The Lucifer Network [181-142-181-4.7]

By: Geoffrey Archer

Category: Fiction Espionage

Synopsis:

MI6 agent Sam Packer watches powerlessly as a trouble-making gunrunner
is shot down in front of him on a lonely road in Zambia.  As life slips
from his grasp the arms smuggler whispers a heart-stopping warning to
Sam: a terrorist gang has a horror weapon and means to commit mass
murder.

But the man dies before naming the gang, its nationality or its cause.
Is the weapon nuclear, chemical or biological?  The world's
intelligence agencies are desperate to know.  Packer has his own ideas
about how to crack the case and is convinced that Julie, the
gunrunner's daughter, has been given the answers.  In turn, she
suspects Packer to be her father's murderer.

The two are thrust together in an unlikely pairing as wrorld events
threaten to spiral out of control.  A bomb explodes in an Asian quarter
of London ... Anti-racism officials succumb to an unidentified virus
... A Royal Navy submarine discovers a germ warfare lab on an Adriatic
island .. . Disconnected incidents whose relevance is unclear until
ghosts from his past send Packer to Vienna on the trail of an ex-Stasi
spy-But the key still lies with Julie.  Only by winning her confidence
can Packer break the ring of silence and penetrate to the heart of the
sinister organization known as The Lucifer Network.


Last printing: 09/12/02
`>551' ALSO BY GEOFFREY ARCHED

Sky Dancer Shadow Hunter Eagle Trap Scorpion Trail Java Spider Fire
Hawk

THE LUCIFER NETWORK

Geoffrey Archer

CENTURY LONDON

Geoffrey Archer has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is a work of fiction.  Names and characters are the product
of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, is entirely coincidental

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar
condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent
purchaser

First published in the United Kingdom in aooi by Century

The Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V

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ISBN: 0-5926- 7126 84689 (hb)

Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Polmont, Stirlingshire
Printed and bound in the UK by This book is dedicated to the RN
Submarine Service whose pivotal role in great dramas cannot always be
revealed.

The Service celebrates its centenary in 2001.

Acknowledgements

WHILE PREPARING THE factual backdrop against which this work of fiction
is set, I was indebted to many people who were generous with their time
in setting me straight.  There isn't space to list them all and some of
them spoke to me in confidence, but I would like to thank Glyn Ford
MEP, Searchlight magazine and the EU Monitoring Centre on Racism and
Xenophobia in Vienna for their insights into the extreme right wing in
Europe.  Officers from Scotland Yard's Racial and Violent Crimes Task
Force were also most helpful.

Dr.  Wolfgang Preiser of the Department of Virology at Middlesex
Hospital spent many patient hours explaining to me how viruses spread
any errors in this book are very much mine and not his.

The Royal Navy Submarine Service was also extremely generous with its
time.  I am particularly grateful to Commander Jeff Tall, Curator of
the RN Submarine Museum at Gosport and to Lt.-Commander Mike Walhker,
First Lieutenant of HMS Turbulent, whose captain and crew looked after
me so warmly and so informatively when I was their guest on a submerged
passage to the Mediterranean.

Finally I should acknowledge the colourful insight into the murky world
of arms smuggling in Africa which was given to me by someone who will
remain nameless.  Subsequent to our conversations, he was tried for the
murder of his girlfriend and sentenced to life imprisonment.

ONE

Zambia

Tuesday, 25 August 1998

THE ENGLISHMAN SWITCHED off the engine of the hired car.  The emptiness
of the parking area in front of the game lodge was broken by a handful
of four-wheel-drives.  Beyond and above the lattice of trees ringing
this small country club a few miles outside Kitwe, the African sky was
purple with the start of a still night.  Cicadas tickled themselves in
the trees.  Under the bonnet of his rented Toyota something clinked as
it cooled.

The last time he'd been in Africa the job had been dirty and it was
dirty again.  The same muck as before.

"Clearing up' London had called it.

"You were in at the start, old son.  Only proper you should be there at
the end."

By rights it was a job for an in-house man, someone under diplomatic
cover, but they'd sent him because he was deniable.  And because the
matter was personal if the man he'd come to see were to talk and was
believed, it would be his head on the block as much as the Service's,
his career at an end.

The car window was open, the night air still warm but with a freshness
not there during the day.  Sam Packer wanted a drink.  Something large
and volatile.  But he knew to restrain himself this evening.  At the
table Jackman would order the house red, because that's what he always
drank here.  Brain glue, he called the stuff that came in a deceptively
plain bottle from the Cape.  A year ago Sam's headache had been
memorable.  This time he would limit himself to a single glass.  There
was a deal to be struck.  A man to be got the better of.  A man who was
unprincipled and full of guile.

In his late thirties, Sam Packer had a strong, square face with a
chiselled chin whose determination was concealed by a close-trimmed
beard.  He disliked facial hair but had grown it two years ago out of a
need to change his appearance.  He had thick, dark hair and eyes that
seemed distant, yet recorded all they saw.  He was a man women tended
to take an interest in.

He watched a Range Rover pull up and four men get out.  White men with
the look of engineers here for the copper mines, he guessed.  With
wives who tinkered with oil paints and did voluntary work at the local
school.  The group made its way in to the restaurant, bantering
gently.

He knew that decades ago whites fell in love with this sultry
continent, never wanting to leave it, but his own experience had been
recent and the parts of it he'd seen had smelled of death.  It was a
place where he didn't want to be, particularly for a mission like
this.

Headlamps swept round the car park, as a vehicle turned in from the
Kitwe road.  Packer slumped in the seat.  Was this Jackman already,
doing the same as him, coming twenty minutes early to check the place
out?  He felt crazily jumpy tonight.  Too much was hanging on the
outcome of this meeting.  The halogen beams bounced round the potholed
parking area and died close to him.  He raised his eye-line above the
door sill, enough to see out.  It wasn't Jackman climbing out of the
vehicle parked a few feet from his, but a young and beautiful Zambian
couple.  As they walked with the grace of gazelles towards the lodge,
they entwined fondly.  He felt a twinge of envy.  He pushed open the
car door and stood up.

Tall and straight-backed, he wore freshly pressed tan slacks and a blue
cotton shirt.  He stretched to shake out the stiffness from his
shoulders there'd been little sleep on last night's flight from London.
The air smelled of some alien vegetation.  Dust dry.  It'd be December
before the rains came, according to the hotel porter who'd carried his
bags earlier that day.  As he closed the car door and locked it, he
listened to the rhythm of the tree crickets.

Pools of darkness surrounded the car park.  He peered into them one by
one, looking for shadows that moved.  A year ago Jackman had told him
the price for a contract killing in Zambia was fifty pounds.  Sam
touched the pocket of his trousers to check the wallet was there, then
crunched over the gravel to the lodge, running a finger under the
sweaty collar of his shirt to free it from his neck.  Lights set high
in the dark-leafed trees at one side of the building illuminated
well-watered lawns and a few hardwood easy chairs and tables.  But it
was the mosquito hour and the guests were indoors.  Instinctively Sam
smacked a hand against a cheek, imagining some winged malaria-carrier
braving the repellent he'd daubed on earlier.

The lodge was reed-thatched, as were the two small accommodation
chalets that stood slightly apart from it.  A private venture, Jackman
had told him, a more restful haven than the hotels in town for visiting
relatives of European mining specialists.  And the restaurant served
good steaks in reasonable privacy.  The lodge was of timber, darkly
varnished.  On its walls, paintings of elephants, baboons and exotic
birds glowed under their picture lights.

"I'm meeting Harry Jackman here," Sam announced to the shirt-sleeved
European who greeted him inside.

"May I ask your name sir?"

"Foster.  Simon Foster."

Today's name.  And last year's.  The one Jackman had known him by when
they'd done the deal that was now causing the firm such pain.  Twelve
months had passed, almost to the day, a year that had proved, if proof
were ever needed, that even the best of intentions could go sour.

"When he comes I'll tell him you're in the bar, sir."

"Thank you."

The restaurant was small, not more than a dozen tables, several set
against wide windows overlooking a small lake.  Beyond it, the western
horizon glimmered deep violet, its colours mirrored in the water.  The
four men he'd seen emerging from the Range Rover were already seated,
studying menus and gulping beers.

The almost empty bar was separated from the dining room by a Chinese
lacquered screen and lit by flickering oil lamps.  Packer glanced
around pretending to be looking for a friend.  Two couples sat at
tables, white haired and with the even-tanned complexions of the
well-heeled.  He returned their smiles, then made for a cane armchair
in the shadows at the far end.  The barman followed him to his seat.

"Most please," he asked, remembering the name of the local beer.  The
African retreated to prepare a tray.

Packer felt intensely uneasy.  His tactics were bad.  He aimed to
wrong-foot the wily old gun-runner, yet their meeting was at a time and
place Jackman himself had set.  His home ground.  There'd been no other
way, of course.  The Service wanted a solution fast and Jackman held
all the cards.  Short of silencing him with a bullet, there had to be a
negotiation.  A gentle probing to see what he wanted.  So it had been
the phone call from an untraceable number at the headquarters at
Vauxhall Cross.

"We're upset, Harry.  Just don't get it.  Why are you doing this?  We
need to talk."  And now this dinner date where, if the man was truly
bent on discrediting his own country's Intelligence Service, he might
well have invited the press along to join them.

There was movement beyond the Chinese screen.  Sam half covered his
face.  Instinct.  Pure self-preservation.  But it was only more dinner
guests arriving.

Jackman could well arrive with a snapper, he realised.  Some hack who'd
flown out maybe even on the same plane as Sam to get the proof their
story needed.  Proof that the British government, through its
intelligence arm, had involved itself in a coup in the small
independent African state of Bodanga a year ago.  A coup which had
failed, leaving thousands dead, including the European staff of a
refugee camp whose raped and machine-gunned bodies had been shown on a
billion TV screens across the globe.

And it was Sam who'd paid Jackman to provide the guns for that coup.
Paid him with a briefcase full of British taxpayers' sweat, handed over
twelve months ago.  The cash had bought a lot of guns.  Hundreds of
them.  Hundreds of thousands of bullets.

After the debacle he'd asked himself if it would have felt less dirty
had the coup succeeded.  A quick clean kill, a tyrant overthrown,
victims in the dozens, not thousands.  No violation of those sweet
girls from Surrey and County Clare.  Probably.  The politicians would
have crowed, assured of a place in history when the cabinet papers came
out in thirty years.  Consciences clear, instead of being burdened by
guilt and now by panic.

Two more elderly white couples entered the bar, greeting one of those
already there.  There was air kissing and many gentle embraces.

"My dears, it's been an age .. ."  The flat accents of Europeans bred
south of the equator.

No Jackman yet.  No cameramen, thank God.  Just these people.  What
were they?  Tobacco farmers?  Traders who killed with cancer instead of
lead and never gave it a moment's thought?

The Service had been baffled by what Jackman was threatening.  Why
would a man who'd been the only real beneficiary of that deal to arm
the coup plotters try to blow the lid off it?  Why had he told a
prominent British newspaper editor of MI6's complicity in the botched
coup?  And why that editor, Frank Hampson, a man whose links to the
Intelligence Service had been common knowledge for years, a choice of
mouthpiece that had led to the story being quickly blocked.  Bad luck
on Jackman's part, or deliberate?  Telling a brown-noser because he
wanted his intentions known by SIS?  But what did he want, this man
enriched by decades of illicit dealings?

Packer finished his beer.  The chilled amber liquid had been pleasant,
though watery.  He rejected the barman's offer of another.  He wanted
the clearest of heads this evening.

The file on Jackman was thin a few A4 sheets sketching suspected
involvement in international intrigues and criminality, but little hard
proof.  The sort of bundle a graduate trainee would compile during
induction at Vauxhall Cross.  For more than twenty years Jackman had
worked the rich vein of Africa's corruption, first gold and precious
stones, then tapping the richer lode of arms.  The Angolan war had
bought him homes in Zambia, South Africa and Spain.  Congo and the ANC
had helped him accrue property back in England under nominee names.
There'd been money laundering and sanctions busting.  Wisps of
evidence.  Not enough to convict, but possibly enough to frighten.  It
was Sam's only card, but hardly an ace.

The skin crawled on the back of his neck, telling him he was being
watched.  He turned his head slowly but couldn't see from where.  A few
minutes later the maitre d' appeared in the bar.

"Mr.  Jackman asks if you will kindly join him in the restaurant,
sir."

"Does he?  Right."

Sam stood up without hurrying.  He stepped past the Chinese screen,
pausing in the entrance lobby to glance through the glass into the car
park.  A drab green Land Rover stood ostentatiously beneath one of the
floodlights, its occupants dressed in army fatigues.  Fear rippled
through him, but he rebuked himself for it.  This was friendly
territory he was on, not some madhouse like Iraq.

Harry Jackman didn't rise from the table as Sam approached, instead he
eyed him with an almost playful look.  His bald head was red from the
African sun.  His eyebrows were smudges on a fleshy face, angled
upwards into the middle of his brow, giving him the deceptive look of a
clown.  He wore a short-sleeved cotton shirt with a thin stripe.  Small
gold spectacles perched firmly on the bridge of his nose.

"I trust you've come alone," he murmured as Packer sat, his accent
vaguely north of Birmingham.

"You mean you're not sure?"

Jackman stifled a smirk.  Of course he was sure.

"You on the other hand have brought some friends along," Sam remarked,
inclining his head towards the door.

"You noticed.  I'm glad.  You were meant to."

"You pay them to look after you?  Or they do it for love?"

Jackman chuckled.

"What do you think .. ."  Behind the small, polished lenses his eyes
lacked self-confidence.  The look of a man used to peering over his
shoulder.  The armed men in the car park would be regular escorts, Sam
surmised.

"Drink?"  Jackman offered.

"That'd be nice."

"I've ordered some Cape Red .. ."

"Fine."

"Brain glue I call it."

"I know.  And a glass of water please."

Jackman had only to raise his hand from the table for the waiter to be
at his elbow.

"Some water for my guest, Emanuel."

"Tell you what," said Sam, glancing up.

"Mind if we change tables?  There's a terrible draught here."

The waiter looked to Jackman for guidance.  The stony consternation on
the gun-runner's face was enough to harden Sam's suspicion of a
microphone beneath the mahogany.

Jackman chuckled again.

"Why not," he beamed.

"Anywhere you like.  You choose."

The maitre d' was summoned to reseat them.  When they were alone again,
Jackman glowered at him.

"Happy now?"

"Stiff neck.  From the flight," Sam explained.

Jackman settled back like a Buddha, nodding knowingly.

"Please yourself.  They look after me pretty well here."  He said it
with the smugness of a man for whom being served by others was
important.

"I can remember them building this place," he added, reminding Sam how
long he'd been around in these parts.

"The bloke whose idea it was had done well from emeralds and wanted to
put down roots.  He'd gone native for a while, stupid bugger.  Had an
African lady-friend he was talking of marrying.  Didn't happen, as it
turned out.  Went for a Norwegian instead.  The wife of one of his
first clients when he opened the lodge to tourists.  Classic long legs,
although the blonde hair was from a bottle.  Only discovered that when
she dropped her drawers."  He chortled, his laugh rattling unhealthily
in his chest.

"He still runs it?"

"No.  Sold out five years ago.  Moved back to Europe with his Scandi
woman.  Switzerland, I think."

The waiter was back with the wine, a jug of water and two menus.

"Steaks are always good," Jackman advised.

Sam chose a T-bone.  A CD of Miriam Makeba played in the background.
They were a reasonable distance from the next table and wouldn't be
overheard here.

"Good flight out?"  They were fencing.  Waiting to see who would be
first to raise the issue they'd come here to discuss.

"A 747 to Lusaka then a hop up to the Copperbelt on a turbo-prop."

"I trust HMG sends its representatives first class."

"Limousines at each end and a personal porter."

"I mean, I wouldn't want to think that the man I'm being asked to deal
with only merits being stuffed in the back of a jumbo with the families
and the blacks."  He said it with venom, as if such status issues
really mattered to him.

Packer's patience gave way.

"Fuck the flight, Harry."  He forced his mouth into a smile for the
benefit of anyone watching.

"What are you up to?"

Jackman drew back.

"Testing the water."

"Meaning?"

