Traitor's Kiss

…Chapter Five

Mowbray used the status gained in a lifetime with the Service shamelessly. 'If you abandon the agent, Codename Ferret, then you might as well pin up a scribbled message on the front door that says, "Don't risk your lives for us, we're not concerned what happens to you." You could broadcast on the BBC's World Service that every agent we run is left bare-arsed and on his own…'

He was formidable. Rupert Mowbray stood at his full height while the others sat and flinched, and his voice carried the resonance of certainty. The meeting was in an anteroom off the ground-floor atrium. His audience was the Director General, Bertie Ponsford, Peter Giles, and the youngster Locke, and by the door on a hard chair sat Alice North. He had not been in the building at Vauxhall Bridge since his retirement party. It was exceptional for a former employee to be allowed access past the front-door security checks, but for him the rules had been violated and the room made available. It was because of the respect that had been awarded the old warrior that the Director General had cancelled a dinner engagement after taking Mowbray's call, and Ponsford and Giles had been summoned.

'I ask, does the life of a spy matter? We use him, bleed him, keep him in place even when the alarm bells are ringing, and — of course — we make a few idle promises about going down to the line to save him if the going's rough, but are we prepared to be bold? We should be. Not for emotion, but for the reputation of our Service.'

Mowbray centred his argument on the Director General. Every word, dramatic pause and glowering glance was directed at the DG. He had never had time for the man who had been his immediate junior during the Bonn posting twenty years before. The Director General had ambition, though, had mastered the network of the administrative departments of the Service, and had never stayed long enough in any of them for his shortcomings to be exposed. He had a knighthood, the ear of the Prime Minister, travelled with the head of government on all foreign visits, and he was weak. Mowbray despised him, despised him enough to make an argument for the glory of the Service. He reckoned he had fifteen minutes to make his pitch.

'We go in. We take him out of Kaliningrad, and we let the message be filtered around the world that the British Service looks out for those who risk their lives on its behalf. It would be a powerful message. It would be heard in Asia and on the sub-continent, in the Middle East and throughout Europe. It would be a magnet for the disaffected who are the very men on whom we rely. I urge you to send such a message.'

None of the men around the table met his eye. They fiddled with their handkerchiefs, locked their fingers and cracked them, studied the ceiling, the far walls and the shining table's surface. Ponsford he thought to be a journeyman who would wait on his Director General's opinion and would then endorse it. Giles had the guts of a neutered family cat, and the imagination to go with such a spoiled beast. But Mowbray was now armed with the transcripts of two meetings. He had rifled through the second meeting's typescript, given him to glance at by Alice as they had loitered in the corridor before being called in. He needed an additional target. The Director General would have read the same transcripts. He broke his walk, which had carried him back and forth in front of the Director General, and now stayed, poised as a cobra would be, behind the young man. A smile of contempt played at his mouth and he took his hands from behind his spine, rested them easily on the back of Locke's chair.

'I accept that we should not be governed by raw emotion, but loyalty should dictate our actions. A powerful word, maybe fashioned for the lexicons of old men, but loyalty gives us the right to stand with dignity, to walk with honour. It would be a sad day, not just for me but for all of us, if dignity and honour were discarded for a misplaced creed of pragmatism. Show me a pragmatist and I will show you a coward.'

He saw the back of Locke's neck reddening. It was a ruthless demolition and one over which he had no qualms. He had met the rookie once, at his retirement party, after he had been delivered the set of decanter and glasses, and he had tried to sober himself sufficiently so that he could talk for some brief minutes of the value of Ferret, but he had seen the young man's blatant lack of interest as he had muttered through the tradecraft of the dead drops. He mocked Locke, then resumed his pacing walk.

'If you tell me that the Service I left with such pride, after a lifetime of endeavour, is now run by cowards then I will be saddened — I don't believe it. The history of the Service demands better rewards. If the nerves are in your veins then leave the business to those who are not frightened — me, and a team I will put together and head. I will deliver.'

He spoke with confidence and certainty. He had no plan for exfiltrating an agent from Kaliningrad. It was what the old Service would have done, in the sixties and seventies. As clearly as if it were yesterday, he could remember the little moments of excitement that had winnowed through the corridors at Broadway, then at Century House, as rumour of triumphs spread in the corridors, canteens and bars. And he could remember also the frisson of helpless despair that had moved in the same corridors, canteens, bars, when the news had reached them that the life of the agent, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky of the GRU, Codename Hero, had been ended by a bullet in a prison yard. A secretary who had worked on that handling team had wept openly over her typewriter, and his debriefers had gone to the pub at lunchtime and not returned in the afternoon. The triumphs he could recall had never matched the sadness of the day the big man, Penkovsky, had been reported dead. Mowbray had never forgotten that mood of shame. Nothing had been done to save the agent, Codename Hero. He focused again on the Director General.

'Not that it matters, not to the pragmatists, but Ferret is as brave a man as I know of. For four years, day after day, he has hazarded his life, looked execution in the face. For what? For his belief in us as men of our word? It is difficult to imagine the terrifying burden that rests on his shoulders…but that's not important, only incidental. What is important is that we show the world that we look after our people, we reach out to protect them.'

Easing up his cuff, Mowbray glimpsed the face of his watch. Never go on too long, he had learned. Never bore an audience. He spoke with a new quietness so that his audience leaned forward, all except Locke, to hear him.

'So, is it to be the day of the faint hearts? Impossible. To lift out Ferret would be, in the old vernacular, a "piece of cake". If we do nothing, allow events to run their course and wait for the echo of that bullet or sit on hands until it is reported that a young man has been thrown out of a helicopter or has "died in a road accident", then all of you, gentlemen, might as well draw your pensions and eke out your lives in retirement. Would the Service have a future — other than feeding from the crumbs dropped off the Americans' table? I doubt it. I expect you'd like me to withdraw?'

