring his father, “but with more secret passages, and you don’t just pick up ammo and stuff, you can warp yourself into these amazing creatures with loads of new weapons and stuff. You can fry the bad guys’ eyeballs so they’re blind and then you-”

“Allan, enough,” his mother said.

“But I’m just telling Dad-”

“Enough.”

“But, Dad-”

“Enough!”

Allan looked down at his plate. He’d eaten all the fries and only had the cold ham and baked beans left. “But Dad wanted to know,” he said under his breath. Joan looked at her husband.

“Tell me later, pal, okay? Some things aren’t for the dinner table.” He watched Joan lift a sliver of ham to her mouth. “Especially fried alien eyeballs.”

Joan glared at him, but Allan and Gordon were laughing. The rest of the meal was carried off in peace.

Afterwards, Allan made instant coffee for his parents-one of his latest jobs around the house. Reeve wasn’t so sure of letting an eleven-year-old near a boiling kettle.

“But you don’t mind fried aliens, right?” Joan said.

“Aliens never hurt anyone,” Reeve said. “I’ve seen what scalding can do.”

“He’s got to learn.”

“Okay, okay.” They were in the living room. Reeve kept an ear attuned to sounds from the kitchen. The first clatter or shriek and he’d be in there. But Allan appeared with the two mugs. The coffee was strong.

“Is milk back on the ration books?” Reeve queried.

“What’s ration books?” Allan asked.

“Pray you never have to know.”

Allan wanted to watch TV, so the three of them sat on the long sofa, Reeve with his arm along the back, behind his wife’s neck but not touching her. She’d taken off her slippers and had tucked her feet up. Allan sat on the floor in front of her. Bakunin the cat was on Joan’s lap, glaring at Reeve like he was a complete stranger, which, considering he hadn’t fed her this past week, he was. Reeve thought of the real Bakunin, fighting on the Dresden barricades shoulder to shoulder with Nietzsche’s friend Wagner…

“A penny for them,” Joan asked.

“I was just thinking how nice it was to be back.”

Joan smiled thinly at the lie. She hadn’t asked much about the cremation, but she’d been interested to hear about the flat in London and the woman living there. Allan turned from the sitcom.

“So what’s it like in the USA, Dad?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” Reeve had spent some time deciding on the story he’d tell Allan. He painted a picture of San Diego as a frontier town, exciting enough and strange enough to keep Allan listening.

“Did you see any shootings?” Allan asked.

“No, but I heard some police sirens.”

“Did you see a policeman?”

Reeve nodded.

“With a gun?”

Reeve nodded again.

Joan rubbed at her son’s hair, though she knew he hated it when she did that. “He’s growing up gun-crazy.”

“No, I’m not,” Allan stated.

“It’s all those computer games.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“What are you playing just now?”

“That game I told you about. Jackie copied it for me.”

“I hope it hasn’t got a virus.”

“I’ve got a new virus checker.”

“Good.” At that time, Allan knew only a little more about computing than Reeve and Joan put together, but he was steadily pulling away from them.

“The game’s called Militia, and what you do is-”

“No fried eyeballs,” Joan demanded.

“What happened to the game Uncle Jim sent you?” Reeve asked.

Allan looked embarrassed. “I was stuck on screen five…”

“You’ve given it away?”

Allan shook his head vigorously. “No, it’s upstairs.”

“But you don’t play it anymore?”

“No,” he said quietly. Then: “Mum said Uncle Jim died.”

Reeve nodded. Joan said she’d had a couple of talks with Allan already. “People grow old and tired, Allan, and then they die. They make room for other younger people to come along…” Reeve felt awkward as he spoke.

“But Uncle Jim wasn’t old.”

“No, well some people just-”

“He wasn’t much older than you.”

“I’m not going to die,” Reeve told his son.

“How do you know?”

“Sometimes people get feelings. I’ve got the feeling I’m going to live to be a hundred.”

“And Mum?” Allan asked.

Reeve looked at her. She was staring at him, interested in the answer. “Same feeling,” he said.

Allan went back to watching television. A little later, Joan murmured, “Thanks,” put her slippers back on, and went through to the kitchen, followed closely by Bakunin, scouting for pro-visions. Reeve wasn’t sure what to read into her final utterance.

The telephone rang while he was watching the news. Allan had retreated to his room, having given his parents over an hour and a half of his precious time. Reeve let Joan get the phone. She was still in the kitchen, making a batch of bread. Later, when he went through to make the last cup of coffee of the night, he asked who had called.

“They didn’t say,” she offered, too nonchalantly.

Reeve looked at her. “You’ve had more than one?”

She shrugged. “A couple.”

“How many?”

“I think this was the third.”

“In how long?”

She shrugged again. There was a smudge of flour on her nose, and some wisps in her hair, making her look older. “Five or six days. There’s no one on the other end, no noise at all. Maybe it’s British Telecom testing the line or something. That happens sometimes.”

“Yes, it does.”

But not more than once in a very blue moon, he thought.

They’d been in bed for a silent hour and were lying side by side staring at the ceiling when he asked, “What about those callers?”

“The phone calls?” She turned her head towards him.

“No, you said some customers had turned up.”

“Oh, yes, just asking about courses.”

“Two of them?”

“Yes, one one day, one the next. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. It’s just we don’t often get people turning up like that.”

“Well, I gave them the brochure and they went away quite happy.”

“Did they come in the house?”

She sat up. “Only as far as the hall. It’s all right, Gordon, I can look after myself.”

“What were they like? Describe them.”

“I’m not sure I can. I hardly paid them any attention.” She leaned over him, her hand on his chest. She was feeling his heart rate. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said. But he swung his legs out of bed and started to get dressed. “I don’t feel tired; I’ll go down to the kitchen.” He stopped at the door. “Anybody else come while I was away?”

“No.”

“Think about it.”

She thought about it. “A man came to read the meter. And the freezer lorry turned up.”

“What freezer lorry?”

“Frozen foods.” She sounded irritated. If he kept pushing, the end result would be an argument. “I usually buy chips and ice cream from him.”

“Was it the regular driver?”

She slumped back on the bed. “No, he was new. Gordon, what the hell is this about?”

“Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

“What happened in the States?”

He came back and sat on the edge of the bed. “I think Jim was murdered.”

She sat up again. “What?”

“I think he was getting too deep into something, some story he was working on. Maybe they’d tried scaring him off and it hadn’t worked. I know Jim, he’s like me-try that tactic and he’d just be more curious than ever, and more stubborn. So then they had to kill him.”

“Who?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to find out.”

“And?”

“And, because I’ve been doing just what Jim was doing, maybe they’re targeting me. The thing is, I didn’t think they’d come here. Not so soon.”

“Two potential clients, a meter-reader, and a man with a van full of spuds and sprouts.”

“That’s four callers more than we usually get. Four callers while I was out of the country.” He got to his feet again.

“Is that it?” Joan asked. “Aren’t you going to tell me the rest?”

He started towards her, just able to make out her shape in the shadows of the curtained room-curtained despite the blackness outside and the isolation of the house. “I don’t want to make you a target.”

Then he padded downstairs as quietly as he could. He looked around, turning on lights, not touching anything, then stood in the living room thinking things over. He walked over to the TV and switched it on, using the remote to flick channels.

“Usual rubbish,” he said, yawning noisily for the benefit of anyone listening. He knew how sophisticated surveillance equipment had become. He’d heard of devices that could read computer screens from a distance of yards, without there being any physical connector linking them to the computer. He probably hadn’t heard half of it. The technology changed so quickly it was damn near impossible to keep up. He did his best, so he could pass what he knew on to his weekend soldiers. The trainee bodyguards in particular liked to know about that stuff.

He first checked that there were no watcher devices in the house. These were not so easy to hide: after all, if they were going to view a subject, they couldn’t be tucked away under a chair or a sofa. They also took a lot longer to fit. Someone would have had to access the house while Joan was out or asleep. He didn’t find anything. Next he put his jacket on and went outside, circling the house at a good radius. He spotted no one, certainly no vehicles. In the garage, he slid beneath both Land Rovers and found them clean-well, not clean, but lacking bugs. Before going back indoors he unscrewed the front panel from the burglar alarm. The screws were hard to shift, and showed no signs of recent tampering-no missing paint or fresh-looking scratches. The alarm itself was functioning.

Joan had said she’d let the new clients in as far as the hall. And he would guess she’d probably let the van driver in as far as the kitchen. He took a lot of time over both areas, feeling beneath carpets and behind curtains, taking the cookbooks off the bookshelf in the kitchen.

He found the first bug in the hall.

It was attached to the inside of the telephone.

He went into the kitchen and switched on the radio, placing it close to the phone extension. Then he unscrewed the apparatus and found another bug identical to the first one. Both had the letters USA stamped into their thin metal casing. He wiped sweat from his face, and went through to the living room. Despite an hour-long search, he found nothing, which didn’t mean the room was clean. He knew he could save a lot of effort by getting hold of a locating device, but he didn’t have the time. And at least now he knew-knew his family wasn’t safe, knew his home wasn’t secure.

Knew they had to get out.

He sat on the chair beside the dressing table in their bedroom. A morning ray of sun had found a chink in the curtains and was hitting Joan’s face, moving from her eyes to her forehead as she twisted in her sleep. Like a laser sight, Reeve thought, like an assassin taking aim. He felt tired but electric; he’d spent half the night writing. He had the sheets of printer paper with him on the chair. Joan rolled over, her arm flopping down on the space where he should have been. She used the arm to push herself up, blinking a few times. Then she rolled onto her back and craned her neck.

“Morning,” she said.

“Morning,” he answered, coming towards her.

“How long have you been up?” She was blinking her eyes again in an attempt to read the sheet of paper Reeve was holding in front of her.

“Hours,” he said with a lightness he did not feel.

DON’T SAY A WORD. JUST READ. NOD WHEN YOU’RE READY. REMEMBER: SAY NOTHING.

His look told her he was serious. She nodded, sitting up farther in bed, pushing the hair out of her eyes. He turned to the next sheet.

THE HOUSE IS BUGGED: WE CAN’T SAY ANYTHING IN SAFETY. WE’VE GOT TO PRETEND THIS IS JUST ANOTHER DAY. NOD WHEN YOU’RE READY.

She took a moment to nod. When she did so, she was staring into his eyes.

“So are you going to lie there all day?” he chided, turning the page.

“Why not?” she said. She looked frightened.

YOU’VE GOT TO GO STAY WITH YOUR SISTER. TAKE ALLAN. BUT DON’T TELL HIM. JUST PACK SOME THINGS INTO THE CAR AND GO. PRETEND YOU’RE TAKING HIM TO SCHOOL AS USUAL.

“Come on, get up and I’ll make the breakfast.”

“I’ll take a shower.”

“Okay.”

WE CAN’T SAY WHERE YOU’RE GOING. WE CAN’T LET ANYONE KNOW. THIS IS JUST AN ORDINARY MORNING.

Joan nodded her head.

“Will toast do you?” he asked.

I DON’T THINK WE’RE BEING WATCHED, JUST LISTENED TO.

He smiled to reassure her.

“Toast’s fine,” she said, only the slightest tremble evident in her voice. She cleared her throat and pointed at him. He had foreseen this, and found the sheet.

I’LL BE FINE. I JUST NEED TO TALK TO A FEW PEOPLE.

