The Network

2

I am not sure how much time passes, whether I’ve lost consciousness, or whether I’ve been drugged. My right eye, because my left has swollen shut by now, opens as if into a tunnel running beneath a long row of lights with metal shades, some of which are unlit. The floor on which I’m lying on my side is concrete and the walls are wooden. I have the impression it’s dark outside but I can’t say why. Remembering the long structures I passed earlier, I eliminate tunnel and barn and decide on chicken farm, disused. A rank smell supports my guess. Turning my head slowly, because it hurts too much when I try to move my eyes, I now see the man whose face appeared at the door of the aircraft during my ill-fated attempt at flight, which has imprinted itself on my memory with extra clarity. He’s squatting beside me in scuffed Timberlands, black denim jeans and a brown leather jacket with a belt which he’s had the presence of mind to keep off the floor.

‘Wakey wakey,’ says the Face in a tone of perverse intimacy. South London accent, I’m guessing. He’s watching me closely for any reaction, which is perhaps his training and suggests the shrewd observational skills of the streetwise. ‘Looks like our stunt pilot here is in need of a bit of refreshment,’ he says. Then, more loudly, and without taking his eyes from mine, ‘Billy, get the man some refreshment.’ There is a scraping noise behind me from a second face which I’ve not yet seen. ‘Do you fancy that, Mr Stunt Pilot? A nice bit of tucker to warm you up after all your recreational activities?’

Food would be good, but I say nothing. This is a dance in which I and my captors will make our chosen moves. The sing-song in the Face’s voice is calculated to provoke.

‘Cat’s got his tongue,’ says the Face. ‘Shame about your flight plan being denied. Who’s that actor who’s a pilot? You look a bit like him. Is it John Travolta? Billy,’ he calls to whoever is behind me, ‘who’s that actor who’s always flying around in his own private jet? Isn’t it John Travolta?’ He stands and takes a few steps backwards.

‘Fuck knows,’ mutters Billy, who at the moment of replying is preparing to throw a bucket of cold water over me, which he now does. His heavy northern accent registers simultaneously with the shock of the water.

‘Sorry about that,’ says the Face, squatting down again. ‘Ran out of hot.’

My hands are tied behind my back and I cannot wipe the water from my eyes. I want to tell him this. I’m just able to tilt my head to allow a few drops to fall from my eyebrows onto my tongue, which is enough to moisten the inside of my mouth, but not more. He sees me shivering.

‘Chilly, isn’t it? Catch your death lying on a cold floor like that. Shall we get you up? Stretch your legs a bit?’ He studies my face with an exaggerated look of enquiry. ‘You can even have a go at me and Billy if you want. Get your blood going a bit. Fancy your chances?’

He raises his fists in a pantomime boxer’s stance.

‘Because we’re going to get you up now, and if you do fancy your chances,’ he says, opening the left side of his jacket to show me the paddle holster on his belt with the SIG Sauer pistol in it, ‘if you really do, we’ll shoot you. You alright with that?’

He looks up and nods towards Billy, who is behind me cutting through the plastic cable tie on my wrists. The relief is indescribable. I bring one arm over my body and the other from under me and squeeze my hands together to ease the pain in them.

‘Get up, cunt,’ says Billy in a matter-of-fact tone. I feel two strong hands pulling me up. The Face stands and steps back while Billy, who’s the larger of them, does the lifting. As I come to my feet, I lean on him more than I need to, partly to get the measure of his strength and partly to appear weaker than I am. The Face spots this ploy in an instant, and circles round me like a hyena whose prey isn’t quite dead yet.

‘Oh look, he’s feeling faint. Shall we put him back on the floor and tie him up again? Maybe something in his mouth this time? Billy? See if you can find a dead rat, can you?’ A sudden lethality enters his voice. ‘Don’t fuck around with us, soldier boy.’

So he knows I was in the army, I register, which means that my identity is known. It’s a mistake on his part, I can’t help thinking, and this error, however small, gives me a feeling akin to hope. It means these people are fallible, human. Billy is manhandling me meanwhile, spreading my arms against the wall and kicking my ankles away from it, so that I’m leaning forward like a man about to be frisked.

‘Now give the man his nice hat,’ says the Face.

