Zero Option

NINE

It turned out to be a filthy night of rain and wind — but that made no difference to our plans. By 2145 we were rolling along the bypass towards Impact Pamp, and five minutes later all three vehicles were parked in the turning area. Our main getaway car was a souped-up Audi Quattro that had seen service in Northern Ireland.

It had been brought back to the mainland because it had been co.mpromised: after a couple of successful operations the IRA knew it too well, so it had come home for a respray and the issue of new plates.

From the outside it looked the same as any other silver Audi; but lurking beneath its skin it carried potent extra assets. One was the engine, which had been given racing specification during a visit to the workshops at the DoningtonPark circuit in Leicestershire. The tweaked unit fired the car with fearsome acceleration and a top speed of 150 m.p.h. There were also slices of Kevlar armour in the doors and down the backs of the front seats — and to cope with the extra power and weight, both brakes and suspension had been uprated.

The result of all this was that the driver Could throw it about the road like a racing-car — which was lust what Whinger fancied.

Our other vehicle was an old black Granada — less brutal, but solid, dependable and fast enough for most contingencies. I'd nominated Stew as driver, with Doughnut Dyson as his co-pilot. The rammer van was being driven by two other guys from the Regiment.

Someone had pointed out that, as the police were not going to give chase after the intercept, there was no need for us to use such a high-performance beast as the Audi. I countered with the possibility that other people might get caught up in the operation — accidentally or on purpose — and we might in the end be glad of a genuine getaway car. In any case, it was important that, once we had Farrell on board, we should cover a few miles at seriously high speed, as though the law were truly on our tail.

In our jeans and trainers we looked like any old layabouts, but covert radios and pistols in shoulder holsters under our sweatshirts gave us the teeth we needed. In the boot of the Granada were three MP5s, a box of loaded magazines, and a case of flash-bang stun grenades.

On our vantage point at the top of the Impact lamp we sat in the dark and waited, the raindrops pearling on the windscreens. The Audi was first in line, with the Granada behind it, and the rammer van last.

The traffic on the bypass below us was spasmodic.

For several seconds at a stretch the road would be empty, then a car or truck would come past, its lights glistening on the wet tarmac. The first sign of activity or rather, lack of it — should come soon after 2215, when the police were due to seal off all approaches to the ring road.

'Does he know what's happening?' asked Tony quietly.

'Who?'

'Farrell.'

'Can't tell. It's possible word's got back to him, but I doubt it. He hasn't seen any outsiders since the ban on visitors was imposed.'

'Where does he think he's going, then?'

'I don't suppose he's got a clue; they don't have to tell prisoners where they're taking them. That's why it's called the ghost train. He may think he's going down to the IKA nick at Evesham. Or there's another one called the Dana at Shrewsbury. That's not far off, either.'

Time dragged. I stared out of the window at the dismal conditions, thankful that at least all the guys on the team knew what our target looked like. Mugshots of Farrell, full face and profile, taken in the nick, had gone up on the board in the incident room. Seeing them, I had realised that even after months of pursuit I had never had a really good look at him. The night I'd seen him at the barn outside Belfast he'd been thirty or more metres off, standing in poor, flickering light; it was my colleague in the C)P, a guy from the Det, who'd recoguised him. And when I had chased him into the edge of the Amazon jungle it was in half-darkness, and in any case I'd been nearly blind with rage. The pictures taken in Winson Green showed him looking pretty rough, with hollow cheeks and dark shadows under the eyes.

Something else was niggling at my mind as we waited: a sheet of a telephone transcript which I'd glimpsed on Fraser's desk in the incident room. It was a record of a conversation with the PIPOk which had obviously taken place while we were in Libya.

Somebody had rung in, demanding to speak to Geordie Sharp, and 'KT' — Karen Terraine — had taken the call.

For a while she'd stalled the man with stock answers, but when he had insisted on talking to me, she'd said: 'Well, you can't. He's not in the country. He's gone abroad for a few days.' Beside these words somebody had made a couple of big red crosses with a felt tip, as if to draw attention to a major breach of security. Why, for Christ's sake, had the woman said that I was overseas? Was it just carelessness, or was it spite 207 revenge for my giving her the brush-off in that bout of midnight fisticu? Either way, I got the impression that Fraser had moved her smartly out of the team working on my problem. He told me she'd gone on leave, but I reckoned she'd been fired. Whatever had happened to her, one potentially dangerous fact was now in enemy hands. To some extent Operation Ostrich had been compromised.