"That I've had enough of this continent, Simon.  I want to go home. And
I want to be sure I'm treated right when I get there."

"You've a funny way of going about it."

"Think so?"  The eyebrows shot up again, the eyes beneath them
twinkling.

"You're here, aren't you?  The string-pullers have sent their boy."

Sam bristled.

"Those string-pullers, Harry, you've upset them.  Writing outrageous
letters to the papers isn't wise."

"One paper."

"Whatever.  Wasn't wise at all.  You ought to be careful."

"Me need to be careful?  I think you'll find the boot's on the other
foot, chum."

The waiter returned to reset the cutlery for what they'd ordered.  He
was joined by a waitress with a basket of bread, a slender woman with
braided hair, clad in a low-cut African dress.  Her skin had the
burnished glow of roasted coffee and her teeth dazzled as she smiled.
She leaned forward and her breasts quivered with a life of their own.
Then she withdrew and a third server came with soup.

When they'd all gone Harry Jackman passed a hand over his shiny dome.

"Fancied that one, did you?"

"She was very beautiful."

"A lot of them are.  And a lot of ex-pats develop a taste, of
course."

"Not you?  How many years have you been here?"

"Twenty-five, give or take.  But no.  They're different, you see,
African women.  The smell.  The shape of their mouths and their arses.
To me it'd be like shagging a sheep.  Not that I've anything against
sheep.  Or Africans.  They've got their place in nature's blueprint and
we've got ours."

"Apartheid."

"Exactly.  The idea was right.  It's the way the Afrikaners handled it
that was wrong."

"And because apartheid's dead you want to go home?"

"Not that simple.  Although you know as well as I do what's happening
here.  This is no place any more for a white man wanting an easy life.
Blighty, old boy.  That's where my roots are."

Roots, thought Sam as he spooned tomato soup into his mouth.  As
twisted as the rest of Jackman's law-dodging life.  The file in London
had shown a blank -when it came to the man's parentage.  The first note
of the young Harry's existence had been at one week old when found in
the doorway of a pub.

"So let me get this straight, Harry."  Sam edged his voice with
sarcasm.

"You want to settle back in the UK.  And you want to be sure
officialdom is nice to you when you get there.  So what's the first
thing you do?  You offer a story to the papers that'll blow a hole in
the government's claims to have an ethical foreign policy.  You're off
your trolley."

"I need to be sure, Simon."

"Of what, for Christ's sake?"

"Of being allowed to live the rest of my life in peace.  I'm pushing
fifty.  Fifteen years older than you?"  He overestimated by a handful
of years.

"I can afford to retire.  To do a bit of this and a bit of that, just
for the fun of it.  Not for the money.  I've got enough."

"I'm sure you have."  Thousands of dead Africans had seen to that.

"But you're still confusing me, Harry.  How does writing a letter to a
newspaper claiming the British government was involved in a bungled
African coup get you safe passage home?"

Jackman's eyes became deadly serious.

"Come on.  Don't play the virgin with me.  A warning shot, that's all
it was.  I knew damn well that good-ole-boy Hampson wouldn't go into
print about Bodanga without the say-so of C or whatever you call him
these days."

"Meaning?"

Jackman hissed with exasperation.

"That I just wanted to show you what I could do if I was so minded."

"Oh.  Is that what it was about?"  Sam mocked, trying to get Jackman on
the back foot.

"You've miscalculated, old son.  The people you're dealing with don't
take kindly to threats."

"Don't be daft.  They need my co-operation as much as I need theirs.
The world's a dangerous place.  You scratch my back .. ."

Sam gave up on his soup which tasted unpleasantly of the can it came
from, and pushed the plate away.

"So, spell it out to me, Harry.  What exactly is it you want?"

"Immunity from any sort of prosecution."

Sam lifted his eyebrows.

"Come on," Jackman insisted.

"It's a small return for the services I've done for my country."

It was true there'd been other small jobs for SIS before last year's
arms deal.  Smuggling people across borders and providing untraceable
funds to political groups that the government of the day was
embarrassed to be associated with.

"What sort of prosecutions did you have in mind?"  Sam inquired sceptic
ally

Jackman's gaze became a tunnel with no light at its end.  He wiped his
mouth -with a napkin.

"Can't imagine," he murmured with a contrived mysteriousness.

"But there's people out there who'll dream something up.  You boyos
have found me useful over the years, but I don't kid myself you're my
friends."

"So.  Let me get this right," Sam persisted, spreading his fingers
across the edge of the table.

"You want HMG to promise that you'll never be prosecuted, whatever
crimes you've committed.  Is that it?"

Jackman swallowed.

"Yes, essentially."  He paused for a moment.

"Odd word crime, don't you think?  The definition of it seems to depend
on who's carried it out."

Sam folded his arms.  Time for some home truths.

"They'll never buy it, Harry.  Not a blanket immunity.  You'll need to
be specific.  Have to spell it out in black and white."

The gun-runner's shoulders sagged as if the wind had been knocked from
him.  He shook his head.

"No can do."

The soup plates were cleared away and the steaks set before them.

"Best beef in southern Africa .. ."  said Jackman listlessly.  The
words sounded like a mantra he'd grown rather tired of.

"You'll miss it," Sam goaded.

"We're all getting brain disease from the stuff back home."

The gun-runner fired a glance towards the door.  Sam recognised the
look and empathised with it.  Fear of enemies closing in.

"Expecting someone?"

Jackman grimaced.

"Look.  I do want to go home, Simon.  Back to England.  Don't make it
hard for me."

"What makes you think you'll be safer there?"

"I'll blend in easier .. . Surrounded by people my own colour."

"You're out of touch.  Times have changed."

"Not out in Suffolk they haven't."

Sam remembered the file again.  An ex-wife and a daughter living in
Ipswich.

Jackman's eyebrows arched in despair.

"I've got to get home, Simon.  Too many enemies here.  That's why I'm
prepared to play rough to be left in peace."

Packer watched him begin picking at his food.  He was puzzled.  There
was something fundamentally odd about Jackman's fear of legal
retribution.  Before coming out here his controller had told him there
was nothing pending.  No warrants waiting to be served.  No
misdemeanours under investigation.  So long as he kept his mouth shut
the ex-pat could return home and merge with the background as much as
he wanted.  But Jackman clearly thought otherwise, a paranoia that was
perfectly understandable after so many years of bending rules to suit
his own pocket.  But Packer sensed there was something specific Jackman
was concerned about.  Some deed in his recent past which he expected to
backfire.

If so, his mission was changing.  No longer merely a matter of agreeing
terms for Jackman's silence, but a need to discover what the bugger had
been up to.  Success would require more subtlety than he'd used so far.
He decided to sidetrack.  To soften up the ground.

"Why Africa, Harry?  What got you started here?  Twenty-five years ago,
you said."

Jackman's eyes melted with self-satisfaction.  His mouth puckered, like
a bully's given an unexpected excuse to brag.

"You really want to know?"  Sam nodded.  Jackman took a gulp of wine.

"Dust.  That's what got me started."

"Dust?"

Jackman grinned.

"I was a chemist by training when I came out.  First job was managing a
lab at a copper mine.  Boring as hell.  I had two Kaffirs who did all
the real work.  Then one day a black came to me who'd been given the
job of cleaning the whole place up.  Copper production sites get
littered with all sorts of junk.  This Af had found some drums of
powder and didn't know whether it was safe to dump them.  Didn't know
what was in 'em, you see."  Jackman's eyes twinkled at the memory of
it.

"So what did I do?  I did a little test in the lab after my two
assistants had gone home.  Found out the powder was condensates from
the smelter chimneys.  Packed with cobalt and nickel.  Worth a fortune
to somebody with the hardware for extracting it.  So, I told the Af the
drums weren't worth anything but because they contained toxic minerals,
they couldn't be taken for dumping.  Then I got in touch with a feller
I knew in South Africa "And the rest is history," Sam interrupted.

"A life of crime was under way."

"Crime?  Come on, my friend!  Out here that's not crime, it's
business."

"But a business which has now turned sour, you're saying."

Jackman sighed.

"It's become harder.  A lot harder.  Too many people wanting a cut."

For a while they ate without speaking.  The beef was as good as Jackman
had promised.  Sam noticed an increase in frequency of the glances
towards the door.

"Somebody after you, Harry?"  There'd be plenty of candidates.

Jackman feigned a look of wounded innocence.

"Who is it?"

"I don't know."

Sam clicked his tongue.

"Come on, old son.  If we're to get anywhere, you've got to be
straighter with me than that."

"No, I mean it."  Behind the oval lenses Jackman's eyes were like
gob-stoppers.

"I really don't know, Simon."

"Explain."

Jackman hesitated again.

"Things .. . things have been going on."

"Such as?"

"People dying."

"It happens."

"Unnaturally, I mean."

"Friends of yours?"

"Yeah."  Jackman's expression became pained, as if he were really
putting himself out.  He glanced down at his hands and began picking at
his cuticles with a thumbnail.

"Look.  There is something in particular you know, that I want immunity
from."  Sam smiled inwardly.  Progress.

"The death I'm talking about was to do with that."  He looked up again,
his eyes wanting sympathy.

"It's a deal I wish I'd never got involved with, to be honest.  And
it's something you boys really ought to know about."

"Perhaps we do already.  Tell me."

"I'd like to.  And I will.  But only after I have it in writing that
I'm being granted immunity."  He bunched his fists and rested them on
the table.

Packer let out a long sigh.  For a moment he'd thought a breakthrough
was in sight.

"You know what you have to do, Harry.  In black and white up front, so
they know what's involved."

The sweaty red brow crinkled with concern.

"You're asking me to put my head on the block.  I can't do that."  He
glanced towards the door again then leaned forward.

"Look .. . That bloke who died was a partner of mine in Jo'burg.
Involved in the deal I'm talking about."

"Tell me about it."

Jackman leaned even closer, his voice less than a whisper.

"They'd sawn his effing head off, Simon."  The fear in the eyes looked
convincing.  Jackman thought he was next.

"For God's sake let's settle things with HMG, so I can tell you about
it."

"If they can be settled .. ."

"Oh they will be, Simon," Jackman bristled, winding back, angry at
being played with.

"You see, there's other letters ready to be sent.  To the media and to
people I'm close to.  A whole bunch.  All sealed up.  Envelopes
addressed.  Left with someone I trust in case something happens to me."
He thumped a fist on the table.

"And next time they won't go to one of your bloody lap dogs

They finished their food in silence, heads down like weary bulls.  When
he'd done, Jackman puffed out his cheeks.

"You know, I'm beginning to think they've sent the wrong man."

"Why's that?"

"I need to talk with someone who'll take me seriously."

"Oh I'm taking you very seriously Harry.  Be in no doubt about that.
But you haven't understood what's possible and what isn't as far as HMG
is concerned."

Jackman seemed not to hear.  He hovered like an angler pondering how
much bait to lay down before the fish could be hooked.

"This deal I'm talking about .. ."  He was whispering again.

"I'll tell you this much.  It involved the shipment of something pretty
nasty.  And I think it was heading for the Islamics."

The mention of the 'I' word triggered alarm bells for Sam.  It was less
than three weeks since the car bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania.

"What do you mean think?

"Because I don't know for sure."

"What sort of nasty stuff?  Weapons?  Biological?  Nuclear?"

Jackman shook his head.  He'd achieved his aim.  Didn't need to say
more.  The man was like a streetwalker, flashing her interesting bits
then hiding them again.

"You say you want to move back to England," Sam growled.

"Why not Venezuela or Monaco?  Someplace where they won't give a shit
what you've done in the past."

"Personal reasons."

"You're not telling me you want to get back with your wife?"  Sam
prodded.

"Which one?  I've had three.  And no, I'm not planning anything like
that.  Just take it that I want to return to my own country."

Sam told himself to cool it.  Letting the man rile him wasn't going to
help.

"Tell me about your ex-wife and daughter.  The ones in Ipswich."

"Your file's out of date.  It's Woodbridge.  I bought them a place by
the river a couple of years back.  The estate where they'd been living
was going downhill.  Anyway, what about them?"

"You've kept in touch?"

"Stayed friends with all my exes.  And Julie my daughter she's just
great.  You married?  Kids?"

"No."

"I was twenty-one when I met Maeve.  Shacked up with her because it was
the thing to do in 1970.  A nurse.  Irish, but with the morals of a
Dane.  Birth pills in her handbag instead of a rosary.  But careless
with it.  She got pregnant.  I agreed to marry her, stupid kid that I
was.  She was wrong for me.  Too placid.  And, you know, when it came
to the business, the sex stuff it was something she felt she had to do
because everyone else was.  Not because she got any pleasure out of it.
You know the sort."

|

Happily for Sam he didn't.

"So I left her after a couple of years," Jackman continued, 'and came
out here.  Went back from time to time.  Not very often."  He paused.

"Little Julie never knew who I was when she was tiny."

"Do they know what you do for a living?"

Jackman squirmed slightly.

"No.  It isn't always wise being truthful in relationships, don't you
find?"

Sam ignored his question.

"So you started off selling black market chemicals.  How did you get
into guns?"

"Somebody asked me if I could get them some.  One of Mandela's boys."

"And .. . ?"

"And I discovered how easy it was.  AK47s could be prised from the
Zambian army like peas from a pod.  This country's packed with people
wanting to earn a dishonest penny."

"And it never concerned you what the guns might be used for?"

Jackman raised a cynical eyebrow.

"Don't come the naive kid with me, Simon.  I was filling a hole in the
market.  If it hadn't been me, it'd have been someone else."

The old excuse.  They all used it.

"And this other deal.  The one you'll only tell us about if you get
immunity was that filling a hole too?"

Jackman fixed him with a steady eye.  He selected a toothpick from the
holder in the middle of the table and removed some beef fibres from
between two molars.

"It was supplying somebody with something that was damned hard to get,"
he said enigmatically.

"Something they wanted very bad."  Then he leaned forward.

"I'll tell you something else.  The shipping arrangements were real
high security.  Never done anything quite like it before.  The
warehouse I fixed up it was like Ali Baba, Simon.  Like bloody Ali
Baba."

An odd image, thought Sam.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that you and I have to do a deal, Simon."  The eyes were
playing with him again.

"So I can tell you about it."

Sam felt his patience going.  He had a sudden urge to deprive Jackman
of sleep and food for a few days.

"For God's sake, let's do a deal, man, "Jackman pleaded
melodramatically.

"For the sake of the civilised world, if not for you and me."

Packer narrowed his eyes.  What sort of line was he being spun?  Fact,
fiction did Jackman even know the difference?

"Look," he snapped.

"The bottom line is this.  You simply cannot expect the British
government to give you immunity from prosecution without knowing what
crimes you're talking about.  Suppose some African nation were to
charge you with genocide.  There's no way HMG would protect you from
that."

Jackman pulled himself up straight.  He twisted his head to one side
and studied Sam out of the corner of his eye as if seeing whether a
different perspective would show him the way forward.

"Have another drink," he suggested un originally

"Something a little stronger?  They've got good single malts here."

Sam would willingly have seen off most of a bottle.

"No."

Jackman clasped his hands.

"Okay.  Let's get back to basics.  HMG needs my silence.  I need a
laissez-passer from HMG.  There's two people who can sort this out. You
and me."

"I've been trying my best, Harry."

Jackman nodded.  For a delirious moment Sam thought he was about to
concede something meaningful.

"We can reach a compromise, you know," Jackman assured him.

"I mean it is why you've come here, Simon.  To do a deal."

"It's your move, Harry.  It really is."

Jackman pushed the spectacles up his nose and stroked his chin.  The
cockiness had gone from his eyes, replaced by an expression Sam
couldn't quite define.

"Well ... if you won't have a night-cap here, what about one back at my
place," Jackman suggested.

"The house rattles a bit.  My last girlfriend left me a couple of
months ago.  Went back to the Cape."

Loneliness.  That's what his eyes were showing, Sam realised.  Jackman
was lonely.  Giving up on Africa because Africa had given up on him.
He'd found a chink in the man's armour.  Big enough to stick a
screwdriver in for now.  Soon it'd be a chisel, then a whole DIY
workbench.

"All right.  I'll have a quick one with you," Sam conceded.

Jackman called for the bill and paid it.  They made small talk about
the upcoming Springboks' tour and England's chances for the coming
season.  Then they walked out to the car park.  Seeing Jackman appear,
the army officer in the Land Rover shook his soldiers awake.