With a grand gesture, as if he could do no more, he spun on his heel, went to the door and slipped from the room.

Twelve minutes later, Mowbray was called back in.

The Director General said, 'The loyalty bit did it, Rupert.'

They had come down off the mountains above the gorge and reached the command post. The other passengers were already there, as Bikov had known they would be, and the helicopter pilot was anxious to be off and up because the snow was settling on the rotors and fuselage of his machine. They had flown low, on instruments, above the rooftops and skimmed the power cables hung between pylons; the war's devastation had been laid out beneath them.

Yuri Bikov was not a man to milk a moment of triumph. When they landed at Grozny military airfield he stayed in his canvas seat with the restraining harness still buckled over his shoulders and across his chest. He could see the welcoming party, headed by the general, but he kept back. The brigadier was down the steps first, needing to be helped because he had received four days of beatings, followed by his three escorts who were young conscripts and who had the fear still implanted in their faces along with the scars and abrasions from their own torture. They had been a full load on the helicopter. Next out were the six Black Berets, who would have achieved near hero status among their colleagues because they had tracked, trapped and held Ibn ul Attab and his son, then the four Vympel men, who could reasonably expect high decorations for the skill with which they had crossed the bandits' country on foot.

He watched through the porthole window. The brigadier was held and kissed by the general, then passed to the care of medical orderlies. The hands of the conscripts, whose faces had the pallor of the young who have been close to death, were shaken with vigour. They had the wet of tears in their eyes. Bikov watched. He saw others of the Black Beret unit, ground-crew technicians and troops gather close to the survivors who had been on the journey to hell and who had, against all the wisdom of experience, returned from it. There was a short impromptu speech from the general, then guttering applause from the men who had pressed close to be part of the celebration.

He was still frozen when he lowered himself gingerly down the rickety steps from the fuselage hatch and his clothes clung, still soaked, to his body. He staggered the few steps away from the dying swing of the rotors as the engine was shut down. The brigadier turned away from the fussing orderlies, lurched to Bikov and clung to him, but the interrogator eased him away politely. He arched his back, stretched himself, and the pains and aches in his limbs were made more acute. The general came to him and saluted flamboyantly, but Bikov barely had the strength to raise his arm in response. The Vympel men had half dragged and half carried him down the long descent from the high ground to the farmhouse where the helicopter waited. He looked around him. Standing as a beacon in the first spread of dawn, bright among the uniformly-softened shapes of the camouflage-painted bunkers and aircraft was an executive jet. It had a shining silver underbelly, its superstructure was a brilliant white and its wings and tail carried the markings of the airforce. Its navigation lights, green and red, flickered in the early light. It was the transport of an officer of stature. The general took his arm. 'You have my gratitude…'

'Thank you. I did what I thought necessary.'

'But it came, Bikov, at a price.'

'I was asked to bring him home, your colleague, and I did that.'

'You made a deal with Ibn ul Attab, Bikov. You gave him dignity.'

'I bought their freedom, theirs for his.'

'At a price. You let the beast go free. How many more men will die because you made a deal that saved the life of my colleague? You did what was asked of you — I do not criticize — but it was a harsh price we have paid.'

The general was turning away. It was not that Bikov had chosen the moment for maximum effect, not his nature. It was more that the moment was appropriate. It had been his intention to deliver the information quietly to the resident team of military counterintelligence, over a coffee and a beer.

'The price is cheap, general.'

'He walked free. You gave him back his rifle. That is cheap?'

Bikov said quietly, 'I gave him back his rifle. In the shoulder stock there is now a homing bug, set behind the cleaning rod. It has a range of five kilometres and the power of the battery is enough for what I recommend should happen. I would not like it said that I reneged on an honest deal between Ibn ul Attab and myself. I request that you leave it for a week then go and search for the bug's signal. I would guarantee to you that, after what has happened to him, his rifle will not be more than a metre from him, night or day. In a week, search for the signal then bomb the fuck out of him. Use bombs and rockets and kill him, with his child. That, General, is the price of the deal'

The general's face creased in astonishment. Bikov eased back the shape of his wristwatch. Under it, preserved, written in indelible ink, was a set of scrawled digits. His face was impassive. He reached out and lifted a pen from the front pocket of the general's tunic, then took the senior officer's hand, peeled off the leather glove and wrote the numbers on the clean palm. Then he returned the pen to the pocket.

'That is the frequency of the homing bug, General. One week, then help him to the Garden of Paradise.'

Bikov walked past the general, and heard the crescendo of laughter behind him. All he wanted was coffee or soup, straight from the stove, and then sleep. But the general had run after him and had snatched the material of his tunic. 'They have sent a plane for you, to take you to Moscow. Everyone wants you, you are a man of that importance. I could almost feel sorry for the next wretch that faces you. Almost…'

Fifteen minutes later, Yuri Bikov was airborne. Swathed in warm blankets, naked under them, he sat in the cabin, the only passenger. His clothing was in a leaking plastic bag in the aisle. Before they had cleared Chechen air space, he was asleep.

Two hours later, the early light seeped in the mist over Kaliningrad.

Captain, second rank, Victor Archenko, was in the back seat beside Admiral, Commander of the Baltic Fleet, Alexei Falkovsky.

'I was reading last night, reading history…'

Viktor was not expected to reply. He gazed through the side window. Had he turned and twisted in his seat and looked out of the rear window, stared back at the traffic respectfully following the staff car that flew the admiral's pennant, he would have seen the black van and the red saloon. He did not turn and twist.

