Traitor's Kiss

…Chapter Nineteen

She heard the message.

Alice listened.

Wickso's voice, laconic, and the brevity of old messages was gone, was clear in her headset.

'Delta 3 calling in to Havoc, whatever number Havoc has. We are on the treeline. Dunes, beach and sea are in front of us. It's lit by flares, all of it, it's bloody midday here. I am with Lofty and Ferret. We have to cross the dunes and the beach, get into the sea, raise the dinghy, then… They've got a heavy machine-gun on us.'

She thought Wickso teased her. He seemed so close, with the sharp edge in his voice, as if he were beside her. He was close, as a crow flew: she remembered the quiet courtesy with which Wickso had passed coffee from his flask, in the farm gateway near Braniewo, when Ham had told her of the failed pickup in the zoo park — Lofty had had his arm round her for comfort. She heard him, crisp in her headset. 'Have to use the dinghy. Have to get over the dunes and the beach… They've a blocking force between us and the frontier — to be expected, actually. We're being squeezed. Well, that's the way it goes…oh, and Locke showed up.'

Her mouth gaped, and then her teeth seemed to chatter. He had said: 'I'm going outside. I'll be gone some little time.' The voice droned on, as if careless to interception. She sat very still, her hands pressed the headphones tight against her ears.

'He sort of pitched up, like it was just before closing time, like this is Last Chance Saloon. Why? Said he'd come to help… We're about to go for the beach. If we get out of the saloon…no, no, when we get out of the saloon, you owe me a drink, ma'am… Going now. Out.'

She clicked to 'Transmit'. She couldn't match the laconic mood in his words. She quavered, 'Received for onward transmission. Anything further, send direct to Havoc 2. Not to me. Change to necessary frequency. Communicate direct with Havoc 2. Out.' She was too shaken, too beaten, to offer her personal encouragement. It would have insulted them, she'd thought fast, to have wished them luck — and luck was already beyond the reach of Billy and Ham. She should not clutter their minds with emotion. Viktor would have been beside Wickso. It would have been unprofessional to ask for the microphone and the headset to be passed by Wickso to Viktor. What to say? 'How's the weather where you are? I love you?' Nothing to say, and if she had heard his voice sharp in the earphones, she would probably have cried — and that would have been unprofessional.

She tipped the earphones off her head and snatched her coat off the chair. She left the door to the kitchen open behind her and as she ran for the back fence she heard its hinges sing in the wind.

She caught her coat on the wire as she scrambled over it. She ran between the trees. When they were on the beach, when they had gone into the water, when the flares lit them and the machine-gun fired on them, there would be no more transmissions. She wanted to see it, the last-chance drink in the saloon. She must be there, must be a witness. It was owed them…

The binoculars rattled in the pocket of her coat, bounced on something. She could not identify what they hit against, and did not care. She reached the path between the trees. A car came behind her and its lights blazed on her. It swerved to pass her, and a man waved cheerfully at her, as if it were not exceptional for a young woman to be stampeding through a dump village, out beyond nowhere, at dawn. She passed the church. The car had stopped there. She saw that the man who had waved to her wore a priest's habit. Should she follow him inside, beg a candle and light a flame for them? She did not break her stride.

She ran towards the dunes and the beach, and in front of her a scrum of cars, casually abandoned, threw down guiding lights.

Alice North ran as if the devils chased her. She was responsible. She had gone to Rupert Mowbray with the transcribed minutes of the meeting. She had worked his vanity, she felt the guilt. She had to be there on the beach to see it finish.

The cool of the wind blustered on her as she came to the dunes' summit. It was where she had shown Gabriel Locke a grave. At the front of the parked cars, where the dunes fell away to the beach and the shore, the engine of a saloon ran, the driver revved it and its lights speared down. She saw the crowd of men and women standing around a low fire. She stumbled in the loose sand of the dunes. The crowd stood in silence. She slowed and walked the last steps to join it, and she saw from the flames the sombre stare in their faces.