"You'll follow me in your car?"  Jackman checked.

"Be right behind you."

Sam kept half an eye on Jackman as they each moved to their own
vehicle.  He heard the Land Rover engine rattle into life, then as he
unlocked the door of the Toyota the Zambian officer crossed to
Jackman's Mercedes to talk to him.  The two men's palms touched. Payoff
time.

The Mercedes was first onto the road back to Kitwe, followed by the
army patrol, a nearly full moon turning the palm trees by the gate into
ghostly sentries.  Out on the road the three vehicles settled into a
steady run towards the outskirts of town.  Sam's spirits had lifted. He
felt absurdly confident all of a sudden.  A few more hours and Jackman
would be eating from the palm of his hand.

Five minutes into the journey, the Land Rover's brake lights flickered
and the vehicle lurched over to the side of the road.  Sam overtook,
expecting it to fall in behind like a tail gunner, but when he looked
in the mirror the lights had been doused.  His antennae twitched.

When the tail lights of Jackman's Mercedes also disappeared he began to
feel distinctly uneasy, but then they reappeared as he rounded a bend.
He accelerated to close the gap.  Suddenly, further ahead, there were
other lights in the road.  A red lamp being swung.  A road block.  Army
or police.  The Merc's brake lights blazed and Sam also touched the
pedal, telling himself there was no need for alarm.  Random traffic
checks were normal on Zambian roads.  Part of the government's
anti-crime programme.  The fact that the men involved used them to
extort 'fines' from guiltless car drivers was just an inconvenient fact
of life.  He fingered his wallet for a suitable note.

As the two vehicles approached the checkpoint in tandem, Sam braked
harder.  Suddenly a man in fatigues sprinted forward, shouting at him
to stop short of the other car and to switch off his lights.  An icy
chill came over him the soldier wore a black cloth hood with holes for
eyes and mouth.  This was no ordinary road block.

Jackman's car had stopped twenty yards in front of his.  A spot lamp on
the roof of an army truck lit up its pale cream paint.  Sam's window
was half open.  The soldier who'd stopped him rested his rifle barrel
on the top of the glass.  A strong body odour wafted in, leavened by
eucalyptus from the roadside trees.

His unease growing by the second, Sam watched Jackman being dragged
from his car, a gun at his chest.  The old ex pat still seemed
unconcerned, extracting a wad of banknotes from a hip pocket.  Sam told
himself they'd be okay.  A robbery on a larger scale than usual
perhaps, but if they stayed cool and let the men have what they wanted
.. .

Then a shot rang out, echoing through the trees like the sound of
splitting timber.  Jackman buckled and fell.

"Shit .. ."  Sam grabbed at the door handle to open it, but felt the
cold of the gun press against his temple.

A second shot had Sam thinking his own brains had been blasted.  But it
was Jackman again.  Spreadeagled on the tarmac, a vivid red bubbled
from his chest.  Then the spotlight turned on Sam, blinding him.

His throat tightened.  He couldn't speak or breathe.  Any moment now
they'd do the same to him.  There'd been times before when he'd faced
death, and he knew there was no way to manage it.  No way to control
that cringing feel as you waited for the hit.

Two more shots, each sending shocks through his body, but not touching
him.  He heard air hiss from a tyre.  There was a shout of impatience
and the lorry started up.  Two engines revving, the "truck and the
Mercedes.  The light shining in his eyes wobbled and went out.  Then
with a crash of gears the two vehicles accelerated away.

Silence again.  And darkness.  Just the eucalyptus smell. Overpowering.
Like a stench.  Sam clicked his headlamps back on, banged open the
door and ran forward.

"Harry .. he breathed, crouching over him.  Jackman lay in a thickening
pool of blood.  No response.  The striped cotton had two small holes in
the middle of the chest, but Jackman's life was leaking from the
craters in his back.

The ashen face twitched suddenly.

"Simon .. ."  More of a breath than a voice.

Packer leaned forward.

"Yes.  Help's coming."

"Merc .. ."  Jackman croaked.

"The car?"  Why worry about a motor at a time like this?

"No," Jackman hissed, suddenly finding the strength to pull Sam
closer.

"Mercury.  Red mercury .. ."  Sam felt a chill shoot through him.

"S'what I didn't tell you.  That deal "The stuff you shipped to the
Islamics was red mercury?"

"Julie .. ."  The hand that had been hooked into Sam's shirt fell
away.

"Ask Julie 'bout it.  She knows Then the breath left him.  Quite
suddenly.  Like a tap being turned.  Sam felt for a pulse in the neck,
but there was nothing.  Not a nicker.

"God .. ."

Try mouth to mouth?  Get the life back into him?  Then blood oozed from
the lips and it sank in that Harry Jackman was utterly dead.

Stunned, Sam sat back on his haunches.

Red mercury.  The one-time holy grail for terrorists bent on making
nuclear bombs.  Except the bloody stuff didn't exist.

"Harry .. ."  He patted the man's face.  Pointless.  Harry Jackman
would be going home, but in a box.

Red mercury.  Fucking nonsense.

"Damn you, Harry."  A night of riddles from the man, right up to the
end.

He looked up, shooting glances up and down the road.  Engines
approaching from each direction.  A car from the Kitwe road stopped
first.  As its headlamps picked out the bloodied corpse, a woman
screamed at her husband to drive on.  Then the vehicle from out of town
pulled up behind Sam's car.  From the engine rat de he knew it was the
Land Rover Jackman's 'protection' that had conveniently given up on
them half a mile back.

Before he could turn his head, Sam felt hard metal press into the bone
behind his ear.

"Mistah Foster!  You under ahrrest!"

TWO

London

Three days later, 09.45 ms

THE METALLIC BLUE car that emerged from the underground garage of SIS
headquarters was driven by a dark-haired woman in her late thirties
called Denise Corby.  She wore a slate-grey jacket and skirt.  Beside
her sat a fair-haired man, who was her immediate superior.  As the
security gates slid shut behind the Vectra, it turned right and blended
with the traffic heading north over Vauxhall Bridge.  The morning was
dull, the sky overcast.

"I spoke to Julie Jackman last night," the woman announced in a mellow,
matter-of-fact voice that was almost low enough to be a man's.

"She can see us at noon."

"Good."  Her boss, Duncan Waddell, spoke with a Belfast accent.  A
small figure, he sat rigidly upright to maximise his height.

"You know, when the FCO consular department rang the ex-wife on
Wednesday, she expressed no surprise whatsoever at the manner of
Jackman's demise.  Says something, don't you think?"

"Says she didn't care any more.  I should hope not.  It was twenty-six
years ago that he dumped her and the child."  Denise Corby was a
big-boned woman who'd probably looked middle-aged since childhood.

"Where exactly does the daughter work?"  Waddell queried.

"In the virology department of the St.  Michael's Hospital Group.  It's
one of the top labs in the country, so I'm told."

"How did she sound?"

"Oh, shaken up still.  Naturally.  And anxious about why we wanted to
talk to her."

"What reason did you give?"

"Bland as hell.  Told her there were a couple of legal ends to tie
up."

"If she's anything like her father, you'll need to watch her.  Devious
to a fault, that man was.  The world's a better place without him."

Waddell's close-cropped hair gave him an austere, unforgiving
appearance.  He wore a light grey suit and his manner suggested an
acute awareness of his own importance.  He rested his elbow on the open
window and glanced to his right where a shaft of sunlight had caught
the roof of the Tate Gallery just visible beyond the bridge parapet.
There was a Jackson Pollock exhibition on.  Not his cup of tea.

"What d'you know about Sam Packer?"  he asked.

"Not a lot."  Denise Corby pursed her lips.

"Except .. . didn't he have a spot of trouble with Ukrainian mobsters a
couple of years back?"

"He did.  He's still on a hit list."

"And wasn't it linked to a certain piece of in-house scandal that we
don't talk about?"

"It certainly was.  An adulterous relationship with another field
officer.  She also worked eastern Europe."

Suddenly Denise Corby stamped on the brakes.  An elderly woman in green
and brown had drifted onto a zebra crossing.

"Sorry.  Didn't see her."

"Won't live long if she makes a habit of that," Waddell commented,
bracing himself against the dashboard.

"She sort of blended into the background."

"Probably works for us," Waddell quipped.

Corby let a smile flicker as they waited for the ancient pedestrian to
get safely across.

"A long-running affair, was it?"  she asked.

"Sam's?  Yes.  Went on for years.  The husband hadn't a clue until the
very end."

"And he was one of ours too, I seem to remember."

"Indeed.  The whole thing was highly incestuous.  And I have to say the
quality of the deception applied by all the parties involved did great
credit to their tradecraft."

Corby smiled politely.

"Pity about the quality of the judgement."

"Aye.  That's the bit we don't like to think about.  Anyway, apart from
that little hiccup, Sam's been a good field man for us, which is all
you need to know.  Ex naval intelligence, he did fine work in Eastern
Europe in the early nineties, then switched to the Middle East beat
three years ago.  His cover job was in trade fairs."

"So how come he was working in Africa?"

"Well, his legend got well and truly blown in Baghdad.  Then, when the
Odessa mafiya wrote a contract on him, we had to lose him somewhere."

"And where better than the dark continent."

"Precisely."

Denise Corby drove expertly, heading up through Chelsea until they hit
the Cromwell Road.  The morning rush hour was over, but traffic flowed
thickly in both directions.

"You'll have to direct me when we get closer," she warned.

"Hounslow is not a part of the metropolis I make a point of
frequenting."

A couple of miles later Waddell told her to turn left off the A4.
"Flightpath-blighted housing and dreary industrial estates," he growled
distastefully.

"But there's a nice little firm here that provides Sam with cover.  The
characters who run it are ex-SAS sergeants.  Dave and Ron Davron
International Trading they call themselves."

"How sweet.  Tell me, how did you prise Sam from the clutches of the
Zambian police?"

"Loud diplomatic noises and a few well-placed banknotes.  The High
Commission in Lusaka has a slush fund that saves an awful lot of
paperwork."

"And the investigation into the shooting?"

"Not getting very far."  He made it sound both to be expected and
perfectly satisfactory.

"They've failed to identify the army unit that carried out the killing,
and judging by their past record on such robberies they never will."

Ten minutes later the car turned into a trading estate full of
buildings trimmed with brightly coloured corrugated plastic.

"Block C6.  Bottom of the row, then left," Waddell directed.

The unit they stopped outside had three Audis in the car park, all with
personalised plates.

Sam Packer had arrived at the Davron International offices ten minutes
earlier, dressed in the light grey suit, pale blue shirt and striped
tie that he'd travelled in on the night flight from Lusaka.  He'd
dumped his bag in a corner of the dusty, little-used, first-floor
office that was his operating base and logged onto the Internet to
check the main newspaper archives both in London and southern Africa
for reports on Jackman's murder.  Specifically he wanted to see if
connections had been made with red mercury.  There were none.  Before
leaving Lusaka the station officer at the High Commission had shown him
short articles in the local Post and Times.  Both papers had dismissed
the murder as robbery with violence the police line but Sam was certain
they were wrong.  Jackman had been targeted.  Targeted for the simplest
reason of all.  Someone had wanted him dead.

Compared with the torture chamber he'd experienced in Baghdad two years
earlier, the police cell he'd been confined to in Kitwe had been
luxurious.  In Iraq, he'd thought his end had come.  This time he'd
felt certain of release within hours.  After recovering from the shock
of seeing a man die in front of him he'd picked his way back through
their conversation, searching for clues to his killer.

He was well aware that the world would, generally speaking, be quite
content with Harry Jackman's passing.  From what he could gather, Her
Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service was over the moon.  But for him
the murder had been a disappointment as well as a shock.  He'd begun to
believe that he could silence the man through negotiation.  Believed
too that in the process he would glean valuable intelligence about
Islamic terrorism.

Sam had not met Denise Corby before.  Her appointment to
Counter-Proliferation was recent.  When she walked into his first floor
office, towering above their diminutive boss, the skin-stripping stare
of her dark brown eyes warned him that she was a career-hungry
perfectionist, intolerant of human weakness, a woman it would be unwise
to cross.  He was big on first impressions.

"Welcome back, Sam."  Waddell made the introductions and they shook
hands.

"You okay?"  he asked.

"Fine."  Admitting to being shaken up by seeing people's innards being
blown out wasn't the done thing for employees of the firm.

Waddell staked a territorial claim on Sam's black leather recliner.  He
pointed to a couple of stacking chairs by the far wall, wiggling a
finger to indicate they should grab them.

"We've read your report, Sam," he began stiffly, 'and the Lusaka
station's still doing follow-ups of course, but the whole thing's
pretty opaque.  We've no idea why Jackman was shot, but so far we
favour the robbery theory."  He leaned back in the chair, rocking it on
its springs.

"And to be perfectly frank, we don't give a shit," he added
predictably.

"He's much less trouble to us dead."

"Unless those letters about Bodanga that he talked about start turning
up in newspaper offices," Sam reminded him.

"We're working on that," Waddell told him.

"Shouldn't be hard to discredit him, particularly since he's not around
to defend himself.  Anyway that was probably a bluff, Sam.  The man was
mostly piss and wind."

"Whatever.  He'd have been a lot more useful to us if still alive."

"This red mercury crap, you mean?"

"Sure.  We'd have found out what the hell it was about, rather than
having to guess."

"Red mercury simply doesn't exist, Sam," Denise Corby told him
firmly.

"I'm well aware that's the perceived wisdom," Sam responded.

"It's just that for some reason Harry Jackman seemed to think otherwise
.. ."

"Playing games," Waddell muttered.

"A false hare for us to waste time on."

"He was in shock," Sam protested.

"You don't make up things like that when you know you're about to
die."

"Remind him, Denise," said Waddell dismissively.

"Tell Sam about the red mercury scam."

"It began with glasnost at the end of the eighties."

"That much I remember," Sam nodded.

"Word came out of Russia about this amazing new chemical compound which
could make neutron bombs more lethal, or worse still, dramatically
reduce the size of an H bomb.  The media had visions of terrorists
armed with thermonuclear footballs particularly after certain perfectly
reputable scientists, British and American, came back from a visit to
Russia fully convinced of red mercury's existence.  They wrote it up in
the scientific press."

"But you're saying the Russians made it all up?  The stuff didn't
exist?"

"Or if it did, it certainly didn't have the capability they claimed for
it.  But that didn't matter, because in 1992 a Russian entrepreneur
persuaded the Kremlin that overseas interest in red mercury was so
strong they could all make a fortune from it.  Export licences were
granted up to ten tonnes a year at a price of $3 50,000 a kilo.  If you
do the maths, that gives an earnings potential of over three billion
dollars."

"But if the product didn't exist," Sam queried, 'how could they make
any money?"

"From gullibility.  Some customers were ready to pay up front without
even seeing the stuff, let alone testing it.  Foreign banks gave huge
credits to the Russian exporters on the promise of whacking interest
payments.  The cash of course was used to finance a whole raft of other
highly profitable business activities nothing to do with red mercury,
most of them criminal.  The banks didn't care.  Their paperwork said
the loans were for a legitimate export business, and they got their
money back with a hefty profit."

"And the people trying to buy the stuff?"

"Lots of long faces," she answered.

"Iraq tried for it.  South Africa and Israel.  Even Nigeria."

"Jackman told me about some business partner of his in Jo'burg having
his head severed," Sam reminded them.

"There was a South African connection, you said?"

"Indeed," said Waddell pushing the chair further back and resting his
feet on Sam's desk.  His brown shoes were immaculately clean.

"A series of odd and rather grisly murders in the early 1990s
supposedly linked with attempts to buy or manufacture red mercury.  All
sorts of villains were suggested, including Mossad."

"But the man Jackman talked of that was more recent."

"Three months ago at the beginning of June.  A dodgy trader, rather
like Harry himself.  Name of Van Damm.  At first the South African
media did speculate it was another red mercury killing, but the police
found a simpler motive.  The victim spent his spare time and ill-gotten
gains on young, black rent boys."

"I see."

Sam's mind clicked back to Tuesday night.  All the double talk, the
teasing hints that might or might not have been important.

"Jackman was playing games with you, Sam," Waddell declared
dismissively.