'The battle of Tsushima. I had gone back to the history book for it, because all our ills come from it. You agree, Viktor?'

He nodded. At least five times a year, Viktor was required to listen as the admiral regurgitated what he had read of the war at sea in the Far East. The battle had been fought on 27 May 1905, combat between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Imperial Russian Navy, Baltic Fleet. Ahead of them was the regular monthly meeting in the headquarters building in Kaliningrad city of the commanders of the army, the missile forces, the airforce and the navy. The admiral used only one book of naval history and Viktor could have recited the text that had been read the previous night. At Tsushima, 4830 Russian sailors had been killed or had drowned, some seven thousand had been taken prisoner, 1862 had reached neutral territory and had been interned, and all the capital ships had been lost. Two or three times a year, Viktor and the admiral re-enacted the battle with models. Viktor took the role of Admiral Togo and Falkovsky took the identity of Admiral Rozhdestvensky, and they would pore for an evening and half into the night over their charts and models while Falkovsky cursed the incompetence of his Baltic Fleet predecessor, then made the decisions that broke history's mould and won the battle. To Viktor, the sessions were a pointless waste of time. They drove into the city, and the admiral's pennant ensured they were not delayed.

'We still suffer because of the incompetence of Rozhdestvensky. The Russian navy, because of his stupidity, has never recovered. From the start, they sail from the Baltic, they break out into the North Sea — they are half the world's circumference from Japanese waters — they are at the Dogger Bank off the coast of Great Britain when they see small craft and open fire, believing they are about to be attacked by Japanese torpedo boats. What does Rozhdestvensky think Japanese torpedo boats are doing in the waters of Great Britain? They sink four British trawlers and consider they have won a great victory over the Japanese navy…and they sail on and it will get worse.'

The car lurched in a pothole. Viktor had jerked his head up. They were on Prospekt Mira and had passed the Kosmonaut monument. Under his breath the driver swore. Big blocks of rabbit-warren apartments flanked the road, the concrete was stained by the rust from the metal window-frames and they had a mildew of decay about them. The driver swerved again, to avoid an addict shambling across the street. There was more heroin on the streets of the city this year than last. The base senior medical officer had told Viktor that. He watched the addict collapse on to the pavement as they swept by. He was as trapped in the city as the addict, now insensible in his own filth.

'At last, the fleet approaches the Straits of Tsushima, six months after leaving the Baltic. They come as if for a fleet review, as if the Tsar inspects them. They make no effort to sink the Japanese scout ships that monitor them. Togo knows where they are and where they are going, and Rozhdestvensky is blind to where the Japanese are and their intentions. The man was a fool. He has the finest battleships — Kniaz, Suvorov, Imperator Alexander III, Borodino and Orel — of the Baltic Fleet, but he has allowed their gunnery to become so poor that they cannot achieve hits even when they have closed to five thousand five hundred metres. It was good that Rozhdestvensky died on the Suvorov. If he had survived he should have been hanged.'

The sign for the zoo was behind them. They drove on Leninsky Prospekt towards the Bunker Museum, the Investbank and the big hotel where it was too expensive for a captain, second rank, to use the bar. They went by the House of Soviets: two great concrete blocks linked with two horizontal walkways, known as the Monster. It had sixteen storeys, and beneath it were 1100 sunken pillars of concrete hammered down into the marshland. Beside it were the ruins of the old German fortress of Konigsberg. That building had survived for seven centuries before the bombing brought it down, but the Monster had never lived. It sagged, was not safe to occupy, and the money had run out before electricity or heating were installed. Each time Viktor went past the House of Soviets he saw it as the symbol of the State he betrayed. Alone, far from safety, Viktor needed symbols.

'The Suvorov is sunk, the Alexander capsizes, the Borodino explodes, the Orel surrenders — the rest are left to be massacred. He was very lucky — Rozhdestvensky was exceptionally lucky — to have died of his wounds. It was the last time we had a great fleet, and it was thrown away. With it went the future of our navy.'

On the other side, some men fished in a canal running into the Pregel river. Viktor knew that Kaliningrad was regarded as a polluting cesspit by its Baltic neighbours. Dawn, and men already fished. He could not imagine what species survived there in its rank water. They would not catch anything, they would stare at a float stationary on the oily surface and hope they could forget what was around them. Abruptly he tossed back his head so that he no longer saw the canal. He was a fish. A rusted hook was in the gristle of his mouth. He felt the pressure of the rod and line. He tried to run and could not find the open water, tried to dive and failed, and the pressure on him grew.

They were at army headquarters. Now, Viktor looked back. He saw the black van slowing in the traffic behind, while the red car came past and stopped beyond the main gate. And he saw Piatkin, the zampolit, in the front passenger seat. He clasped his hands to stop their trembling, as their car turned in past smart sentries and came to a stop in front of the main doors. An aide strode forward to open the admiral's door, but the driver waved him away because his admiral still talked.

'The reason why the importance of the navy is not recognized is because of Tsushima, and the humiliation of the Baltic Fleet. Lenin knew of Tsushima, and Stalin. The army and airforce poisoned Khrushchev's opinion of us by telling him of Tsushima, and Brezhnev's. Gorbachev and Yeltsin would have been similarly affected by the toxin of Tsushima, and today it is no different. Half a day and half a night of incredible ineptitude has cost us, Russia's sailors, our rightful position. I read of Tsushima last night so as to be better prepared to meet these shits today. Even now we are not considered equals. I tell you, if they had their way, our aircraft would go under airforce command, our submarines would go to the missile forces, our amphibious capability would go to the army. I see no future because ninety-seven years ago an idiot threw away a great fleet at Tsushima. You don't respond, Viktor. What is wrong?'

