The Glory Boys

FIVE

Sokarev's wife had noted the preoccupation that gripped her husband. There was his listlessness, the unwillingness to contribute anything in conversation, the desire just to slump in his chair, the books at his desk unopened. There were often times when his work had seemed to force him down, literally bowing his shoulders with the pressures of the speed and intricacy and finesse required for the study of nuclear action.

On previous occasions the signs of extreme exhaustion and depression had been well telegraphed, and they had been able to discuss them, thereby lessening the load. But not this time. Her gentle feelers for information were shrugged off, and she was left feeling frustrated and inadequate. She hoped that the arrival later in the day of

'the children', as she still called them, would be enough to rouse him.

Sokarev himself thought continuously of what the security men had told him, wondered why they had found it necessary to take him into their confidence, regretted that they had. He was not used to fear, and could not remember a similar sensation of such intensity. Like an infant afraid to be left alone in an unfamiliar room, he had come in the last twenty-four hours to dread his London visit.

When, just before nightfall succeeded dusk, his wife suggested they should take a walk together he shook his head, heavy with the negative. He heard her sigh her disappointment as she fidgeted with a duster behind his chair.

'We've time,' she said, 'before the children come. We could go down to the new swimming pool, just a few hundred metres, a few minutes. We'll be back well before them.'

He shook his head again, and she left it.

He sat alone for a few more minutes, then got up abruptly.

'I'd like a walk,' he said quietly. 'I'd like to go on my own. I won't be long.' Her face clouded, and he watched the pain he had inflicted. Her jaw seemed to tighten, her eyes to close a little. 'There is a problem. I have to think about it. It has no place for you. Not long-term. I'll resolve it very soon. I'm sorry.'

Out on the street there was a warm, dry heat. The children were on the pavement playing football, but they made way for the professor. Hot, spiced smells came to him from the kitchens as he walked mingling with the scents from the flowering trees that had been planted when the flats were built. There was noise: high above him, a couple shouted abuse at each other, fiercely combative.

It was difficult for him to concentrate on the question that dominated his thinking — too many extraneous sights and senses forced their way over him. He walked little more than half a mile, then turned and came back slowly.

When he had reached the entrance on the ground floor that led to his apartment he saw the Mini his son drove parked outside, and he went on round to the back of the building where the garages were. He unlocked the door of his own garage, and then the door of the car, on the passenger side, and slid on to the seat.

His hand wavered a moment before he opened the glove compartment. Underneath the duster, where it always was, rested the Mauser pistol. Sokarev took it in his hand, weighing it, feeling the black, hard shape of the butt pressing down on to his palm. The magazine was fastened into position. Live bullets — the power to kill, or to protect.

They're dragging you down, old man he said to himself.

Pulling you into their own pit, where crude, insensitive violence settles all. What learning, what thought, what intellectual capacity is demanded to ease the stiff and metallic lever of the safety catch and transform a simple piece of engineering into a killing instrument? So vulgar, so alien. To the men who were to accompany him to London the gun would be as familiar as their shoe-laces, their toothpaste, the belts that held their trousers on their hips.

He would take it with him. Whether they liked it or not, those two young men would have to accept it — a part of his destiny he would keep in his own hands. He put the pistol back in the compartment, and covered it again with the duster.

As he paused at the door of his flat, searching in his pocket for the key, he could hear his wife talking, her voice anxious, excited, and the quieter tones of his son.

But he felt calmer now, steadied. When he walked inside there was the smile of greeting on his face.

At Victoria Station the Arab pushed his way through the crowds of surging, homeward-bound commuters until he reached the telephone kiosks. He waited his turn, and when the box in front of him was vacant nodded his gratitude to the man who held the door open for him, and went inside. It smelled in the dank cubicle. Perhaps a man had vomited there. Looking up at the board above the phone, Famy read the instructions, found a two-pence coin and dialled the number he had memorized. The call was answered, and there was the vibrant noise of the beeps instructing him to feed his money into the appropriate slot.