"With his dying breath?"

"Delirium perhaps," suggested Corby in a burst of generosity.

"Or maybe you misheard him."

"He was lucid," Sam answered flatly.

"Red mercury.  That's what he said.  That and "Julie knows about it".
Quite deliberate and clear.  Said he'd shipped a load of it somewhere
and was worried it had ended up with Islamic fundamentalists.  And now
he was regretting it.  Conscience troubling him."

"Conscience]' Waddell exploded.

"Since when did that bugger have a conscience?"

"It's just an impression I got, Duncan.  I never did pass GCSE
mind-reading."

"Sketch him for me," said Corby briskly.

"A gullible type?"

"Gullible isn't right.  But a conspiracy theorist, yes."

"People who still believe in red mercury usually are."

"Don't dismiss him as a nutter," Sam warned.

"Harry Jackman was scared about what he'd got mixed up in.  He was
paying for protection.  Had the appearance of a man who thought he was
going to be topped."

Waddell swung his legs down to the floor again.

"And you reckon his death was not unconnected with this deal he was
supposedly so worried about."

"Possibly."

"Robbery sounds a more likely scenario to me," Waddell insisted.

"The staging was too elaborate.  The soldiers he'd hired to look after
him had pulled off the road for a piss just before the road block.
Coincidence?  I don't think so.  And if it was just robbery why didn't
they do me over too?"

"You were in a Toyota.  Jackman's car was a Merc."

"An old one."

"Well, whatever."  Waddell shrugged and put his hands on the table as
if about to rise.

"I have to take my leave of you.  There's a minister needs briefing,
heading out from Heathrow for talks on Kosovo.  The Foreign Office
should have sent a car for me.  There's only one way forward on this
Jackman case, and that's if his girl Julie really does know something
about his fantasies.  You two go and find out."  He levered himself to
his feet.

"But I tell you, unless she opens doors, this particular red mercury
trail is heading for the bin like all the others."

Waddell strutted towards the door and left them to it.  Sam could see
from Corby's face that she shared her boss's scepticism.

"I really have got better things to do than this, but let's get it over
with," she said, picking up her bag and slipping its long strap onto
her shoulder.

"What's the arrangement?"  Sam asked.

"Noon," she replied.

"You and me at the place where she works, off Tottenham Court Road."

"Any idea what sort of state she's in?"  He hated interviews with the
newly bereaved.

"Sounded okay on the phone.  Suspicious more than anything else."

The Central Virology Laboratory, St.  Michael's Hospital 11.50 hrs

Julie Jackman sat on a stool by the bench in the laboratory, her
rubber-gloved hands working a measured-dose pipette to fill a grid of
tiny test tubes for an immunoassay.  A white lab coat covered her
normal clothes blue jeans and a grey T-shirt.  She had a pretty,
heart-shaped face with wispy brown hair, some strands of which fell
forward to the corner of her mouth.  From time to time she brushed them
away with the back of her wrist.  From behind the oval lenses of small,
silver-framed spectacles, her pale, grey-green eyes concentrated hard.
One mistake and the whole test procedure would need to be started
again.

She was finding it difficult to work, with her father's death preying
on her mind.  It hadn't truly sunk in that she wouldn't see him again.
The fact that the funeral was happening that very morning in a place
half a world away seemed quite unreal.  Her mother had suggested asking
for a delay so she could travel to Zambia to attend it, but she'd
decided not to go.  She knew next to nothing of his life in Africa.  In
a strange land surrounded by strangers.  Questions would be asked which
she wouldn't want to answer.  And she was afraid.  Superstitiously
scared that whatever evil had struck him down might seek her out too.

Her relationship with her father had always been more shade than light.
She'd come to think of him as a serial deserter.  The first time, when
she was two years old, she'd been unaware of what was going on, but the
act of abandonment had repeated each time he returned to the house in
Ipswich for a visit.  Her mother used to say 'this is your father,"
like he was a complete stranger.  Then he would start acting the part,
showering her with gifts and affection until sure he'd secured her
adoration again.  Then he would leave.  Suddenly.  Without a 'goodbye'
or a 'see you soon'.  And each time those flights in the night had
broken her heart.

And now he'd gone for good.  It had been a hell of a jolt when her
mother had rung to tell her.  She'd been shocked at the news.  Shocked
too to discover she wasn't able to cry about it.

She looked up at the wall clock.  The Foreign Office people would be
here any minute.  She dreaded talking to them, yet at the same time
wanted to hear what they had to say, hoping for some explanation, some
reason for what had happened.  To make it real.

She put down the pipette.  The test was almost prepared, but her mind
was wandering and she feared making a mess of the final set of
insertions.  In the next bay sat a fellow scientific officer.  He was
the sort of earnest, reliable type her mother would have loved her to
settle with, but his efforts to arouse her interest in him during the
past few months had been fruitless.

"George .. ."  She removed her glasses and ducked her head to one side
to see through a gap in the shelving separating the bays.

"Would you do me a favour?"

"What is it?"

"Just say yes."

"All right then, yes."

"There's only the antigen to be added to these samples.  Do it for me,
would you?  I'm running out of time."

"Time?"  he asked tetchily.

"I've got people coming in to see me any minute.  To do with my dad."
She'd already told the lab staff about her father's murder.

"Oh, sure."  He was suddenly sympathetic.

"You run along.  I'll look after everything.  When the results are
through I'll put the printout on your desk."

"God, I'll be back long before it goes into the analyser, George," she
assured him, peeling off her rubber gloves and slipping them into the
yellow bin for contaminated waste.  She stood up and thrust her hands
deep into her lab coat pockets.

"It's just Foreign Office officials.  Don't suppose it'll take long.
They're probably after some of his back tax."

"Want me to sit in with you?"

"Thanks, but no."

She crossed to the hooks by the door and hung up the coat.  Outside in
the corridor she walked the five paces to the small office she shared
with George and a woman called Janet.  For now the office was empty.
She sat at her computer terminal, logged in and checked for e-mail.
There were a couple of messages to do with a correspondence with a
virologist in Memphis, but nothing interesting.  She logged off again
then put her head in her hands, massaging her forehead.  The
conversation she was about to have concerned something far more
sinister than tax, she suspected.  From the little she'd known about
her father's business life, she'd guessed that most of it had been on
the wrong side of the law.

It had been sweaty in the lab because the air conditioning was on the
blink.  She decided to freshen up.  She grabbed her backpack from the
floor beside her desk and hurried past the labs to the washrooms.
Inside she found the department's receptionist Ailsa Mackinley checking
her eye make-up and hair.  She had long, dark, spiralling curls which
required maintenance in front of a mirror at least once an hour.

"I told you about these people coming to see me?"  Julie checked,
concerned that Ailsa mightn't be back at her desk before they
arrived.

"You did, Jul.  A Ms Corby, you said.  Twelve o'clock.  Where will you
be?"

"At my desk."  For the first time she began to think of the mechanics
of the visit.  It would be hopeless receiving them in her office if
George and Janet wanted to be in there too.

"God, Ailsa!  Where can I talk to them that's private?"

"The professor's away for the day.  You could use his room.  I'm sure
he wouldn't mind.  He's so amenable."

"Great idea.  Thanks, Ailsa.  You're certain he's not coming back?"

"He's in Birmingham.  Rang from there ten minutes ago."

"Perfect."

"What's it all about, Jul?"

Julie ducked the answer by feigning an urgent need for the loo and
diving into one of the cubicles.  Then, when she heard the door bang
with Ailsa's departure, she re-emerged and splashed water onto her face
in a vain attempt to get rid of the shadows under her eyes.  She'd
hardly slept the last two nights.  She dried her skin, ran a comb
through her hair, then replaced her spectacles.  Straightening her grey
T-shirt and tucking the hem more tightly into her jeans, she returned
to her office and began tidying papers.  The professor ran a clean desk
policy, which she, like the others in her office, tended to ignore.

Then the phone rang.  Her visitors were here.

Sam had been dreading this meeting.  There were no right words to say
to the daughter of someone you'd watched being shot to death.  The
first thing he noticed as she walked towards them was that she was
pretty.  Shiny hair, wide cheekbones and a small mouth.  None of her
father's clown-faced looks.

"Miss Jackman?"  The Vauxhall Cross woman held out her hand.

"Denise Corby from the Foreign Office."

Sam let his companion take the lead.  This was a head office show.

"And my colleague here," she went on, turning to Sam, 'is a
businessman.  I asked him to come along with me because he was actually
with your father when he died.  They'd just had dinner together."

"Oh!"

For the first time Julie felt she was about to cry.  She searched the
man's visage for some sign of his having been there shock, sorrow, or
just plain distress.  But all she saw was a pleasant face despite the
beard which looked wrong on him and a pair of kindly eyes.

"We're so sorry," Corby whispered.

"You must have been terribly shocked."

"Not quite sunk in," she said.

"Of course not."

They stood there in the entrance lobby, not moving, each waiting for
the other to take the next step.

"Is there some place we can talk in private?"  Corby prompted.

"Yes.  Yes of course.  I'm sorry."  Julie led them through the first
set of swing doors.

"My boss, Professor Norton, he's away.  We can use his office .. ." She
ushered them into it.  Apart from the virginally clean desk there was a
small boardroom table with six chairs.

"What do you work on here, Miss Jackman?"  Sam asked in an effort to
normalise things.  He closed the door behind them.

"HIV mostly.  The hospitals in the group have four wards for AIDS
patients."

"Interesting work," Denise Corby commented.

"Yes.  It is."  As she lowered herself into a chair, Julie removed her
spectacles and placed them on the table, an automatic action, done
without thinking whenever a male registered on her personal radar.  She
felt drawn to this man, as if the fact that he'd been with her father
in the last moments of his life had made him a part of hers.

"I'm sorry .. ."  she said, looking at Sam's now slightly out-of-focus
face.

"I didn't catch your name."

"I'd rather keep my name out of it, if you don't mind," he told her.

"I deal in a lot of confidential projects.  Wouldn't be helpful if my
competitors knew I'd been talking to your father."

Julie felt rebuffed.  Suddenly she wanted this business over with as
quickly as possible.

"Would you tell me what happened exactly?  It was at a road block,
wasn't it?  Soldiers?"

"Yes.  Men in uniform, anyway.  And wearing masks.  Your father and I
were driving back to his place for a night-cap.  In two cars.  He was
in front.  Suddenly a red light was waved in the road.  We both braked.
There were soldiers all around us.  One of them stopped me short of
where your father pulled up.  The soldiers grabbed him from his car.  I
thought they wanted to search him for money, but instead they shot him.
There was a gun at my head, so there was nothing I could do.  I'm .. .
I'm sorry."

Julie shivered at his matter-of-fact description.

"But why did they kill him?"  she asked, her voice breaking.

"That's what we're trying to find out," Denise Corby told her, reaching
across the table to comfort her.

Julie shuddered at the gesture and withdrew her own hand quickly.

"The police think it was robbery," Sam told her.

"The soldiers took his car."

"Which hasn't been found," Corby added.

"There's always a market for Mercedes Benzes."

Julie wiped her eyes.  To die for a car was so horrible.

"Was it quick?"  she whispered.

"I don't think he suffered," Sam assured her.

"And you your name was the last thing that crossed his lips before he
died."

Suddenly the dam broke.  The tears she'd been unable to weep since
learning of the murder coursed down her cheeks.  Her body shook
uncontrollably.  She buried her face in her hands.  Denise Corby
offered a tissue from a new pack in her bag, which Julie took
gratefully.  It was nearly a minute before she could speak again.

"It's just such a waste," she said.

"I mean I never really knew what he thought about .. ."  She was going
to say 'me', but stopped herself in time.

"About anything .. ."

"I understand."  Denise Corby pulled a large notebook from her
handbag.

"Would it be all right if I ask you some questions now?"

Julie nodded.

"Of course."

Corby straightened her back and cleared her throat.

"First, if you don't mind, I'd like to know a little bit more about
your relationship with your father."

Sam raised his eyebrows, surprised by Corby's indirect approach.  As
far as he was concerned there was only one question that needed
asking.

Julie recoiled.  The big notebook.  The inquisitorial stare.  Suddenly
this was an interrogation.

"How d'you mean?"

"Well, with him living in Africa and you in England, you can't have
seen each other very often," Corby continued.

"No.  We didn't."  That much was obvious.

"You were pretty young when your parents' marriage broke up."

"I was two."

"So you would hardly have known him when you were small.  How often did
you actually see him?"

Julie wondered why this could possibly matter.

"I don't know.  Once a year, perhaps."

"You must have resented his abandoning you and your mother," Corby
suggested, in a ham-fisted attempt at being sympathetic.

Julie bristled.

"That's hardly any of your business."

Sam wondered if departmental budget cuts had eaten into interview
training for SIS desk officers.

"It's just that your father gave my colleague here the impression that
you and he were really close," Corby explained, steaming on
regardless.

"I wondered if that's the way you saw it, that's all."

Close?  How could one be truly close to someone who was hardly ever
there when you needed them?  Julie squared her shoulders and directed
her response at Sam.

"What exactly did dad say about me when he was dying?"

"He said he thought you were great," Sam soothed, finessing the
truth.

"I think he loved you very much."

The tears came back.  Julie turned away.

"Well..  ."  she sniffed.  She didn't want to talk about it, yet in a
sense she did.

"People show their love in different ways, I suppose.  His was mostly
with a chequebook."

Denise Corby hunched forward.

"Meaning?"

"Oh, I don't know," she floundered, wishing she hadn't got into this.

"Meaning that I may not have seen him very often, but he did pay for me
to go to a nice school.  He funded me through university and .. . and
he bailed me out when I was having personal problems."  The last part
spilled out before she'd thought to stop herself.

"Personal problems?"  Corby prodded.

"Would that have been to do with your becoming a single mother?"

Julie jerked bolt upright.

"You know about Liam?"

"It's on the file."

Sam raised his eyes to the ceiling.

For the first time Julie began to wonder exactly who these people were.
A chilly finger ran down her back, as if some unseen presence was
warning her to take care.  She was recalling a late night conversation
with her father on his last visit home.  Talk of his having got
involved with MI6, saying they were people he didn't trust.  He'd been
rambling and she'd paid no heed to his words.  But she vaguely
remembered mention of letters he'd written about MI6, to be posted if
something happened to him.

"How old would Liam be now?"  Corby asked, softening her tone.

"Seven."

"And your father helped with the boy.  Financially?"

Again Julie wondered why it mattered.  She hesitated, thought
carefully, then told herself that she really had nothing to hide when
it came to her son.

"Liam was a kind of catalyst for our family," she explained.

"In a way, his birth brought my father back into my life.  The bloke
I'd been having a relationship with had dumped me, you see.  In the
same way that Dad had dumped my mother twenty years earlier."

"History repeating itself," Corby noted.

"That's what he felt.  That he'd passed his own bad judgement about
relationships on to me.  There was more contact after that letters,
phone calls.  And there'd been almost none before."

"And in recent years?"  Corby pressed.

"The letters continued?  He was still writing you cheques?"

Julie bristled.

"Look, I earn my own living, right?"  She snatched the spectacles from
the table and put them back on.

"What's the point of all this?"

"I'm simply trying to establish how close you two were," Corby
pleaded.

"In order to judge how much you'd have known about his business
activities."

Nothing, "Julie insisted.

"He never talked to me about his work."

Denise Corby glanced at Sam as if to say i told you so.  He took it as
a cue to intervene.

"Julie .. . That evening I spent with your father, he had something on
his mind."  Sam spoke gently.  If she knew anything it would need to be
coaxed from her.

"He hinted at it during dinner.  Some business transaction he'd done
that was troubling him.  After he was shot he started telling me about
it, but didn't get far.  He was fading fast.  But the very last thing
he said was that you knew about it."

' What?"  Julie shivered, sensing that finger down her spine again.

"What was I supposed to know about?"

"Something to do with red mercury," Corby interjected.

"What the hell's that?"

Sam sensed the girl's bafflement was genuine.

"Your father never talked to you about it?"  Corby pressed.

"Never."

"And he hasn't written to you about it recently?"  Sam asked.

"He told me he'd prepared letters to be posted in the event of
something happening to him.  They haven't come your way?"

Julie frowned.

"Certainly not.  Nothing like that at all."