'I agree with everything you say, Admiral.'

'You all right? You look like death.' Falkovsky stared hard at him.

He did not know how soon it would be before Admiral Alexei Falkovsky was informed that his chief of staff was to be arrested on a charge of treason. He thought that then the admiral — his patron — would stand in a line and queue with others for the chance to strangle him, barehanded.

'No problems,' Viktor said.

'Let's hit these bastards — and we give them nothing, nothing. Fucking parasites.'

A pace behind, in his respectful place, Viktor followed his admiral into the building.

With his target safely inside army headquarters for a minimum of two hours, Piatkin walked away from the red saloon, down to the canal's towpath, away from the few fishermen, and there he made a call on his mobile to Boris Chelbia. He was full of apologies for the cancellation of the meeting the week before. Because of the cash in foreign currencies paid him by Chelbia, the apologies were abject. Piatkin confirmed at what time in the night the lorry, supplied by Chelbia, would have access to the base, how the necessary pass for its driver would be handled, and the load that the lorry would carry out. Again he apologized for inconvenience caused by the delay. He rang off.

He did not feel himself trapped, but he was. The officer of the FSB, Vladdy Piatkin, was owned by Boris Chelbia. He was a servant of the racketeer. He wrapped his coat tight around him as proof against the dawn's cold.

An hour after dawn came to the Baltic, the same light fell on the Bay of Biscay. The Princess Rose was out of sight of the Spanish coast and rode the swell on low power. She pitched like an awkward, cussed mule, fell into the troughs, climbed the peaks, and rolled.

With a mug of slopping coffee, and the message received on the radio rolled and slipped behind his ear, the mate headed for the master's cabin. The heritage of Tihomir Zaklan was far from the sea. He had been sick in the night, was always sick in a storm. He was from the Croatian town of Karlovac, eighty kilometres from the sea at Senj on the Adriatic. His training had been at war, not at a university. He had fought the Serbs to save his city, then worked the bars of Split to raise the money to travel to Hamburg for a seamanship diploma. The sea had been his escape from the war. On receiving his diploma he had applied for sixty-eight mate's positions, had written to every shipping agent in the Mediterranean, and for a year he had languished back home in Karlovac and had heard nothing or had received the posted rejections. At the end of that year, 1997, with his savings down to the last few kunar, his prayer had been answered. He had flown to Naples, had seen the ship that was to be his home tied up at the end of the quay and had immediately called her, to himself, the Sea Rat.

He put the mug of coffee down beside the bed, and the dog growled softly at him from the floor. He shook the master's shoulder, took the signal from behind his ear and left it beside the mug. He scrambled up the bucking staircase to the bridge.

The signal, from the Princess Rose's owners, he had left for the master perplexed him. Why, if they were ordered to Gdansk to take on fertilizer for the Latvian port of Riga, were they directed first to a position off the south-west British coast for transfer on board of a cargo of less than one tonne?

Tihomir Zaklan was in turn confused and grateful — especially grateful. If there was work for her at least the Princess Rose stayed afloat and alive, and he had a home.

One hour after it had nestled over the Bay of Biscay, the first light of day simpered on Central London.

Not that it was a dawn worth waiting for. The rain came down hard on the few street-sweepers who were already out and on the lorries that removed the bagged rubbish from the pavements. The streets ran with little streams and the high gutters were overwhelmed by the downpour. It cascaded on to the windows of a building north of Leicester Square, on the fringe of Covent Garden. At street level the rain beat on the wide plate-glass window of a pizzeria and on the narrow doorway beside it. The doorway led to a staircase and on the first floor, identified by a bell and a slip of card, was a theatrical-artists agency. The second floor housed a mail-order firm specializing in novelty party toys, while the third was occupied by a small firm of accountants, whose trade was limited to clients employed in the clothing market. The top floor was the most exposed to the rain. Set under a shallow, sloping roof, its windows caught the full blast of the weather. The top floor was marked at the front door only by a bell and a grilled intercom with no name attached. That early morning, it was the only floor where a light burned behind slatted blinds.

Alice North had the electric kettle boiling. Mowbray slept on a canvas bed that sagged under his weight.

Locke had left an hour ago. Mowbray had been in the bathroom when he'd gone.

'It's absolute madness, you know that?' Locke had said to Alice. 'It'll end in tears and rightly so.'

He would be in the air from RAF Northolt by now.

The managing director of Security Shield Ltd, Wilberforce, had been gone more than two hours. He was a man in his forties who seemed permanently to wear an uncreased suit, a clean shirt and a tightly-knotted tie, and always to be close-shaven. Alice had met him before. Security Shield Ltd provided freelancers for the Service. Bodyguards, burglars and surveillance people were on their books. Those who needed employment after coming out of the special forces units and who had the skill of close protection, clandestine entry or the placing of audio and visual bugs came to their discreet Mayfair office and were enrolled. Wilberforce had arrived at this building at two o'clock in the morning, had taken off his drenched raincoat and was immaculate underneath, as if attending a ten a.m. meeting. He'd brought a briefcase of files, studied the maps, then sifted through a list of names before settling on four files. He'd left at four o'clock. Last thing before going, he had gestured then to the files left on the table and had said briskly to Rupert Mowbray, 'If the regulars don't want to know — and, God, they're getting choosy these days — these are as good as you'll get. They left the Boat crowd under something of a shadow, something when they were together. I doubt they've seen each other since, but at least they've worked in harness. They'll be better than chucking together four strangers. What I can't say, of course, is how much persuading they'll take to go where you want them to. Anyway, if they do agree to take your shilling, my usual commission, please, and up front before they travel. They're the best I can do.'