She looked doubtful, so he smiled again and bent forward to kiss her.

“That better?” he asked.

“Better,” she said.

I’LL PHONE YOU AT YOUR SISTER’S. YOU CAN CALL HER ON YOUR WAY THERE, LET HER KNOW YOU’RE COMING. DON’T COME BACK HERE UNTIL I TELL YOU IT’S ALL RIGHT. I LOVE YOU.

She jumped to her feet and hugged him. They stayed that way for a full minute. Her eyes were wet when he broke away.

“Toast and tea it is,” Reeve said.

He was in the kitchen, trying to hum a tune while he made breakfast, when she walked in. She was carrying a notepad and pen. She looked more together now that she was dressed, now that she’d had time to think. She thrust the notepad into his face.

WHAT THE FUCK’S THIS ALL ABOUT?

He took the pad from her and rested it on the counter.

IT’D TAKE TOO LONG. I’LL EXPLAIN WHEN I PHONE.

He looked up at her, then added a last word.

PLEASE.

THIS IS UNFAIR, she wrote, anger reddening her face.

He mouthed the words I know and followed them with sorry.

“Had your shower already?” he asked.

“Water wasn’t hot enough.” She looked for a second like she might laugh at the absurdity of it all. But she was too angry to laugh.

“Want me to cut some bread?” she asked.

“Sure, thanks. How’s Allan?”

“Not keen on getting up.”

“He doesn’t know how lucky he is,” Reeve said. He watched Joan attack the loaf with the bread knife like it was the enemy.

Things were easier when Allan came down. Both parents talked to him more than usual, asking questions, eliciting responses. This was safe ground; they could be less guarded. When Joan said maybe she’d have that shower after all, Reeve knew she was going to pack. He told Allan he was going to get the car out, and walked into the courtyard, breathing deeply and exhaling noisily.

“Jesus,” he said. He circled the property again. He could hear a tractor somewhere over near Buchanan’s croft, and the drone of a light airplane overhead, though the morning was too overcast to see it. He didn’t think anyone was watching the house. He wondered how far the transmitters carried. Not very far by the look of them. There’d be a recorder somewhere, buried in the earth or hidden under rocks. He wondered how often they changed tapes, how often they listened. The recorder was probably voice-activated, and whoever was listening was only interested in telephone calls.

Or maybe they just hadn’t had time to bug the house properly.

“Bastards,” he said out loud. Then he went back into the house. Joan was coming downstairs with a couple of traveling bags. She took them straight out to her car and put them in the trunk. She motioned for him to join her. When he did, she just stared at him like she wanted to say something.

“I think it’s okay outside,” he said.

“Good. What are you going to do, Gordon?”

“Talk to a few people.”

“What people? What are you going to talk to them about?”

He looked around the courtyard, his eyes alighting on the door to the killing room. “I’m not sure. I just want to know why someone has bugged our telephones. I need to get hold of some equipment, sweep the place to make sure it’s clean apart from the two I found.”

“How long will we have to stay away?”

“Maybe just a couple of days. I don’t know yet. I’ll phone as soon as I can.”

“Don’t do anything…” She didn’t complete the sentence.

“I won’t,” he said, stroking her hair.

She brought something out of her pocket. “Here, take these.” She handed him a vial of small blue pills-the pills he was supposed to take when the pink mist descended.

The psychiatrist had wondered at pink. “Not red?” he’d asked.

“No, pink.”

“Mmm. What do you associate with the color pink, Mr. Reeve?”

“Pink?”

“Yes.”

“Gays, cocks, tongues, vaginal lips, little girls’ lipstick… Will those do for a start, Doctor?”

“I get the feeling you’re playing with me, Mr. Reeve.”

“If I were playing with you, I’d‘ve said red mist and you’d’ve been happy. But I said pink because it’s pink. My vision goes pink, not red.”

“And then you react?”

Oh, yes, then he reacted…

He looked at his wife now. “I won’t need these.”

“Want to make a bet?”

Reeve took the pills instead.

Joan had told Allan they were taking Bakunin to the vet. The cat had resisted being put in its carrier, and Allan had asked what was wrong with it.

“Nothing to worry about.” She’d been looking at her husband as she’d said it.

Reeve stood at the door and waved them off, then ran to the roadside to watch them leave. He didn’t think they’d be followed. Joan drove Allan to school every morning, and this was just another morning. He went back inside and stood in the hallway.

“All alone,” he said loudly.

He was wondering if they would come, now that he was alone. He was hoping they would. He had plans for them if they did. He spent the day waiting them out, and talking to them.

“She’s not coming back,” he said into the telephone receiver at one point. “Neither of them is. I’m on my own.” Still they didn’t come. He went through the house, organizing an overnight bag, making sure he had the list of emergency telephone numbers. He ate a slice of bread and butter for lunch, and dozed at the kitchen table for an hour (having made sure all the doors and windows were locked first). He felt better afterwards. He needed a shower or bath, but didn’t like the idea of them coming in on him when he was in the middle of lathering his back. So he just had a quick wash instead, a lick and a spit.

By late afternoon, he was going stir crazy. He checked the windows again, set the alarm, and locked the house. He had his overnight bag with him. He went to the killing room and unpadlocked and unbolted both sets of doors. Those doors looked ordinary enough from the outside, but were paneled inside with beaten metal, an extra deterrent to intruders. In the small hallway outside the room proper, he knelt down and pulled at a long section of baseboard. It came away cleanly. Inside, set into the wall, was a long narrow metal box. Reeve unlocked it and pulled the flap down. Inside was an assortment of small arms. He had large-bore weapons, too, but kept those in a locked cabinet in what had been the farmhouse’s original pantry. He picked up one of the guns. It was wrapped in oiled cloth. What use was a killing room without weapons? In his Special Forces days, they’d almost always trained with live ammo. It was the only way you came to respect the stuff.

Reeve had live ammo for the handguns. He was holding a 9mm Beretta. Guns were always heavier than people expected. He didn’t know whether that was because most people equated guns with childhood, and childhood meant plastic replicas, or because TV and cinema were to blame, with their blithe gun-toting goodies and baddies, guys who could fire a bazooka and still go ten rounds with the world-champion warlord-whereas in real life they’d be checking into the emergency room with a dislocated shoulder.

The Beretta was just heavy enough to warn you it was lethal. In the killing room they used blank ammunition. Even blanks could give you powder burns. He’d seen weekend soldiers scared shitless, frozen with the gun in their hand like someone else’s turd, the explosion echoing in the chambers of their heart.

Maybe he needed a gun. Just to scare these people. But you could only scare someone if you were serious and if they could see exactly how serious you were by the look in your eyes. And he wouldn’t be serious if the gun wasn’t loaded…

And what use was a loaded gun if you didn’t intend to use it?

“Fuck it,” he said, putting the Beretta back in its cloth. He rummaged around behind the other packages-he had explosives in there, too; almost every other soldier brought something with them back into civvy life-until he found another length of oiled rag. Inside was a black gleaming dagger, his Lucky 13: five inches of rubberized handgrip and eight inches of polished steel, a blade so sharp you could perform surgery with it. He’d bought it in Germany one time when they’d been training there. Its weight and balance were perfect for him. It had felt almost supernatural, the way the thing molded to his hand. He’d been persuaded to buy it by the two men on weekend leave with him. The knife cost just under a week’s wages.

“For old times’ sake,” he said, slipping it into his overnight bag.

He crossed by ferry to Oban, which was where the tail started.

Just the one car, he reckoned. To be sure, he led it a merry dance all the way to Inveraray. Just north of the town he pulled the Land Rover over suddenly, got out, and went to the back, looking in as though to check he hadn’t forgotten something. The car behind was too close to stop; it had to keep going right past him. He looked up as it drew level, and watched the impassive faces of the two men in front.

“Bye-bye,” he said, closing the back, watching the car go. Hard to tell from their faces who the men were or who they might work for, but he was damned sure they’d been following him since he’d hit the mainland: most cars would have stuck to the main road through Dalmally and south towards Glasgow, but when Reeve had headed on the much less popular route to Inveraray, this one had followed.

He started driving again. He didn’t know if they’d have organized a second car by now, of if they’d have to call someone to organize backup. He just knew he didn’t want to be driving anywhere much now that they were on to him. So he headed into the center of town. Close combat, he was thinking as he headed for his revised destination.

The Thirty Arms had a parking lot, but Reeve parked on the street outside. They didn’t hand out parking tickets after six o’clock. Locals called it the Thirsty Arms, but the pub’s true name was a reference to the fifteen men in a rugby side. It was the closest this quiet lochside town had to a “dive,” which was to say that it was a rough-and-ready place which didn’t see many female clients. Reeve knew this because he dropped in sometimes, preferring the drive via Inveraray to the busier route. The owner had a tongue you could strike matches on.

“Go get that red fuckin‘ carpet, will you?” he said to someone as Reeve entered the bar. “It’s been that long since this bastard bought a drink in here I was thinking of selling up.”

“Evening, Manny,” said Reeve. “Half of whatever’s darkest, please.”

“An ungrateful sod of a patron like you,” said Manny, “you’ll take what I give you.” He began pouring the drink. Reeve looked around at faces he knew. They weren’t smiling at him, and he didn’t smile back. Their collective stare was supposed to drive away strangers and outsiders, and Reeve was most definitely an outsider. The surliest of the local youths was playing pool. Reeve had noticed some of his mates outside. They weren’t yet old enough looking to fool Manny, so would wait at the door like pet dogs outside a butcher’s shop for their master to rejoin them. The smell of drink off him was their vicarious pleasure. In Inveraray, there wasn’t much else to kill the time.

Reeve walked over to the board and chalked his name up. The youth grinned at him unpleasantly, as if to say, “I’ll take anybody’s money.” Reeve walked back to the bar.

Two more drinkers pushed open the creaking door from the outside world. Their tourist smiles vanished when they saw the sort of place they’d entered. Other tourists had made their mistake before, but seldom stayed long enough to walk up to the bar. Maybe these ones were surprisingly stupid. Maybe they were blind.

Maybe, Reeve thought. He still had his back to them. He didn’t need to see them to know they were the two from the car. They stood next to him as they waited for Manny to finish telling a story to another customer. Manny was taking his time, just letting them know. He’d been known to refuse service to faces he didn’t like.

Reeve watched as much as he could from the corner of his eyes. From the distorted reflection in the beaten copper plate that ran the length of the bar behind the optics, he saw that the men were waiting impassively.

Manny at last gave up. “Yes, gents?” he said.

“We want a drink,” the one closest to Reeve said. The man was angry already, not used to being kept waiting. He sounded English; Reeve didn’t know which nationality he’d been expecting.

“This isn’t a chip shop,” said Manny, rising to the challenge. “Drink’s the only thing we serve.” He was smiling throughout, to let the two strangers know he wasn’t at all happy.

“I’ll have a double Scotch,” the second man said. He was also English. Reeve didn’t know whether it was done on purpose or not, but the way he spat out “Scotch” caused more than a few hackles in the bar to rise. The speaker purported not to notice, maybe he just didn’t care. He looked at the door, at the framed photos of Scottish internationals and the local rugby team-the latter signed-and the souvenir pennants and flags.

“Somebody likes rugby,” he said to no one in particular. No one in particular graced the remark with a reply.