Near the fire, beyond the crowd's backs, the gulls pranced and scrapped for fish heads. She wondered if Gabriel Locke would soon be carrion. She didn't know why he had gone out into the night for 'some little time' and what he could do 'to help'.

She saw Jerry the Pole, and the blackened mess of his hand, clenched like a claw, and she followed his eyes down the beach. Where she looked, the beach had an eerie brightness. Flares dispersed the dawn's first shadows and the night's rain mist melted under them. The dunes, the beach and the sea close to the sands were exposed and the light, garish in its intensity, left no cover and no hiding-place.

From the edge of the treeline to the last fall of the dunes was, Wickso estimated, seventy-five metres. The width of the beach from the dunes to the shore where the sea rolled in little ripples then fell back was a further 150 metres. From the surf to the sunken dinghy was an additional 100 metres. Running or swimming, there was no protection. Far out to sea, far beyond the light pools, was the hulk of the ship, and he saw from its bow wave that it came towards them, grey and remote. N

'Who goes first, Wickso, you or me?'

'Not him,' Wickso grinned and looked down at Ferret. 'And can't be Locke…'

Locke murmured something that Wickso barely heard, about 'watching their backs'. He held the Skorpion away from him, as if it might bite.

'…between you and me, Lofty.'

'I'd like to.'

'You go first, then, Lofty.' He unfastened the bleeper from his webbing. It made a shrill repetitive howl, but long blasts. He hooked it on to Lofty's webbing, where it could be seen and heard easily. When Lofty was closer to the dinghy the bleeps would come shorter; when he was over it they would be shortest. 'We'll follow when you get into the water. Two targets. No call to make life easy for them. When we get to you, you'll be under and breaking the bottles. If there was a second way, I'd take it. It's what we've got.'

He heard Locke mutter again about 'covering fire'.

'Look, I didn't ask you to trip along, don't know why you did — just fucking shut up.'

Lofty heaved the launcher into Wickso's lap, then took all the grenades he had from his pouches — there were six left, not that it mattered, and a seventh up the tube. All that had been fired had been wasted. Lofty was off his stomach and seemed to crouch, like a sprinter in the blocks.

'If I don't…'

'Don't even go there, Lofty. That's crap.'

'Yes, yes.'

'You can do it, Lofty, and we're right behind you.'

He saw the tremble of Ferret's body, and his arms seemed to be in spasm; his hands were clasped together as if to break the shaking. It was a quick gesture, meant as kindness: Wickso took Ferret's neck in his hand and squeezed hard. Ferret choked. Give him something else to think about, Wickso reckoned. And he needed it, they all did. It would take Lofty, in the wetsuit, a clear fifteen seconds to reach the beach, then twenty-five to reach the waterline, then he was left with the waifs and strays. He squeezed Ferret's neck again, hurt him some more. Not kindness now, but to ready him.

He barked at Locke, 'You just follow me, stay on my shoulder. I don't hang about for you.'

He felt the fear squeeze his guts worse than he had squeezed Ferret's neck. He had seen Billy and Ham. He knew the hitting power of the machine-gun, and he knew the skill of the man who fired it. The fear cramped his stomach.

Lofty was rocking — waiting for the gun. There was a dullness, a darkening. Two flares down, and another drifting lower to the beach. A gloom spread across the dunes, the sands and the sea.

Wickso snarled, 'For fuck's sake, Lofty, get on with it — or do you want a bloody cup of tea first?'

Lofty was up and the shadows spread on him. He took a first hesitant step away from the trees. He would have heard the whip in Wickso's voice, and perhaps the fear was infectious. The darkness seemed to creep over the open dunes and down on to the beach. He was clear of the trees. To Wickso it was like the crack of the pistol…the flare burst above him, hung, and the light blistered away the shadows. Lofty shambled away from them.