Sam sat back, arms folded, suddenly fearing he'd got it wrong.

"What is red mercury?"  Julie asked, looking from one face to the
other.

By the time Denise Corby finished explaining, Julie had understood
precisely why these people had come hotfoot to see her.

"I can assure you I know nothing about it," she repeated, looking hard
at Sam.

He found her certainty puzzling.  Jackman had been so definite that
"Julie knew'.  All at once it dawned on him.  The gun-runner must have
meant she would know very soon.  Because after he'd died a letter would
be in the post to her.  Posted from where?  From Zambia might take an
age.  But if it was from London then it could have already arrived.

"Had the postman been before you left home this morning?"  he asked.

Julie shook her head.

"He comes mid-morning."

"You see I think your father had written to you about red mercury," Sam
suggested.

"Very recently.  One of those letters that were to be sent after his
death."

"I doubt it.  I told you.  He never wrote about business," Julie
insisted.

Denise Corby cleared her throat.

"Nonetheless we'd better go back home with you in case it arrived this
morning," she announced, retaking control.

"You share a flat or live alone?"

"It's just a room," Julie protested.

"In a grotty part of Acton.  You can't seriously want to go there."

Corby nodded.

"Just to see if the postman's brought anything?  I can ring you this
evening after work."

"Please, Miss Jackman.  It's in the national interest that you
co-operate."

National interest.  Julie shivered.  She felt certain by now that these
people were to do with intelligence.

"I'll... I'll have to see if the lab can spare me," she whispered,
standing up.

"Do it now, please.  We'll wait by the main door until you've got it
sorted."

Out in the corridor she hurried along to her own office.  In reality
she was playing for time.  There'd be no problem about getting away for
a couple of hours.  What concerned her was the real reason these people
had come.  It had suddenly occurred to her that red mercury could be a
red herring.

Her father had been drunk when he'd ranted about the untrustworthiness
of MI6 a few months ago, and at the time she'd dismissed it as
paranoia.  But supposing it wasn't?  What if her father had been on the
point of exposing some of their dirty tricks when he died?  What if
they'd killed him?  To silence him .. .

"Oh God .. ."  Her mind was running away with itself.

Suppose a letter had arrived that morning?  Her father relying on her
to expose the dirt he'd been stopped from revealing.

She hovered by the door to her office, torn as to where her duty lay.
The law-abiding half of her character told her she should assist these
agents of the government.  But the stronger half said that somehow she
had to make damned sure they didn't get their hands on anything her
father might have sent her.

THREE

DENISE CORBY DROVE the Vectra west through the lunchtime traffic with
Sam beside her in the front and their reluctant passenger in the back.
Sam felt his neck prickling.  The girl was no fool and he realised she
was suspicious of them.  She was different from what he'd imagined.
He'd expected a creature with Harry Jackman's deviousness, yet he felt
she'd been open with them so far.  He cautioned himself not to judge
her too kindly, however.  He was attracted to her.  Her compact
sensuality and the flashes of feistiness she'd displayed in response to
Denise's left-footed questioning had stirred up his hormones.  And the
tears.  He was a sucker for tears.

Denise Corby drove for forty minutes before being directed from the
back seat into a particularly dreary west London street.

"Beggars can't be choosers," Julie apologised.

"Anywhere decent in London is prohibitively expensive, especially when
you've a child to support.  Liam doesn't like it when I buy his clothes
at Oxfam."

"The trainers are the worst, aren't they?"  Denise replied.

"I've two kids of my own.  Where do I stop?"

"Here on the right.  The house with the broken washing machine out the
front.  The landlord's been promising to shift it for months."

Julie's heart hammered as the Vectra pulled up.  She had no idea how
she was going to handle things if there was a letter from her father.
She pushed open the car door and hurried towards the house, hoping to
get in ahead of them and work some sleight of hand.  The Yale lock
played up however, and by the time she opened the front door the other
two were beside her.

The hall was carpeted in blue cord and on a small, oak table the
morning's mail had been laid out neatly by one of the other residents.
Julie blocked their view until she was sure there was nothing for
her.

"What did I tell you?"  she said, shoulders sagging with relief.

"You've had a wasted journey."

"Which is your flat?"  Denise Corby asked, disregarding her remark.

Julie indicated a door at the far end of the hall.

"We'd like to see it."

"I'd rather not.  The place is a tip.  I wasn't expecting visitors."

"We're not fussy."

"Well I am.  Look.  You wanted to know if there was a letter.  There
isn't.  If there's one tomorrow or the day after, I'll ring you.
Okay?"

"We'd like to see your flat please."  Denise Corby squared up to her
like a rugby player.

Julie responded by jamming her hands onto her hips.

"Why?"

"To see if there's a letter from your father," Corby snapped.

"Please, Julie," Sam intervened, fearing the women were about to come
to blows.

"It won't take long."

Julie gave in because it was the man who'd asked her, and she liked
him.  Liked him better than the Corby woman, anyway.  And when men whom
she liked asked her to do something, she tended to comply.

The bed sit was long and narrow, two small ground floor rooms knocked
together.  At one end was the sleeping space with a double bed and
rumpled sheets.  Julie walked over to it and jerked the duvet up to the
pillows to tidy it.  Beside the bed stood a wardrobe and a chest of
drawers in bargain-basement pine.  A panelled-off section in the corner
contained a shower and toilet.  At the other end of the room was a
sitting area with a grey-covered sofa in a window bay facing the
street.  Halfway along stood a small dining table draped with a plastic
cloth.  Next to it a tiny kitchen alcove, its draining board stacked
with unwashed plates.

Julie stood with her back to the cooker, pushed her spectacles onto the
bridge of her nose, then folded her arms.

"As I told you, I just sleep here," she repeated, trying to excuse the
mess.

"It's dirt cheap.  My money goes on Liam."

"You see your little boy every weekend?"  Corby asked, with what passed
for maternal interest.

"Yes.  And during the week if there's a problem."  Julie told herself
to control her anger.  She had nothing to hide.  She opened a cupboard
to see what she could offer in the way of a drink.  Nothing.  She'd
forgotten to shop.

"I'm afraid I'm out of coffee," she mumbled.

"That doesn't matter.  We'll just do a quick search."

"There isn't a letter," she told them.

"Then it won't take long, will it?"

Sam considered that for someone who a few hours ago had been dismissing
Harry Jackman's red mercury as 'delirium', Denise Corby was taking her
investigating role remarkably seriously.  It was a power thing with
her, he decided.

"You know you've no right to invade my privacy like this," Julie
protested.

"I could get a warrant very quickly .. ."  Corby told her.

Sam winced.  It was a lie.  A magistrate would probably refuse.

"God!"  Julie's mouth set in a thin angry line.

"And people think we live in a free country .. ."

"It's because people make threats to that freedom that we have to act
high-handedly at times," Corby stated primly.

Julie pictured her in court, sitting in a judge's seat with a silly wig
on.

"Then get it over with," she snapped.

"And quickly, because my work is important both to me and to the people
in the lab, and I want to get back to it."

"Of course.  We'll be as quick as we can."

"Sorry about this," Sam mumbled as he followed Denise Corby towards the
sleeping end of the room.

When the woman started fingering the bedclothes, Julie felt sick.  She
watched her pillow and mattress being checked, then saw the hands
feeling through the sheets and the duvet.  God!  What did they think
she was up to?

Sam opened the top drawer of the chest.

"Hang on a minute," Julie scowled.

"I thought you said you were a businessman?"

"That's right."  Sam smiled uncomfortably.  He'd moved without
thinking.

"Then how come you're involving yourself in all this police-state
activity?"

"Just trying to hurry things along," he rejoined sheepishly.

"I realise how unpleasant this must be for you."

Julie wanted to believe him.  To feel that someone here was on her
side.  But when he began his search of the chest by putting his hands
in amongst her underwear she angrily turned her head away.  The two
were a pair.  As bad as each other.

Sam hesitated.  The girl was right to be incensed at what they were
doing, but it was a job and he couldn't afford sympathy.  He pushed
aside tights, pants and bras to see if they concealed anything.

They did.  An opened packet of fruit-flavoured condoms.

He glanced towards the girl again, just as she spun back to face him.
Her glare warned him that passing comment on his little discovery
wouldn't be wise.  He moved quickly on to the next level pullovers and
T-shirts idly wondering whether she had a regular lover or if the
prophylactics were for chance encounters.

The bottom drawer was empty.  He closed it and turned his attention to
the wardrobe.  A couple of pairs of trousers dangled next to a skimpy
black dress.  The clothes smelled of cigar smoke.  On the floor were
some trainers and a Chinese lacquer box.  He took it out and set it
down on top of the chest.  When he opened the lid music tinkled.  Swan
Lake.

Suddenly Julie propelled herself towards him.

"That's private," she snapped.  She grabbed the box from him and banged
the lid down.  The music stopped.

"We'll need to see inside," he told her apologetically.

' We," she mimicked.

"Some businessman."

"Please don't be difficult."

"I said it's private," she repeated.  This whole process was beginning
to feel like rape.

"Tell you what," he suggested gently, 'why don't you take the stuff out
while I watch?  It's a nice box, by the way."

"No it's not," she retorted.

"It's cheap tat.  But my dad gave it to me for my twelfth birthday ..
."

"Then I can understand why it matters so much to you."

Julie had been given it full of emeralds, but she wasn't going to tell
them that.  The stones weren't worth anything.  Chippings from the
mines her father had said, but to her they'd been jewels worthy of a
princess.  Today they were in a muslin bag at her mum's house for Liam
to play with.

"Please," Sam pressed.

"It's important."

After a few more moments she relented.  Despite her certainty by now
that he worked for the same organisation as the Corby woman, he had a
totally different way about him.  It was his eyes.  There was a hazel
softness about them that made her think of old cardigans.

As she opened the lid, the music tinkled again, imperfectly.  Some of
the notes were broken through excessive use.  She took out the
photographs and old letters that were faded with age, then replaced
them in the box one by one as if dealing cards.  One of the envelopes
looked thicker than the others.

"May I?"  He reached in to take it.

"That letter's years old."

She was right.  The Zambian postmark said 1989.

"From your father?"

"Yes.  He sent it to me when I went to college.  He wrote to say how
proud he was."

Sam checked it cursorily then dropped the letter back in the box.

"What did you study?"

"Biology."

"Of course.  Hence your work."

The last items were snapshots which she replaced in rapid succession,
as if wanting to gloss over the years they represented.

"Who's that?"  Sam pointed to a picture of a young man with long dark
hair and a leather jacket.

"Liam's father," she told him curtly.

"Brendan."

"Not still around?"

"No."

"There's someone else?"  he asked idly.

"Some other bloke?"

"Mind your own business."

Sam watched her close the box.  As she bent down to replace it on the
floor of the wardrobe, her shoulder-length hair fell forward to reveal
a neck as slender as a child's.  Creamy white skin with soft, cirrus
cloud tufts at the nape.  He was in love.

He looked up to find Denise glaring, as if she'd caught him doing
something disgusting behind the bike sheds.  She marched over to them,
questioning Julie about whether her father had been in the habit of
leaving papers at her mother's place.

"For safekeeping.  Legal documents.  That sort of thing."

"Never seen any.  At the bank, maybe.  He had an account at Barclays in
Ipswich."

"But there might be letters at the house in Woodbridge, even if you've
never seen them?"

"It's possible," Julie wavered, dreading going through a repeat
performance of this.

"We'd like you to accompany us there," Corby announced.

"To Woodbridge."

"What, now?"  Julie turned to Sam, hoping to play him off against the
woman, but he averted his eyes.

"I'll need to ring the lab," she stated testily.

"I don't have a phone here, but there's a call box on the corner."

"You can ring from the car, if you like," Sam told her, pleased to be
having her company for a little longer.

"I'll lend you my mobile."

Julie rubbed her temples.

"Hang on a minute.  It's the weekend coming up.  I'll be staying on at
Woodbridge, which means packing a bag."

"Five minutes long enough for you?"  Denise offered.

"I suppose."

"We'll wait outside in the car."

As they emerged from the house, a black teenager was pushing a buggy
along the cracked pavement with a grizzling child in it.  She didn't
look up.  Denise unlocked the Vectra and they sat inside.

"Better get their mail intercepted from tomorrow," she fretted.

"But what a waste of time.  There is no red mercury, Sam."

He didn't reply.  There was a point to it all.  Because whatever Harry
Jackman had been trading in, it had put him in fear of his life.

FOUR

IT WAS JUST before midnight when Sam paid off the cab a few hundred
yards from his rented flat overlooking the river at Brentford.  He
never let a taxi drive him right up to the door.  These days he was
super-conscious of security after having to move from his old home down
the river because of the keen interest shown in him by a hit squad. The
vehicle swung in a U-turn back towards central London where Denise
Corby had dropped him twenty-five minutes earlier.  As the head office
woman had predicted, the visit to Woodbridge had proved a waste of
time.

The house where Harry Jackman's first wife lived was in a recently
converted sail maker loft on the Deben estuary, an up market
development with most of the apartments owned by weekenders.  They'd
found no letters there relating to red mercury, a pair of words as
meaningless to Julie's mother as they'd been to Julie herself.

The Jackman home had been modest in size, three bedrooms, a decent
living room, a playroom and a kitchen.  Seven-year-old Liam had had an
attractive, curly-haired wildness about him.  He'd flung himself at his
mother as soon as she opened the front door and refused to leave her in
peace until she settled on the sofa and read him a story.  Sam had
liked the way Julie had been with the boy.  They'd shared a sense of
belonging.  Of being integral to each other's life.  Sam had felt pangs
of jealousy watching them.  They had something he didn't.

Mrs.  Maeve Jackman had the same wide cheekbones as her daughter.  With
the docility of a woman well used to having her life messed about,
she'd shown them around her home, letting them delve into anything they
wanted.  She'd behaved with a patent honesty which neither Sam nor
Denise Corby had been inclined to doubt.  If Harry Jackman had written
them a letter explaining red mercury, then it was still in the post.

There'd been rain in the last few hours and the Brentford air smelled
of it.  He could see the vaulted roof of the apartment block where he
lived, towering over a pub at a bend in the road.  He pulled the phone
from his pocket and dialled the number of his flat.  The answer phone
voice that cut in was not his.  Security had prepared the tape for him,
rapper style, complete with funky music.  Sam pressed four numbers in
quick succession and the tape stopped.  He heard a hum and then a
digitised voice telling him the intruder alarm had detected no motion
in the flat since the day he left it nearly a week ago.  He put the
phone away, walked on briskly and let himself into the building.

The plane from Lusaka had been full last night and he'd found it hard
to sleep.  By now he was dog tired.  He dumped his suitcase on the
floor of his bedroom, deciding to wait until the morning before
unpacking it.

A drink was what he needed most urgently.  He opened the cocktail
cabinet that was an integral part of the rented flat's furnishings,
scowling as it struck up a tune.  One day when he found the time, he
would work out how to kill it.  He poured himself a good measure of
whisky and water, then took the tumbler to the picture window
overlooking the river.  The apartment block was just upstream from Kew
Bridge.  Directly below it, cormorants nested.  Beyond the far bank lay
the botanical gardens.  The residence had been designed for the smart
and the well-heeled and he felt out of place in it.  He'd moved here
two months ago because of its security arrangements electronic gates
and security guards.  For the past couple of years there'd been many
changes of address for him as he'd kept ahead of those intent on
killing him.  He tossed back the whisky and poured himself another. Two
shots would be enough to put him to sleep.

He switched on Sky News, just to make sure the world hadn't come to an
end while he'd been chasing phantoms in Suffolk.  A tedious piece about
some spat in the House of Commons was followed by a report on Kosovo.
He sat down to watch.  The newscaster revealed new UN figures
estimating that 300,000 Kosovars had been driven from their homes by
the Serbs' summer offensive and had taken refuge in the mountains.  The
video showed wide-eyed children and weeping grannies.  He pitied them.
There'd be no quick solution to their problems.

The report turned its focus to one ethnic Albanian family that had
decided to seek a better life outside their homeland.  Sky would be
following their progress, the reporter declared, as they searched for
asylum in western Europe.  Sam winced.  Good TV, pulling at the
heartstrings, but he hated the kind of journalism that flipped the
minds of politicians, driving them to react with emotion rather than
sense.