The man closest to Reeve, the one who’d spoken first, ordered a lager and lime. There was a quiet wolf whistle from the pool table, just preceding the youth’s shot.

The man turned towards the source of the whistle. “You say something?”

The youth kept quiet and made his next shot, chalking up as he marched around the table. Reeve suddenly liked the lad.

“Leave it,” the stranger’s companion snapped. Then, as the drinks were set before them: “That a treble.” He meant the whiskey.

“A double,” Manny snapped. “You’re used to sixths; up here we have quarters.” He took the money and walked back to the register.

Reeve turned conversationally to the two men. “Cheers,” he said.

“Yeah, cheers.” They were both keen to get a good look at him close up, just as he was keen to get a look at them. The one closest to him was shorter but broader. He could’ve played a useful prop forward. He wore cheap clothes and had a cheap, greasy look to his face. If you looked like what you ate, this man was fries and lard. His companion had a dangerous face, the kind that’s been in so many scraps it simply doesn’t care anymore. He might’ve done time in the army-Reeve couldn’t see Lardface having ever been fit enough-but he’d gone to seed since. His hair stuck out over his ears and was thin above his forehead. It looked like he’d paid a lot of money for some trendy gel-spiked haircut his son might have, but then couldn’t be bothered keeping it styled. Reeve had seen coppers with haircuts like that, but not too many of them.

“So,” he said, “what brings you here, gents?”

The taller man, Spikehead, nodded, like he was thinking: Okay, we’re playing it like that. “Just passing through.”

“You must be lost.”

“How’s that?”

“To end up here. It’s not exactly on the main road.”

“Well, you know…” The man was running out of lies already, not very professional.

“We just felt like a drink, all right?” his partner snapped.

“Just making conversation,” Reeve said. The edge of his vision was growing hazy. He thought of the pills in his pocket but dismissed them instantly.

“You live locally?” Spikehead asked.

“You should know,” Reeve answered.

Spikehead tried a smile. “How’s that?”

“You’ve been following me since Oban.”

Lardface turned slowly towards him, fired up for confrontation or conflagration. A pool cue appeared between them.

“You’re up,” the youth said.

Reeve took the cue from him. “Mind my drink, will you?” he asked Lardface.

“Mind it yourself.”

“Friends of yours?” the youth asked, beer glass to his mouth as they walked to the pool table.

Reeve looked back at the two drinkers, who were watching him from behind their glasses the way men watched strippers-engrossed, but maybe a little wary. He shook his head, smiling pleasantly. “No,” he said, “just a couple of pricks. Me to break?”

“You to break,” the youth said, wiping snorted beer foam from his nose.

Reeve never really had a chance, but that wasn’t the point of the game. He stood resting his pool cue on the floor and watched a game of darts behind the pool table, while the youth sank two striped balls and left two other pockets covered.

“I hate the fuckin‘ English,” the youth said as Reeve lined up a shot. “I mean a lot of the time when you say something like that you’re having a joke, but I mean it: I really fuckin’ hate them.”

“Maybe they’re not too fond of you either, sunshine.”

The youth ignored the voice from the bar.

Reeve looked like he was still lining up his shot; but he wasn’t. He was sizing things up. This young lad was going to get into trouble. Reeve knew the way his mind was working: if they wanted to fight him, he’d tell them to meet him outside-outside where his pals were waiting. But the men at the bar wouldn’t be that thick. They’d take him in here, where the only backup worth talking about was Reeve himself. There were a couple of drunks playing darts atrociously, a few seated pensioners, Manny behind the bar, and the road sweeper with the bad leg on the other side of it. In here, the two Englishmen would surely fancy their chances.

“You see,” the youth was saying, “the way I see it the English are just keech…” He said some more, but Lardface must have understood “keech.” He slammed down his drink and came stomping towards the pool table like he was approaching a hurdle.

“Now,” Manny said loudly, “we don’t want any trouble.”

Spikehead was still at the bar, which suited Reeve fine. He spun from the table, swinging his cue, and caught Lardface across the bridge of his nose, stopping him dead. Spikehead started forward, but cautiously. Reeve’s free hand had taken a ball from the table. He threw it with all the force he had towards the bar. Spikehead ducked, and the ball smashed a whiskey bottle. Spikehead was straightening up again when Reeve snatched a dart out of one player’s frozen hand and hefted it at Spikehead’s thigh. The pink haze made it difficult to see, but the dart landed close enough. Spikehead gasped and dropped to one knee. Reeve found an empty pint glass and cracked it against a table leg, then held it on front of Lardface, who was sprawled on the floor, his smashed nose streaming blood and bubbles of mucus.

“Breathe through your mouth,” Reeve instructed. It barely registered that the rest of the bar had fallen into stunned silence. Even Manny was at a loss for words. Reeve walked over to Spikehead, who had pulled the dart from his upper thigh. He looked ready to stab it at Reeve, until Reeve swiped the glass across his face. Spikehead dropped the dart.

“Christ,” gasped Manny, “there was no need-”

But Reeve was concentrating on the man, rifling his pockets, seeking weapons and ID. “Who are you?” he shouted. “Who sent you?”

He glanced back towards Lardface, who was rising to his feet. Reeve took a couple of steps and roundhoused the man on the side of his face, maybe dislocating the jaw. He went back to Spikehead.

“I’m calling the polis,” Manny said.

Reeve pointed at him. “Don’t.”

Manny didn’t. Reeve continued his search of the moaning figure, and came up with something he had not been expecting: a card identifying the carrier as a private investigator for Charles & Charles Associates, with an address in London.

He shook the man’s lapels. “Who hired you?”

The man shook his head. Tears were coursing down his face.

“Look,” Reeve said calmly. “I didn’t do any lasting damage. The cut isn’t deep enough for stitching. It’s just a bleeder, that’s all.” He raised the glass. “Now the next slash will need stitches. It might even take out your eye. So tell me who sent you!”

“Don’t know the client,” the man blurted. Blood had dripped into his mouth. He spat it out with the words. “It’s subcontracting. We’re working on behalf of an American firm.”

“You mean a company?”

“Another lot of PIs. A big firm in Washington, DC.”

“Called?”

“Alliance Investigative.”

“Who’s your contact?”

“A guy called Dulwater. We phone him now and then.”

“You bugged my house?”

“What?”

“Did you bug my house?”

The man blinked at him and mouthed the word no. Reeve let him drop. Lardface was unconscious. Reeve regained his composure and took the scene in-the prone bodies, the silence, the horror on Manny’s face… and something like idolatry on the youth’s.

“I could’ve taken them,” the youth said. “But thanks anyway.”

“The police…” Manny said, but quietly, making it sound like a request.

Reeve turned to him. “I’ll see you all right about the breakages,” he said. He looked down at Spikehead. “I don’t think our friends here will be pressing charges. They were in a car smash, that’s all. You might direct them to the nearest doctor, but that’ll be the last you hear about this.” He smiled. “I promise.”

He drove south until he reached a pay phone, and called Joan to check she was all right. She had arrived safely at her sister’s, but still wanted to know what he was going to do. He remained vague, and she grew angry.

“This isn’t just about you, Gordon!” she yelled. “Not now. It’s about Allan and me, too. I deserve to know!”

“And I’m saying that the less you know the better. Trust me on this.” He was still trembling, his body pumping adrenaline. He didn’t want to think about how good he had felt laying into the two private eyes.

It had felt wonderful.

He argued a few more minutes with Joan, and was about to plead that he was running out of money when she remembered something.

“I called an hour or two ago,” she said. “I got the answering machine, so checked it for messages.”

“And?”

“There was one there from a woman. She sounded foreign.”

Marie Villambard! He’d forgotten all about her. He’d left his home telephone number on her machine.

“She left a number where you can reach her,” Joan said.

Reeve cursed silently. That meant whoever was bugging his phone would have her number, too. He took down the details Joan gave, told her he had to go, and dug in his pockets for more change.

“Allo?”

“It’s Gordon Reeve here, Madam Villambard. Thank you for getting back to me, but there’s a problem.”

“Yes?”

“The line was compromised.” Two cars went past at speed. Reeve watched them disappear.

“You mean people were listening?”

“Yes.” He looked back along the dark road. No lights. Nothing. The only light, he realized, was the bare bulb in the old-style phone booth. He pulled a handkerchief out of his jacket and used it to disconnect the bulb.

“It is a military term, compromised?”

“I suppose it is. I was in the army.” The darkness felt better. “Listen, can we meet?”

“In France?”

“I could drive overnight, catch a ferry at Dover.”

“I live near Limoges. Do you know it?”

“I’ll buy a map. Is your telephone-?”

“Compromised? I think not. We can make a rendezvous safely.”

“Let’s do it then.”

“Okay, drive into the center of Limoges and follow signs to the Gare SNCF, the station itself is called Bénédictins.”

“Got it. How long will the drive take from Calais?”

“That depends on how often you stop. If you hurry… six hours.”

Reeve did a quick calculation. If he didn’t encounter congestion or construction, he might make it to the south coast in eight or nine hours. He could sleep on the boat, then another six hours. Add a couple of hours for sailing, embarkation and disembarkation, plus an hour because France was one hour ahead… seventeen or eighteen hours. He’d flown to Los Angeles in about half that. The luminous hands of his watch told him it was a little after eight.

“Late afternoon,” he said, allowing himself a margin.

“I’ll be waiting in the station at four,” she said. “I’ll wait two hours, best look for me in the bar.”

“Listen, there’s one more thing. They recorded your call; they know your name now.”

“Yes?”

“I’m saying be careful.”

“Thank you, Mr. Reeve. See you tomorrow.”

His money was finished anyway. He put down the receiver, wondering how they would recognize each other. Then he laughed. He’d have driven a thousand miles straight; she’d recognize him by the bloodshot eyes and body tremors.

But he was worried that “they” would know she’d called. He should have destroyed the transmitters as soon as he located them. Instead, he’d tried playing games, playing for time. These were not people who appreciated games. He pushed the lightbulb home and opened the iron-framed door.

One more thing worried him. The private eyes. They were working for an outfit called Alliance, an American outfit, and he had no idea who’d hired Alliance in the first place.

Plus, if Lardface and Spikehead hadn’t planted those bugs… who had?

TWELVE

JEFFREY ALLERDYCE WAS LUNCHING WITH one of the few United States senators he regarded with anything other than utter loathing. That was because Senator Cal Waits was the only clean senator Allerdyce had ever had dealings with. Waits had never had to call on Alliance’s services, and had never found himself under investigation by them. He didn’t appear to be in any corporation’s pocket, and had little time-at least in public-for Washington’s veritable army of slick besuited lobbyists.

Maybe that was because Cal Waits didn’t need the money or the attention. He didn’t need the money because his grandfather had owned the largest banking group in the Southwest, and he didn’t need the attention because his style in the Senate got him plenty of that anyway. He was a large middle-aged man with a store of homespun stories that he was keen on recounting, most of them very funny, most of them making some telling point about the subject under discussion in the Senate. He was always being quoted, sound-bitten, edited into fifteen seconds of usable television for the midevening news. He was, as more than one newspaper had put it, “an institution.”