Wickso understood the trick played on them. The flares had been allowed to die. The marksman or the man who directed the marksman wanted them flushed from the trees. The bait was to let the flares fall, to recreate the natural murk, to get them out and unprotected. The brightness, the return of daylight, fell on Lofty. Wickso watched, willed him on. Maybe Lofty had covered a quarter of the ground, gone a quarter of the way across the dunes. Trying to sprint, but not able to because the sand under his feet was soft, giving. He had asked too much of Lofty but, then, too much had been asked of all of them. Lofty was the simple one, the one who was led, the one who raked leaves from graves, Lofty…

He said, emptiness in his voice, 'When we start there is no stopping. You don't stop for me, I don't stop for you. We follow Lofty.'

Lofty had crossed half of the dunes, then there was the open beach where kids in that sunshine might have played. The big man ran and his boots slithered, slid in the giving sand. Wickso pulled Ferret up, and kept a tight hold on his collar. He tensed. Wickso stabbed a backward glance at Locke. He saw a vacant stare. He cleared spit from his dried-out mouth, coughed it. Lofty was going over the edge of the dunes.

'Take him.'

He heard Bikov's voice.

The sight was set for 1200 metres. He had tracked the target for ten seconds, from the moment the target had emerged from the treeline. He had held the target, running but not well, from the flare's burst. The fitness instructors made the conscripts sprint on the loose sand of the dunes by the ruined village of Rybacij. He knew how hard it was to go fast on the dunes. Magnified for him, the target's knees pumped but could not gain good grip. His finger was on the trigger's bar. He paused his breath, squeezed the bar, and the thudding weight pressed into his shoulder. The noise exploded around him.

As he watched the tracer round go, the target went down. The target, in the scope sight, broke its stride, stopped, stood upright, then fell. The target was not pitched sideways, or backwards or forwards; it subsided. The target collapsed. His finger eased from the trigger bar.

Vasiliev said, 'I tell you, Colonel Bikov, there is not another man, not a conscript or an instructor NCO or an officer, who could have hit a moving target at 1200 metres — only me. You have seen me shoot. What am I, Colonel Bikov?'

'You are the best, Igor.'

'The barrel was warm. I did not need the help of the tracer because my first shot was perfect. You will not see better shooting, Colonel.'

'When the last of them makes the run, and Archenko — and they must — I will see better shooting. You are supreme.'

'Did you see, Colonel, that I made what we call a "beaten zone"? It has the shape of a cigar, one that an officer would smoke. Inside the beaten zone of a heavy machine-gun, no target can survive. The "beaten zone" is the margin of error, caused by the shift of the tripod's feet, thirty metres long, two metres wide. When I shoot, anything in the "beaten zone" is dead.'

'I salute you, Igor.'

He heard only the praise heaped on him. He did not take his eye from the sight as he nudged the crosshairs away from the body, black under the bright light, and traversed them back towards the trees, where the target had come from. Had he taken his eye from the sight, twisted his head, let his gaze wander down the line of bullets waiting for feeding into the breech, then he would have seen the eyes of the colonel, and he would have known that they did not match the honey of the words…and had he looked beyond the eyes, where the mortar was set up, he would have seen the anger that misted the faces of the farm-boys and the contempt of the petty officer. He did not. Vasiliev — proud, the exhilaration pounding, the best — did not know he was despised, detested.

As the flare fell, two more were fired. He was his own man. He had no more need of the friendship of Captain, second rank, Viktor Archenko. His excellence was proven. He watched the trees and waited for the last of them to break, and for the glimpse of the white shirt in the crosshairs.

The arm came up. They saw the black sleeve and the hand that was stained with dirt and blood, and it was clenched as if to withstand pain. It was rigid. Wickso couldn't help himself…The arm was raised above a gently rippling lake of grass stems, as if it had been thrust up from deep water and now broke the surface. Wickso wanted to weep.

The arm fell back, as if the water closed over it.

'Give it a minute,' Wickso said.