The phone rang, startling him.  He looked at his watch.  It was well
after midnight.  He wasn't used to calls this late, not since the days
of Chrissie, when she would ring in the middle of the night to say
she'd escaped from her husband again and wanted to share his bed for a
couple of hours.  He switched off the TV and snatched up the
receiver.

"Yes?"

"Sorry about the late hour."  Sam recognised the Ulster growl of his
controller.

"But I understand from our mutual friend that you've only just got
back."  The diligent Denise Corby had reported in already.

"What's up?"  He could tell from the background noise that Waddell was
in his car.

"We need to talk."

"In the morning?"

"No.  Right now.  You know where."

"Well, yes."  They had a rota of locations for short-notice meetings.

"You sure it can't wait?"  Stupid question.

"Absolutely.  See you there in five."

"If you say so."

Sam crossed the wood-block floor to the window again, wondering.  He
guessed that some new mission must have come up.  A flight back to
Africa first thing in the morning, with Jackman's red mercury being
left to the Vauxhall Cross pen-pushers to follow up if they bothered.

Outside, the night sky was clear.  A half-moon cast a silvery
reflection on the water.  The aircraft which at peak times filed past
every ninety seconds on their way into Heathrow had stopped for a few
hours to let those on the flight path sleep.  Sam finished his whisky
and patted his trouser pocket for his keys.  He switched on the TV
again, pushing the button for channel O, the security camera concealed
outside his front door.  It showed the landing to be empty.

He took the lift to the underground garage, and unlocked his Mondeo
estate.  His inclination was for older, more characterful machines, but
the 1984 Mercedes which he'd owned for many years had had to be sold,
along with his share in a 3i-foot Moody sloop and several other
trappings of his former life.  All in the interests of preventing the
Odessa mafiya picking up his trail.

At the garage exit gate he swiped a security card and the pole lifted.
The Kew Gardens car park which was this week's meeting place was a
couple of minutes away, just the other side of the river.  The traffic
over Kew Bridge was light but fast moving.  He stuck himself in the
right-hand lane with his indicator going, praying that the nocturnal
boy racers who touched sixty over the bridge would spot him in time
before running into his boot.  If the cops breathalysed him it would be
he who got the blame.

He turned onto Kew Green past the beautifully preserved Georgian
houses, then hooked right into the lane running parallel to the river
which ended in a large parking area for visitors to the Gardens. Packed
during the day in the summer, there were just two cars there now. 
Lovers or dog-walkers, he decided.  He drove to the far end, turned the
headlamps towards the river and switched off.

In less than a minute another car swept in, its lights blazing in the
Mondeo's mirrors as it pulled up behind.  It was a warm night.  When
Waddell slid silently onto the passenger seat of the Mondeo, he was
dressed in a white T-shirt and blue jeans.  Sam stared in bemusement.
He'd seldom seen his controller without a tie.

"What's this?  Come here to cruise?"

"Fuck off.  I was at a barbecue at my sister's place."

"Nice for you."

"Would have been if I hadn't been hit by a call from Washington just as
I was leaving the office."

"Red mercury?"

"No way," he scoffed.

"No.  A different matter altogether."

Sam waited for him to continue, but he didn't.

"You're going to tell me?"

Slowly Waddell turned sideways in the seat, his head backed against the
window.

"You're not going to like this, Sam.  It's to do with your father."

"My father?  But he died when I was eleven.  Brain tumour."

"I know.  Trevor Patrick Packer," Waddell intoned.  '1931-1971.  At the
time of his death he was a chief petty officer in the Royal Navy
submarine service.  On HMS Retribution."

"A Polaris missile boat," Sam interjected, baffled as to what this was
about.

"The starboard crew, whatever that means."

"They had two crews on the bombers," Sam explained uneasily.

"Took it in turns to man the boat.  That way they could maximise the
time the hardware was at sea.  So what?"

Waddell paused momentarily.

"The Americans think your old man passed secrets to the Russians."

Sam gaped into the gloom, thinking he must have misheard.

"Bollocks."

For a moment he suspected Waddell was laughing at him.  That this was
some sort of practical joke.

"You're not serious?"

"The Yanks are."

"Then they need their brains examined.  Where's this crap come from?"

"From the Russians, Sam," Waddell told him.

"Or rather from one particular ex-GRU officer who's just been given an
American passport.  The quid pro quo was a file full of intelligence on
what the Sovs knew about British and American naval operations in the
seventies and eighties.

I tell you, over in the States they're having heart failure.  Two
retired US admirals were arrested yesterday."

"Jesus."  Sam felt pole axed.

"But this is crap, Duncan.  Utter crap.  My old man was as proud as
punch of the submarines he served on.  He would never have betrayed his
country, or his mates."

Waddell didn't comment.  They both knew that when it came to spying,
appearances and reality could be very different.

"What does Five say about this?"  Sam demanded.

"Too early.  They've only just been briefed," Waddell told him.

"What do you say, more's the point?"

"I've told you.  It's rubbish."

"Did you ever wonder about him?"

"Don't be daft.  I was a kid.  What eleven-year-old suspects his father
of spying?"

"You don't remember odd visitors at home?  Men with funny accents
coming round for tea and walking away with brown envelopes?"

"Do me a favour, Duncan.  This is a joke.  Isn't it?"

"The funny accents, yes.  But for the rest, it's deadly serious.  We
need to get to the bottom of it."

"You're talking twenty-seven years ago," Sam protested.

"Were there any suspicions at the time?"

"None at all."

"Well, there you are."

"Och, all that does is suggest the buggers got away with it."

"Or that it never bloody happened."

"The Russians had your dad's name on file, Sam.  You think they plucked
it out of thin air?"

Sam turned to stare through the windscreen.  The moon was to their
left, its soft light picking out a shape moving along the towpath, a
couple, clinging so closely together that they made a single outline.

"So what's being done about this nonsense?"  Sam blustered.

"The Security Service are going to start trawling tomorrow.  Tracking
down people who worked alongside your father."

"Fucking madness," Sam hissed.

"Whatever ... It needs clearing up."  Waddell tapped a hand on the
dashboard.

"For the Service's sake."

Sam sensed some threatening edge to Waddell's voice.

"What are you talking about, Duncan?"

"You're his son.  And the firm employs you."

"So?"

"It makes certain people in the firm's upper layers a little
uncomfortable, that's all."

"Because some nutcase has accused my father of being a traitor?  For
Christ's sake, that doesn't make me one."

Waddell shifted in his seat.

"On the top floor they think in headlines, Sam.  Negative stories that
could hit the newspapers.  If it leaked out about 'your father, and the
press started asking what his son does for a living .. ."

"Why should it leak out?"

"Our American cousins.  Anything to distract attention from the scandal
within their own Navy."  He tapped his fingers together.

"Any of your family know how you earn your crust?"

"My sister has some idea," Sam croaked.

"Nothing specific."

"Well stick some tape across her mouth and take her phone away .. ."

"You're getting hysterical, Duncan."

"No I'm not.  This could go horribly wrong.  And it could happen fast.
I want you to sniff around.  Go back to the time when you were ten or
eleven and see what you can find there.  With a bit of luck we can
strangle the whole thing at birth.  Your mother, she's still alive?"

"Died five years ago.  There's nothing left of that time, Duncan," Sam
sighed, 'except what's in my head."

"Nevertheless, go and look.  See your sister and shut her up.  Make
some excuse to contact your parents' old friends.  Give me a ring in a
couple of days to let me know how you're getting on."

"And Harry Jackman's so-called red mercury?"

"It's going nowhere.  The man lived a fantasy life half the time.  If
anything does come up, Denise can sort it."  He reached for the door
release.

"I'm going home now.  It's been a long day."

"Back to the barbecue?"

"Oh sure.  Ashes to ashes."  Waddell fumbled for the handle, conscious
of a bad choice of words.

"Don't take it hard about your father.  Life's full of surprises and
they can't all be nice ones."  He got out.

"Ring me," he said before clicking the door shut.

Sam heard Waddell's car start up.  The headlamps dazzled again and then
swung away.  For several minutes he stayed where he was, sinking lower
into the seat.

It wasn't true.  It simply couldn't be.  His father was no traitor. And
if the firm was hoping to avoid trouble, they were looking the wrong
bloody way.  Harry Jackman was the man to watch out for, the one who'd
bring sleepless nights to the top floor of Vauxhall Cross.

FIVE

London Saturday, 08.10 hrs

ON THE OTHER side of the capital from where Sam Packer had his flat,
stood a cluster of 1960s apartment blocks whose occupants were on far
more modest incomes than those with a view over the river at Kew.

On the twelfth floor of one of them, a tower that had never lived up to
its name of Windsor Court, a computer screen flickered in the corner of
the small, plain living room.  The man hunched in front of it checking
his e-mail had short hair and a face dominated by a broad, putty-soft
nose.  He shot a nervous glance at the time icon, needing to be out of
the flat before his girlfriend returned from her hospital night shift.
Fifteen minutes to go.  The last of his four anonymous mailboxes
reported empty.  There was no message from "Peter' calling off the job.
Half of him had been hoping for one.

Rob Petrie logged off, shut down the PC and stood up.  He had a broad
chest and narrow hips, which gave him a top-heavy look.  Normally a
neat dresser obsessed with looking clean and spruce, today he wore old
jeans and a T-shirt bought at a charity shop to help him pass unnoticed
in a crowd.  He was tense.  Very tense.  A tension that bordered on
fear.

He knew he had to eat something if his brain was to keep alert.  At the
breakfast bar in the tiny kitchen he filled a bowl with cornflakes, but
halfway through eating he gave up.  Butterflies.  He checked his watch.
8.15.  Sandra would appear at half-past on the dot, her blue uniform
crumpled and stained, smelling of the geriatrics she spent her nights
watching over.  He'd told her it would be kinder to gas the old crap
bags  Five minutes and he needed to be out of here.  She might be
early, although she never was.

He shoved the bowl under the tap and left it to drain, then banged open
the door to the toilet his second session of the morning.  Nerves.

At twenty-two minutes past he was out of the front door and onto the
open landing.  As he walked along it, he glanced down at the grass and
concrete a hundred feet below where children would be playing before
long.  For most people in the block, Saturday morning meant a lie-in,
so when he reached the end of the passageway the lift came quickly and
was empty.

Eighty households in Windsor Court, all nursing secrets behind their
draughty aluminium-framed windows.  Some with children, some just
couples, few of them married.  It wasn't a place Petrie would have
chosen to live, but the loss of his job in the City eighteen months ago
had left him no choice.  Sandra was the breadwinner now.  16,000 a
year, she earned, a tenth of what he'd made before the Jews he'd worked
for had booted him out.  She claimed not to mind being the provider,
saying they'd managed to stick together in the good times, so they
could do it in the bad.  But he had a problem with it.  Failure to find
another City job had wrecked his confidence in all aspects of his life.
Sandra was suggesting Viagra.

Amongst the occupants of the block were a few Afro-Caribbean families
and a handful of Asians, but most of the residents were white.  He
stepped from the lift and walked briskly across the open yard.  Few
people about, which was a relief.  On the far side was a row of lockups
where he kept his car, a twelve-year-old Escort.  The garage door swung
up on its weights.  He checked that the Tesco bag was still on the back
seat, together with the baseball cap and dark glasses.  He'd prepared
the gear last night after Sandra had gone to work.

He started up and drove into the daylight, then got out and closed the
door, telling himself that if he left the garage open some nigger would
come and piss in it.  He headed west, keeping carefully to the speed
limits.  The last thing he needed today was for a dutiful plod to feed
his number into the Police National Computer.  His path cut across
London Angel, Euston, Baker Street, then out past Hangar Lane onto the
A4.  At the Polish War Memorial by Northolt airport he turned left,
cutting through into the heart of Southall.

His skin began to prickle.  Every face here was Asian.  Men with
turbans, women swirling in synthetic silks.  He could smell the curry
spices through the car's ventilation system.  Another country in
everything but name, a part of England which the criminals in
government had allowed to turn foreign.  It angered him, seeing the
state of the place, which did him good, giving him the bottle for what
he had to do next.

He drove the Escort into a parking area behind the High Street, tugged
the baseball cap down on his head and jammed the dark glasses onto his
face.  On this day in history, his leader had told him in the e-mail
he'd received a week ago, all across Europe, people would be standing
up for their heritage.  This was the day when the fight back started,
the moment when the streets would begin to be reclaimed by those they
belonged to.

He got out, locked the doors, then, with the Tesco bag dangling from
his right fist, he set off towards the street market.

Brentford 09.25 hrs

It had been another bad night for Sam Packer.  Instead of sleeping, his
restless mind had relived the day twenty-seven years ago when his
father died.  It had been early July 1971.  Looking forward to the
summer holidays, he'd come home from school to find his dad on the
living room floor, grey and gaunt, mouth agape, eyes glassy and still.
Then the district nurse had appeared.  Fat, professional fingers
closing the lids on the face that looked so different from the chirpy
grinner in the black-and-white wedding snap that was framed in silver
and anchored to the tiled mantelpiece in their Fareham living room.  A
uniformed sailor with his self-conscious bride.

Sam had managed to switch off those memories eventually and had dozed a
little in the early hours, a light sleep quickly broken by an early
Jumbo at 4.35.  He'd got up soon after seven, pummelled his brain under
the power jets in the gold-tapped shower cubicle, dressed in pale
cotton trousers and a polo shirt, then breakfasted on fruit and
scrambled eggs at the smoked-glass table in the marble-floored living
room.  The glitz of the place he hated it.  It wasn't his style.

When his father died he'd felt abandoned, left to the mercies of a
bitter mother and an elder sister who despised boys a sister whose
attitude to him had changed little over the years and whom he now had
to visit.  He'd rung her a few minutes ago to say he was going to be in
the area and might drop in.  Dead casual.  No hint of why, on the basis
that an enemy unprepared was easier to overcome.

He packed an overnight bag, because he wasn't sure where this delving
into the past would lead him, and was on the point of setting off for
Hampshire when the phone rang.

"Lo?"  he grunted.

"Oh good.  You're back."  A woman's voice, strong and jolly, which he
recognised immediately.

"Steph!  How are you doing?"

Stephanie Watson.  A detective chief inspector with Special Branch, a
woman who'd become as close to him as any female could expect to get,
short of getting physically intimate.

"I'm doing well, thanks," she told him cheerily.

"Ringing to ask if you fancied a game of tennis?  Gerry's away for a
few days and I'm feeling frisky."  Gerry was the new man she'd hitched
up with a couple of months ago.

"Oh, Steph!  Under normal circumstances I'd take huge pleasure in
knocking you around the court, but unfortunately I can't.  Something's
come up."

"Something to your taste?  In a skirt?"

"Sadly not.  Family problems."

"Oh.  Sorry."

"Don't be.  It's probably nothing.  But I need to make sure."

"Sounds intriguing."  She was canny enough not to press for details.

"But later in the week perhaps?"  Sam checked.

"Or maybe a lunch?"

"You're joking!  Don't get time for a sandwich these days.  But I could
face a curry one evening.  Midweek, say?"

"You mean Gerry'll give you time off?"

"I told you.  He's away."  The flatness in her voice made him wonder
for a moment if jaway' meant her new man had walked out on her.

"A curry would be great," he told her.

"Give you a ring in a couple of days?"

"I'll look forward to it.  Might even challenge you to a vindaloo."

"No chance," he growled.

"You know my preferences.  A naming arse hole cramps my style with the
boys."

Stephanie laughed.

"You're so disgusting, you could be a copper.  See you later in the
week."

"Bye."

He knew that in many ways Stephanie was precisely the sort of woman he
ought to pick as a partner.  She was clever, witty and level-headed.
Their minds sparred beautifully, but they'd never clicked physically.
For a woman she was on the stocky side and he liked them more girlish.
Gerry, her new.  man and an Armed Response Team officer, was the right
size for her.  Six foot two with the build of a bouncer.

Sam grabbed his mobile phone and his wallet.  He went through the
routine of monitoring the security camera, then let himself out of the
flat.  Down in the underground garage he noticed some of the light
bulbs had failed, casting dark shadows amongst the line-up of
German-made cars.  He made a mental note to get the caretaker to fix
them, then drove up the ramp and over Kew Bridge, heading for the M3
motorway.