Billy obliges by putting a white pillowcase over my head. I am thus deprived of any chance to observe my surroundings, but the warmth of my own breath on my face is a comfort which they can’t guess at. I’m also able to move my face without being observed. To flex my eyebrows, gauging thereby the extent of the wound to my eye, brings a feeling of secret victory. It doesn’t last. The stress position is an innocent-looking technique designed to reduce to nothing what little reserves are left to an exhausted man. After lying on the cold ground with my hands tied, the first few minutes are a relief. But soon I feel the strain on my wrists and ankles, especially where they’ve been kicked, and the pain begins to spread.

The urge to move my limbs becomes irresistible. I want first to let my head drop and relax my neck. Billy has evidently been left in the room to make sure I don’t do this. Whenever my head begins to fall, I hear his northern charm from behind me.

‘Fucking head up, cunt.’

I comply, not from fear of him but so as not to give any impression of defiance. If I show no reaction, I am winning, because I am overcoming my wishes, which requires a measure of control. I cannot change the world, but I have a tiny degree of control over my reactions, which, however infinitesimally, does have an influence on events. I must guard this control. I have been taught that in small choices great consequences are often hidden.

My second wish is to bring my legs closer together to reduce the feeling that I’m sinking into the ground, like a sagging beam which is beginning to split under its own weight. Billy is trained to notice this too.

‘Fucking legs apart,’ is his way of putting it. The third time I shift my legs he comes over and kicks my ankles to increase the distance between them, and then slaps the back of my head down for good measure.

‘Fucking head up, I said. You fucking deaf, or what?’

And before too long, after what is commonly called an eternity, not only am I unable to keep my head up for more than a few seconds at a time, but my legs are beginning to tremble with fatigue. Only slightly at first, but visibly later on. Twice my legs simply buckle under me as I fall asleep before righting myself by reflex, and it is perhaps this indication I won’t last much longer that prompts the arrival of a third and unfamiliar voice to enter my deprived world. I cannot hear it distinctly, but I think the words are ‘Take that off, for God’s sake,’ and the tone is more smoothly modulated and unexpectedly deep.

I hear the calculated cheeriness of the Face near my ear.

‘You still in there, Captain?’ The pillowcase is pulled off my head. ‘Nice bit of fresh air for you. All the comforts of home. Don’t say we don’t look after you. Have a seat, there’s a good fellow, and say hello to the CO.’

The Face leads me by the arm towards a folding chair with a torn plastic seat placed several feet from a table where a man in uniform is sitting. He does not look up as I am steadied into the chair but with my good eye I can make out his jumper, the three pips on each shoulder that identify him as a captain, and the rose and laurel cap badge on his distinctively coloured beret that identifies the regiment to which he belongs.

‘Get this over with quickly and you can have that eye seen to,’ he says in a quiet but firm tone. I cannot help but feel, after my treatment by the Face and his friend Billy from up north, a kind of kinship with this fellow officer, but dare not let my hopes rise. I must bring myself to a state of indifference, of greyness, as H would call it. Each breath brings a sharp pain into my side and I am at the edge of total exhaustion. My head falls forward.

‘Head UP,’ screams Billy from behind me at the top of his voice. My head jerks up in reflex, and this is when I notice that the three pips on the officer’s rank slides are not identical. One is a crown. He is not a captain but a full colonel. My mind is struggling to understand the significance of this. Military protocol dictates that only an officer of equal or senior rank may interrogate another officer, but the sight of such a senior officer is disturbing me.

He unscrews the cup of a Thermos, fills the cup, drinks from it and puts it down beside a trio of files. I can smell the coffee. Perhaps the visual metaphor is a deliberate one, calculated to weaken me.

‘Can you confirm that you are Captain Anthony Hugh Taverner, 1st Battalion, Scots Guards, latterly SO3/E2 in Kuwait City serving under the Joint Services Interrogation Wing?’

The big four to which H referred are name, rank, serial number and date of birth. But since they seem to know this and more, I see no reason to speak. Even were I to confirm my identity, I don’t know how it would help him, since I haven’t been in the army for nine years and service law is inapplicable to me as a civilian.

‘Ah,’ he exclaims, as if my silence itself has given him the answer he requires. ‘Nemo me impune lacessit. Good show at Tumbledown, but I suppose that’s before your time.’