The coin slid through the mechanism, emerging in a small tray below. For a moment he panicked, fumbled for it, and then pushed the coin again into the machine. A pause, then the answering voice. He spoke the number of the extension they had given him, and heard the click that denoted the reconnection. Another voice announced the number he had just asked for, confirming it for him.

Famy said, 'Mushroom, one has arrived.'

From the other end, curt and hurried, 'Same rendezvous, as if you had been here last night. You know it?'

Famy said, 'Yes, I have it memorized, I… '

The line was dead, the voice replaced by the purring constancy of the dialling tone. Three hours to kill. Time to be lost, evaporated. Famy walked out into the late evening sunshine and on to the London pavements. In front of him was a tourists' stall. Union Jacks, dolls in guardsmen's uniforms, postcards of Buckingham Palace, cardboard replicas of 'Gentlemen's Lavatory' and 'Piccadilly'.

His voice seemed diffident as he asked the elderly man sitting on the stool beside his counter, 'Excuse me, excuse me. I wonder, do you have the A-Z Book of London? A map called the A-Z?'

The man looked at him, boring into his face — not for any reason, just a mannerism. He handed the book to Famy.

'A to Z,' he said patronizingly, repeating it. There was a look of contempt on his face. 'Thirty pence, it'll cost you.'

Famy moved away with the book. Across the fast-flowing road he could see a sign. 'Sandwiches and Snacks', it proclaimed. He felt hungry and tired. He waited till a group of pedestrians had gathered by the traffic lights, and joined them as they scurried across the wide space. Safety in numbers. He looked at the huge white-fronted, porti-coed houses of Lower Belgrave Street. It was what he might have imagined of London; grand, majestic, privileged. In the cafe an Italian waiter brought a coffee to his table, and he also ordered some bread and salad. He flicked at the book, taking in the labyrinthine network of lines and words that made up the Greater London area.

When his food came he reached inside his coat for the slim diary he carried, and among a jumble of figures in the section for accounts at the end of it selected the top line. It read '77.1.6'. He shouldn't have written those numbers in his diary. The order had been to memorize them. Dani and Bouchi, they wouldn't have written them on paper. But, Famy had been nervous of forgetting. He was aware that for the first time he had broken an instruction of the mission. The sensation of guilt, though faint, caught him as he started to work the code system that he had been given.

He noted the numbers, printed heavily in black at the top extremes of each page, and went carefully through the book till he came to page 77. There was a '1' printed smaller below it, marking a series of squares. He counted through his alphabet, learned years ago at school, searching for the letter that equalled the number 6. On his fingers he came to the letter F. He peered closely at page 77, directing his sight at the square marked laterally by the figure 1 and vertically by the letter F. In the square there was a shaded-in area, a quarter of an inch across, marked

'Waterloo'. They had said the rendezvous would be at a station. If for any reason, his briefing had gone on, it is not suitable for a rendezvous to take place you should go straight to the accommodation. But that was not desirable.

He checked with the figures for the accommodation code.

'173.65.162'. This time he turned to the back index of the map, sought out page 173 and began to work his way down the extreme left hand column of street names. The sixty-fifth in the descending order read, 'Englefield Road, N. 1. 4C 46.' The accommodation address was 162 Englefield Road, on the fringes of Islington and Dalston in North London.

A transcript of Famy's call to the embassy was hurried up to Jones's office.

'There's no chance of a trace,' said the man who brought it. 'Lasted about fourteen seconds, the whole thing, and that includes fumbling with the money, and getting transferred. There's a fair bit of background noise where the call originates, probably a public place, but that's where most of the phone boxes are. It's not inside a building, anyway.'

'Definitely, we can't pick up a call like that?' Jones queried.

'Not a cat in hell. No way at all. Need an awful lot more than that.'

'And the voice?' persisted Jones.