He had no clear plan for the day, apart from the need to visit his
sister.  Beryl, married to a naval scientist and well settled in an
estate outside Portsmouth, was the custodian of all their father's
paperwork.  It would be an uncomfortable meeting, the first since their
mother's funeral five years ago.

The traffic was heavy heading for the coast, families making the most
of one of the few sunny weekends of that bleak, wet summer.  He turned
off the motorway and took the Meon valley road through the Hampshire
countryside, passing rain-flattened wheat fields and the lush green
parks of old mansions.

His father had been serving on a diesel boat in the year of his birth,
a Porpoise class submarine based in Gosport.  Away at sea for months at
a time, he'd missed his son's coming into the world, an absence his
wife had never forgiven him for.

Fareham where they'd lived was an overspill town for Portsmouth.  Sam
found his way easily at first, driving through the housing estates as
if on autopilot.  But when he entered his old road it all looked
different.  The houses had been upgraded with B&Q doors and coach-lamp
porch lights.  To identify his old home he had to check the house
numbers.  It was odd seeing it again.  Everything looked smaller than
he'd remembered.  Staring up at the window of his one-time bedroom, he
shivered as he remembered the chill there'd been in that house when his
father wasn't there.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected to find.  Today's residents of the
estate were not from his time.  They all looked so young.  Not much
more than teenagers but with small children snapping at their heels.
His own mother, one of the last of her generation to move, had left ten
years ago for her sister's in Southsea.  There was nothing to see here,
and what there was, he didn't want to look at.

He switched on again and drove down the road, then took the A3 2 north
for a few miles before turning onto the high down that overlooked
Portsmouth.  His sister's husband worked in a windswept Admiralty
research centre perched on the ridge.  Sam had met him a few times. The
quiet type.  Beryl liked her men docile.

Four years older than Sam, Beryl lived with Jim and their two girls in
a modern house of dark brick.  He found his way to their village and
through the estate, passing homes with tricycles and speedboats in
their drives.  Outside number 12 Magnolia Close a teenager's bike lay
on the lawn and a trug full of weeds blocked the path.  The front door
was open.  Sam switched off and got out.  As he stepped over the basket
a figure emerged from the house wearing gardening gloves.

"Well, bless my soul!"

Thinning fair hair brushed back, metal-framed glasses and a long thin
nose, Beryl's husband was shorter than Sam.  He wore old cords and a
blue check shirt.

"Hello, Jim."

"Nice to see you, Sam.  "Jim Butterworth pulled off a glove and reached
out his hand.  His voice had a touch of Hampshire about it.

"What a surprise!"

"Beryl didn't mention I rang?"

"No.  Must've slipped her mind," Jim said charitably.

"Well, I was in the area so I thought I'd try my luck.  High time and
all that .. ."

"Absolutely.  How are you?"   

"Fine.  Just fine.  And you?"

"Oh, you know.  Rubbing along.  Come on in."

Sam's sister emerged from the hall.  She'd put on weight but it had
done little to soften the pinched, disapproving expression she'd
inherited from her mother.  She wore green shorts, revealing pasty legs
that had lost their once decent shape.

"Well .. ."  she grunted.

"So there you are."

They made no attempt to embrace and went into the kitchen.  The
children -were summoned to say hello to this uncle they'd seldom seen.
Two girls, aged twelve and fourteen, both quite pretty, studied him
with idle curiosity.

"Still no wife in tow?"  Beryl enquired, peering theatrically towards
the door.

"You would have invited us to the wedding .. ."

"I imagine I might have done.  No.  I'm not married."

Sam didn't want them probing into his life.  He'd come here for one
reason only.

"So ... to what do we owe this pleasure?"  Beryl asked, perching her
hands on her ample hips.  She had the same wiry hair as Sam, but it had
been cut short in a style like a tea cosy

"As I said, I was just in the area," Sam explained uncomfortably.  He
couldn't broach the subject in front of the girls.

"Oh no you weren't."  She turned to the sink to fill a kettle.

"Dropping in isn't your style.  You're after something.  I take it
you'd like some coffee now you're here?"

"That'd be nice.  Thanks."

The girls took it as their cue to go back to whatever they were doing.
Sam gave them a smile.

"So?  How's things?"  Beryl asked when she'd plugged in the kettle.

"Not bad.  Not bad."

"Your work still all hush-hush?"  She tried to make it sound
inconsequential, but he knew that she was rather in awe of what he
did.

"That's right."

"Travel a lot, do you?"  Jim chipped in.

"Now and then."

"Nice for you."

Beryl put custard creams on the kitchen table and they all sat round
it.  There was silence for a few moments.

"Come on Sam.  Spit it out," Beryl told him.  They watched him
expectantly.

"It's to do with our father."

Beryl blanched.

"Our father?  But he's been dead nearly thirty years."

Sam stood up and crossed to the kitchen door, checking that the girls
weren't in earshot.  Then he closed it.

"Something odd's come up," he told them, sitting down again and keeping
his voice low.

"Bit of a bombshell.  And it's highly confidential.  Not the sort of
thing to be talked about with children or friends."

"Sam!  Don't be so mysterious.  What's happened?"

"Well .. . the Russians are claiming he spied for them."

Jim and Beryl's mouths sagged and their eyes became saucers.  Neither
of them spoke.

"A former Soviet military intelligence officer who's defected to the
United States has handed over a list of people they recruited back in
the 1970s," Sam explained.

"And Dad's name was on it."

Beryl covered her mouth.  Jim was the first to speak.

"Lordy "No," Beryl reasoned, shaking her head.

"That can't be right."

"That's what I said," Sam told her.

"It's a mistake.  Has to be."

"Whatever our father was, he wasn't a spy," she went on heavily.

"He lived for the Navy.  Put it above everything else.  Particularly
his own damned family," she stressed, her voice rising in pitch.

"He went to sea, came home, patted his beloved little boy on the head,
ignored his wife and daughter, bedded a handful of women he wasn't
married to, then went to sea again."

Sam closed his eyes at this familiar litany of complaint.

"You've only got our mother's word for the other women," he told her
defensively.

"And when did she ever lie?"

Sam groaned inwardly.  His conversations with Beryl always went this
way.

"Well..  . whatever he did in his spare time, he wasn't a spy and I
intend to prove it," he told her, determined not to be sidetracked.

"Quite right too," said Jim, his brow furrowing.

"But how?"

"I don't know yet."

Beryl's complexion was turning a blotchy red and her eyes had become
dark dots of anger.

"I simply don't believe it," she hissed.

"No.  Nor do I," said Sam.

"No!"  she squealed.

"You, Sam, you!  That's what I don't believe.  I do not understand how
you can sit there and say we only have mother's word for his woman
ising

Jim rolled his eyes and passed a hand across his face.

"You're missing the point Beryl," Sam soothed.

"Oh no I'm not.  The man was a lecher.  And after all these yean you're
still defending him.  That's the point."

"Lecher is a bit over the top, Beryl.  Anyway the charge is spying. And
at this particular moment nothing else matters."

"Oh yes it does.  The trouble with you is that you're just like him,"
she countered.

"One woman in your life has never been enough for you, has it?"

"Bee .. ."  Jim's pained expression said he'd heard far too many of
these outbursts.

"Look, forget about women," Sam growled.

"I came here to warn you."  He wanted to be gone from here.

"The press may get on to you.  If they do, say nothing about my work,
understand?  If anyone wants to know what it is I do, say it's
import-export."

"We understand, Sam," Jim assured him.

"Don't worry.  We know the rules."

Sam took in a deep breath.  There is one other reason I came here."

"Ah.  I knew it," Beryl snorted.

"You've got some things of his.  A tin box with old passports, service
documents, driving licences and so on."

"Went years ago," Beryl snapped, her face scarlet.

Her husband turned to her.

"Isn't it in the .. . ?"

"I said it's gone," she yelled.

"Chucked out.  Mother kept it under her bed when she moved in with her
sister.  God knows why she hung on to it when she hated him so much."

"And after she died all those oddments came to you," Sam reminded
her.

"When did you throw them out, Beryl?"  He was losing patience.

"I really don't remember," she said vapidly.

"We have clear-outs from time to time.  Most families do."

She stressed the word to emphasise the abnormality of his single
state.

"That box was all that was left of him," Sam snapped.

Jim half stood.

"You know, I do have a feeling that .. ."

Beryl cut him off with a slicing movement of her arm, but her husband
persisted.

"I am pretty sure that tin box is in the loft," he declared.

"Well you must have put it there," Beryl charged.

"Because I certainly didn't."

"Quite possibly, "Jim mumbled.

Her pinprick eyes fixed Sam with loathing.

"You are so disgustingly like him, you know.  Particularly with that
beard which doesn't suit you at all.  How long have you had that .. .
that dreadful fuzz?"

"A couple of years."  Odd how he'd forgotten that his father had been
bearded once.  He'd been clean shaven in the wedding photo.

"And this is typical, of course," Beryl added, her voice rising to a
yell.

"Your turning up like this.  It's only because you want something.  Not
to see us.  Not because you're interested in how your nieces are doing.
Exactly like Dad.  He really was a prize shit, you know."

Her husband sighed.

"Leave it out, Bee, for God's sake."

Sam held back, startled by his sister's virulence.  She was displaying
signs of mental instability.  Upstairs he heard a door slam and guessed
it was the children shutting out a noise they'd come to hate.

As tears filled her eyes, Jim put an arm round her shoulders and rocked
her gently, grimacing an apology to Sam.

"Bee .. ."  he cooed.

"Oh, give him his damned tin box for heaven's sake and then he can go,"
Beryl gulped.

Jim stood up and beckoned Sam to follow him upstairs.  On the upper
landing he opened an airing cupboard and brought out a boat-hook which
he used to pull down a ladder concealed above the hatch to the loft.

"Shan't be a mo," he said, handing Sam the hook.

"Hold this, would you?"

He shinned up the ladder and reached up to the rafters, fumbling for a
light switch.  Then he hoisted himself into the roof space, emerging
half a minute later with a black metal deed box.  He turned it over to
show the initials on the lid.  T.P.P. Trevor Patrick Packer.

Sam took it from him.  There was a key in the lock, but it wouldn't
turn.

"I'll drench that in WD40,"Jim told him, gingerly descending.  He
patted his hands to shake off the dust, then pushed the sliding ladder
back into the cavity.

"It's in the garage."

Sam followed him downstairs.  Glancing into the kitchen, he saw the
door to the back garden was open.

"This way," said Jim, leading him out through the front.  He eased up
the garage door weights and rummaged on a tool shelf next to the small,
green Rover parked there.  He took the box from Sam and squirted oil
into the keyhole until the mechanism freed up.

"There you are," he said, handing it back.

Sam opened the lid to check it was the material he'd remembered.

"Thanks, Jim."

His sister's husband took his arm and hurried him back to the Mondeo.

"Best you don't hang around," he mumbled.

"She's been having treatment, you know."

"I didn't.  What for?"

"Psycho-stuff.  You know, counselling and so on.  That sort of
thing."

"Really.  What brought this on?"

Jim shrugged and let out a sigh.

"Dunno.  Something to do with your father."

"But what?"

Jim pressed more firmly on his arm and urged him towards the car.

"God knows!  It's made her think all men have a bit of the beast in
them.  Fertilising females wherever they can find them.  Even me!"  he
added, laughing at himself.

"I mean, who'd be interested in Jim Butterworth apart from your sister
Beryl?"

They'd reached the car.  Jim opened the door for him, then held out his
hand.

"Bye, Sam."

"Thanks for your help, Jim."

Beryl's husband turned back to the house, stooping to pick up the trug
of weeds.

"Cheerio," he called, head down, avoiding Sam's look.

Sam watched him go inside and close the door.  Then he got into the car
and drove slowly away.

A mile or so outside the village he found a lay-by and stopped.  For
several minutes he watched a combine harvester working the neighbouring
wheat field, finding its steady, relentless progress soothing.

He shook his head like a dog.  Had his father really been the sexual
predator Beryl described?  Or just a man with an eye for a skirt living
in a household of frigid females?

He didn't know.  And that was the trouble.  He knew so little about the
man whose genes he carried.  Had no idea whether he'd had it in his
soul to be a lecher or a spy.

The deed box was on the seat beside him.  He opened its lid.  On top
was his father's naval service record.  Signed up in 1949, died in
service 1971.  A list of the vessels he'd served on.  A record of one
man's working life.  Of his pride.  Ending up with HMS Retribution,
based at Faslane.

He delved deeper into the box and found a diary.  The date on the cover
was 1942.  Sam frowned.  His father had been eleven years old then.  He
opened it and discovered it belonged to his grandfather, also a
submariner.  He skim-read some paragraphs.  Descriptions of being bored
for long periods on wartime patrol.  Nicknames of shipmates Bunny.
Tiger.  Chips and Taff.  Two years later, he remembered, the boat had
been depth-charged and his grandfather consigned to the fishes.

Submarines and the men who lived and died on them.  They'd been in his
father's blood.  It wasn't credible he could have betrayed them.

Sam sifted through the rest.  He looked at the photos in two expired
passports.  The same determined chin as himself, the same thoughtful
eyes.  Then, lying loose in a corner of the box, something that
surprised him.

Two tickets for the ferry from Wemyss Bay to Rothesay on the Isle of
Bute.  Date stamped the 21st of May 1971, six weeks before his father
died.  Who had his companion been?  Certainly not his wife.  Sam's
mother had told him time and again that she'd never been north of the
border.  Said it with pride in her voice, as if the very act of going
to the place where her husband's submarine was based would be
succumbing to his will.

Two tickets which his father had wanted to keep for the memories they
bore memories of a year when Russian military intelligence added his
name to its list of foreign agents.

Were they significant?  It was the only lead he had.

He checked the time.  Just turning midday.  He switched on the car
radio to catch the news, wanting to know if word about his father had
leaked.  The headlines came.  All about a nail bomb explosion in
Southall.  Sixteen people seriously injured, one elderly Sikh dead from
heart failure.

"Bastards!"  he hissed.  He hated terrorists.

All the main right-wing groups were infiltrated, Steph had told him.
They could hardly fart without Special Branch knowing.  So it was
probably a loner.  Hard to catch.  He listened through the rest of the
news, but there was no mention of a spy scandal.

He looked again at the Scottish ferry tickets, then pulled a road atlas
from the pocket in the door and located Bute in the Firth of Clyde. The
Wemyss Bay ferry terminal was on the Ayrshire coast about an hour west
of Glasgow.  Driving to Scotland would take the rest of the day, he
realised.  It'd make more sense to fly.  He began to calculate how soon
he could get there.  Then his phone rang.

"Hello."

"Simon Foster?"

He tensed.  He'd only used that name in his dealings with Harry
Jackman.  The voice was a woman's which he didn't recognise.

"Who is this?"

"Julie.  Julie Jackman."  Her voice was strangely hoarse.  Nervous, he
guessed.

"Oh.  Hello."

"You're surprised to be hearing from me?"

"I am rather.  Where did you get this number from?"

"You'll never believe this, but it was totally by accident.  When you
lent me your phone yesterday, I was pressing buttons trying to turn it
off when the number of the phone came up on the display.  And it just
so happens I have a very good memory for numbers."

Sam didn't believe in accidents like that.  He'd slipped up.  A
security lapse.

"Okay," he said suspiciously.

"So, what can I do for you?"

"It's what I can do for you, really.  There's been a letter.  I thought
you'd want to know."

"A letter?  From your father?"  He felt an adrenalin rush.

"Yes.  It arrived here in Woodbridge this morning.  And it talks about
red mercury."

"Does it now .. ."  He struggled to contain his excitement.

"Have you contacted Denise Corby?"

"No."

"I think you should."

"Look.  That woman got right up my nose yesterday.  She came on like
the Gestapo.  I don't mind showing the letter to you and please drop
the pretence that you two don't work together."

"Never met her before yesterday," he replied with total honesty.

"Whatever ... I won't have Denise Corby anywhere near me again."

Sam knew the headquarters woman would blow a fuse if he acted on his
own.  And if he took up Julie's invitation, the investigation into his
father's past would have to go on hold.  But he was intensely keen to
read that letter.  And it would mean getting another eyeful of Julie
Jackman again, which he wouldn't object to at all.

"Where are you?"  he asked.