I looked at my watch again and said, 'Now. It's quarter past. The road blocks should be in position.'

For a while we saw no change; the occasional vehicle continued to come past. Then, after one last lorry from the south, the flow from that direction ceased. A couple of minutes later the same thing happened from the north — a single car came down and disappeared south wards trailing a cloud of spray — and then everything went quiet.

'Standby,' I said over our chatter net. 'Engines running.'

Whinger turned the ignition key, and the Audi burbled into life with a deep, throaty grumble. I switched to the police channel, and a moment later heard a voice I recognised as that oflkoss Tucker, driver of the lead vehicle in the convoy: 'Point Alpha now.'

Back on our own net I called, 'OK. Take up position.'

Whinger switched on his headlights, which blazed out across the bypass, and rolled the heavy car down the slope. He headed a few yards to the left, so as to leave the rammer van a clear run, and brought the Audi to rest at an angle across the carriageway, its nose pointing south. In a couple of seconds Stew had eased the Granada round ahead of us and backed it up so that its rear-bumper was touching our front mudguard. By the time he'd switched on the alarm flashers and raised the lid of the boot, the two vehicles presented the very picture of an unfortunate shunt.

I nipped to the boot of the Granada, grabbed the power-saw, switched on and gave a couple of pulls on the starter cord to make sure it would run. At the second tug the engine burst into life, and after belching out a cloud of white smoke, rewed up smoothly. I switched off and returned the saw to its place. The rest of the team stationed themselves on the south side of the barricade, away from the impact area.

'Standby!' called Tony. 'Lights to the north.'

On the chatter net I called the driver of our rammer van. 'All set, Joe?'

'Turning and burning,' he replied calmly.

'Fine. Listen out for my countdown.'

The lights bore down towards us, at first only one big glare through the drizzling rain, then three distinct pairs of headlam, ps, with blue police lamps flashing fore and aft. They were less than a quarter of a mile off when Tony's voice suddenly broke into the chatter net.

'Geordie,' he called. 'The cops are saying a rogue vehicle's bust through the cordon. There's a fourth car coming down the road.'

Jesus! I thought. Somehow the PIPA have rumbled us. They've overheard one of our planning conversations. They're coming to loin the party.

I had about five seconds in which to make a decision.

Abort or carry on? Pointless to abort. If this was the PIP-A, we were fairly well equipped to take them on here and now. If it was someone else pissing about we could stuff them with the greatest of ease. I said, 'Carry on as planned. Whinger, watch for a fourth fucking vehicle.'

In the distance, beyond the convoy lights, another faint glow was already visible. But I had no more time to worry about it. loss, driving the lead police car, had seen our obstruction and began to brake. The middle vehicle closed on him a bit, then slowed, increasing its distance again. The little group cruised on towards us at a diminishing pace. I kept mentally calculating the distance they had to run.

'Stand by to roll,' I told Joe. 'Five, four, three, two, one… GO!'

We stripped off our covert radios and dumped them in the boot of the Granada. Tony and I pulled on pairs of lightweight goggles. My eyes were glued to the approaching convoy, but my ears were listening for the engine o pounds ur van. There it was, running at high revs in second gear.

I flailed my right hand at the oncoming lights, urgently waving them down. The lead car had barely coasted to a halt when the van, its engine screaming, hurtled down on to the carriageway at right-angles and caught the meat wagon broadside. With a huge, crunching crash of metal and a screech of tyres the wagon was hurled sideways. As the wheels caught on the tarmac, the impetus toppled the van on to its right side and sent it powering on, sparks flying from the side that scraped over the road. From close quarters the violence of the impact was shocking. With a sudden stab of alarm I thought that the van was going to catch fire. If Farrell got roasted alive, that would be the end of everything.

It came to rest with the roo pounds ertical, on the edge of the shallow ditch. Then things happened very fast. I dived for the power saw, grabbed it, ran to the ditch, started up and applied the carbon blade to the metal.

Tony stood beside me, directing a torch on to the roof.

Above the scream of my saw I heard rounds going down in bursts, then the boom of flash-bangs.