'Need more time with that. Foreign, and we can go a bit further than that. Not USA, not North European, not African, not Asian. I'd put in a bid for Mediterranean, not Latin but East.'

'Thank you,' said Jones, and the man made his way out of the office.

There were those in the department, trained to work at phonetics and speech, who would be able to pin-point the origin of the caller, or at least the region in which he had spent time long enough for it to affect the vowels and consonant construction of the syllables. It would take them no great time, but Jones was certain that whatever they came up with would merely be the professional confirmation of what in his own mind he already knew.

So he had arrived, their little friend. Missed his first appointment, but was now in and ready to make up the lost time for the rendezvous. Right code-word, right part of the world, and ready to meet up with this sodding little Provo.

Jones reached across for his white telephone, the one which carried the department's main number and an extension. The phone beside it was red, and carried a separate number, left clear for incoming calls. He dialled nine for an outside line, and then his home number.

'I'll be late, dear. No, it's just come up. Usual old story, isn't it? I say I'll be late, but it's conceivable I won't be back at all tonight. Boys all right? Good. I'm sorry… I always say that. Mean it though. Love you. 'Bye darling.'

There were two files now. One for the embassy calls, one for McCoy. He took them both with him as he went down to the basement. In cubicles sat the men who listened to the calls that the Director General had authorized as suitable for monitoring. He pulled up a chair beside the man who listened to the number he was concerned with.

The man greeted him silently, plugged in a separate pair of earphones, and passed them to him. He offered Jones a cigarette, which was declined. Then they waited, concentration building up, the metal of the earpieces digging into Jones's flesh, as he waited for the next call.

He reflected that there was no complacency among his small team. They were too old for that, too well-versed.

Each of them appreciated that they were starting late, catching up in a few hours on the homework it had taken the enemy weeks, perhaps months to prepare. There was never enough time in this business for indulgence. Always running from behind, handicapped, catching up against the passing of the calendar.

The major from Intelligence Corps was able to tell Duggan little of McCoy that was not already apparent. He enjoyed his retirement, and the gratuity the army had given him.

He devoted his attention, once directed towards interrogation, wholly to his rose garden. He had been there in semi-darkness when Duggan had called the cottage in Wiltshire, and the former officer's mind was more attuned to the problems of green and black aphis-fly and its risk to his blooms than to the young Irishman he had met so many months earlier.

'He was a hard little bugger,' he remembered. 'Very cool, difficult to shake. Cut above the usual cement-between-the-ears boyos. We had more than one session.

Didn't budge him at all. Things had got pretty easy for them by then; clamps were well down on what we could do by the stage we got our hands on him. He didn't tell us anything.'

Duggan read him over the first section of the report from Northern Ireland intelligence.

'I didn't see any great political leanings. So few of them have,' said the major. 'He reacts to orders, like most of them. But he's tougher, harder. Has a lot of hate. Patient.

One of those that would lie up on the hedgerows for days at a time ready to set off a bomb under an armoured truck.

Plans well — we know that from some of his operations.

They're a hard breed down there in South Armagh, harder than anywhere else in the bloody place.'

He paused, seeking for anything else that could be of use.

'One thing. If you're looking for him in London. He had a sister, a bit older, perhaps a couple of years. Worked in a hospital, somewhere in London… '

Duggan prompted him.

'… Well, the girl went a bit haywire. McCoy thought she'd been in the wrong just by coming over. We were told that from other sources. He didn't think she should be working across in the mainland. Seemed quite a normal girl, apparently, then got mixed up with a load of hippies.

Packed her nursing in and went to live with them. He didn't approve of that. They're a very Puritan crowd, the hard-core Provos. I tried to talk about it to him, tried to shake him up a bit, get him angry. Didn't work. Water off a duck's back.'

'That could be very helpful,' said Duggan.

A courier came by car with the report, decoded, from the meeting at RAF Akrotiri. Fairclough had to come down to the lobby of the building to sign personally for the plain buff envelope that carried only his name on the outside.