The treeline was a refuge. While they stayed there, harboured by the pines, they were safe. His mind rambled. He kept his hand on Ferret's shoulder and felt the pounding of the blood in the veins that wound around the upper spine. Locke was behind him, and ignored. He could see all of the dunes and most of the beach and he could see, clear, the water, could make out each small, surging wave. Out beyond the waves and the white caps was the ship. She seemed to come so slowly, and far to the east of her, but coming faster, was a bow wave — bright white in the gloom. If he could see the bow wave, Wickso knew it, they were late, the schedule was gone. The dawn came. He sent a signal.

No frills, no favours — no call-signs, no sign-offs, no chatter. Delta 3 was down, they were going for the dinghy.

The minute was exhausted, and another. Wickso said, 'Just one more minute, get our breath back, then we'll hack it.'

He was thankful he couldn't see Lofty. The waving grass stems, thin and green-yellow, hid Lofty. And more thankful that he couldn't hear Lofty. Wickso knew about death in the field. Lofty, he hoped, was unconscious. If he was still alive, but critically wounded, his pulse rate would be slipping to twenty or thirty, down from sixty to eighty, slipping towards the coma, on the route between life and death, and the coma would stifle what was left of the heartbeat. Lofty, Wickso hoped, was now clinically dead and within twenty minutes — after the creeping brain damage — would be biologically dead. Another minute had gone. He loved Lofty, could have wept for the big, quiet man who was now down on the dunes, hidden by the grass stems.

'We give it one more…'

Ferret turned his head, looked up at him.

'We give it one more minute, do you understand me?' Wickso spoke more slowly, to a child, and held up a single finger. 'One more minute.'

'I understand English. You do not have to speak carefully. I understand everything you say.'

'Sorry. I didn't know. Sorry, sir.'

'I am Viktor — do we have one more minute?'

Behind him, from the side of his vision, Wickso saw that Locke had discarded the Skorpion and his hand now lay on the grenade launcher; he could make out the deep-ploughed shadow lines in Locke's forehead as if he studied it to find a truth.

Locke said, 'You have to go, you don't have one more minute.'

Wickso flared, 'We go when I say we go. We go when I am ready to go. I run this bloody show. We go when I decide it is the right time.'

Locke said, 'You don't have another minute.'

Viktor said softly to Wickso, 'I understand that you are frightened. I am frightened. For three weeks I have been frightened, sometimes beyond control, sometimes within control, but frightened. It does not make you a lesser man. Too much is asked of you. You are the bravest of men…it is better that you acknowledge the fear.'

Locke said, 'Fuck the fear — just get moving.'

Wickso twisted his body. He hit Locke, caught him with a clenched-fist punch to the side of the chin and saw the head jerk back. When the head was back, he hit it again. His third punch split Locke's lip. He was over him and the blows came in a frenzy. Wickso had seen Billy without his leg and Ham without the upper part of his head, and he had seen Lofty's arm raised in the pain spasm. Locke did not fight him and did not cover his face, just stared back, and with his fingers Wickso would have gouged the eyes, but he was pulled off. Viktor held him, smothered him, held his arms tight so that he could not reach Locke's eyes. In front of him was the stretch of the open dunes and the beach that had no cover and the sea where the mist had lifted, and he saw himself magnified in the crosshairs of a gun sight.

Wickso panted, 'We go when I say we go.'

'Victory has many fathers, but defeat is a lonely child.'

Maybe he had read it but he did not know in what volume. Perhaps he had been told it but Bertie Ponsford could not recall when or by whom.

The technician had brought the signal through the glass door dividing the annexe from the Central Communications Unit. Four, five times he read it, willing the words to disappear, change, be erased, 'Delta 3 down.' He could not alter it.

Bertie Ponsford felt the loneliness.