The saw bit through the thin metal sheeting of the roof as if it were cardboard, and in a few seconds I'd made two big cuts running downwards and outwards from a central point at the top. A hail of fiery red sparks flew in all directions, and I thanked my stars that the fuel I could smell spilling out over the verge was diesel, not petrol. Out of the corner of my eye I saw somebody struggling out through the left-hand door of the cab, which was uppermost. Knowing it was one of our own guys I didn't worry; he'd keep out of the way, or.maybe just lie down.

One more cut across the bottom of my triangle and the job was done. As the piece came away, Tony stuck his head in through the hole, swept his torch beam and fired offwith a canister of pepper spray in the direction of the tail. Then he scrambled in through the opening and I followed.

The vehicle's lights had gone down in the crash, so the torches were our only illumination. In the beams I saw two gures piled into one back corner, struggling on top of each other, gasping and cursing and rubbing at their eyes. Tony reached them first and lifted the upper man bodily into the air, only to find he was attached to the second by a handcuff and a short chain.

Which was which? The top man had fair hair, the bottom one was dark; the minder was uppermost, Farrell on the deck.

Bolt shears out. Snap through the links. Blood shining on the floor of the van — or rather on the wall.

Grab Farrell.

He yelled a string of obscenities as t slammed him face-down, wrenched his arms behind him and got a pair ofplasticuffs pulled up tight on his wrists. 'Take it easy, Seamus!' he managed between coughs and splutters. 'That fucking gas! It's you, Seamus, is it not?

Jaysus, man, get offme! Get me out of this!'

That was all he could manage. He couldn't open his eyes. Blood was frothing out of his mouth, and as the pepper got to him properly he relapsed into incoherent roars. The spray was getting to me as well. My eyes were OK inside the goggles, but my nose, mouth and throat were burning, and I tried not to inhale.

I saw Tony had Farrell under control, so I dived back through the hole into the open and gasped in a few breaths of fresh air. Outside it sounded as though a full- scale battle was in progress: bangs, flashes, rounds clattering down, police sirens screaming. The moment Farrell's head appeared in the opening I grabbed him by the hair and pulled him bodily out. He collapsed on to the ground, bellowing and choking. A second later Tony dived out as well. Between us we hoisted the prisoner to his feet and gave him the bum's rush in the direction of the Audi. To right and left I noticed bodies lying on the ground.

It had originally been my intention to get Farrell in the back seat between Tony and myself. But on impulse I opened the boot, dumped him bodily inside and slammed the lid.

'Let's go,' I yelled.

Whinger loomed up in front of me, thrusting his MP 5 in my direction as he went for the driving seat. I grabbed the weapon, pointed it up in the air and squeezed the trigger, purely to make sure it was unloaded. To my amazement, five or six rounds hammered off into the night before the magazine was empty.

'For fuck's sake, Whinger!' I shouted.

'Get in! Get in!' he yelled. 'Stop pissing about.'

He already had the engine running. I leapt into the passenger seat, Tony into the back and with a squeal of tyres and the engine howling, the Audi shot away down the bypass.

'Those guys on the deck,' I panted. 'What happened to them?'

'Nothing.' Whinger sounded perfectly cool. 'They just lay down when we started firing.'

'What about the extra car?'

'A pale blue Lexus. It went past.'

'How?'

'Scraped round the front of the Granada, on the verge.'

'What was it doing?'

'Not a clue. But it was going like shit offa shovel.'

'Phworrh!' I was still choking and spluttering. 'Your tucking pepper, Tony.'

'I know. But it did the trick. I don't reckon our guy saw anything at all.'

In seconds we were nudging 120 m.p.h. Having tried an experimental ride in the boot earlier that day, I knew that Farrell couldn't possibly hear us talking: the noise inside the tin can was diabolical. 'Take it easy,' I told Whinger.:At this rate Stew'll never keep up.' On the radio I called, 'Zulu One to Zulu Two, what's the score? Over.'

'Zulu Two,' came Stew's voice. 'Mobile towards you. We have you visual.'

Looking back, I saw the Granada's lights in the distance. 'Zulu One to all Papa stations,' I went. 'Clear Point Charlie now. Anticipating Point Charlie figures six-zero seconds, repeat six-zero seconds.'

'Papa Nine,' came the answer. 'Roger.'

Whinger had throttled back to ninety and the lights of the Granada had closed a little. But then ahead of us our own lights picked up the shape of another car parked beside the road.

'Fuckin' 'ell!' cried Whinger. 'It's that bastard Lexus.'

He put his foot down again and the Audi surged forward.