They ate at Allerdyce’s favorite restaurant, Ma Petite Maison. He liked the crab cakes there; he also had a 10 percent share in the place (though this was not widely known), and so liked to keep an eye on business. Business wasn’t bad, but at short notice Allerdyce had still been able to get a booth, one of the ones at the back usually reserved for parties of five or more. A journalist from the Wall Street Journal had been moved to one of the lesser tables, but would be kept sweet by seeing his eventual tab reduced by 10 percent.

Allerdyce couldn’t tell Cal Waits that he’d had someone moved. Some luncheon companions would have been impressed, honored-but not Waits. Waits would have protested, maybe even walked out. Allerdyce didn’t want him to walk, he wanted him to talk. But first there was the other crap to be got through, the so-called excuse for their lunch engagement: catching up on family, mutual acquaintances, old times. Allerdyce noticed how some of the other diners stared at them, seeing two scarred old warhorses with their noses in the feedbag.

And then the main courses arrived-cassoulet for Waits, magret d’oie for Allerdyce-and it was almost time.

Waits looked at his plate. “The hell with healthy eating.” He chortled. “This health kick we’ve been on for the past-what?-twenty years: it’s killing this country. I don’t mean with cholesterol or whatever new bodily disaster or poison the scientists are coming up with, I mean people aren’t eating for fun anymore. Dammit, Jeffrey, eating used to be a pastime for America. Steaks and burgers, pizzas and ribs… fun food. Surf ‘n’ turf, that sort of thing. And now everybody looks at you in horror if you so much as suck on a drumstick. Well hell, I told my doctors-you notice you don’t just need one doctor these days, you need a whole rank of them, same thing with lawyers-I told them I wouldn’t diet. I’d do anything else they told me to do, but I would not stop eating the food I’ve been eating my whole goddamned life.”

He chewed on a fatty piece of ham to prove his point.

“How much medication are you on, Cal?” Allerdyce asked.

Cal Waits nearly choked with laughter. “About a bottle of pills a day. I got little pink ones and big blue ones and some capsule things that’re white at one end and yellow at the other. I got red pills so small you practically need tweezers to pick them up, and I got this vast pastel tablet I take once a day that’s the size of a bath plug. Don’t ask me what they do, I just gobble them down.”

He poured himself another half-glass of ‘83 Montrose. Despite hailing from California, Waits preferred the wines of Bordeaux. He was rationed to half a bottle a day, and drank perhaps twice that. That was another reason Allerdyce liked him: he didn’t give a shit.

Allerdyce could see no subtle way into the subject he wanted to raise, and doubtless Cal would see through him anyway. “You were raised in Southern California?” he asked.

“Hell, you know I was.”

“Near San Diego, right?”

“Right. I went to school there.”

“Before Harvard.”

“Before Harvard,” Waits acknowledged. Then he chuckled again. “What is this, Jeffrey? You know I went to Harvard but pretend you don’t know where I was born and raised!”

Allerdyce bowed his head, admitting he’d been caught. “I just wanted to ask you something about San Diego.”

“I represent it in the Senate, I should know something about it.”

Allerdyce watched Waits shovel another lump of sausage into his mouth. Waits was wearing a dark-blue suit of real quality, a lemon shirt, and a blue silk tie. Above all this sat his round face, with the pendulous jowls cartoonists loved to exaggerate and the small eyes, inset like a pig’s, always sparkling with the humor of some situation or other. They were sparkling now.

“You ever have dealings with CWC?”

“Co-World Chemicals, sure.” Waits nodded. “I’ve attended a few functions there.”

“Do you know Kosigin?”

Waits looked more guarded. The twinkle was leaving his eyes. “We’ve met.” He reached for another roll and tore it in two.

“What do you think of him?”

Waits chewed this question over, then shook his head. “That’s not what you want to ask, is it?”

“No,” Allerdyce quietly confessed, “it isn’t.”

Waits’s voice dropped uncharacteristically low. His voice box was the reason Allerdyce had needed a table away from other diners. “I feel you’re getting around to something, Jeffrey. Will I like it when we arrive?”

“It’s nothing serious, Cal, I assure you.” Allerdyce’s magret was almost untouched. “It’s just that Kosigin has hired Alliance’s services, and I like to know about my clients.”

“Sure, without asking them to their face.”

“I like to know what people think of them, not what they would like me to think of them.”

“Point taken. Eat the goose, Jeffrey, it’s getting cold.”

Allerdyce obeyed the instruction, and sat there chewing. Waits swallowed more wine and dabbed his chin with the napkin.

“I know a bit about Kosigin,” Waits said, his voice a quiet rumble seeming to emanate from his chest. “There’s been an investigation, not a big one, but all the same…”

Allerdyce didn’t ask what kind of investigation. “And?” he said instead.

“And nothing much, just a bad feeling about the whole operation. Or rather, about the way Kosigin’s headed. It’s like he’s building autonomy within the corporation. The only person he seems to answer to is himself. And the people he hires… well, let’s just say they’re not always as reputable as you, Jeffrey. This Kosigin seems to like to hang around with minor hoods and shady nobodies.”

“You think CWC is in trouble?”

“What?”

“You think something’s going to blow up.” It was a statement, not a question.

Waits smiled. “Jeffrey, CWC is one of the largest chemical companies in the world. And it’s American. Believe me, nothing‘s going to blow up.”

Allerdyce nodded his understanding. “Then the investiga-tion…?”

Waits leaned across the table. “How can the authorities protect American interests unless they know what problems might arise?” He sat back again.

Allerdyce was still nodding. Cal was telling him that the powers-the FBI, maybe the CIA-were keeping tabs on CWC in general and Kosigin in particular; not to root out illegalities, but to ensure those illegalities-whatever shortcuts Kosigin was taking, whatever black economy he was running-never, ever came to light. It was like having the whole system as your bodyguard! Jeffrey Allerdyce, normally so cool, so detached, so unflappable, so hard to impress… Jeffrey Allerdyce sat in Ma Petite Maison and actually whistled, something no diner there-not even his old friend Cal Waits-had ever seen him do. Something they might never see him do again.

He gathered his thoughts only slowly, picking at the goose. “But,” he said at last, “they wouldn’t protect him from every contingency, surely? I mean, if he became a threat to the standing of CWC in the world, then he wouldn’t-?”

“He’d probably lose their protection,” Waits conceded. “But how far would he have to go? That’s a question I can’t answer. I just know that I keep out of the guy’s way and let him get on with getting on.” Waits wiped his mouth again. “I did hear one rumor…”

“What?”

“That Kosigin has agency privileges.”

“You mean he’s special to them?” Allerdyce knew who Waits meant by “agency”: the CIA.

Cal Waits just shrugged. “What was he asking you to do anyway?”

“You know I can’t answer that, Cal. I wish I could tell you, but I’m bound by a vow of client confidentiality.”

Waits nodded. “Well, whatever it is, just do a good job, Jeffrey. That’s my advice.”

A waiter appeared at that moment. “Mr. Allerdyce? I’m sorry, sir, there’s a telephone call. A gentleman called Dulwater-he said you’d want to speak to him.”

Allerdyce excused himself.

The telephone was on the reception desk. A flunky held it out towards him, but Allerdyce just pointed to the receiver.

“Can you have that call transferred to the manager’s office?”

The flunky looked startled. He didn’t want to say no, but didn’t want to say yes either.

“Never mind,” Allerdyce snarled, snatching the telephone from a palm that was starting to sweat. “Dulwater?”

“Some bad news, sir.”

“Better not be.” Allerdyce looked around. “I’m in a public place; I’m sure cursing is frowned upon.”

“The UK operatives proved to be disadvantaged.”

“In plain English?”

“They weren’t up to it.”

“You assured me they were.”

“I was assured they were.”

Allerdyce sighed. “Should’ve sent our own men.”

“Yes, sir.”

Both of them were well aware that the decision had been Allerdyce’s; he’d wanted to save money on flights. So they’d used some firm in London instead.

“So what’s the damage?”

“They were confronted by the subject. They sustained a few injuries.”

“And the subject?”

“Apparently uninjured.”

Allerdyce raised one eyebrow at that. He wondered what sort of man this Reeve was. A grade-A tough bastard by the sound of it. “I take it they lost him?”

“Yes, sir. I doubt he’ll return home. Looks like he’s packed his wife and son off.”

“Well, it’s snafued, isn’t it, Dulwater?”

“We can try to pick up his trail.” Dulwater sounded unconvinced. He wasn’t sure why Allerdyce was so interested anyway. To his mind it was a wild goose chase.

“Let me think about it. Anything else?”

“Yes, sir. One of the men said Reeve asked him about his house being bugged, asked if our operative was responsible.”

“What?”

“Somebody bugged Reeve’s domicile.”

“I heard you the first time. Who?”

“Do you want an educated guess?”

“Let’s see if we agree.”

“Kosigin.”

“We agree,” said Allerdyce. He thought for a moment. “Makes sense. He’s a clever man, doesn’t like loose ends, we already know that. Now he’s got one, and it’s unraveling fast.”

Allerdyce was intrigued. If he kept close to Kosigin’s operation, he could well end up with information, with the very power he wanted over Kosigin. Then again, it might mean mixing it with some powerful agencies. Allerdyce didn’t know everybody’s secrets; there were some agencies he probably couldn’t fix… Stay close, or take Cal Waits’s advice and back off? Allerdyce had always been a careful man-cautious in his business, prudent in his personal life. He could see Cal sitting at the distant table pouring yet more wine. A warhorse, unafraid.

“Keep close to this, Dulwater.”

“Sir, with respect, I advise we-”

“Son, don’t presume to advise Jeffrey Allerdyce. You’re not far enough advanced on the board.”

“Board, sir?”

“Chessboard. You’re still one of my pawns, Dulwater. Moving forward, but still a pawn.”

“Yes, sir.” A hurt pause. “Pawns aren’t very flexible, are they, sir?”

“They just inch their way forward.”

“But if they inch far enough, sir, isn’t it right that they can turn into more important pieces?”

Allerdyce almost laughed. “You’ve got me zugzwanged, son. I’m going back to my lunch.” Allerdyce dropped the receiver. He was beginning not to detest Dulwater.

Back at the table, Cal Waits was in conversation with a leggy blonde who’d paused to say hello. She was standing in front of the booth, leaning down over the senator. It was a gesture hinting at intimacy, carried out solely so the other diners would notice. It wasn’t supposed to embarrass Waits; it was supposed to flatter her. She wore a blue two-piece, cut just about deep enough so Waits could see down the front.

She smiled at Allerdyce as he squeezed none too gently past her and resumed his seat. “Well, I’ll leave you to your meal, Cal. Bye now.”

“Bye, Jeanette.” He released a long sigh when she’d gone.

“Dessert, Cal?” Allerdyce asked.

“Just so long as it ain’t jelly on a plate,” Cal Waits said before draining his wine.

THIRTEEN

REEVE MADE THE CALL FROM THE FERRY TERMINAL. It was either early morning or else the middle of the night, depending on how you felt. He felt like death warmed up, except that he was shivering. He knew the time of day wouldn’t matter to the person he was calling. When he’d been a policeman, Tommy Halliday’s preferred shift had been nights. He wasn’t an insomniac, he just preferred being awake when everyone else was asleep. He said it gave him a buzz. But then he resigned, changed his mind, and found the force wouldn’t take him back-just like what had happened with Jim and his newspaper. Maybe the force had discovered Halliday’s drug habit; maybe news had leaked of his wild parties. Maybe it just had to do with staffing levels. Whatever, Halliday was out. And what had once been a recreation became his main source of income. Reeve didn’t know if Tommy Halliday still dealt in quantity, but he knew he dealt in quality. A lot of army-types-weekenders and would-be mercenaries-bought from him. They wanted performance enhancers and concoctions to keep them awake and alert. Then they needed downers for the bad time afterwards, times so bad they might need just a few more uppers…

Reeve had few feelings about drug use and abuse. But he knew Tommy Halliday might have something he could use.