The colonel knows my regimental motto and its battle honours, which suggests a level of personal knowledge, or research, which makes me uncomfortable. One of the files is a familiar red colour, and I wonder if it’s my 108, record of service from my stint with the Green Team. I dread to think. He’s probably got eyewitness statements from the Thursday nights in Abbots and a menu from the Roast Seagull Chinese restaurant in Ashford.

He purses his lips pensively.

‘Are you going to co-operate, Taverner? We won’t need long if you are. I expect you’d like to get home, as would I. What’s your answer?’

His apparent sincerity is like a lifeline towards which I’m tempted to reach. I must assume it is all part of his plan, although what the overall purpose is I can’t yet guess. I’m almost disappointed at the ridiculousness of the charade – the semblance of a military interrogation, as if the trappings and manners of an authority to which I once bowed will intimidate me into compliance. I am wondering who has concocted this infantile scheme when the colonel speaks again.

‘In case you think you’re not in the army any more, you are.’ He looks directly at me, without expression, then down again. ‘I have here your additional duties commitment document, dated 17 March. That is your signature, isn’t it?’ He holds up a piece of paper that appears to confirm this. But I haven’t signed any such document and my mind is starting to turn in tighter circles now. The only document I put my signature to a month ago is the paperwork handed to me by Seethrough at Vauxhall Cross, which I took to be the Official Secrets Act. But now I begin to wonder if I’ve been deceived, which is, I remind myself, the prerogative of the service to which Seethrough so proudly belongs. I must escape from this anxiety or at least find a way to regulate it. It is time to give voice to my chosen mantra, as recommended by H.

‘I can’t answer that question. Sir.’ To speak brings relief.

‘Ah. So you do talk.’

And now I recall Seethrough’s joke at the moment I was about to look over the pages. More draconian than before, he’d said, or something like it. I’d thought it strange at the time: you only sign Section 5 of the OSA once, because it’s for life. Was his joke to distract me from looking too closely at the pages? Is it possible that I’ve been tricked into signing a document that makes me accountable under military law? Is it possible that everything that has preceded this moment has been a set-up? That the op in Afghanistan is no more than a ploy? Or have I been tricked into thinking that I’ve been tricked? Doubt is stalking me now. But perhaps that is the colonel’s job: to feed my doubt.

‘Always read the small print, isn’t that what they say?’ He says this almost to himself.

I tilt my head back to get a better look at him from under the swelling ridge of my eyebrow. Would he bother, I’m wondering now, with such a throwaway line if he didn’t mean it?

He drives home his attack. ‘In that case, I must caution you under Section 52 of the Armed Forces Act, “whereby a charge may be heard summarily if the accused is an officer below the rank of lieutenant colonel, and if the accused is subject to service law”. Which you are, Taverner. Offences that may be dealt with at a summary hearing include any offence under Section 13, Contravention to Standing Orders, Section 30, Allowing Unlawful Release of Prisoners, and Section 42, Criminal Conduct. I remind you also that a court martial has jurisdiction to try any service offence under Section 328, Giving False Answer During Enlistment in a Regular Force. And in case you want to drag things out in the hope that someone’s going to swoop from the heavens to rescue you, I remind you also that any review of custody may be postponed if the person in service custody is being questioned and the commanding officer is satisfied that an interruption of the question would prejudice the investigation. In your case, the first review of your custody here will be in ninety-six hours. Are you with me, Taverner? Ninety-six hours can be a long time.’

Now, for the first time, I am beginning to feel uncertain as to the true purpose of our encounter. It is paradoxical that this unextraordinary-looking man with his precise gestures and his even tones evokes more distress in me than any of the threats of violence from his more theatrical subordinates. But that is the interrogator’s art. I have seen a few of them. The best never have to lay a finger on their charges to bring about a state of total compliance, a fact of which I am now reminded.

The colonel looks down at the file again, as if disappointed. His lips are pursed and he’s nodding to himself. I wonder how much of the material is genuine, or whether the pages really belong to someone else’s file. I recognise the interrogator’s ‘file and dossier approach’, used to convince a prisoner that everything about him is known and recorded.