'Zulu One to Zulu Two,' I called. 'Watch yourselves. The intruder vehicle's parked up ahead.'

As we hurtled down towards it I had to remind myself that this was Shropshire, England, not some godforsaken bog outside Belfast. I was so hyped up by the intercept that our best option seemed to be to spray the Lexus with a few busts from the MP 5s as we went past… Take it easy, I told myself. You can't do that here. The guys in that car may easily be PIRA. Farrell hoped I was Seamus. Was he expecting an intercept? But equally, the Lexus crew could be drunks trying to evade the breathalyser, or joy-riders baiting the police.

By the time we reached the Lexus it was already rolling, gathering speed. I caught a glimpse of three young faces, two in front and one behind. Just after we'd roared past, its lights came on.

'Hey!' I yelled. 'These bastards are after us. Sort them, Whinger. Don't kill 'em, for fuck's sake, but put them out of contention.'

Over the radio I called, 'Zulu One, the intruder's now between us.'

We were rounding a gentle curve. A moment later our speed had carried us out of sight of our tail. From our recce I remembered that there was a picnic site coming up on our left, a pull-up with rustic chairs and tables, screened from the road by conifers.

'There!' I exclaimed. 'Dive in there!'

Whinger had seen the entrance too. He hit the brakes with such a thump that the Audi slewed left and right. With a juddering rush we banged down off the tarmac on to the gravel of the pull-up. Whinger doused his lights and simultaneously switched offthe ignition so that the brake-lamps wouldn't light up.

'Slow down, slow down!' I called to Stew. 'Keep back. We've bombed into a lay-by. We're going to hang in here, then take them out.'

In about five seconds the Lexus overshot. Maybe the driver had been confused by the disappearance of his target — at any rate, he seemed to be moving more slowly than before. Whinger watched the lights go past outside the screen of firs, then started the engine again and came out after him.

Like a greyhound after a hare, the Audi surged up behind its prey, showing no lights at first, then with everything blazing. Before the other driver had time to react Whinger was up beside him, still accelerating hard.

Then, just as our tail was about to clear the Lexus's front, he braked fiercely and.jerked the steering wheel to the left.

The hit was perfectly timed. There was no way the other driver could have avoided us. In a split second he found his car whacked sideways and sent out of control.

As Whinger straightened and accelerated away, I saw the Lexus spin through 360 degrees, go half round again, and finally roll over on to its side.

'Brilliant!' I went. On the net I said, 'Zulu One.

Problem Solved. Continue as per schedule.'

'Roger,' Stew answered.

'That's as far as they'll get tonight,' said Whinger.

'Whoever they were.'

'Dickers, for sure,' I told him.

'You're joking. I reckon they were joy-riders, I bet the car had been nicked.'

'Maybe.'

'I got to see their faces quite well,' said Tony. 'I shone my torch on them as we came past. All youngish twenties, I guess.'

'Irish?'

'Coulda been. I don't know. How do you tell?'

'You can't,' I said. 'SB'll show us some mugshots when we get back. See if you recognise any of them.'

'Ah, come on!' said Whinger. 'You're getting PIRA on the brain. We shook 'em up, anyway.'

After all that things quietened down a bit, and I had a moment to wonder how Farrell had fared during the violent maneuvering. At Charlie Three, the southern roundabout, there were no police cars in sight. I guessed that some were about, but standing well back, as arranged. We went across unopposed, and sped on southwards past Leominster to a spot where a side-road carried up through some woods. There, on the brow of a hill, we were due to switch from the Audi into a minivan — another precaution laid on to bluff Farrell, who would certainly have the wit to realise that in any real chase the police would radio details of the getaway car ahead, leaving it liable to arrest.

Just before we reached the rendezvous I said quietly to the other two, 'Don't forget — from now on we've all got to act.'

They knew what I meant: until then we'd been on our own, but for the next few hours or maybe days we were going to be at close quarters with our man.

Everything we did or said in his presence must confirm our claim to be renegades, acting on our own for my personal benefit. No hint must be given that we had the full backing of the legiment and the security services.

The white van was standing on the designated spot beside a bus-shelter on the outskirts of a village.

Although there was nobody in sight, I knew that some guys from the legiment had the place staked out; they'd be somewhere in the background, eyes on the vehicle. They would pick up the Audi as soon as we were clear, and drive it back to base.