The phone rang for a while, but that was normal: everyone who knew Tommy knew he let it ring and ring. That way he only ended up speaking to people who knew him… and maybe a few utterly desperate souls who’d let a phone ring and ring and ring.

“Yeah.” The voice was alert and laid-back at the same time.

“It’s Gordie.” All Tommy’s callers used first names or nicknames, just in case the drug squad was listening.

“Hey, Gordie, long time.” Halliday sounded like he was light-ing a cigarette. “You know a guy called Waxie? Came to see you for one of your long weekends.”

Henry Waxman. “I remember him,” Reeve said. This was typical of Halliday. You phoned him for a favor from a pay phone and spent half your money listening to his stories. Through the terminal’s windows, Reeve saw a greasy sky illuminated by so-dium, a blustery wind buffeting the few brave gulls up there.

“He’s become a good friend,” Halliday was saying. Which meant Waxman had become a serious user of some narcotic. It was a kind of warning. Halliday was just letting Reeve know that Waxman might not be as reliable as he once was. Halliday was under the misapprehension that Gordon Reeve trained mercenaries. Reeve had done nothing to correct this; it seemed to impress the dealer.

“Sorry to ring you so early. Or do I mean late?”

“Hey, you know me. I never sleep. I’m right in the middle of Mean Streets, trying to figure out what’s so great about it. Looks like a home movie. I dunno.” He paused to suck on his cigarette and Reeve leapt into the breach.

“Tommy, I’d like you to get Birdy for me.”

“Birdy?”

“Can you do that?”

“Well, I haven’t seen him in a while…” This was part of the Drug Squad game, too. Birdy wasn’t a person. Birdy was something very specialized, very rare.

“I’ve got something for him.” Meaning, I can pay whatever it takes.

“I dunno, like I say, he’s not been around much. Is it urgent?”

“No, I’m going to be away for a few days. Maybe I’ll call you when I get back.”

“You do that. I’ll see if I bump into him, maybe ask around. Okay, Gordie?”

“Thanks.”

“Sure, and hey, do me a favor. Rent out Mean Streets, tell me what’s so great about it.”

“Three words, Tommy.”

“What?” The voice sounded urgent, like it mattered.

“De Niro and Keitel.”

He slept for three-quarters of an hour on the ferry crossing. As soon as the boat came into Calais and drivers were asked to return to their vehicles, Reeve washed down some caffeine pills with the last of his strong black coffee. He’d made one purchase onboard-a hard-rock compilation tape-and he’d changed some money. The boat was nearly empty. They took the trucks off first, but within five minutes of returning to his car, he was driving out onto French soil. Back at a garage outside Dover, he’d bought a headlight kit, so he could switch beam direction to the other side of the road. Driving on the right hadn’t been a problem to him in the USA, so he didn’t think it would be a problem here. He’d jotted down directions so he wouldn’t have to keep looking at the map book he’d added to his purchases at the garage.

He headed straight for Paris, looking to take one of the beltways farther out, but ended up on the périphérique, the inner ring. It was like one of the circles of Dante’s Hell; he only thanked God they were all traveling the same direction. Cars came onto the road from both sides, and left again the same way. People were cutting across lanes, trusting to providence or some spirit of the internal combustion engine. It was a vast game of “Chicken”: he who applied the brakes was lost.

Still hyped from the caffeine and loud music, and a bit dazed from lack of sleep, Reeve hung on grimly and took what looked like the right exit. The names meant nothing to him, and seemed to change from sign to sign, so he concentrated on road numbers. He took the A6 off the périphérique and had no trouble finding the A10, which called itself l’Aquitaine. That was the direction he wanted. He celebrated with a short stop for refueling-both the car and himself. Another two shots of espresso and a croissant.

When he started hallucinating-starbursts in his eyes-still north of Poitiers, he stopped to sleep. A cheap motorway motel looked tempting, but he stayed with his car. He didn’t want to get too comfortable, but it didn’t make sense to turn up for his meeting with Marie Villambard unable to concentrate or focus. He wound the passenger seat as far back as it would go and slid over into it, so the steering wheel wouldn’t dig into him. His eyes felt gritty, grateful when he closed them. The cars speeding past the service area might as well have been serried waves crashing on the shore, the rumble of trucks a heartbeat. He was asleep inside a minute.

He slept for forty deep minutes, then got out of the car and did some stretching exercises, using the car’s hood as his bench. He took his toothbrush to the toilets, scrubbed his teeth, and splashed water on his face. Then back to the car. He was a hundred miles from his destination, maybe a little less. Despite his stops, he’d made good time. At the back of his map book there was a plan of Limoges. It had two railway stations: the one he wanted-gare des Bénédictins-was to the east, the other to the west. He headed south on the N147 and came into Limoges from the north. Almost at once the streets started to hem him in. They either bore no signposts or identifiers, or else were one way. He found himself shunted onto street after street, twisting right and left and right… until he was lost. At one point he saw a sign pointing to gare SNCF, but after following it didn’t see another sign, and soon was lost again. Finally he pulled over, double-parking on a narrow shopping street, and asked a pedestrian for directions. It was as if he’d asked the man to talk him through open-heart surgery: Bénédictins was difficult from here, he’d have to retrace his steps, the one-way system was very complicated…

Reeve thanked the man and started driving again, waving at the complaining line of drivers who’d been waiting to pass him.

Eventually he crossed a bridge and saw railway lines beneath him, and followed those as best he could. Then he saw it, a huge domed building with an even higher clock tower to one side. Bénédictins. It looked more like an art gallery or museum than a city’s railway station. Reeve checked his watch. It was half past five. He found a parking space, locked the car, and took a few seconds to calm himself and do a few more exercises. His whole body was buzzing as though electricity was being passed through him. He walked on to the station concourse, looked over to the left and saw the restaurant and bar.

He paused again outside the bar itself, looking around him as though for a friend. Actually, he was seeking out the opposite, but it was hard to judge from the people milling around. There were down-and-outs and students, young men in military uniform and businesspeople clutching briefcases. Some stared anxiously at the departures board; others sat on benches and smoked, or browsed through a magazine. Any one of them could be put-ting on an act. It was impossible to tell.

Reeve walked into the bar.

He spotted her immediately. She was middle-aged, wore glasses, and was chain-smoking. There was a fog of smoke in the bar; walking through it was like walking through mist. She sat in a booth facing the bar, reading a large paperback and taking notes in the margin. She was the only single woman in the place.

Reeve didn’t approach her straightaway. He walked up to the bar and settled himself on a stool. The barman had already weighed him up and was reaching for the wine bottle. He managed not to look surprised when Reeve ordered Perrier.

There were six other men in the bar, eight including the waiters. Reeve studied them all. They’d stared at him collectively on his arrival, but that was only natural in a French bar as in bars around the world. Mostly they were drinking short glasses of red wine; a couple of them nursed espressos. They all looked like they fitted right in; they looked like regulars. Then he saw that someone else was watching him. She’d put down her book and pen and was peering at him over the top of her glasses. Reeve paid for the water and took his glass to her booth.

“Mr. Reeve?”

He sat down and nodded.

“A good journey?” There was irony in the question.

“First-class,” Reeve replied. He would place her in her early fifties. She was trim and well dressed and had taken care of herself, but the lines around the neck gave it away. Her hair was salt-and-pepper, swept back over the ears from a center part and feathered at the back of her head. She had the word executive stamped on her.

“So,” she said, “now you will tell me about your brother?”

“I’d like to know a bit about you first,” he said. “Tell me about yourself, how you came to know Jim.”

So she told him the story of a woman who had always been a writer, ever since her school days, a story not dissimilar to Jim’s own life. She said they’d met while she was on a trip to London. Yes, she’d known Marco in London, and he’d told her his suspicions. She had come back to France and done some research. In France the farming lobby was even stronger than that in the UK, with close ties between farm owners and their agrichemical suppliers, and a government-no matter whether left- or right-wing-which bowed to pressure from both. The investigation had been hard going; even now she wasn’t much further forward, and had to leave the story for long periods of time so she could do work that would earn her money. The agrichem story was her “labor of love.”

“Now tell me about Jim,” she said. So Reeve told his side of it, a seasoned performer by now. She listened intently, holding the pen as if about to start taking notes. The book she’d been reading was the biography of some French politician. She tapped the cover absentmindedly with the pen, covering the politician’s beaming honest face with myriad spots, like blue measles. The barman came over to take another order, and tutted and pointed. She saw what she’d been doing, and smiled and shrugged. The barman seemed not much mollified.

“Do you know this man?” she asked Reeve. She meant the politician. Reeve shook his head. “His name is Pierre Dechevement. Until recently he was responsible for agriculture. He re-signed. There was a young woman… not his wife. Normally, such a thing would not be a scandal in France. Indeed, there was no trace of a scandal in Dechevement’s case. Yet he still resigned.”

“Why?”

She smiled. “Perhaps because he is a man of honor? That is what his biographer says.”

“What do you say?”

She stabbed the pen at him. “You are shrewd, Mr. Reeve. For years Dechevement took bribes from the agrichemical compa-nies-well, no, perhaps bribes is too strong. Let us say that he enjoyed hospitality, and received favors. In my opinion one of those favors was the young lady in question, who turns out to have been a sometime prostitute, albeit high-class. Dechevement was quite brazen; she accompanied him to functions here and abroad. He even became her employer, giving her a position on his private staff. There is no record that she contributed any work, but she was paid a generous salary.”

Marie Villambard lit a fresh Peter Stuyvesant from the stub of the old one. Her ashtray had already been emptied twice by the barman. She blew out a stream of smoke.

“Dechevement’s closest ties were to a company called COSGIT, and COSGIT is a French subsidiary of Co-World Chemicals.”

“So Dechevement was in CWC’s employ?”

“In a manner of speaking. I think that’s why he was told to resign, so no one would bother to backtrack and find that the young prostitute had been paid for by Co-World Chemicals. That might have created a scandal, even in France.”

Reeve was thoughtful. “So you weren’t working along the same lines as my brother?”

“Wait, please. We have not yet… scratched the surface.”

Reeve sat back. “Good,” he said as his second Perrier arrived.

“In a sense, Dechevement is only a very small part of the whole,” Marie Villambard said. The waiter had brought her a new pack of cigarettes, which she was unwrapping. Reeve noticed that all the customers who’d been in the bar on his arrival had now been replaced by others-which didn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t surveillance.

“I have become,” she went on, “more interested in a man called Owen Preece. Doctor Owen Preece. Your brother was interested in him, too.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s dead now, unfortunately. It looked like natural causes. He was in his seventies-a cardiac crisis. It could happen to anyone that age…”

“Well then, who was he?”

“An American psychiatrist.”