‘Allow me to take you back nine years to Kuwait.’ He has my attention, such as I can summon. ‘You were detailed with confinement of Cat 1 PW number,’ he looks down, ‘LBN428571, better known as Elias Rashid Gemayel, were you not? I know, you can’t answer the question. So let me answer it for you. You’re E2 ops officer with the Joint Forward Interrogation Team tasked with assessing said internee’s IP and drafting relevant TIRs. Coming back to you?’

‘I can’t answer that question.’

‘Can’t answer it, sir.’

I have forgotten the army’s obsession with acronyms and abbreviations. It’s another language. E2 is my function as an extra-regimentally employed officer with the JFIT, IP is the prisoner’s intelligence potential, and a tactical interrogation report is what an ops officer, on occasion, is tasked to write up after an interrogation has taken place.

‘Would you like to describe for me your relationship with Gemayel? You gave him a high co-operation level, low potential intelligence rating. Which is strange, don’t you think? Did you imagine all the effort that went into finding him was just for fun?’ He allows himself a pause, during which he takes a sip of coffee. ‘You liked him, didn’t you? Your words, not mine,’ he remonstrates, as if I’ve challenged him on the point.

There had been no reason to dislike him. He had been scooped up in Kuwait City by 14 Int after a tip-off. It was near the end of hostilities, and he’d been brought to the EPW facility for priority processing. We’d rained so much high explosive onto the length and breadth of Iraq that the war was about to end with spectacular speed, and technically Gemayel hadn’t been an enemy prisoner of war at all. He was later classed as a civilian internee and given private but secure quarters. Despite the circumstances, our sessions were friendly. Gemayel was a Lebanese Arab, whose mother had been Christian before her marriage. He was pushing fifty, an educated and cultured man with a sense of humour. He claimed to have been visiting relatives in the city when the war had started, and I had no reason to doubt his story. In the course of our interviews we’d talked about Lebanese food and wine, and the literary outputs of Gibran and Naimy. But a week after his arrival his interviews were taken over by a team from a newly formed unit I’d never even heard of. They wore civilian clothes and concealed sidearms, and their treatment of him grew too harsh for my liking. As E2 and translator I was obliged to be present, and after several days of seeing him manhandled and deprived of food I protested that under the definitions of the Geneva Convention his treatment was inhumane. I’d brought him cigarettes in his room and urged him to tell his interrogators what they needed to know. He’d always dismissed my suggestions with a mirthless laugh, claiming they would never give up. They will come for me, he said. I never understood what he’d meant. But this should all be ancient history, I’m thinking. This was all cleared up years ago.

‘Let’s go on, then,’ says the colonel. ‘On the morning of 9 February the facility is breached by persons unknown whose intention, you purport, is to kidnap Gemayel.’

Purport? My left eye protests as the muscles try to open in surprise. ‘Persons unknown’ is a commando team with explosives and automatic weapons, the ammunition for which is later shown to be Israeli. They didn’t come for a tea party, I want to say. Unless they were planning to have one in a corridor of a prison facility filled with smoke from the plastic explosive they’d used to blow Gemayel’s door off its hinges while their screaming victim was being dragged out by his hair. Purport?

‘Let me ask: at the time when the facility was breached, what were your actions on in the event of a security failure? After the cessation of hostilities on 7 February were they not to issue a verbal challenge to any intruder? And did you issue a verbal challenge to the intruder?’

‘I can’t answer that question, sir.’ Because it’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard.

‘You did not.’

Of course I fucking did not. When a man points an automatic weapon at you, you don’t engage him in conversation.

‘You shot and killed him instead. You fired eight rounds from your weapon into him.’ The colonel takes a sip of coffee. ‘There are some people – I’m not saying I’m one of them – who are still unhappy about that. There’s a family in Tel Aviv without a father, and there are people who want to know more about your motives that morning.’

Motives? He’s pushing all my buttons now. My motives were to save my own life and prevent my prisoner from being kidnapped. There has never been any doubt about this – until now. I’ve relived the scene often enough. Relived the trauma, relived the debriefs, relived the guilt, relived the questions that cannot be answered.

The assault team hadn’t expected to be challenged. They had planned for the guards at the entrance to the facility, who were disarmed and held at gunpoint at the outset of the raid, but not for two extra armed officers inside, who should have been quartered on the other side of the compound. I had slept in my office in my clothes after a late night of writing up reports, and across the corridor my best friend and fellow E2 had done the same. The first we knew of the raid was when the door to Gemayel’s cell was blown open with charges to the hinges and locks. I tripped the emergency lighting and ran with my weapon to the prisoners’ rooms, where the air was thick with shouts and smoke.