He turned and faced the screen. The outline of a head with no features stared down at him. He was not the best with matters technical. He had been on the courses where senior officers were drilled by hard-faced, patronizing young women, in the arts of electronics. He could manage the Chinagraph pencil that linked to the screen's image — pathetic, really, that he could only manage. He put crude hairs on the head's scalp, and ears. He did not attempt the eyes, because he did not know whether they were tight set or wide, or a mouth. He brought slight life to the opponent, the enemy, but he did not know the man — all he could be certain of was that one of Giles's 'little people' had bested him.

He cleared his table.

Bertie Ponsford thought they played a game, an old man's game. But others had intruded, younger men, who did not know the rules. Younger men had spoiled the pleasure of the game by barging into it. He gathered his papers and files together and placed them in his briefcase.

The technician had his back to him and was deep in a magazine. His going was not noticed. He followed in the footsteps where the Director General had led, where Giles had gone. He justified himself — to cut a firebreak was sensible.

The lift surged him up to the Russia Desk floor. If he hurried he would be clear of the building before the first of the day shift came on. His hurried, heavy footfall clattered down the corridor past the numbered doors, past the noticeboards where holiday lettings were advertised and invitations were posted for players for Sunday morning sports teams and where the in-house orchestra and Light Opera and Dramatic Society advertised, and the newest amendments to health and safety 'in the workplace' regulations were posted, and he swiped his card for entry to his office.

It was all so damnably normal.

To keep it normal, Bertie Ponsford would need a firebreak — a bloody wide one. From the start of the adventure his name had been loud in the minutes. He checked that all of his papers were off his desk and in the safe. Without a firebreak, he would be destroyed. He took down his coat from the stand. It had been a dream. He looked out of the window and saw the early commuters on the Embankment across the river, and the first speeding buses. Whether he survived or whether he was swept away he would never again speak with Rupert Mowbray. He remembered Mowbray's leaving party. All the older men drunk, and all the younger officers eyeing them with embarrassment, or amusement, and the talk had been of the glory days when the writ of the Service ran wide. The decanter and the crystal glasses had been presented, and then — in his cups — Mowbray, moist-eyed, had told them of the worst morning he had experienced in forty years with the Service: the shocked, hushed gloom in the little corner of the Broadway building, when the news had come through of the execution of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. 'Handkerchiefs out, and bottles from cupboards, not a single silly little frightened giggle — like the mourning wake for an esteemed friend. A man of infinite courage lost because we didn't get off our bloody arses or lift a finger for him.' Nobody, then, had told Mowbray he was talking second-class rubbish. Then the talk had gone back to the glory days. Old men jerking off…and he, Bertie Ponsford, was one of them.

He closed the door after him.

Down the length of the corridor he scraped the head of his battery razor across his cheeks, chin and upper lip. By the time the lift dropped him in the atrium, he thought he had made himself passably decent. His last gesture, before the doors opened and exposed him, was to straighten his tie. Crisis? What crisis? Already the first of the day shift were busy swiping for admission. He slipped towards the main entrance.

The cool morning air caught him. The streetlights still burned but the dawn negated their power. The first cars were arriving, being flagged through the outer gates. The early cyclists in their gaudy Lycra kit were dismounting. The stream on foot pressured round him. He stood on the pavement, looked for a taxi.

'Morning, Mr Ponsford,' the voice trilled behind him. 'Off home, then?'

He turned. Clarence beamed at him.

'Yes, off home.'

Clarence winked. 'All done and dusted, is it, Mr Ponsford?'

'Where's my best bet for a taxi?'

'Taxis are always best across the bridge. Been a good night, has it? If it's not impertinent, Mr Ponsford — well done.'

'What do you mean?'

The second wink was heavier, and a grin. 'Just my little joke, Mr Ponsford. The likes of a gentleman such as yourself don't stay overnight unless it's for something worth the sweat — a big, big show, what the Service is about — like old times. No offence.'