Locke had leafed through the files before dumping them in his briefcase. He'd had a deep frown of distaste on his forehead, but Mowbray had told him sharply not to play dumb insolent and to contribute only when he had something positive to communicate. Alice had been pleased when Locke had left for Northolt with the files.

The kettle whistled breezily.

Later she'd ring her neighbour, who had a key to her apartment and knew how to disengage the alarm, and ask that she let herself in and clear the post off the mat while she was away.

Alice North was the only daughter of Albert and Roz. Ten years before, her parents had sold their chain of Ford dealerships in Hertfordshire, Essex and Kent. They were hugely rich and shared that comfort with an enduring pride in their sole child. After a convent education at Weybridge in Surrey, the teenage Alice had walked away from the path taken by most of her school-friends, which veered between early marriage and a financial career. She had no interest in marriage, where she felt she would have quickly become an accessory to her parents' lives, breeding grandchildren for them to dote on, and even less interest in making money. She had no need for the money: she was protected by a trust fund that the stock market downturns had not dented. Albert and Roz North had bought the Docklands apartment and used it as a London base on their thankfully rare trips from the villa on the Algarve. She was thirty-four years old now, and on her visits her mother made a habit of asking when she was going to find a 'nice young man'. Her mother knew so little.

She stirred the instant coffee.

Alice was closer to Rupert Mowbray than to her father. Her worst day in the Service had ended when he had left Vauxhall Bridge Cross, a little unsteady on his feet, and she had carried the box with the decanter and the glasses to the taxi. On the canvas bed, he lay on his back and grunted in his sleep. His tie was loosened and his collar was grimy from the previous day. The bristle was strong on his cheeks.

From the cupboard above the microwave she took sweeteners and dropped two into the coffee. She carried the mug to the bed, knelt beside it, and kissed his forehead.

He had recruited her. Rupert Mowbray had given her the chance to escape the dead-hand clutch of her parents. She worked in a world where her father couldn't manage her and where she had the perfect excuse not to gossip with her mother: 'Sorry, Mums, can't talk about my day — that's the way it is.' They knew she had been in Poland, but did not know she had travelled three times from Warsaw to Gdansk; nor did they know she had four times visited Murmansk for the collection of dead drops with Mowbray, nor did they know she had wept on the night he had retired, and again when the signal had come through from Braniewo, ferret: no show.

He stirred. Right eye first, then left, opened languidly. 'You're very sweet, my dear. What time is it?'

'Six o'clock, still raining. It's going to be a foul day.'

'Oh, I don't know, Alice — could be rather fun.' Mowbray grimaced. He had a spark of mischief.

She had been recruited in February 1992. A late-night train journey from central London to stay with a friend, from her convent-school days, in Thames Ditton and a shopping binge arranged for the next morning. An austere older man with silver hair sitting opposite her reading papers from his briefcase. The train jolting to a halt at Teddington. Him dropping papers on the carriage floor and not realizing it, hurrying to open the door, and gone into the night after he'd slammed it shut. Seeing the papers. Picking them up. The papers were stamped 'secret'.

Opening the carriage door as the train started to ease away, stumbling on to the platform, whistles blowing, station staff yelling. Ignoring them. Running to the barrier and seeing the man lowering himself into a car driven by a woman, and it driving away from the station forecourt. Jumping the queue forming for a taxi, telling the driver to follow the car ahead, clutching the classified papers. Losing the car, then finding it after fifteen minutes of kerb crawling. It had been parked outside a semi-detached yellow brick house in a side-street. Ringing the bell. A woman opening the door. Thrusting the papers at her, and showing the stamped 'secret' on the top of the pages, explaining.

'You'd better come in,' the woman had said, then had called out, a stentorian voice, 'Rupert, you're a bloody fool, but — not that you deserve it — the good Lord has smiled on you. Come here, Rupert.'

Being sat down, given a large whisky, being a witness to Rupert Mowbray's gratitude. Hearing the woman say, 'They'd have hanged you, Rupert, cut you down, drawn out your bowels and burned them in your face, then chopped you into quarters. Your head would have been on a pikestaff at Century House.'

She'd missed the last train to Thames Ditton and the woman had insisted she stay the night, and they'd fussed round her. At breakfast the next morning, Rupert Mowbray had asked for her address, before Felicity Mowbray had driven them to the station. She'd waved him off on the London train and he'd held up his briefcase in the carriage window, tapped it and smiled sheepishly. The application form had arrived at her apartment five days later. The Service suited her.

Alice kissed his forehead again.

He sipped his coffee. 'It's not my birthday, Alice — but still appreciated.'

It was to express her gratitude. 'You did well last night — for Viktor.'

He was grinning. 'Well, I've certainly put my head on the block…'

She wandered into the next room, a tiny box under the sloped eaves with a single bed that would be hers if ever she had a chance to use it. She opened the wardrobe. She hadn't checked it in the night, had been too busy with the calls to the shipping agent that the Service used, and those that had brought Wilberforce to Covent Garden, and then the interminable arrangements for Locke's flight schedule from RAF Northolt. In the wardrobe was a rack of men's and women's clothes, assorted styles and sizes. She took what she needed for herself, and what he would need. The top-floor rooms were a frequently used safe house for the Service. She hadn't told Locke about the wardrobe: he could buy himself whatever else he was short of. She came back into the big room.

'You've only an hour.' Mowbray sat up, rubbing his eyes. 'I think I'd prefer to walk.'

'Then you ought to be up.'

Mowbray beamed his smile. 'Head on the block, as I said…it'll be a fine show, worthy of the best traditions of the Service — or I have to hope the blade's sharp. Do you know, my dear, when the unlamented Duke of Monmouth was beheaded the axeman took fourteen chops? Wouldn't want him! Right, the last hurdle.'