It didn’t look like a tea party. I raised my Browning towards the figure in black who was dragging Gemayel out of his room. His weapon came up as he saw me, but for reasons I will never know he hesitated, allowing me in his second of doubt to fire. I kept firing until he went down. His partner returned a long burst from an automatic weapon from beyond him and I was forced back into cover. My friend and 2i/c had come out of his room before me and received a rifle butt in his face before he could reach his weapon. He was taken with Gemayel, and had never been found. At our debrief all the facility personnel signed extra secrecy clauses and the event was sealed up tighter than radioactive waste.

End of story, Colonel, I want to say. Don’t drag me back there now. Because this wasn’t the kind of conflict I signed up for in any case. Not for the frenzied slaughter by American jets of the retreating Iraqis at the Mutla Gap, not for the fuel-air bombs that sucked the lungs and eyes out of their victims, or the conscripts bulldozed alive into their trenches, or the depleted uranium that’s poisoned the desert for a thousand years, and not for the disappearance of my best friend. Don’t drag me back to that.

‘I have to tell you,’ the colonel continues, ‘there are those who think you might have got just a bit too friendly with your prisoner. They think you might have struck a deal with him. Did you strike a deal with him, Taverner?’

It’s an abhorrent suggestion, but it’s getting me where it hurts. It is so perversely twisted a suggestion that I’m wondering if an equally twisted deal has been struck in which I’m the scapegoat, and am filled with misery at this possibility. I can’t think about it now. But the colonel isn’t letting up.

‘What did you agree? Agree to defend him? Fight off his kidnappers? Kill a Jew or two? Or were you just going to ask them to go away back to Israel? Because if it’s found to be that, you’re looking at an increase in sentence for Racial Aggravation, Section 240. That is unless you’re charged with Unlawful Killing, Section 42, which carries up to a life sentence. Do you want to talk about it now, sort it out? Or do you want to play the hero and go to prison? You will go to prison. Do you want to go to prison?’

‘I can’t…’ Just breathe. ‘I can’t answer…’ Breathe. ‘That question. Sir.’

My eyes are closed now. From another room comes the scraping sound of someone getting up from his chair. It’s the Face and he’s back to escort me to my place against the wall.

‘Nice chat with the colonel?’ I hear him ask. ‘Oh dear, was he a bit hard on you? Speaking strictly personally, it sounds to me like you’re fucked. Right, hats on, everybody.’

And I’m back against the wall with the pillowcase over my head now, wondering if there really is an Israeli unit claiming its pound of flesh for the accidental death of one of its commandos. The colonel’s report will set the tone for everything that follows, and I’m not co-operating. But it’s too much effort now to think this through. My mind is grinding to a halt like a film that’s being slowed down, and it’s frame by frame now.

‘Shall we try a bit of white noise on him, Billy?’

I shudder in anticipation, and not being able to see amplifies my fear.

‘Put it right by his ear and turn it on.’

I hear their bodies drawing near and wonder how I’ll cope. Then I hear a strange sonorous whine by my ear and realise after a few seconds that it’s Billy, whistling a tuneless rendition of ‘Rule Britannia’.

‘That’s torture, that is,’ says the Face, and they both burst into heartless guffawing.

I am falling asleep. My legs buckle several times, but Billy is always there to offer his own special encouragement. Twice I collapse, but he’s there to pick me up and remind me, in his own way, that I’m messing him around and he’s not fucking having any more of this shit from me. The pillowcase comes off again and I look up at him out of one eye. He towers over me and seems monstrously large. I doubt if I will take much more. My body does not co-operate any longer. Billy hauls me into the chair, and the colonel is waiting patiently for me. I no longer care whether he is really a colonel or not. Something has gone badly wrong but I don’t know what. They can’t treat me like this.