He went on his way, far from a spit of sand in the eastern Baltic. He cleared his mind. He would be behind his firebreak when the final message came in, with the phone at home off the hook. He would be in bed, and secure. He would be safe from the fate of Ferret, and from Mowbray's team, and from young Locke, whom madness had caught — not his worry.

He walked briskly up the pavement and began to wave for a taxi. Others could take the strain, were welcome to it.

The problem lay at Piatkin's table.

Military and airforce officers now hustled for space in the operations room, and generals were reported on the road from Kaliningrad. The problem was his — the ship out in territorial waters. He was watched. By default, he had assumed responsibility, but now the weight of it hung on him. Ringing through his mind was the accusation: the failure of security could only have been caused by his incompetence or by his intention. He would rot in premature retirement, or in gaol. In the crowded operations room, the only free space was close to him…the ship. He was told the ship's history, its engine failure in Gdansk and the repairs, its loading, then the repeat failure. He was told it had been boarded, checked, and found to be above suspicion. The ship, named to him as the Princess Rose, was now under power, moving towards the beach, and a patrol-boat closed on it. The commander of the patrol-boat demanded instructions. Many times Vladdy Piatkin checked the chart map. As a zampolit attached to the Baltic Fleet he had a rudimentary knowledge of naval affairs, but it was just that, rudimentary. The ship flew the flag of convenience of Malta. Alarm bells, as shrill as the sirens that had tipped him out of the senior officers' mess, pealed in his head. If he panicked, ordered the patrol-boat to fire on the ship prematurely, he would be gutted by the inquiry board that would follow. Nobody, none of the uniformed, medal-ribboned officers, stepped forward to help him. He broadcast his order.

'Intercept, then escort away from the coastline. Do not open fire unless you face resistance and can confirm the ship is engaged actively in the land action. Get the fucking thing out of the area.'

The master said, 'I am now three nautical miles off shore. They are too late. We did what we could. It is not our fault, Mr Mowbray. We are a coastal cargo ship, not a boat for war. In four minutes, a maximum of five, we must turn. In four minutes, or five, the Nanuchka is with us. We have to turn and plead our ignorance, our stupidity, a further problem with the propeller drive, and we have to hope we are believed — or we will be boarded. We will stay as long as we can, Mr Mowbray, but I do not see them on the beach. What can I do?' /

He felt aged, wearied. There wouldn't be a car at the airport. No bands, no alarms, no welcoming line of greeters. Felicity would meet him. He would go home and empty the dirty clothes out of his bag and while the washing-machine thundered in the kitchen he would pour himself Scotch, and tell her if 'they' phoned she should tell 'them' that he had gone to the common to walk…not that they would phone. Without fuss, the process barely visible, he would be airbrushed from the memory of the Service. He would never again be called upon to lecture at the Fort; he would never receive the invitation to an old farts' reunion, he would be removed from the mailing list of the former officers' news sheet, his lifetime's work would be undone. A letter would come from the vice chancellor, signed by a secretary, three lines at most, relegating his chair in strategic studies to the bin. So unfair…

The dawn was settling on the tarpaulin covers of the holds filled with fertilizer sacks. The flares were still pitched high over the beach, but the clarity of their light was lessened by the slow sunrise behind the forests' trees. He could see the detail now of the approaching patrol-boat's bow wave. Maybe five minutes were left, perhaps six, and then it was doomed. Who could he blame? 'They' would blame him — who would he blame? Locke, of course. Locke would be the scapegoat of his personal bitterness.

'You should do what you can,' Mowbray said brusquely. 'Do what is honourable.'

He was relaxed. The colonel's hand soothed his shoulder. He had shown he was the best and he would show it again. Vasiliev lay behind the heavy machine-gun and waited for the last of them to break cover. In his mind, across the dunes and the sand and the sea, he created beaten zones within which the bullets would have killing accuracy.

Viktor said, 'It is too many minutes.'

Locke heard Wickso say, 'Nearly there, nearly'

He asked, 'How do you use the launcher?'