He crawled off the bed.

The last hurdle was the politician.

'This is the real battleground, not playing at "Bash the Taleban" or having a game of "Kill the Tribesmen up the Khyber", this is the territory that matters. It's what we do well, an operation calling for verve, expertise and clear-minded thinking.'

Political sanction was necessary. The Secretary of State, who had nominal and tolerated responsibility for the Service, was a tired man after a late-night dinner at The Hague, and a flight back in the small hours. His office had been told by the Director General that a decision on this matter was necessary and urgent — and the Prime Minister was holidaying. The Secretary of State was alone and vulnerable. Caught in the headlights, he sat behind his wide desk, and the Director General lolled in an easy chair close to him, near enough to be a comforting presence.

Mowbray continued, 'I wouldn't want you to think, sir, that we are advocating a mission high on risk. Far from it. We are talking about a surgical lift carried out by trained personnel, men with a first-class record. One minute our agent will be there, the next his surveillance team will be scratching their heads and wondering where the hell he's gone. We're very good at this sort of thing. In and out, without fuss or fanfare…but we have to move at speed. Each hour that goes by, so, such an operation attracts difficulties. Give us the green light now, and the risk is minimal.'

A civil servant had opened the door, stood in the Secretary of State's eyeline, and gestured to his watch.

'Let's do it. Go for it. I'll look forward to meeting him when you've brought him over.' The Secretary of State laughed shrilly. '"The risk is minimal." You said that, Mr Mowbray?'

'You heard me clearly, sir. You've made a very wise decision, thank you. You won't regret it.'

It had been one of the great bravura performances of Rupert Mowbray's life. It went without saying that the support of the Director General was critical to his success. In turn, he had entrapped them both. The difference: the Secretary of State had not recognized that a gladiator's net was thrown over him. When he stood he received a little bob of respect from Mowbray. The politician would clatter down the stairs of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office building, but Mowbray and the Director General would follow at a more dignified pace. By the time they stood on the step, each under his own umbrella, the official car was pulling out through the archway with a tail vehicle in pursuit.

'Have I ever told you about Betty's aunt, Rupert?'

'I don't think you've ever discussed your wife's family with me.' Mowbray's eyebrow flicked upwards.

'She's a grand maiden lady, now in her eighty-second year, and Betty's her favourite niece. She always comes to us at Christmas…it's an arrangement set in stone. One of our boys goes up to Euston and meets the train from the West Midlands, where this delightful old lady lives, then escorts her down into the Underground and on to the Northern Line. They travel to Waterloo main terminus, emerge above ground and take a train to Wimbledon where Betty and I are waiting. Pretty straightforward, yes? You make it sound, Rupert, as though lifting Agent Ferret out of Kaliningrad will be as simple as seeing Betty's aunt safely between Euston and Wimbledon. And I almost believe you.'

'A good plan and good men, that's the key to a good result' Mowbray said. 'You'll go down in the history of the Service as the man who gave it back its dignity.'

'Go carefully. There aren't too many naval-infantry battalions between Euston and Waterloo. Don't embarrass me.'

Mowbray walked out into the rain.

Locke's plane and its pilots had a punishing schedule to meet. They landed at Inverness, where an RAF helicopter waited. When the helicopter returned him to Inverness, he would be flown on to an airstrip west of Wolverhampton. After Wolverhampton he would be taken cross-Channel to Bruges in Belgium. From Belgium the plane would go west and follow the southern English coastline to a runway at Torbay used by a flying school. The schedule was tight, but the pilots said it was possible.

For Viktor, back from his meeting at headquarters, the day flickered by. He scarcely saw the papers placed in front of him by the secretariat. In his own big office, Admiral Falkovsky catnapped and did not need him. Was his cry for help heard? Was it acted on? Viktor did not know. There was nothing to tell him that the noose tightened on him. Around him was normality, but he felt that he was slowly, steadily, being crushed.

The shelducks, black-throated divers and mergansers usually gathered in the day on the shallow waters of the loch's edge close to his hut, where it was his habit to feed them, but they had been scattered in terror by the helicopter's landing on the shingle beach, and had not returned.

William Smith, former sergeant in the Special Boat Service — what he called the Squadron — known to the few close to him as Billy, prepared to leave. Dusk had gathered over the water. Where the cloud was broken, along towards the forested spur under Beinn Resipol and the cliff of Rubha Leathan, towards Acharacle, defined pools of gold light had settled. Only a military helicopter, and one flying in emergency conditions, would have landed in the early grey texture of the day on the gradual slope of the beach.

He was called back. He felt no satisfaction at it, but he had not refused. He hammered planks across the windows on either side of the hut door. The outside wood of the hut was faded creosote and the windows were well built, except that the putty holding the panes had been loosened by the pine martens that chewed it; he had thought it best to nail the planks across the windows.

The young man, off the helicopter, had said he would be back within ten days. 'It's just a quick one, Mr Smith, in and out.' But Billy had seen the evasion in the young man's eyes and he thought it right to make the hut secure against the winter. Beside him, as he swung the hammer, was his filled rucksack, and his dog lay close to it. He had finished inside the hut. Most of his day, since the morning when the helicopter had left, had been spent inside tidying. Out at the back the fire of his rubbish smoked in an oil drum, nearly dead. He had packed away his paintings in his old trunk; it had been with him in both his marine commando and his Squadron days.