He waited until he was back in his office before looking at the contents, and then read the typed sheets with attention for detail. It was very thorough, but then SIS in Nicosia were well known for their exactness.

He buzzed through to Jones's extension, received no answer, and tried the outer office. Helen had not gone home.

'He's down below. Eavesdropping. Said he won't be up for some time. He asked me to stay behind. Said there might be some typing to do, some reports to make up.'

Annoyance surged through him. His own girl had disappeared hours ago. Jones's girl was always there, never went home, watching them the whole time when they worked late, amusing herself at their expense.

'Get a message to him,' Fairclough said. 'As soon as he's taken the business down below, we need to see him — Mr Duggan and myself. Say whatever time he's through we'll be waiting.'

When he'd rung off he too phoned his home to warn of a late departure from the office. Duggan had already done the same.

'Here it goes, sir,' said the man hunched intently in the cubicle, stretching his bulk closer over the machinery.

Jones could hear the amplified beeps through his earphones. He winced at the noise.

The man reacted to it, without turning round. 'Have to have 'em up full blast. They can whisper and you've lost the lot while you're fiddling the volume.' He had switched on the tape recorder, the two wheels revolving steadily and without impatience. A third man was behind them, holding to his mouth the receiver of an open telephone to the GPO exchange nearest the embassy.

'It's McCoy,' muttered Jones as the Irish voice came through. The man behind was speaking into the phone, urgently. Jones heard the switch made to the extension inside the embassy, heard the code-word given, and the single sentence in reply before the connection was broken.

It had been shorter than the earlier call, by two to three seconds.

'Not a bloody hope,' said the man who was standing at the back, it gives them next to nothing to work on.'

'Didn't say much anyway,' Jones spat the words out.

'Two hours waiting for that. Used the code-word, though

— that's all.'

His note-pad carried a few hastily scrawled words.

'Mushroom — same as yesterday, but confirmed.'

Helen was standing by the outer door of the basement when he emerged. She said, 'Mr Duggan and Mr Fairclough want to see you. They said they'd wait till you were through with whatever… '

'Get them to my office, and quick.' And he was past her, hurrying along the corridor, not waiting for the lift, attacking the broad central staircase, three steps at a time.

From among the crowd by the mobile tea trolley Famy watched McCoy. The Irishman stood in front of the high wooden board that gave out the destinations and the times of the trains from Waterloo Station. He was wearing the right clothes — shirt correct, draped coat correct, sign correct. Nervous, that was as it should be. Not furtive, but anxious. Passengers swayed round the fair head of the Irishman as he swept the concourse, searching for recognition, and his contact. While he waited Famy reflected that this was a completely new departure for him. He had had no contact with foreign groups in the camp: older, more influential men in the movement had, but not Famy.

If it had happened as planned, Bouchi would have been the one to go forward. But Bouchi was in a morgue.

Famy drank his tea, his hands scalded through the fragile side of the plastic cup. His eyes were never far from the Irishman, but intermittently they strayed to take in the rest of the concourse, watching for any other man who might linger overlong. He took many minutes to be satisfied, then began to make his way forward.

He moved deftly, picking his way through the running commuters, avoiding confrontation. McCoy saw him some fifteen feet away, and stiffened. This time it was the Irishman whose breathing came a little faster. His contact was just a few seconds away — a slightly-built figure, with dark chocolate skin, short, well-groomed hair and brightly dressed. A stranger, something separate. McCoy watched him roll his hips and sway past the mass, saw the head turn once for reassurance and look behind, and then he was close, and pausing, and then speaking.

'The mushrooms are — ' Famy broke off. 'I think you are here to meet me?' There was a questioning in his voice.

The word they had told him to say, how stupid and idiotic it sounded, spoken by a grown man in the chaos of a railway station.

McCoy just said, 'Come on. No need to hang about.