He thought Viktor was now at the edge of control, as if he stood on a pit's edge and looked down and saw only the darkness of the abyss. Locke watched Viktor reach out to take both of Wickso's hands and pressure them together, to give the man strength. He thought Viktor had good hands, powerful, and they enveloped Wickso's and killed the trembling. To Locke, it was as though Viktor had woken from a sleep, and the morning light showed him reality.

Viktor said, 'We have two choices — we run and take the chance, or we surrender and take that chance. I cannot surrender.'

Scorn in Wickso's response. 'You can't do it, you wouldn't know how. Have to dive, have to break the compressed air bottles, have to get the engine going. You couldn't…'

Locke asked, 'What's the firing procedure for the launcher?' Quite a handsome man, he thought, and not flattered by the photograph in the file or by the picture that Alice had shown the team. Locke never, in the normal times of his life, looked at another man and was taken by his appearance: it would have denigrated him. Viktor was, to him, fine-looking. The jaw, mud-spattered, jutted at an angle of defiance. Alice loved the man…he had kissed Alice. Alice and Viktor would remember him.

'How do you fire the grenades from the launcher?'

Viktor said, 'I am going for the water. You stay if you want to, take the chance with them. For me, fast death or slow — I choose fast. We have no more time.'

'I hear you,' Wickso said.

'How many grenades do we have, and what is their range?'

In his inside pocket were the four letters. He should have given them up, he had not. The envelopes were nestled against his chest. Wickso gave no answer to Viktor. The light broadened in front of them and the flares had less power and Locke could see the silhouette of the Princess Rose and the white V-wave coming closer to it. He knew what he would do. He heard the murmur from Wickso about retrieving the bleeper from Lofty — God, had they only one of them? Pathetic. He saw Wickso lift himself up from his stomach, then the fist tightened on the snub machine pistol Wickso held, then the discarded Skorpion was given to Viktor. Wickso was on his feet, and Viktor was beside him. The dunes stretched away from them, and the beach and the sea.

He had been to Hereford, had been given the demonstration of close-quarters fire-power in the 'killing house': trussed up, gagged, blindfolded, they had played at hostages, as the stun grenades and gas and the live rounds had blasted, wafted and cracked around them — his memory was of the silence in the room, then the shattering noise and speed of the assault. In the afternoon they had been shown the use of explosive charges, then had been sent on their way. What he could recall was the strutted contempt of the Special Forces officers for them, because they were mere civilians. Words were few. The language of their bodies was explicit enough. He remembered the liaison man, at the meeting at Vauxhall Bridge Cross: 'I don't think my people would be that keen on a trip in there, not to Kaliningrad.' He was there, the men who had stormed the 'killing house' were not. He felt no arrogance because conceit was long ago purged from him. He was there, had chosen to be, as they had chosen not to be.

'I lead,' Wickso said. 'Run zigzag, head down, run like the goddamn wind. In the water you dive, keep down, the dinghy's a hundred metres…'

He felt calm. 'How do you fire the bloody thing?'

Locke groped at the pouches on Wickso's webbing and snatched out the grenades. He filled his pockets with them. He stood. In the far distance he could hear the cordon moving forward from the frontier fence. They had used up too much time. The flares hung in a lighter sky. Too much time.

'Count to fifty, then go. Give me fifty.' He started to run.

Locke heard Wickso's hiss, 'You get left, you know you get left behind.'

He didn't turn, didn't wave a last time. Locke heard Wickso's shout, 'It's loaded. Just use the under-trigger. Fires a blank bullet into the grenade. Reload it down the barrel, tilt the barrel and let it slide in. Maximum range is four hundred metres, that's top. Burst radius is five metres, fuse delay is four seconds or contact. The ones marked phosphorus are best, better than explosive. The bolt action on the launcher puts the next blank in the breech. Go close, go in on top of them. Phosphorus will burn them…'

The shout faded.

He ran the zigzag, as they would, and he felt the cold of the morning on his face. She saw them, two not three.