As Whinger pulled in and parked alongside the van, I jumped out and went round to open the boot. My torch beam revealed Farrell lying on his right side, hands cuffed behind him, his knees drawn up to chest.

'Out!' I snapped. 'Get out!'

'Get out yourself, yer fucking twat!' he exploded.

'What in God's name d'you think yer doing, giving me shite treatment like this?'

'Out!' I repeated.

I noticed that his voice had sounded thick and peculiar, but I grabbed him by the upper shoulder and dragged him into a sitting position. 'On your feet.'

'Is Seamus with you?' he spluttered. 'Or is he not?'

'He's not.'

'Who are you, then?'

'You'll find out. Come on.'

His voice definitely sounded odd — thick and lisping.

It was something I didn't remember from before.

Slowly, painfully, his wrists still tied behind him, Farrell knelt up on the floor of the boot, then lifted one knee over the back of the car so as to lower his foot to the ground. 'Get these fucking cuffs off me,' he gasped.

'They're after killing my hands.'

I ignored the complaint, heaved him upright, dragged a balaclava hood down over his head with the eye-holes'at the rear, a.nd propelled him in the direction of the van. He walked unsteadily, and I remembered that the man had a chronic limp, apparently the legacy of a car accident.

'OK,' I told him. 'You're beside the other vehicle now. Get in, to your left, and sit in the middle of the back seat.'

With Tony to his left on the bench seat, me to his right and Whinger back at the wheel, we set off again, heading south. The arrangement was that the Granada, which had stood offwhile we switched.vehicles, would proceed to the cottage independently.

We went by a roundabout route — although, with his eyes full of pepper spray, the hammering in the boot of the Audi and now the hood, I didn't think Farrell had a clue where he was or whether he was facing east, west, north or south. It gave me an odd feeling to be shoulder-to-shoulder with this murdering, torturing pride of the Belfast Brigade. Because of his plasticuffs he had to sit forward awkwardly, and I could see he was in some pain, but I just thought, Ah, stuff the bastard.

Occasionally he asked some question about where we were and where we were going, his voice muffled by the hood, but when none of us answered he gave up.

The silence left me time to think. I was trying to work out what he knew and what he didn't. The fact that he thought he'd been lifted by his own guys showed surely — that he was totally in the dark: maybe the PIRA had been trying to set up a lift, but obviously he hadn't got wind of Plan Zulu, and it dawned on me that he might not even know that Tim and Tracy were being held hostage. After all, we'd captured him in Colombia before they were lifted, and, including the first two days in Bogotfi, he'd been in the nick ever since.

Looking back over the interception, I couldn't remember anything we'd done that would give our game away. I started to wonder: did Farrell even know who I was? He'd shown no sign of recognising me.

Then I remembered that on the only occasion he'd seen me, when we had fought in the Amazon jungle, I'd had my face blacked up for the night operation.

Whinger drove brilliantly, never missing a turn, even when he came to the steep, winding lanes of the Forest of Dean. Admittedly he'd recced the approach to Laurel Cottage the day before, but his route-finding was impressive. Not knowing that part of the country myself, I found the roads thoroughly confusing. On the final stretch I reminded myself not to make some stupid remark like 'Is this it?' which would betray the fact that our destination was new to me. In fact, I decided I was going to say as little to Farrell as possible. My aim was to move him on as fast as we could. He surely knew by now that we weren't his own people, and I hoped he'd be in shock for a few hours after the lift, and that the prospect of a quick escape would stop him trying to analyse the situation too deeply.

Eventually we climbed a steep gravel track through a wood, passed a battered white gate that stood open, and pulled up outside a house which was already lit up; Stew and Doughnut, in the Granada, had got there ahead of us. While Whinger went on in, Tony and I got Farrell out of the van and hustled him through the front door into a small hallway and on into the kitchen. Only then did I bring out a pair of regular steel handcuff. Having locked Farrell's right hand to Tony's left, I cut the plasticuffs away with my Leatherman pliers. And none too soon; because the prisoner had been tugging away at them, the cuf pounds had ratcheted themselves up tighter and tighter and his hands had started turning blue.

Removal of his hood gave me a shock. He looked a right mess: face pale, eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot from the pepper, dried blood crusted over one cheek, and his ulSper lip all puffed out with a split down it to the right of centre — I guessed from being thrown against the wall of the meat wagon in the crash. There was blood on his blue and white striped prison shirt as well, and on his regulation-issue brown trousers.