Reeve frowned; someone else had mentioned a psychiatrist in connection with CWC…

“He headed what was supposed to be an independent research team, funded partly by government and partly by agrichemical companies, to look into BSE, what you call mad cow disease.”

Reeve nodded to himself. Josh Vincent had mentioned something similar-research funded by CWC itself, using psychiatrists as well as scientists.

“This was in the early days of the scare,” Marie Villambard was saying. “The team comprised neurologists, viral specialists, experts in blood diseases, and psychologists. Their initial reports were that the disease ME-”Yuppie Flu‘ as it was called at the time-was not a disease at all but was psychosomatic, an ailment brought on by the sufferer for some complex psychological reason.“

“They were working on prion protein?”

“That is correct, and they found no evidence to link prion proteins found in organophosphorus substances, or any pesticides currently in use, to any of the range of diseases that other scientists claim are closely linked to them.”

“They were got at by CWC?”

“Not exactly, but there is good reason to believe Dr. Preece was in the employ of CWC, and he was head of the team. He gave the final okay to their results. He had access to all the data…”

“And could have tampered with it?”

“One member of the team resigned, claiming something along those lines. He was killed in a boating accident only weeks later.”

“Jesus. So Preece falsified tests and results? And all this was partly funded by the U.S. government?”

Marie Villambard nodded throughout. “The initial idea had come down from someone in the middle ranks of Co-World Chemicals. Some of us assume this man was responsible for put-ting Preece in charge. Dr. Preece was in some ways an excellent choice-he was a psychiatrist of some renown. He is also thought to have carried out experiments for the CIA.”

“Experiments?”

“On humans, Mr. Reeve. In the fifties and sixties he was part of a team which tested the effects of various hallucinogens on the human nervous system.” She saw something close to horror on Reeve’s face. “It was all perfectly legal, believe it or not. The subjects were patients in lunatic asylums. They had few rights, and no one to fight for what few rights they had. They were injected with all manner of chemicals; we can’t even say which. Preece was a small part of this. It only came to light recently, after his death, when some CIA files were released. It made some of us wonder about his involvement with various committees and research projects post-1960. This man had something to hide, some shame in his past, and those with a past can always be bought.”

“And the CWC employee who suggested all this…?”

“Kosigin,” said Marie Villambard. “A Mr. Kosigin.”

“How do you know?”

“Your brother found out. He interviewed a lot of people under the pretext of writing a book about Preece. He spoke to scientists, government agencies; he tracked down people who had been involved in the original project. He had evidence linking Preece to Kosigin, evidence of a massive cover-up, something concerning every person on the planet.” She lifted her cigarette. “That’s why I smoke, Mr. Reeve. Eating is too dangerous, to my mind. I prefer safer pleasures.”

Reeve wasn’t listening. “Whatever evidence my brother had has gone to the grave with him.”

She smiled. “Don’t be so melodramatic-and for goodness’ sake don’t be so silly.”

Reeve looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Your brother was a journalist. He was working on a dangerous story, and he knew just how dangerous. He would have made backups of his disks. There will be written files somewhere. There will be something. In an apartment somewhere, or left with a friend, or in a bank vault. You just have to look.”

“Supposing the evidence has been destroyed?”

She shrugged. “Then the story is not so strong… I don’t know. Maybe it is impossible to find a publisher for it. Everywhere we look, in every country which uses these chemicals and pesticides, we find some government connection. I do not think the governments of the world would like to see this story published.” She stared at him. “Do you?”

He stayed silent.

“I do not think the agrichemical conglomerates would like to see the story appear either, and nor would agencies like the CIA… Maybe we should all just get back to our ordinary lives.” She smiled sadly. “Maybe that would be safer for us all.”

“You don’t believe that,” he said.

She had stopped smiling. “No,” she said, “I don’t. It has gone too far for that. Another good reason for smoking. I am like the condemned prisoner, yes?”

And she laughed, the terror showing only in her eyes.

She had some information she could give him-copies of documents-so he followed her in his car. They left the city traveling towards a town called Saint Yrieix. This is all I need, thought Reeve, more driving. The road was a succession of steep ups and downs, and a couple of times they found themselves stuck behind a tractor or horse trailer. At last Marie Villambard’s Citroën Xantia signaled to turn off the main road, but only so they could twist their way along a narrow country road with nothing but the occasional house or farmstead. It was a fine evening, with an annoyingly low sun and wide streaks of pale blue in the sky. Reeve’s stomach complained that he’d been shoveling nothing but croissants and coffee into it all day. Then, to his amazement-out here in the middle of nowhere-they drove past a restaurant. It looked to have been converted from a mill, a stream running past it. A few hundred yards farther on, the Xantia signaled left, and they headed up a narrower, rougher track made from hard-packed stones and sand. The track led them into an avenue of mature oak trees, as though this roadway had been carved from the forest. A couple of roads leading off could have been logging tracks. At the end, in absolute isolation, stood a small old single-story house with dormer windows in the roof. Its facing stones hadn’t been rendered, and the shutters on the windows looked new, as did the roof tiles.

Reeve got out of his car. “This is some spot,” he said.

“Ah, yes, my grandparents lived here.”

Reeve nodded. “He was a timberman?”

“No, no, he was a professor of anthropology. Please, come this way.”

And she led him indoors. Reeve was dismayed to see that security was lax. Never mind the isolation and the fact that there was only one road in and out-the house itself was protected by only a single deadbolt, and the shutters had been left open, making for easy entry through one of the windows.

“Neighbors?” he asked.

“The trees are my neighbors.” She saw he was serious. “There is a farm only a couple of miles away. They have truffle rights. That means the right to come onto the land to search for truffles. I only ever see them in the autumn, but then I see them a lot.”

There was a bolt on the inside of the door, which was something. There was also a low rumbling noise. The rumble turned into a deep animal growl.

“Ça suffit!” Marie Villambard exclaimed as the biggest dog Reeve had ever seen padded into the hall. The beast walked straight up to her, demanding to be patted, but throughout Marie’s attentions its eyes were on the stranger. It growled again from deep in its cavernous chest. “His name is Foucault,” Villambard explained to Reeve. He didn’t think it was time to tell her he had a cat called Bakunin. “Let him smell you.”

Reeve knew that this was the drill-same with any dog-don’t be a stranger. Let it paw over you and sniff your crotch, whatever it takes, until it has accepted you in its territory. Reeve stretched out a hand, and the dog ran a wet, discerning nose over the knuckles, then licked them.

“Good dog, Foucault,” Reeve said. “Good dog.”

Marie was rubbing the monster’s coat fiercely. “Really I should keep him outside,” she said. “But he’s spoiled. He used to be a hunting dog-don’t ask me which breed. Then his owner had to go into hospital, and if I hadn’t looked after him nobody would. Would they, Foucault?”

She started to talk to the dog-Reeve guessed part Alsatain, part wolfhound-in French, then led it back to the kitchen, where she emptied some food from a tin into a bowl the size of a washbasin. In fact, as Reeve got closer, he saw that it was a washbasin, red and plastic with a chewed rim.

“Now,” she said, “my thinking is that you need a bath, yes? After your first-class journey.”

“That would be great.”

“And food?”

“I’m starving.”

“There is an excellent restaurant, we passed it-”

“Yes, I saw.”

“We will go there. You are in France only one night, you must spend the time wisely.”

“Thanks. I’ve some stuff in my car; I’ll just go fetch it.”

“And shall I begin your bath.”

The bathroom was a compact space just off the hall. There was a small kitchen, and a small living space that looked more like an office than somewhere to relax. It had a look of organized chaos, some kind of order that only the owner of such a room could explain.

“You live here alone?” Reeve asked.

“Only since my husband left me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. He was a pig.”

“When did he leave?”

“October eleventh, 1978.”

Reeve smiled and went out to the car. He walked around the house first. This was real “Hansel and Gretel” stuff: the cottage in the woods. He could hear a dog barking, probably on the neighboring farm. But no other sounds intruded except the rustling of the oak trees in the wind. He knew what Marie thought-she thought the very secrecy of this place made her safe. But where she saw secrecy, Reeve saw isolation. Even if she wasn’t in the telephone book, it would take just an hour’s work for a skilled operative to get an address for her. An Ordnance Survey map would show the house-might even name it. And then the operative would know just how isolated the spot was.

There were two small outbuildings, one of which had been a bakery at one time. The bread oven was still there, the large wooden paddles still hung on the walls, but the space was used for storage these days. Mice or rats had chewed the corners out of a tower of empty cardboard boxes. The other outbuilding was a woodshed, and maybe always had been. It was stacked with neat piles of sawn logs. Reeve peered into the forest. A covering of dry leaves on the forest floor wouldn’t be enough to give warn-ing of anyone approaching the house. He’d have had trip wires maybe. Or…

Sudden beams of light flooded the shade. He blinked up and saw that halogen lamps had been fastened to some of the trees. Something or someone had tripped them. Then he saw Marie Villambard standing beside the house, arms folded, laughing at him.

“You see,” she said, “I have protection.”

He walked towards her. “They’re movement-sensitive,” he said.

“That’s right.”

He nodded. “All connected to a single source?”

“Yes.”

“Then they’d be easy to disable. Plus, what do they do? They light up the trees. So what? That’s not going to stop someone from advancing.”

“No, but it gives Foucault something to aim at. He stays out here at night.”

“He’s just one dog.”

She laughed again. “You are a security expert?”

“I used to be,” Reeve mumbled, going back into the house with his bag.

He changed into his spare set of clothes, wrapping his soiled shirt around Lucky 13. He wasn’t planning on staying here. He’d head off after dinner, find a hotel somewhere on the route. So he took his bag back out to the car and put it in the trunk, out of sight. Marie Villambard had put together a cardboard box full of papers.

“These are all copies, so I do not need them returned.”

“Fine,” he said.

“And I don’t know if they will tell you anything I haven’t.”

“Thanks anyway.”

She looked like she had something awkward to say, her eyes avoiding his. “You know, you are welcome to stay here tonight.”

He smiled. “Thanks, but I think I’ll head off.”

“You are sure?” Now she looked at him. She didn’t look like an executive anymore; she looked lonely and tired, tired of solitude and stroking Foucault, tired of long wakeful nights wondering if the sky would suddenly burst open with halogen. Tired of waiting.

“I’ll see how I feel after dinner,” he conceded. But he loaded the box of files into the trunk anyway.

“Shall we take my car?” she asked.

“Let’s take mine. It’s blocking yours anyway.” He helped her on with her coat. “It looked like a very nice restaurant.” Making conversation didn’t come easily. He was still getting over the feeling of being flattered that she wanted him to stay. She locked the door after them.

“It is an excellent restaurant,” she said. “And a very good reason for moving here.”

“It wasn’t sentimentality then?” He opened the passenger door for her.

“You mean because the house belonged to my grandparents? No, not that. Well, perhaps a little. But the restaurant made the decision easy. I hope they have a table.” Reeve started the engine and turned the car around. “I tried calling, but the telephone is acting up again.”

“Again?”

“Oh, it happens a lot. The French system…” She looked at him. “You are wondering if my phone is tapped. Well, I don’t know. I must trust that it is not.” She shrugged. “Otherwise life would be intolerable. One would think oneself paranoid…”

Reeve was staring ahead. “A car,” he said.

“What?” She turned to look through the windshield. There was a car parked fifty or sixty yards away-French license plate; nobody inside.