‘Let’s talk about Afghanistan,’ he says, turning a few pages in the file. Someone has given him a brief and accurate history of my two years with the Trust in Kabul, and I wonder who. I make a note that I must find out how, then wonder if I really care. He asks me who I met there, and he lists names I have never heard, over and over again. Some of them are Arab names, some Afghan. He asks in turn whether I met them, and whether, to use his stupid expression, I ‘went native’ in the course of my time in Afghanistan. Whether I met Abdullah Salafi in Kabul. Ahmad Popalzai in Kandahar. Khalil Razzaq in Herat. Someone else in Jalalabad. He describes their crimes, of which I lose track because I’m not hearing much of what he’s saying any more.

And I’m not hearing him because I’ve found what I wanted now. I’m walking across the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen, in the region of the Shibar Pass, on the high slopes above Bamiyan, where the light dispels all the ugliness of the world and cuts into the soul with a clarity I’ve never seen anywhere else. We’re walking because our vehicle has finally given up and there’s no radio contact with Kabul because of the mountains. We can’t walk out through Bamiyan because there’s fighting there and Salahuddin my driver is a Hazara and the Taliban will kill him. We head for Hajigak to the south instead and hope for the best, living off a few strips of Afghan bread for three days. Then, on the fourth day, Salahuddin quietly produces something from his bag which surprises all three of us because we thought there was no more food. He unwraps a roast chicken from what looks like a bundle of rags.

Billy props me up against the wall because it’s obvious I can’t stand any more, and takes off the pillowcase.

In size it’s more like a pigeon than a chicken, and it’s obviously led a hard but honourable life, like most Afghans, and there’s barely more than a mouthful for each of us. Salahuddin divides it up reverently after uttering a Bismillah over the miserable carcass, and we eat it together, listening to the distant gunfire and explosions coming from the valleys where the Taliban are killing Salahuddin’s Hazara relatives, making us wonder whether we’ll get out of the mountains alive. The flesh has a smoky flavour that comes from the wood it’s been cooked over, and it’s the most delicious meal I’ve ever had. I’m savouring it now for the second time, picking the flesh from the bones and sucking on them until they’re smooth, and the satisfaction is indescribable. And I realise that my satisfaction has been transmitted to my face, because Billy is looking into it with a puzzled expression, asking me what the fuck is so funny. He cannot know that I am eating a chicken and, despite everything, taking more pleasure in it than he can possibly imagine.

And now all I know is that I have been alone for a long while in my ill-lit tunnel, and Billy and the Face are striding towards me with a new look of determination on their faces. Whatever is coming next, I have had enough. Nemo me impune lacessit. Or to put it more colloquially, nobody fucks with me and gets away with it. I will put my elbow into Billy’s groin, headbutt the Face and sink my teeth into whatever part of him I can. Then I will take his pistol and get away, because I have no reason to believe, Section 29, ‘that this custody is lawful’.

I’m being lifted up on both sides, but not roughly this time.

‘Come on, Captain,’ says the Face in a tone I haven’t heard before. ‘Let’s get you in your carriage before it turns into a pumpkin.’ The hostile banter has dropped clean out of his voice, and the effect on my plan is disarming. His voice is real. My feet are dragging under me. I pass through another smaller room and then outside into darkness and feel the cold air on my face. Hands manoeuvre me into the back of a car, where I lie on my side and the pain in my rib flares up and leaves me gasping. The engine is running.

‘Jesus, what have they done to you?’ Through the drunkenness of exhaustion, I recognise the voice.

‘I cannot answer that question,’ I mumble.

‘Turn that heater up now,’ says the voice I recognise. It dawns on me it’s H, who gets into the back of the car, props me up and brings a small hip flask to my lips filled with his blessed Glenlivet. ‘Easy does it,’ he says, ‘end-ex, mate. You’ve done it, you bastard.’ He’s taking off his coat and sliding it behind my back and over my shoulders. ‘What d’you say we get you home?’

I can’t stop shivering, but there’s an electric warmth spreading across my chest, and I’m so relieved I can’t speak, and upset that I can’t speak. I try to wink at H, but my eye’s already closed, and the effort makes me wince instead. I see the Face come to the rear door, and H lets down the window. The Face rests his arms on the door frame and sighs.

‘All yours, skipper,’ he says. ‘Not a word. Top notch. If he ever gets bored send him over to us, why don’t you?’ Then Billy appears beside him and passes the ziplock bag with my possessions through the window.

‘Give him a fucking fag, then,’ says Billy with a look of outrage. The Face hands Billy a cigarette, who lights it and reaches inside the window to put it in my mouth. The smoke goes straight to my head and makes me dizzy.