'Better wash your face,' I told him. 'Use the sink there.' It wasn't that I felt sorry for him, just that I didn't fancy looking at such a wreck.

While Tony led him across to the sink and stood beside him as he scrubbed off his face, I took a quick look round the house with Whinger: lounge, bathroom and separate bog on the ground floor, three bedrooms upstairs. Everything was painted white, with terrible, twee little pictures of animals on the walls. A woman laid on by the tkegiment had been in to make up the beds and put out towels and suchlike. The place was so small that the idea of spending days there gave me instant claustrophobia.

'Get a brew on, Whinger, for fuck's sake,' I said quietly. 'We've got some talking to do.'

I found Tony and Farrell side by side on the settee in the lounge.

'He's bitten his tongue,' Tony told me. 'He's got his teeth smacked together in the crash. That's why he's speaking kinda funny.'

'Does it need stitches or anything?'

'No, no. The bleeding's stopped. It'll be fine. He just can't talk any sense.'

The telephone stood on a glass-topped coffee table near Farrell's left hand, so I pushed it towards him and said, 'Right. You'd better get talking.'

The dark-blue eyes glared at me from out of their inflamed rims. 'Talking?' he spat. 'What about?'

I stared back at him. Was he trying to wind me up,

or had he really no inkling of what was happening?

'D'you know who I am?' I asked.

'Not a clue.'

'In that case, I'll start from the beginning. My name's Geordie Sharp I'm in the SAS. Some of your people in the PIRA have lifted my four-year-old, Tim, and his guardian, Tracy. They're holding them hostage, to get you released.'

I watched the information sink in. Farrell's eyes were wary, as if he didn't believe what he was hearing. He said, 'SAS? Like luck you are. How would the SAS be after attacking a police convoy?' With his split upper lip and swollen tongue, Farrell couldn't get his mouth round the consonants and he was lisping.

'They wouldn't,' I said. 'That wasn't the SAS. That was myself and a few pals — my private army.'

'But you're in the regular army. You just said so.'

'I'm on leave. I've taken time off specially, to sort this out.'

'Who are these other turds, then?'

I gestured towards Tony. 'He's a friend over from the States. He's doing some BG work here.'

'BG? What's that?'

'Bodyguarding. Close protection.'

'All right. And these others?'

'Also friends. Former members of the Regiment, in civvy street now.'

Farrell looked out through the doorway, towards the rest of the guys in the kitchen. Again, he seemed to be weighing up what he was hearing. 'So… what's the game?'

'The game's dead simple,' I told him. 'Your people have told me that if we get you out, they'll release my two. We've got you out. As soon as the kid and the woman are in my hands, you can go.'

At that moment Whinger came in with a couple of mugs of tea. 'Will I do one for him as well?' he asked.

I was about to say no, but I changed my mind and told him, 'All right, then. Give him a cup.'

'You can keep yer fucking tea,' Farrell snapped.

'Whisky if you have it, but not fucking tea.'

Ah, sling yourself, I thought, but all I said was: 'Just get on the phone — right? And set up a rendezvous for an exchange.'

He shot me a look of hatred and said, 'Look, I've not been in Belfast for over a month. I don't know where any of the lads are.'

'You'd better find someone, and quickly. Otherwise you may not make it until daylight.'

Farrell reached for the phone, bu stopped and withdrew his hand. 'Hey! Sharp! You're the little prat that was after shooting me at Ballyconvil.'

'What if I am?'

'You made a fair cock of that operation, didn't you?'

'Dial!' I told him. 'And get something set up for first thing in the morning.'

At last he moved. Holding the receiver in his left hand, he had to draw Tony's left hand across with his right in order to pick out the buttons. I knew the call would be monitored and recorded, so I didn't bother trying to memorise the numbers, although I did notice the dialling code for Belfast, and guessed he was calling one of those sleazy bars on the Falls tkoad where IRA players drift in to drink at all hours of the day and night.

The first man he got was evidently pissed out of his mind.

'What are you at?' Farrell snapped after a moment.

'Answer my question, will you?'

'Bollocks!' came the answer, so loud I could hear it across the table.

'Bollocks yourselfl' Farrell shouted. 'Pull yourself together, man.'

A bellow of laughter came down the line. Farrell held the receiver away from his ear and I heard a voice say, 'By the powers, we have a right prick on here!'

'Get off the line, twat!' yelled Farrell. Tll speak to someone sober… Hello?'