A chattering excitement broke around Alice. The crowd edged away from the fire: it gazed up the beach and over the fence that ran down to the waterline, over the military vehicles and the soldiers on the sand, past the more distant line of troops.

Two men ran on the dunes. Alice held the small binoculars hard against her eyes. She could see them clearly because the flares, in descending height, were over them, and because the low pulse of the sunlight caught the ground on which they ran. They were good binoculars — not Service issue, but a present from her father. Everything from her father was the best. With ten times magnification, and sunshine daylight to look into, it was easy for her to see them both. A few minutes earlier, a lifetime gone by since, she had seen — as had the crowd — a single figure, black-suited, break from the trees. In the circle of the lenses, the angry red tracer had surged to meet him. She had seen him go down. No movement for a moment, then a hand raised…and dropped. After that there had been no more tracer dots, but she fancied she heard, on the wind, muffled cheers from the cordon that merged with the sea's beat.

They were so small, so far from her, but she could make out through the lenses the leading man, black, and the figure a pace, or three, behind. She saw the white shirt and the pinhead of blond hair. She could not see Locke. The lenses held the two of them: around them was the expanse of the dunes and ahead the open beach and the sea. There was no cover. She had thought it was the big boy, Lofty, who had gone down. She thought it was Wickso and Viktor who came in haphazard angled lines across the dunes, towards where he'd fallen.

It seemed to Alice as if the crowd watched it like it was vaudeville, a show. She had been to Rome, last year at the convent school, with her parents. The second day they had 'done' the Colosseum. Her father had been interested in the logistics of building the place, her mother had seen only the multitude of stray cats living there, and the teenage Alice had been quietened by the thought of a great multitude revelling in the excitement of watching death. When the one she thought was Lofty had gone down, the crowd had indulged itself with a noisy sigh — it was only a show, an acrobat's fall from a high wire. If she continued to watch with her binoculars she would see the tracer come, and the white shirt might drop and the pinhead of fair hair might fall.

Where was Locke?

She took the binoculars from her eyes. She compressed them, dropped them into her pocket.

She heard the rattle as she loosed them. She could not watch. Her hand, in her pocket, felt the shape the binoculars had fallen against. She could not watch it. She took the mobile phone from her pocket. Not hers.

The excitement grew around her. She turned away.

Whose phone? Where had the phone come from? She had her back to the flares, but the machine-gun had not fired — the fucking machine-gun would wait till they were on the beach. She switched it on. It warbled, vibrated, and the screen lit. A text envelope was displayed. She clicked. The text would show her whose phone had been placed in her pocket. She knew. She had heard the message on the radio: Oh, and Locke showed up. She read the text.

She understood. She was only a General Service officer, not the full shilling, but she now knew why he had slept in the railway station at Gdansk, why he had kissed her, why he had walked out into the night, why he had showed up, why he did not run on the dunes.

Alice saw the crowd's faces. Titillated enjoyment, macabre pleasure, gallows-watching, the mob in the Colosseum. She took Jerry the Pole as her focal point. He was her target, and he alone would understand her language.

'You bastards. You poor, pathetic bastards. Get your kicks cheap, don't you? It's not fucking Saturday-night television — it's men's lives. Decent of them, right? — to make some bloody entertainment for you. You are sad. In the whole damn lot of you, there's not as much guts as in one of their little fingers. You are cowards…cowards…cowards. Enjoy the bloody show while it lasts — pity you won't ever see a show like this again. Bad bloody luck. Do something…'

The voice was accented English, soft-spoken. 'But what, my child? What is something? What do you want them to do?'

She turned. He had driven the car that had passed her, and he had waved to her. The wind pressed the priest's habit against his legs and tugged at the white of his hair.

'Something.'

'If there is something that can be done, it will be. Enough of profanity, my child — we are all in God's hand. They are simple people, but they are not cowards.'

'Just do something,' Alice said.