Old ways died hard with Billy. He had folded his bedding neatly and piled it on the exposed mattress. To leave the refuge that was his home, beside the loch and under the high mountains, wrenched him to the guts, but he had not considered refusing the work offered. Across the water, the headlights of the post van flashed. The young man had made the arrangement on his mobile phone. Billy Smith padlocked the hut door. He lifted his rucksack, called the dog to heel and went down to the shore, his boots scattering the shingle. The dog jumped into the boat, where its basket and a supply of food were already stored, and Billy launched it. He began to row across the smooth loch waters towards the far side and the waiting post van, his hut diminishing as he pulled strongly away until it was lost beneath the height of Beinn Odhar Mhor.

He had not thought of refusing the offer of work because the guilt still weighed heavy on him, and the escape to the hut and his watercolour painting had failed at the ultimate test to rid him of it. Billy Smith had been the sergeant, the patrol's leader. The others had followed him. He rowed across the loch. Twelve years before, on a night in early summer, he had led the patrol on the east side of Carlingford Lough, between Causeway Bridge and Duggans Point. He had felt no guilt then, but time had changed that. He beached the boat and the dog ran to the postwoman. He didn't look back. Ahead of him was the night train from Fort William and the journey south.

There was a fight in A&E. Usually they came later, when the pubs chucked out into the night. This scrap, men and women, was from a lunchtime birthday session. They were all in their finery, best suits and blouses, and it had started in the bar and moved on to the car park, then followed the ambulance to the waiting area of A&E.

Colin 'Wickso' Wicks, ex-marine commando and Squadron member, finished his shift. Other porters moaned rotten about having first the night shift then the quick changeover to day duties, prattled on about the strain of it. It didn't bother him. He was wide awake. He'd discarded his green overalls, dressed in his civilian clothes and come to the waiting area in search of his supervisor. In his lunch break, eating a pie and chips in the canteen, he'd been called out into the corridor where a young man was waiting for him. They'd spoken. He was told he was wanted. When he'd left the Squadron he'd gone on to the books of Security Shield Ltd, as they all had, and he'd endured two years of escorting businessmen to Kazakhstan, Albania and Colombia; he had been an elite man of arms, not a valet, a servant, a door-opener, and he'd cited the boredom when he'd begun to refuse further work offers. He was trained as a battlefield medic but nursing jobs required references and he didn't want any employer going back to Poole and sifting through his records. References didn't matter, weren't important, for a trolley pusher.

He ignored the fight and rolled forward on the balls of his feet towards the door, looking for the glow of his supervisor's cigarette in the evening darkness. He stayed fit because he ran the streets every night when he was on day shift and every morning when he was on nights. Last year, a nurse had persuaded him to run in Wolverhampton's half-marathon, and Wickso had won by a clear hundred metres, but he hadn't stayed around to collect his prize because he might have been photographed. It was an obsession with him that his picture should not appear in any newspaper — the chance of his parents seeing his photograph in a Midlands evening paper was nil, they lived in west London under the flight paths of Heathrow. The last time he had been home, after his discharge, he had seen the shrine they kept in the front room to their hero, special forces son, photographs, cups, medals, and he'd left early because what had happened to him was like a bad and painful wound to them. The idolized young man had become a pariah and their dreams were broken.

His supervisor came back through the door, and coughed hard. Wickso told him that he would be away for a few days, at least two weeks, but it could be longer. Overseas.

'Well, don't expect any favours from us, sunshine, if you're just pissing off, leaving us in the lurch, and us short-handed enough. Don't come back to us begging.'

Wickso had never begged anything of anyone. He didn't rise to the bait, just walked on and out through the door, then ran loosely the mile to his bedsit. The young man in the corridor had told him where he should be, and at what time, the next morning. He lived with the shame of what had happened on the early-summer night on Carlingford Lough, near to Duggans Point.

The patrol's target had been Sean O'Connell, Provo quartermaster, and from their lie-up bivouac they'd seen the man ease a boat onto the shore and lift a weighted sack from it. It was where Intelligence expected O'Connell to run guns from the South to the North. Billy had whispered they'd have the bastard, not shoot him, but see him shit himself. They'd gone for him. There was a struggle. Billy and Lofty in the water with him, and the thrashing fight as they'd tried to hold his head under so's the spunk would go from him. Wickso had had a torch on them and he'd seen the man's throat as it came up from under the water, and the throat was clean of distinguishing marks. Sean O'Connell, the briefing said, had a distinctive mole on his throat, but Wickso hadn't shouted, hadn't intervened.

He ran easily back to his bedsit, and there he'd pack what little he owned, grab a couple of hours' sleep, and catch an early train.

It was when the ghosts came out and sat around and smoked and brewed tea and talked of girls and home at the end of the evening and the start of the night. There were still enough leaves in the poplar trees at the bottom of the cemetery by the pillboxes for the wind to rustle there. The ghosts came from their sleeping places of square-cut Portland stone.

At the end of many days, 'Lofty' Flint — one time of the Marines and former member of the Squadron — sat with them and spoke with them. The rest of the gardeners employed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission at Tyne Cot reckoned Lofty had 'grave fever', but his work could not be faulted and each year his contract was extended, and he did no harm. In the dark, with the cloud heavy over him and the wind on his face, he could no longer see where he raked.

The young man had come in the late afternoon, by taxi. Lofty had never looked up from his raking, had made the young man stoop with him, walk with him and stand with him as he fed the leaves on to the bonfire.

He put away his tools and his barrow. There were only the ghosts to see him go. He turned on his bicycle light and it threw a stuttered beam ahead of him. At first he had told the young man that it was quite impossible for him to leave Tyne Cot for two weeks, or even two days, because the Remembrance Day services were only two months away, when the leaves must all be cleared and the graves must be cleaned. The young man had said, without sympathy, 'After what you did, after the disgrace of it, I'd have thought you'd be ready for a chance to make amends. These men, here, they served their country — aren't you up to that?'