The man had gone. Another came on, apparently in little better shape.

'Is Eamonn there?' Farrell demanded.

'What's that?'

'Eamonn! It's Eamonn I want.'

'Eamonn who?'

Getting nowhere, Farrell banged down the receiver and dialled again. This time he found a contact who was making more sense, a man he knew called Charlie.

'Now, Charlie,' he said. 'It's Declan here… Yes…

More or less… I don't know — some charming friends. What? Of course it's me. It's me fucking tongue, that's all — I bit it in a car smash… Yes… Certainly not. Not at all… Where am I? Wait one.' He put a hand over the mouthpiece and looked at me enquiringly. I spread my hands out and down. 'No idea,' he went on. 'About two hours from Birmingham, but God knows where… Yes. These fellers are looking to swap me for the woman and kid… That's right. Are they with you?… Oh, I see…'

Talking to this guy, whoever he was, Farrell was fairly polite. Eventually he was given another number and hung up. While he dialled again, although I knew the SB monitors would pick it up, I watched the first four digits and saw that they were 0802 — a mobile.

The moment the call was answered, Farrell's manner changed. He became arrogant and hectoring, just as he had been on the night at the barn outside Belfast. He wasted no time on explanations, just yelled, 'You'll get me out of this shit-hole first thing in the morning. You know that?'

Whatever the other guy said only seemed to enrage him further. 'When I say tomorrow, I mean tomorrow!' he shouted. 'Upgrade.your fucking ideas, man, or I'll see you regret it! I'll give you quarter of an hour to sort something. Then I'll be back.'

I noticed Farrell was trembling as he hung up.

'Jaysus,' he said, 'the fever is on me again. I thought I had the better of it too…'

I put the back of my hand on his forehead, which felt burning hot. 'Your wounds, is it?' I said.

'It is.'

'What happened?'

'Some fucker shot me.'

'R.eally! Where was that?'

'South America.'

'You get around.'

Farrell's face contorted, as if in sudden pain. 'Listen,' he said. 'I need the bog.'

'Go on, then. Tony'll take you.'

Tm not going with him. I need some privacy. Take these cuffs off.'

'No way. Tony's watched plenty of guys taking a dump. You can shit in company or not at all.'

Farrell gave in grumbling, and while the two were in the bathroom I said quietly to Whinger, 'Have you got those tablets the Med Centre packed?'

'Sure.'

'Fetch a couple out, then, and a glass of water. We need to get something down the bastard. We can't have him dying on us.' Special Branch had found out from the prison hospital what antibiotics Farrell had been getting, and the Med Centre had made up some of the stuffinto plain white pills that looked like Paracetamol.

When Farrell reappeared, I gave him two.

His response was predictable. 'What — are you after poisoning me?'

'Don't be daft. Alive you're worth a lot to us; dead, you'd be worth fuck-all. These are just aspirin. Can't do you any harm. And listen — when you get back on to your man in a moment, I want to speak to him myself.

That's the only way to get ourselves straight with details of the meeting.'

Farrell took the tablets and drank the water. A few minutes later he put the call through, and while he was talking I quietly asked Tony, 'Did he want to shit?'

'Sure did!' He held his nose and scrunched up his eyes. 'Boy, has he got the runs.'

'Got to watch him,' I went. 'We don't want him getting too sick to travel.'

After a few exchanges Farrell handed me the phone.

I put my palm over the mouthpiece and asked, 'Who is it?'

'Feller called Malcolm.'

'Hi, Malcolm,' I said. 'What's the score?'

'The M25, northbound,' went the Belfast voice.

'Between junctions fourteen and fifteen. One mile north of fourteen there's an emergency phone on a pillar. Be there on the hard shoulder at eight forty-five in the morning — eight forty-five on the dot. Our people will pull up fifty yards behind you. The hostages will walk forward towards you. You'll bring our man back. The exchange will take place when the parties meet in the middle.'

I repeated the details carefully, then had to check something: 'Farrell was saying tomorrow but it's today, Saturday, we're talking about?'

'It is. And no more than two of you in the car.'

'Your man plus two.'

'All right. And no surveillance, either.'

'You're joking!'

'Just so you know.'

'What vehicle will you be in?… Hello?… Hello?'

The man had gone.

'No point in asking,' said Farrell. 'They probably haven't got the wagon yet. They'll nick some old banger in the morning, and come in that.'