Let's move.' Then, as an afterthought, 'You speak English, understand English?'

Famy nodded. Like all these British, they never believed anyone knew anything but themselves. McCoy was on the move, the Arab half a step behind him. The Irishman pushed a path for himself toward the steps that led down to the bus station in the street below. Almost out into the open again, he shortened his stride and said over his shoulder, 'Where are the others?' it is just me,' said Famy.

There was a tint of suspicion in the way McCoy tilted his head towards the other man. 'That's not what they told me,' he rapped out staccato. 'They said there'd be three of you. They told me I'd meet three men.' it is just me,' repeated Famy.

'What's happened to change it?' McCoy hissed the question, hurrying again now, confused.

'Read your papers of today. Read of the events in northern France. When you have done that it is simple.'

McCoy shook his head, his lack of comprehension overwhelming. They were standing at the bus stop, the street ill-lit from the lights above. Famy went on, 'There was a shooting, at a road block. Yesterday in the early. hours.

My friends did not survive, only myself.'

McCoy turned round fast, his body close to Famy.

Shorter than the Arab, he looked up into his face. 'Dead?' the one word, very quietly.

'They did not survive,' said Famy. is it called off, then, it it over? Finished, the plan?'

McCoy was speaking fast, but trying to keep his voice suppressed. it is not over. There is no possibility of abandoning the plan. We have been launched. It is not infrequent there should be setbacks. But it is not a thing to talk of here.

Later, we can talk.'

McCoy shrugged. He wanted to say more, but it was difficult against the unfamiliar logic spelled out in the curiously pitched voice of the other man. McCoy noticed he ran his words together — and very precise, very clear.

Like some text book, not natural.

They waited in silence for the approach of the big double-decker bus. What sort of game is this? thought the Irishman. The team shot to pieces, and this little bugger carrying on as if nothing had happened. Daft, bloody mad.

He saw the face of the other man — masked, unemotional

— staring down the road. Out of their bloody minds, this bugger and the ones who set it all up. What can one man, what can two achieve compared with four? Four was the minimum number, all agreed and locked-up, that had been. Should have been more, but for the problems of shifting a bigger group. And now it's halved, and this idiot says it goes on. God Almighty, put some sense into these thick buggers' heads. He mouthed the oaths, silently rolling his tongue round them, savouring and enjoying the words that somehow diluted the anger he felt. When the bus came he motioned with his head that they should take it, and went up the stairs to the top deck. A couple sat half-way, and the two men took the front seats, Famy pushing his grip underneath his knees.

'We can talk up here,' said McCoy.

'There is no problem, my friend,' said Famy, his voice gentle and lilting as he pronounced the words. There was no rush as he spoke, only a calmness. 'We two are sufficient. There is a plan? I was told there was a plan that could be executed. That is correct?' McCoy nodded, numbness setting in along with the knowledge that he was no longer in control, that the tall stranger had taken command, if there is a plan, we can execute it,' said Famy.

He broke off as the bus conductor arrived at their seats.

McCoy paid, and pocketed the thin white paper strips he received in return. Famy went on. 'He is only one man, the one we seek. He will be guarded, but not thoroughly. If we are determined there is no difficulty that can arise.'

There was no more conversation as the bus jolted its way from stop to stop, leaving the heart of London far behind and climbing the hill beyond King's Cross to Islington's Angel. The upper deck filled, taking on the teenagers disgorged from the cinemas. Occasionally McCoy looked sideways at the Arab, and realized that the man who sat beside him showed no interest in the journey, that his eyes never shifted from their relaxed unseeing gaze straight ahead. The bright fronts of restaurants, advertisement hoardings, pin-table arcades, cinema hallways — all passed him by. A group of drunk, noisy West Indians, loud and aggressive, gained no reaction. He's like a train, thought McCoy, on course, all signals green, and couldn't give a damn about anything else. The Irishman tried to put himself into the same situation. New city, contact man he's never met before, close to his target, half the back-up dead behind him, and the bugger doesn't even turn his head. Not a drop of sweat on his head, no perspiration round his balls making his trousers too tight so he has to wriggle for comfort. Just relaxed, as if he's on a coach outing.