“Merde,” she said.

Reeve didn’t hesitate. He slammed the gearshift into reverse and turned to navigate through the back window. There was a logging trail behind him, and another car darted from it and braked hard across the road.

“Gordon…” Marie said as he stopped the Land Rover. It was the first time she’d used his name.

“Run for it,” Reeve said to her. He released both their seat belts. The men in the rear car were reaching into their jackets, at the same time opening their doors. “Just get into the woods and run like hellfire!” He was shouting now, pumping himself up. He leaned across her, pushed open her door, and thrust her out of the car. “Run!” he yelled, at the same time hitting the accelerator with everything he had and pulling his foot off the clutch. The wheels spun, and the car started to fly backwards, weaving crazily from side to side. The men were halfway out of the car when Reeve hit them with everything his own vehicle had. One of the men slipped, and Reeve felt his back wheels bump over something that hadn’t previously been on the road. The other man slumped back into the car, either dazed or unconscious.

Reeve looked out of his windshield. Men had appeared beside the car in front. They’d been hiding in the woods. He checked to his left and saw Marie scurrying away. Good: she was keeping low. But the men in front were pointing towards her. One of them headed back into the trees, the other two took aim at Reeve’s car.

“Now,” he told himself, ducking and opening his door. He slipped out of the car and started crawling towards the trunk just as the first shots went off. There was a body lying under the car, between the front and back wheels. Most of it was intact. Reeve patted it down but found no gun. It must have been thrown during the collision. He couldn’t see it anywhere nearby. Another shot hit the radiator grille. Would they hear shots at the neighboring farm? And if they did, would they think them suspicious? The French were a nation of hunters-truffles not their only prey.

The collision had thrown open the back of the Land Rover. He couldn’t hope to carry the box of papers, but snatched his overnight bag. They were closing on him, walking forward with real purpose and almost without caution. He could try the other car, there might be guns there. He was on the wrong side of the track to follow Marie, and if he tried crossing over they’d have a clean shot at him. His first decision had to be right. He knew what standard operating procedure was: get the hell away from the firefight and regroup. If you had to go back in, come from a direction the enemy would least expect.

It made sense, only it meant leaving Marie. I can’t help her dead, he thought. So he took a deep breath and, crouching low, made for the trees. He was like a figure in a shooting gallery to the two gunmen, but they only had handguns and he was mov-ing fast. He reached the first line of trees and kept running. It was nearly dark, which was both good and bad: good because it made it easier to hide; bad because it camouflaged his pursuers as well as himself. He ran jaggedly for three minutes and was still surrounded by oaks. He hadn’t been trying to run stealthily or silently, he just wanted distance. But now he paused and looked back, peering between the trees, listening hard. He heard a whistle, then another-one way over to his right, the other to his left, much closer. Only two whistles; only two men. He was getting farther and farther away from Marie. It could take him hours to circle back around to her. He was doing something he’d vowed to himself he’d never do again: he was running away.

He held out his hands. They were shaking. This wasn’t one of his weekend games; his pursuers weren’t using blanks. This was real in a way that hadn’t been true since Operation Stalwart. Return or retreat: those were the options facing him now. He had seconds to decide. He made the decision.

He looked down at his clothes. His pullover was dark, but the shirt beneath was white and showed at the cuffs and neck. Quickly he tugged off the pullover and took off his shirt, then put the pullover back on. Trousers, shoes, and socks were dark, too. He put the shirt back in his bag, then unwrapped Lucky 13. He used the damp and mud beneath the leaves to cover his face and hands and the meat of the dagger’s blade. They might have flashlights, and he didn’t want a glint of metal to give him away. The dark was closing in fast, the tree cover all but blocking out the last light of day. Another whistle, another reply. They were far enough apart for him to walk between them. They’d hardly be expecting him to double back.

But he was going to do just that. He left the bag where it was and set off.

He took slow, measured paces so as not to make noise, and he went from tree to tree, using each one as cover so he could check the terrain between that tree and the next. He had no landmarks to go by, just his own sense of direction. He’d left no tracks that he could follow back to the road, and didn’t want to follow tracks anyway: they might belong to a truffle hunter; they might belong to a pursuer.

But the whistled messages between his two pursuers were as good as sonar. Here came the first call… then the response. He held his breath. The response was so close he could hear the final exhalation of breath after the whistle itself had ended. The man was moving slowly, cautiously. And very, very quietly. Reeve knew he was dealing with a pro. His fingers tightened around Lucky 13.

I’m going to kill someone, he thought. Not hit them or wound them. I’m going to kill them.

The man walked past Reeve’s tree, and Reeve grabbed him, hauling him down by the head and gouging into his throat with the dagger. The pistol squeezed off a single shot, but it was wild. Still, it would have warned the others. Even dying, the man had been thinking of his mission. Reeve let the body slump to the ground, the gaping wound in the neck spurting blood. He took the pistol from the warm, pliant hand and looked at the man. He was wearing camouflage, black boots, and a balaclava. Reeve tore off the balaclava but couldn’t place the face. He did a quick search but came up with nothing in the pockets.

It was time to go. Another whistle: two sharp staccatos. Reeve licked his lips and returned it, knowing it wouldn’t fool his adversary for longer than half a minute. He set off quickly now, hoping he was heading towards the cars. But he knew his direction was off when he came out into a clearing he knew. There was the house, sitting in darkness. He looked up but couldn’t see any halogen lamps hidden in the trees. Maybe the enemy had disabled them.

Had they taken Marie back to the cottage? It looked unlikely, there were no lights in there. He walked forward to check… and now there was a burst of halogen, lighting the scene like a stage-set in a darkened theater.

“Drop the gun!”

A shouted command, the first words he’d heard for a while. It came from the trees. Reeve, standing next to the cottage window, knew he hadn’t a chance. He pitched the automatic pistol in front of him. It landed maybe six feet away. Near enough for him to make a dive to retrieve it… if there was anything to shoot at. But all he could see were the trees, and the halogen lamps pointing at him from high up in the oaks. Great security, he thought-works a treat. And then a man walked out from the line of trees and came towards him. The man was carrying a pistol identical to the one on the ground. He carried it very steadily. Reeve tried to place the accent. American, he thought. The man wasn’t saying anything more though. He wanted to get close to Reeve, close to the man who had slaughtered his comrade. Reeve could feel the blood drying on his hands and wrists, dripping off his forearms. I must look like a butcher, he thought.

The man kept looking at those hands, too, fascinated by the blood. He gestured with the pistol, and Reeve raised his hands. The man stooped to retrieve the other automatic, and Reeve swung an elbow back into the window, smashing the glass. The man stood up quickly, but Reeve stood stock-still. The man grinned.

“You were going to jump through the window?” he said. Definitely American. “What, you think I couldn’t‘ve hit you? You think maybe the telephone’s working? You were going to call for help?” He seemed very amused by all these suggestions. He was still advancing on Reeve, no more than three feet from him. Reeve had his hands held up high now. He’d cut his elbow on the glass. His own blood was trickling down one arm and into his armpit.

The man held his gun arm out straight, execution-style, the way he’d maybe seen it done on the Vietnam newsreels. Then he heard the noise. He couldn’t place it at first. It sounded motor-ized, definitely getting closer.

Reeve dived to his right as Foucault flew out through the window, sinking his jaws into the man’s face. The force of the dog knocked him flat on his back, the dog covering his whole upper body. Reeve didn’t hang around to watch. He snatched up the pistol and ran back towards the track. A few hundred yards would take him to the cars. He heard another vehicle in the distance, something bigger than a car. Maybe it’s the cavalry, he thought, someone from the farm.

But now there was another whistled command. Three low and long, two higher and shorter. Repeated five or six times. Reeve kept on moving forwards. Van doors closing. Engine revving. As he turned a bend he saw the car he’d smashed into and his own vehicle. He couldn’t see anybody lying under the Land Rover, and there was nobody in the smashed car.

There was a sudden explosion. It threw him backwards off his feet. He landed heavily but got up quickly, winded but still aiming his pistol at whatever the hell had happened. His Land Rover was in flames. Had they booby-trapped it maybe? Then he saw what they’d done. They were disabling it-that was all-so it would be here when the police arrived. The police would find evidence of a firefight, maybe bodies, certainly blood, and a missing journalist. They would also find a British car… a car belonging to Gordon Reeve.

“Sons of bitches,” Reeve whispered. He moved past the burning wreckage and saw that the front car had gone, along with whatever vehicle had turned up towards the end. He kept hearing that whistled command. It sounded like the opening of a tune he recognized… a tune he didn’t want to recognize. Five beats. Dahh, dahh, dahh, da-da. It was the opening to “Row, row, row your boat.” No, he was imagining it; it could have been another song, could have been random.

He wondered about checking the woods for Marie Villambard’s body. Maybe she was alive, maybe they’d taken her with them. Or she was lying somewhere in the woods, and very dead. Either way, he couldn’t hope to help. So he set off the other way until he recovered his bag. He had a landmark this time though. The corpse with the cut throat was still lying slumped on the ground.

Row, row, row your boat. He detested that song, with good reason.

Then he froze, remembering the scene outside the crematorium in San Diego: the cars turning up for the next service, and a face turning away from him, a face he’d thought was a ghost’s.

Jay.

It couldn’t be Jay. It couldn’t be. Jay was dead. Jay wasn’t alive and breathing anywhere on this planet…

It was Jay. That was the only thing, crazy as it seemed, that made sense.

It was Jay.

Reeve was shaking again as he headed back to the cottage. There was a body cooling on the ground next to the window, but no sign of Foucault. Reeve looked into Marie Villambard’s Xantia and saw that the keys were in the ignition. Car theft probably hadn’t been a problem around here. Nor had warfare and murder, until tonight. He got in and shut the door. He was turning the key when a vast bloodied figure pounced onto the hood, its face framed by pink froth, growling and snarling.

“Got a taste for it, huh?” Reeve said, starting the engine, ignoring the dog. He revved up hard and started off, throwing Foucault to the ground. He watched in the rearview, but the dog didn’t follow. It just shook itself off and headed back towards the cottage and what was left of its supper.

Reeve edged the Citroën past the two wrecked, smoldering cars. There was black smoke in the night sky. Surely somebody would see that. He scraped the Xantia against tree bark and blistered metal, but managed to squeeze past and back onto the road. He allowed himself a cold glint of a smile. His SAS training told him never to leave traces. When you were on a deep infiltration mission, you’d even shit into plastic bags and carry them with you. You left nothing behind. Well, he was leaving plenty this mission: at least two corpses, and a burned-out Land Rover with British plates. He was going to be leaving a stolen car somewhere, too, with blood on its steering wheel. And these, it seemed to him, were the very least of his problems.

The very, very least.

He drove north, heading away from a horror he knew would surely follow.

His arms and shoulders began to ache, and he realized how tense he was, leaning into the steering wheel as if the devil himself were behind him. He stopped only for gas and to buy cans of caffeinated soft drinks, using them to wash down more caffeine tablets. He tried to act normally. In no way could he be said to resemble a tourist, so he decided he was a businessman, fatigued and stressed-out after a long sales trip, going home thankfully. He even got a tie out of his bag, letting it hang loosely knotted around his throat. He examined himself in the mirror. It would have to do. Of course, the driver of a French car should be French, too, so he tried not to say anything to anyone. At the gas stations he kept to bonsoir and merci; ditto at the various péage booths.