He cycled on the straight, flat road towards the farmhouse in Passchendaele where he lodged, away from the only place where he knew he belonged, and he heard the singing of the ghosts as he went. He had only done one job for Security Shield Ltd — as driver/escort/handyman for the recently retired commander of 39 Brigade in Northern Ireland, a man thought to be at risk from reprisal terrorism. For six years at the brigadier's Wiltshire home, it had been an idyll for a man severely psychologically troubled. The brigadier's retirement hobby had been a fundraising committee for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Lofty had twice driven him to Belgium to visit the cemeteries at Hop Store, Essex Farm, Spanbroekmolen and Bedford House, and twice they had visited Tyne Cot. The brigadier had died, the house in Wiltshire had been sold, the widow had written a letter to the CWGC commending Lofty for work as a gardener/labourer, as he'd requested. He hoped to live out his life there because, with his rake, hoe, shears and digging fork, it was the one place where he could exorcize the demons.

The chief target of the patrol had been Sean O'Connell, quartermaster. Lofty Flint, who was tall, rangy and strong, lived in the shadow of Billy, his sergeant. He followed Billy where Billy led. Into the water with the target, after Ham had yelped from the kick in the privates and the bite on his hand, and when the Irishman had weakened it had been Lofty who held him down till the bubbles ceased to rise. They had dragged the body to the shore, and then Ham had opened the sack to find not rifles but a confusion of wriggling, writhing crabs. The wallet in the breast pocket of the denim jacket had identified Huey Kelly, sometime inshore fisherman. He would have cracked, when the investigation started; if it had not been for Billy, Wickso and Ham, would have confessed. Tyne Cot was his escape and his penance. He pedalled towards his lodgings. He would tell Marie that he was leaving immediately, and that he did not know when, or if, he would be back. He would pack his bag and cycle in the night to Bruges, would leave his bicycle at the station and take a train to Brussels, then the first Eurostar connection to London. There had been something in the eyes of the young man — doubt or uncertainty — that made Lofty think he would not be back.

Dim light spilled through the open cell door. The prisoners were bedded down, the addicts moaned, the drunks snored and a woman screamed that her baby needed her.

Sitting on the bed with its concrete base, his shoes up on the blanket, Hamilton Protheroe surveyed them. In the Marines he had been 'Ham', given the name by a warrant officer; it had stuck. The WO2 had said he was lippy, with an attitude problem, but he'd passed the physical tests for entry to the Squadron with room to spare, and the tests for aptitude. At the door were the arresting constables, the interview detectives, the custody officer, and a young man. He'd been dozing, near to sleep, when he'd heard the brush of feet in the corridor and the jangle of the keys, and the young man had been put in with him. They hadn't locked the door behind him, had left it open, and he'd known then he was going to walk.

The young man had looked dead tired, out on his feet, and perhaps he'd forgotten whatever grand speech had been written for him. He'd been found via his solicitor. 'Well, it's your lucky day, me pitching up, the young man had said. 'She's retracted her evidence, the woman who's accusing you. I'm taking you out, two weeks abroad, then we cut you loose.'

There were papers to be signed and evidence statements to be binned. The detectives glanced at him with malevolence, as if they despised him. What was in it for him, he'd asked the young man, and he'd been told, and he'd nodded and said that was acceptable. That day, why he looked beaten in, the young man had met the other three — had actually met up with the rest of the team, Billy, Wickso and Lofty. One run, one good payday, piece of crap. He'd lain on the bed, back cushioned by the pillow, head against the wall. 'Yes, I'll do that. No problem, I'll go to Kaliningrad.'

Ham Protheroe's Russian had been categorized as first grade. Not something he'd ever lose. He'd grinned, at the confusion caused by his Russian, then negotiated with the little creep. 'Half up-front, and the rest on return. Cash. OK?' It was the money. He felt no guilt about Carlingford Lough. They'd all have been in gaol still, if Ham hadn't thought on his feet. Chucked the body back into the water so's the tide would carry it on. Thanked Christ they hadn't radioed in for a contact signal. All legged it one mile up the coast and away from Duggans Point, beyond Greencastle, on to Cranfield Bay. Ham was the communications man. Had called in. 'Alpha Four Kilo: nothing to report.' Had called in an hour later, near Greencastle. 'Alpha Four Kilo: patrol proceeding.' Had called in a last time, now four miles from where Huey Kelly floated on the tide. 'Alpha Four Kilo: nothing to report. Returning to base.' He'd held the team together when the provost marshal had met them at the gate the next night, and had escorted them to the interview with the Crime Squad detectives. 'They'll position it on the boat. There was no boat when we went by. We saw nothing. We were on Cranfield Bay,' he'd whispered. 'Stick with it.'

He'd done one assignment for Security Shield Ltd, after the inevitable invitation to resign. Done bodyguard to a singer in London, but the money was shit, and he'd borrowed from her. And hadn't been home in nine years, because he'd taken a loan from his father while the parents were away on holiday and he'd had the run of the Cheshire house. He had nobody. His home was the hotels of the south coast, his family were widows and divorcées, and now the police cell. The custody sergeant gave him a plastic bag with his watch, his wallet, loose coins, belt and tie, and Ham signed for them flamboyantly, then swung his feet off the blanket. There was no mirror in the cell but he tidied his hair as best he could, knotted the tie and hitched the belt round his waist. The crowd stood back, made room for him, and he wished them well. He followed the young man out into the car park. He was told where they'd be staying for the rest of the night, and he said he hoped it was three-star because that was what he was used to. He never thanked the young man for coming with an offer of work…but he'd take it. A beggar could not be a chooser…and he was a beggar, and he reckoned that Billy, Wickso and Lofty were beggars also.