The time he had shot the paratrooper was very clear to McCoy. He could recall his nausea as the soldier, in his airborne smock and red beret, had come into sight. He waited so long for him, but when the soldier came he'd hardly been able to focus his eyes down the smooth, crisp barrel of the Armalite. Sweat ran in rivulets under his vest, fashioning freezing paths of movement across his skin.

Then the soldier had called to the sergeant patrolling in front of him, a remark that McCoy had tried to overhear, and in the effort recognized his concentration slipping away. He'd fired then, watched the soldier heave and clutch at himself, seen the disbelief that comes before the pain and death. He sprinted then, fast with the adrenalin pumping through his veins, and for hours afterwards, even in the womb-like safety of the barn where he lay up after missions before returning to the farm, he had panted with the excitement, close to exhilaration, the moment when he had fired. A near-orgasmic movement of release as the butt of the rifle thudded into his shoulder, his finger coiled on the trigger; he could relive it hour after hour.

But this bugger sitting next to him was something different. It's animal when you don't care, thought McCoy, unnatural when you don't feel the tension. Sub-human.

The Irishman had read of these people when they went into Israel. Suicide squads, kamikaze, there to kill and be killed. Take the greatest possible number with you. He had seen the pictures on the television of them training with the explosive packs strapped round their waists.

Madness, or motivation — McCoy didn't know which.

And the man beside him with the vacant, contented eyes — would he be one of them? Had to be, didn't he? Could be certain of that. One of the hard, mean bastards.

'We get off here. Next stop,' said McCoy. The two men gripped the backs of the seats as they made their way down the centre of the bus to the staircase. They waited by the top step till the bus had come to a halt. On the pavement they began to walk, Famy fractionally behind McCoy. After a hundred yards McCoy turned left, then realized the Arab was not beside him. He turned and saw him pressed against the wall of the pub on the corner.

Bloody play-acting, said McCoy to himself, and walked on. He'd gone another fifty yards before the running feet caught him up. The explanation was not slow in coming.

'Makes certain we are not being followed. To wait a moment at a corner when one goes on. The tail will hear the feet, and have to keep going. That way you spot him.

Nobody is following,' said Famy.

The street was made up of four-storey Victorian terraced houses. Up to fifty years ago these were middle-class homes, complete with maid and cook to work in the basement kitchens and to sleep in the attic bedrooms; expensive and sought-after. But those families had long since abandoned the houses as ghostly, costly white ele-phants, and fled to the cheaper, more territorially secure suburbs. The houses had disintegrated into flatlets owned by landlords who lived far from the premises. McCoy stopped outside a house at the far end of the street.

'Just a word of explanation,' he said. 'We thought about this a fair bit where we were to hole up. We've tried to find quite a new territory this time. None of the haunts our people use, the regular dormitories. It's what we call a

"commune" here. Young people, who just couldn't give a fuck for it all and drop out, absolve themselves of the rat race, they say. This place is up for sale, one property owner selling to another, and it's sitting empty. The kids have moved in, taken over, till there's an eviction order, till they get chucked out. But it's safe, safe for us. People come and go at all hours of the day and night. Nobody asks any questions. Just don't get involved with them — don't ask questions, don't give answers. Just keep to yourself, and no one will bother you. I've got them to clear a room for us, when I thought there were four. Just don't let them bother you, and remember, nobody gives a damn who you are here.'

They walked up the paving steps to the front door.

McCoy pushed the handle and the door swung open. They were met with a flood of hard-rock, shrieking music.