Heading for Paris, he caught sight of signs for Orly. He knew either airport, Orly or Charles de Gaulle, would do. He was going to ditch the car. He figured the ports might be on the lookout for a stolen Xantia. And if the authorities weren’t checking the ports, he reckoned his attackers almost certainly were. In which case they’d be checking the airports, too. But he had a better chance of going undetected on foot.

He drove into an all-night parking garage at Orly. It was a multistory, and he took the Xantia to the top deck. There were only two other cars up here, both looking like long-stayers or cars which had been ditched. The Xantia would be company for them. But first of all he knew he needed sleep-his brain and body needed rest. He could sleep in the terminal maybe, but would be easy meat there. He reckoned there’d be no planes out till morning, and it wasn’t nearly light yet. He wound the car windows open a couple of inches to help him hear approaching vehicles or footsteps. Then he laid his head back and closed his eyes…

He had a dream he’d had before. Argentina. Grassland and mountain slopes. Insects and a constant sea breeze. Two canoes paddling for shore. In the dream, they paddled in daylight, but really they’d come ashore in the middle of the night, faces painted. Supposedly in silence, until Jay had started singing…

The same song he’d sung when they landed on the Falklands only a week before, taken ashore by boat on that occasion. Splash-ing onto the beach, meeting no resistance. And Jay humming the tune he’d been ordered to stop singing.

Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream.

A dream? More like a nightmare when Jay was around. He was supposed to be a good soldier, but he was a firing pin short of a grenade, and just as temperamental.

Just as lethal.

They’d sent for them after that firefight in the Falklands. They wanted to mount a two-man mission, deep surveillance. They were briefed onboard HMS Hermes. Their mission would be to keep watch on Argentinian aircraft flying out of Rio Grande. (Reeve was told only afterwards that another two-man unit was given the same brief with a different location: Rio Gallegos.) Nobody mentioned the words suicide mission, but the odds on coming back alive weren’t great. For a start, the Argentinians on the Falklands had been equipped with direction-finding equipment and thermal imagers; there was little to show that the same equipment wouldn’t be available on the mainland.

Therefore, their radio signals out would be monitored and traced. Meaning they would have to stay mobile. But mobility itself was hazardous, and the possibility of thermal imagers meant they wouldn’t even be able to rest at night. Getting in would be easy, getting out a nightmare.

Jay only demurred when his request for a few Stinger shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles was rejected out of hand.

“You’re going in there to watch, not to fight. Leave the fighting to others.”

Which was just what Jay didn’t want to hear.

Row, row, row your boat…

And in the dream that’s what they did, with a line of men waiting for them on the beach. For some reason, the men couldn’t locate them, though Reeve could see them clearly enough. But Jay’s singing got louder and louder, and it was only a matter of time before the firing squad by the water’s edge let loose at them.

Row, row, row your boat…

Reeve woke up in a sweat. Christ… And the true horror was that the reality had been so much worse than the dream, so awful that when he’d finally made it back to Hermes they’d refused to believe his version. They’d told him he must be hallucinating. Doctors told him shock could do that. And the more they denied the truth, the angrier he got, until that pink haze descended for the first time in his life and then lifted again, and a doctor and two orderlies were lying unconscious on the floor in front of him.

He sensed movement, something low to the ground and in shadow, over beside one of the other cars. He turned his headlights on and picked out a thin, hungry-looking fox. A fox scavenging on the top floor of a multistory parking garage. What was wrong with the fields? Had things got so bad for the foxes that they were moving into high-rises? Well, Reeve could talk: he was hiding in a garage. Hiding because he was being hunted. Right now, he was being hunted by the bad guys; but all too soon the good guys-the so-called forces of law and order-would be hunting him, too. He turned off the headlights and got out of the car to exercise. Sit-ups and push-ups, plus some calisthenics. Then he looked in his traveling bag. He didn’t have much left in the way of clean clothes. At the first service station on the route he had scrubbed away the blood. There were dried stains on his sweater, but his white shirt was still clean. He was wearing it now. He’d tried cleaning his shoes, not very successfully. They looked like he’d been playing football in them.

In his bag he found Lucky 13. The dagger was a problem. He knew he couldn’t hope to get it past airport security. It would have to stay here. But it was a murder weapon; he didn’t want it found. He walked with the dagger over to the elevator, and pressed the button for it to ascend. Then he wiped the dagger with his handkerchief, rubbing off fingerprints, and held it with the handkerchief. When the elevator arrived, he leaned in, pressed the button for the floor below, and stepped out again as the doors were closing. He slipped the blade of the dagger into the gap between the doors and, as soon as the elevator started to descend, used the blade to prize open the doors a couple of inches. Then he simply pushed the hilt and handle through the gap and let the dagger fall onto the roof of the elevator, where it could lie until maintenance found it-always supposing these elevators had any maintenance.

It was still early, so he sat in the car for a while. Then he got out and went over to the far wall, and leaned out so he could see the terminal building. There were two terminals, separated by a monorail, but this was the one he wanted, and he could walk to it. There were bright lights inside, and movement, taxis pulling up-the start of another day. He hadn’t heard any flights leave in the past half hour, excepting a few light aircraft. But they would start leaving soon. During the night some larger planes had landed. At that hour, they had to be package operators or cargo.

Reeve made a final check on the contents of his bag, finding nothing immediately incriminating or suspicious. So he walked through the cool morning air towards the terminal building. He was starving, so he bought coffee and a sandwich first thing. He slung the bag over his shoulder so he could eat and drink as he walked. He walked among businessmen, all looking bleary-eyed and regretful, like they’d spent the previous night being unfaithful. He’d bet none of them had spent a night like his, but at least he was blending in better than expected. Just another disheveled traveler up too early.

He felt a little more confident as he walked to the desk to buy a ticket. He just hoped they’d have a ticket to spare. They did, but the saleswoman warned him he’d have to pay full business rate.

“That’s fine,” he said, sliding over his credit card. He was running up a huge bill on the card, but what did that matter when he might not be around come time to pay? Intimations of mortality bred a certain recklessness. Better financial recklessness than any other kind. He waited while the deal was done, looking for recognition in the woman’s eyes as she took details of his name from his passport. But there was no recognition; the police weren’t on to him yet. She handed back the passport and credit card, and then his ticket and boarding pass. Reeve thanked her and turned away.

There was a man watching him.

Or rather, he had been watching him. But now the man was staring at the morning headlines in his paper. Only he didn’t look like he was reading them; Reeve would bet the man couldn’t even read French. He could walk over and reassure himself of that with a couple of questions, but he couldn’t cause a fuss here on the concourse, not when his flight was still some time away. So he walked casually in the direction of the bathrooms.

The bathrooms were up a passageway and around a corner, out of sight of the concourse. They faced each other, the Ladies and the Gents. There was a sign on a trestle outside the Ladies, saying the place was closed for cleaning and could customers please use the other toilets at the far end of the building. Reeve shifted the sign to the Gents and walked in.

He was lucky; there was nobody about. He set to work fast, looking around at the possibilities. Then he went to the sink nearest the door and turned the tap on full, stuffing the plughole with toilet paper. The sink started to fill. On the wall by the door there was an electric hand-dryer. Perfect. On the far wall were some vending machines. Reeve dropped a ten-franc piece into one and pulled the drawer. The small package contained a tiny toothbrush, tube of toothpaste, Bic razor, and comb. He threw the toothpaste and comb aside and got to work, smashing the head of the razor against the sink until he’d snapped off the plastic. He pushed half the blade’s length into the head of the toothbrush until he was sure it was firmly lodged there. Now, holding the toothbrush by its handle, he had a scalpel of sorts.

Water was pouring onto the floor. He wondered how long it would be before his watcher would get suspicious and wonder what the hell was going on. Maybe he’d suspect another door, some sort of exit from the toilets. He would come to look. Reeve just hoped he wouldn’t call in first, letting his boss or bosses know the score. He wanted one-on-one. He sat up on the edge of the sink, right in the corner of the room, and reached over to the hand-dryer. An electric lead curled out from it and disappeared into the wall. Reeve pulled on the end of the cord nearest the dryer, tugging it hard. Eventually it came away, but he kept on pulling. As he’d hoped, there was cable to spare inside the wall cavity. Electricians did that; it made it easier later if the unit had to be moved. He pulled out as much of the cable as he could. Then he waited. Water was still pouring onto the floor. He hoped the bastard would come soon, or maintenance might get nosy, or a businessman’s breakfast coffee might work its way through…

The door opened. A man splashed into the water. It was the watcher. Reeve flicked the live end of the cable into his face, then hauled him into the room. With his hands up to his face, the man slipped on the wet floor and nearly fell. Reeve let the cable drop from his hand to the floor, connecting with the water, making the whole floor live. The man’s face went into a rictus spasm, and he fell to his knees, hands on the floor, which only made things worse. The electricity jerked him for another couple of seconds, until Reeve hauled the cord away and rested it on the sink tops. Then he slid from his perch, crouched in front of the man, and held the blade to his throat.

The man was shaking all over, sparks still flying around inside. Some people got to like it, apparently. Reeve had been trained in interrogation techniques, and one of the instructors had told him that some prisoners got hooked on those jolts so that afterwards they kept plugging themselves into the socket, just for old times’ sake…

“Who are you?” Reeve asked quietly. “Who are you working for?”

“I don’t know anything.”

Reeve nicked the throat, drawing a bead of blood. “Last chance,” he hissed.

The man swallowed. He was big, and had probably been hired for that reason alone. But he was not smart-not really a professional to Reeve’s mind-he’d fallen too easily. Reeve searched his pockets. The man was carrying cash, but nothing else, no papers, no ID, no telephone or radio.

“When’s your RV?” Reeve asked.

“Noon,” the man said.

So he knew what RV meant; a lot of Americans would have taken the letters to mean “recreational vehicle.” So he’d served time in the armed forces.

“That’s when your relief takes over?”

The man nodded. He could feel blood running down his throat but couldn’t see any, not at the angle his face was at. Reeve would bet the cut felt worse than it actually was.

“What do you do if I’m spotted?”

“Watch you,” the man said, his voice unsteady. He was losing color from his face. Reeve thought maybe the bastard was about to faint.

“And?”

“Call in to report.”

“Have you called?”

The man swallowed. “Not yet.”

Reeve believed him, and was thankful. “When you call in, what’s the number?”

“It’s in Paris.”

“Give it to me.”

The man recited the number.

“Who’s on the other end of the phone?”

“I don’t know.” More pressure with the blade, a fresh trickle of blood. “He hired me in L.A.,” the man said quickly, “at my gym. I don’t know his name, I only know an initial.”

“Jay?”

The man blinked at him, then nodded. Reeve felt his own temperature plummet. It was true; of course it was true. Reeve drew back his fist and hit the man solidly on the side of the jaw. The head jerked, and all resistance went out of the body. Reeve dragged him into a stall and locked the door, then hauled himself up and over the door. He tossed the blade into a washbasin and pulled open the door. A man was standing outside, briefcase in hand. He wasn’t sure about the sign. Reeve showed the man the floor.

“Flooding,” he said. “Toilet’s out of order.”

Then he walked back to the concourse and made straight for his departure gate.