‘You can’t whistle for shit, Billy,’ I tell him.

‘And you’re a stubborn cunt, and all,’ he replies. And Billy is grinning from one side of his face to the other, like a boy who’s made a new friend.

I sleep a whole day and a night, and wake up in the unreal luxury of a clean and warm bed. H has brought the local doctor to me, who doesn’t normally make house calls, but the two of them go back a while by the look of it. It’s not the first time he’s been to the house to look at a minor injury that’s never been properly explained by its owner.

‘You have been in the wars,’ says the doctor as he looks me over.

‘Only two, actually,’ I say.

He tells me there’s not much to do for a cracked rib except patience and painkillers, which will also bring down the swelling in my eye and left hand. My eye gets a butterfly suture and a wry suggestion to stay away from doors.

Hot water feels like a miracle, and the breakfast that H cooks is worth any lottery win. After we eat, H asks if I’m ready for a debrief. He gets out one of his laminated maps and points out the crossroads where I stopped to get petrol, and the place where I began my night-time escape. We find the ridge where I woke up, and we find the village of Shobdon and the airfield where my travels came to an end.

‘What I don’t understand is how you knew I was at the airfield,’ I say.

‘Clever that,’ he says with a knowing smile. ‘Where’d I put your jacket?’ He retrieves it and goes to work on the stitches of the collar with his penknife, extracting a thin piece of black plastic the size of a large stamp with a six-inch-long tail of fine wire. It dawns on me that I never really had a chance to escape my pursuers after all.

‘Tracker,’ he says, tossing it in his palm. ‘A bit sneaky beaky. Used to use these all the time Over The Water. We were going to let you go a lot longer, but we couldn’t have you nick a plane. Nice idea, though.’ He grins. The airfield is where the Regiment has been known to practise what he calls hot exfils, which is Regiment-speak for getting people like H in or out of countries where there isn’t much time to socialise, and involves driving a Range Rover at high speed on or off the ramp of a moving Hercules aircraft, which H calls a Fat Albert. He doesn’t know why Hercs are called Fat Alberts, he says; they just are.

The place I had my tete-a-tete with the colonel is, as I’ve guessed, an abandoned chicken farm on the periphery of the airfield, and the colonel, he says, really is a colonel with the Green Slime.

‘Arrogant bastard, but a good soldier,’ he concedes. Billy, he tells me, is just a big softie, and the Face, who’s actually called Nick, was the youngest member of Pagoda Troop at the Prince’s Gate hostage rescue.

‘He said he was going to shoot me,’ I tell him.

‘Don’t be daft,’ says H. ‘We’re not allowed to carry weapons. Probably just a water pistol.’ A wink suggests this isn’t the whole story, but I let that go.

‘What about that fucking farmer who tried to kill me?’

‘Old Tom? We knew where you were, so we put him at the bottom of the woods. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Known him for years. Some of the lads practise their OP skills on his farm.’

‘What happened to the dogs?’ I ask, because this has been puzzling me.

‘Dogs?’ he asks. ‘We didn’t have any dogs. Must have been a hunt. Happened to me on my E amp; E once,’ he says, going back to his own selection days. ‘Whole pack of them came swarming over us. I was sure I was going to be Platform 4’d. Scared the life out of me, but a minute later they were all gone.’ He folds up the map. ‘Sorry about all the psycho games. They get quite into it sometimes. Must have liked you.’

‘They don’t know what I’m used to from my ex,’ I say, and the effort to laugh hurts my eye again.

I retrieve the Firm’s magic mobile and bring it to life. There’s a text message waiting which reads int locstat, which is Seethrough’s way of asking where I am and what I’m doing. I call London, activate the encryption and listen to the watery-sounding ringing tone until it stops.

‘This is Plato for Macavity,’ I say.

‘Macavity here. I’m told congratulations are in order. Good show.’

Crisp, to the point and ridiculous as ever.

‘You’ve got some travelling coming up. Be here on Saturday, can you? We’ll send some transport.’

I have no idea what day it is, but agree.

‘Did you really try to steal an aircraft?’ he asks.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, don’t make a habit of it. And don’t let this go to your head.’

‘Roger that,’ I say.

But it won’t be easy.