Inside the diplomatic bag sent out of the embassy that night was a cryptic note, in code and in a high-security sealed envelope. It would be flown the next morning to a North African capital. Upon receipt the envelope would be transferred again to Beirut. A telephone call would then be made to the newspaper offices of Al Nahar. The call would be person-to-person from the commercial secretary of the embassy in the Lebanese capital to a particular writer. The message that the man code-named 'Saleh Mohammed' was now in London would then be just a drive from the camouflaged tent of the leader of the PFLP-General Command. By Sunday evening he would be aware that his plan was still in motion.

Under the harsh fluorescent light the files in front of the three men who sat round the desk had begun to thicken.

Every half-hour or so Helen would bring in the mugs of coffee on which the department seemed to exist. The men's jackets were off, their ties were loosened at the collars and their hair dishevelled. Twice the secretary had been called in to type out assessments, handed her without word by Jones. They were all tired now, weary from the strain that had begun more than twelve hours earlier, but aware that no sleep could be taken until the next day's plan was prepared.

Jones knew the danger of exhaustion, had seen it sap men, make them vulnerable. That's how it had been in the war, the last half dozen raids before the end of a tour, but he'd been little more than a boy then. More than thirty years later, and close to the decreed age of retirement, the similar work load was still expected of him. But there was no way around it. No point in mobilizing the forces at their disposal — police, detectives, army — not until there was a plan, something for the masses to do. And that was the problem that he knew confronted him: to find the shape of the threat. Then, and only then, could the big battalions be drawn in. He'd begun to wonder more frequently what retirement would be like, how he'd feel the day after they'd given him the silver pen, or the cut-glass decanter set, or the shining gardening kit: no train to get on in the morning, no conferences to prepare for, no problems… he didn't know whether he would welcome it or not. But irrelevant that night.

Past midnight Jones dialled the home number of the Director General. It was rare for him to be called at home, let alone at that hour. To the head of the department, one of the triumvirate who sat on the Joint Intelligence Committee, Jones spoke with deference. He sketched through the outline of the papers that confronted them. The taped conversations, the identification and background of McCoy, the arrival and rendezvous with the unknown man, the Israeli warning. The 'DG' liked his briefs kept short, and listened without interruption as he sat pyjama-clad on the side of his bed, his wife of thirty-one years asleep beside him.

'Suggestions?' the DG asked at the other end of the line.

'Perhaps you could come in tomorrow morning, sir,'

Jones replied. 'Have a conference with us. Then I think we should meet Special Branch with a view to hunting the Irishman. The Israeli security attache will have to be brought in — get the lines buzzing a bit on the newcomer.

We'll have to do a card check on airports and ferries, though that will probably narrow down simply to the Channel ports. This Israeli professor comes on Monday, in the afternoon. There's not a lot of time.'

'Right. Thank you, Jones.' The winds on the Sussex Downs wrapped round his house, the central heating was long off, cut on the arrival of spring. The DG shivered. 'I'll be in a bit after eight. Give me a few minutes, then the three of you come in at eight-thirty. Get some sleep in the meantime.' He rang off.

Jones repeated the instructions. Duggan and Fairclough shuffled their papers together.

'Not worth making much of a move at this time of night,' said Duggan. 'I'll doss down in the office.' Fairclough agreed. As they were leaving Helen came in, alerted by the scraping of the chairs on the lino fringe of the carpet.

'What time in the morning?' She said it casually, matter-of-fact.

'Eight-thirty, my love. We're seeing "DG". You might as well make it then. Far to go tonight? Or Jimmy's, is it?

He's the lucky man?'

There was no trace of a blush, just a light laugh. 'Jimmy said he'd sit up, make me some cocoa.'

Lucky bugger, thought Jones. 'Tell lover-boy not to burn the candle too hard. Might be needing him before too long. All fit and fighting fresh. Tell Jimmy that.'

And she was gone, leaving him with the task of setting up the canvas and metal bed — that fitted so snugly when collapsed into the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet, and which took such an age to make sleep-worthy.