"Woodbridge."

"Could you bring the letter to London?"

"No.  I promised to take Liam to the beach this afternoon."

"This letter could be very important, Julie."

"Liam's important too."

He glanced at the dashboard clock.  Twelve-fifteen.

"Very well.  I could be with you by four."

"Make it after six, could you?  I won't be back until then."

He recoiled.  The nation's intelligence machinery was being put on hold
so a seven-year-old could build a sand castle.

"All right," he agreed reluctantly.

"Six o'clock it is."

"You on your own, right?"

"Me on my own.  Oh, one more question.  Did the letter talk about
anything else?"

Like a bungled coup in Bodanga.

"No-o .. ."  she answered hesitantly.

"Not really.  Just red mercury."

He felt relieved.

"See you at six, then."

Sam clicked the phone back into its holder.  The call had unsettled
him. Even if he accepted her unlikely explanation about how she knew
his number, there was something else.

Despite his insistence on anonymity yesterday, the damned girl knew his
cover name.

SIX

IT WAS FIVE minutes before six when he pulled up outside the converted
sail loft by the river in Woodbridge.  Shafts of sunlight broke through
buttresses of cloud, giving a mellow tone to the building's dark red
bricks and grey slate roof.  Two S-Reg Range Rovers and an open-top BMW
stood like trophies on the pea-shingle drive.  The weekenders were in
residence.

He tapped on the brass knocker for the ground floor flat at the
left-hand end of the building.  When Maeve Jackman opened the door, he
felt awkward suddenly, like a spotty-faced youth on a first date.

"Didn't expect to see you again so soon," she said in wary greeting.

"She's not back yet, but you can come in."

"Thank you, Mrs.  Jackman."

"Maeve.  Do call me Maeve."  She wore pale cotton slacks, a grey
sweatshirt printed with the slogan GIVE THE NURSES THEIR DUE and spoke
with a soft southern Irish accent.

"They're still at the beach, but shouldn't be long.  Would you like a
cup of tea?"  She looked him up and down as if trying to decide his
tastes.

"Or there's some of Liam's pop.  No beer, I'm afraid."

"Tea would be fine."  The weird feeling of being nineteen again
lingered "Mum' checking him over while the girl fixed her hair.

The ground floor was an open-plan living area.  There was a corner for
toys, a tidy kitchen with a woodblock work top and a wide, stainless
steel hood over the stove.

"You have a nice home," Sam commented.

"Oh yes.  Can't complain.  Swankier than the last place, although I
miss the neighbours.  There's no one here to talk to most of the
time."

"Harry bought this place for you?"

"That's right.  My ex-husband was a bastard in some ways, Simon' That
use of his cover name again sent a fris son through him 'but Harry
looked after us in his own way.  Julie and I can live here as long as
we want, but when we're dead it all goes to Liam.  A good investment,
Harry said.  And I'm sure he was right.  Money was the one aspect of
human relationships that he understood."

"I can believe that."

Much of the far wall of the open-plan was glass.  A sliding patio door
opened onto a lawn which extended to the water's edge.  Sam crossed the
hardwood floor to take in the view.

"The grounds are communal," Maeve Jackman told him, standing beside
him.

"We pay a service charge, then somebody comes and cuts the grass.  Did
it myself at the last place."

The estuary glowed a golden olive green in the early evening light.
Further downstream a fleet of dinghies was making slow progress
upriver.

"It is a lovely spot," Maeve Jackman chattered, 'although I'm not
really one for the boats.  Don't mind looking at them, just so long as
I don't have to step into one of the things."

She returned to the kitchen area, leaning against the work surface with
her arms spread, as if defending her territory.  Her expression, when
Sam turned to face her, was wary again.  Her body which had probably
once been as trim as her daughter's had lost its shape.  As the kettle
began to sing behind her, he noticed that the Mr.  Blobby wall clock
above her head showed five minutes after six.  Julie's tardiness was
beginning to jar.

"Harry's letter, Maeve," he asked briskly, "I don't suppose you have it
to hand?"

"No I don't," she answered firmly.

"Julie has it somewhere safe.  She wanted to show it to you herself.
She won't be long."

The kettle clicked.  Maeve Jackman turned to make the tea and Sam
settled on the flower-patterned sofa.  The room was light and airy. The
books on the shelves were few and mostly with bright covers, suggesting
they were for the boy.  A colour photo of Liam in a brown card frame,
taken in a mass session at school, stood on top of the

TV.

"Good picture of the lad," Sam commented as the boy's grandmother set a
tea tray down on the coffee table, then sat in an armchair opposite
him.

"It's nice, isn't it?  He's a bit of a handful, but we do our best for
him, despite there being no man around."  She poured from a silver pot
into bone china cups.

"Fortunately he's in a home where there's two women who are well used
to that situation."

"Liam's father .. . ?"

"Brendan.  He was a useless so-and-so."  Her brow wrinkled
contemptuously.

"Long gone.  And changed his name a few times since, I shouldn't
wonder.  Sugar?"

"No thanks."

"A bad lot, that man was.  The -worst sort of Irishman, and that's
saying something.  Believe me.  I come from the country myself so I
know."

"He doesn't send Julie any money for Liam?"

"That's a joke!  He was gone the day after she told him she was going
to have his baby.  Not a word since."

"That must have shaken her up."

"It wasn't a good time for her, Simon, that's for sure."  She watched
him sip at the tea.

"Are you married?"

"No.  No woman'll have me, I'm afraid."

She laughed politely.

"That I don't believe.  But you'll have your reasons, no doubt."

Sam looked at his watch.  Ten past six.

"Don't fret.  She'll not be long now because Liam'll be desperate for
his tea.  And anyway, you mustn't begrudge Julie her relaxation.  Life
hasn't done her too many favours, you know."

"I'm sure you're right."  He reined in his impatience.  It was true
that a few more minutes wouldn't matter.

Maeve Jackman leaned forward and lowered her voice, despite there just
being the two of them there.

"Between you and me, she's never had a man that didn't let her down.
Doesn't stand up to them, that's the trouble.  Tries too hard, you know
what I mean?  To my mind it's all because of Harry running off when she
was a baby, though she won't admit it.  Always makes out she didn't
care that much about her daddy, but whenever he made one of his little
visits to us, she was all over him.  If he'd told her he wanted to step
on her, she'd have lain on the floor and let him do it."

Sam nodded.  He could imagine her as a child, constantly seeking her
father's approval.

"So Harry's death must have ..."

'..  . upset her a lot more than she's saying, yes.  To be honest with
you, she should have gone to the funeral.  But she said she'd only go
if I did, and there was no chance of that.  Somebody had to stay and
look after Liam.  And anyway, I had no feeling for the man any more."

"No, I don't suppose you did," Sam murmured.

"You know, Julie really has had more than her fair share of life's
rough face, Simon.  She got in with a bad lot at college.  Drinking and
clubs and all that.  And then there was drugs.  That's when she started
going with Brendan.  He was a disc jockey.  Good-looking feller, but he
had no thought for anybody but himself.  By the time the baby came and
she dropped out of college she was pretty near bottom.  She'd not been
in touch with home for months.  I didn't even know she was pregnant.
She just turned up one day, grey as a ghost, with this three-week-old
scrap in her arms, and the two of them suffering withdrawal
symptoms."

"Withdrawal symptoms?"  Sam raised his eyebrows.

"Julie was addicted to heroin."

"Really?  I'd never have guessed."

"She's clean now, thank God.  It took her a while.  And Harry played
his part, I'll give him that.  When he heard the state she was in with
a newborn baby, he was back here on the first plane.  Blamed himself
for never being there when she needed him."

"So he stayed for a while?"

"Oh no.  Said his business didn't allow it.  But he phoned a lot.  And
he fixed a clinic for her to get her off the drugs.  Eventually he
persuaded her back to college to complete her degree."

"While you looked after Liam."

"While I looked after Liam," she confirmed.

"Had to give up my own job to do it."  She looked embarrassed
suddenly.

"Och, you poor man.  You came here to read some crazy letter and you
get a life history rammed down your throat."

He was about to tell her it didn't matter when he heard tyres on the
gravel at the front.

"That'll be them now.  They went in my Clio," she explained.

"Julie doesn't have a car of her own."

A few moments later Sam heard a key in the lock.  He stood up.  The boy
stumbled in, rubbing his eyes.

"Fell asleep," Julie mouthed to her mother as she gathered her grandson
into her arms.

"What'll it be, Liam?"  the older woman asked.

"Fish fingers, I suppose."

The sleepy boy dumped his head on her shoulder, then stuck a thumb in
his mouth.

Julie turned to Sam.  She still had her glasses on from the driving,
but took them off and held them in her hand.  There were tight lines of
tension round her eyes.

"I'm sorry if you've been waiting," she told him.

"That's all right."  She looked sun-baked and wholesome and he could
forgive her anything.

"I'll get you the letter."

Sam stared longingly at her lean limbs as she climbed the open
staircase to the floor above.  She wore blue shorts and a white
sleeveless vest that clung to her breasts.  Her shoulders were red from
the sun.  She reappeared a few seconds later with an envelope.

"If you want to read it in peace, there's a bench in the garden," she
told him, sliding the patio door fully open.  She was eyeing him with
reserve, as if trying to form a judgement of him.

"You said it arrived this morning?"  Sam asked as they crossed the lawn
to where it sloped to the water.

"That's right.  It shook me when I picked it off the mat and saw the
writing."

"Why would it have come here instead of to Acton?"  v "He chopped and
changed.  Anything he wanted to be sure I got he sent to Woodbridge,
for some reason.  He knew I was here at the weekends."

The seat was under a willow tree.  She sat close beside him, as if not
trusting him to be alone with the letter.  Solemnly she handed the
envelope to him and he extracted the contents.

Harry Jackman's handwriting had a slight backward slope.

"There's no date," Sam commented, inhaling the orange-blossom smell of
her sun cream with the intensity of a solvent sniffer.  She sat close
enough for him to feel the warmth of her body.

"No.  There's nothing to say when it was written."  She hugged her arms
to her chest and clamped a hand over her mouth, staring downriver to
where the racing dinghies were being hauled from the water.

Sam began to read.

"If you ever get this letter it'll be because I'm dead, my dearest.
Don't grieve for me long.  We all got to go some time."

He glanced at Julie, wondering how it must have felt for her to read
those words.  In the next sentence Jackman explained he was leaving the
letter with a trusted friend to be mailed if anything happened to him.
Sam checked the envelope.  The postmark was Kitwe.

"Any idea who this friend was?"  he asked, turning to her again.

"Not a clue."  She pushed her hair back, revealing a perfectly shaped
ear with a small mole behind the lobe.  Her slender neck was white
where the hair had covered it, but reddened by the sun where it plunged
below the T-shirt collar.  He was in love again.

He regained his concentration and read on.

"I've done lots in my life that I'm none too proud of, my sweet.
Forgive me.  But if I hadn't done it someone else would have.  If
African tribes are going to kill, they're going to kill.  The press
always blame the "merchants of death" for selling them guns, but it's
nonsense.  If the Afs didn't have guns it'd be pan gas  Look at Rwanda.
All those split heads."

Julie had her hand clamped over her mouth again, as if by doing so she
could hold everything together.  She felt perilously close to
disintegrating.  Pressure was being put on her from the grave which she
was finding hard to handle.  She knew the letter by heart.  Knew the
words of this one, and of the other which she'd received that morning,
a more personal letter hidden for now under the floor mat in the boot
of her mother's car.

Conscious of her tension, but unaware of the reasons for it, Sam read
on.

"But there is one trade I did that troubles me.  It happened a year
ago.  One of the other fellows involved has been murdered.  I'm scared
I may be next.  I wasn't a big player, just a shipper for the cargo,
but the deal was a bad one.  I'm telling you my sweet, because someone
needs to know about it.  I intend to tell the British intelligence
people, but only if they agree to leave me in peace when I come back to
England.  If you get this letter, you'd best show it to the police.
They'll pass it on to the appropriate place.

Did you ever hear of red mercury?  It was supposed to be a chemical the
Russians invented for making miniature nuclear bombs.  Some people say
it doesn't exist, but I think it does."

His pulse quickening, Sam turned the page over.

"It started in the summer of 1997 when I was contacted by a Russian
trader who operated out of Vienna.  He wanted me to import something
into Zambia under diplomatic seals.  I had good contacts with Zambian
officials, so I could arrange for there to be no police or customs. The
Russian told me to find a secure warehouse in Kitwe to store the cargo
for a few days before it was collected by a man I knew called Van Damm,
who traded for a big chemicals company injo'burg.  I asked him what the
cargo was, explaining that I wouldn't touch Class A drugs. Because of
you, my darling.  What you went through."

Sam glanced at her smooth skin, imagining her arms once scarred by
needles.  Julie guessed where he'd reached in the letter.  She met his
look.

"It's history," she said flatly.

"I know," Sam answered.

"Your mother told me."

Julie hissed.

"She's got a mouth like a runaway train, that woman .. ."

"The Russian told me it was red mercury from a Siberian laboratory.
People had been trying to get hold of the stuff for years, so I was
pretty excited by the deal.  And there was big money in it.  The cargo
was to be delivered to a Zambian embassy compound in Moscow in late
July, then boxed up with the diplomatic seals and flown first to Vienna
and on to Kitwe.  I had everything arranged, the aircraft booked, the
Zambians paid off, and I went to Vienna to finalise the plans and meet
the Russian trader, Vladimir Kovalenko .. ."

Sam sat bolt upright.  Kovalenko's name was uncomfortably familiar to
him.  The man was a major player.

'..  . an impressive fellow, whose connections in Moscow went right to
the very top."

He knew that to be true.  It was Kremlin links that had allowed
Kovalenko's bent business empire to flourish.  Sam read on, his
attention now riveted.

"When I got to Vienna, Vladimir told me there'd been a change of plan.
The red mercury wasn't going to South Africa after all but to somewhere
else.  The shipping arrangements had to be extended.  Once in Kitwe the
boxes were to be put onto another plane, still under diplomatic seals,
and flown to Italy.  I told him it made things very complicated for me.
Van Damm might think I'd stolen the cargo, but Kovalenko said I had no
choice.  You see he knew about you, my love.  Where you lived.
Everything.  Said that if I didn't co-operate I would never see you
alive again."

"Christ," Sam breathed, suddenly understanding Julie's nervousness. But
it puzzled him.  How could Kovalenko know about her?

"Dad was a bigmouth at times," she whispered, answering his unasked
question.

"He used to tell people about this daughter of his he was so proud of."
She said it self-effacingly.

"This Kovalenko you met him?"

"No."  She was emphatic.

"He's never been in contact with you?"

Julie shook her head.

"There's one more page," she prompted, as if wanting to change the
subject.

Sam read on.

"I fixed it.  Five containers, each weighing about ten kilos, were flown
from Russia to Zambia and then to Rome, all under diplomatic cover."

Fifty kilos.  Enough red mercury for a whole arsenal of nuclear bombs
if the stuff had ever existed.

"He never talked to you in person about any of this?"  Sam checked.

"Never."

The letter was nearing the end.

"Last week I heard that Van Damm was dead .. ."

Last week .. . Killed three months ago, Denise Corby had said.  Now
they had a date for the letter.

"My guess is the Israelis were expecting to get some of the red mercury
from the South Africans and thought that Van Damm had double-crossed
them.  Probably suspected he'd slipped the cargo to the Islamics.
That's what worries me, Julie.  If those rag heads get hold of nuclear
weapons, they'll cause mayhem.  And also, with Van Damm gone, I could
be next for an Israeli bullet.  If you get this letter it'll be because
I'm already dead.  And if I'm gone it'll either be because of the red
mercury or because my negotiations with the spooks backfired."

Sam's spine prickled at the realisation that Jackman had anticipated
that MI6 might take him out rather than negotiate with him.  If Julie
believed that, then the letter was a ticking bomb.  He swallowed
hard.

"Any idea what that last bit means?"  he asked, playing the innocent.

"I thought you might," she responded curtly.

"No idea at all."

"You're still pretending you're not a spook, then?"

He gave her the blankest of looks.  There were rules to follow and he
wasn't going to break them.

"From the little I know about spooks, as you call them," he explained
patiently, 'they'll never under any circumstances admit what they do.
That's why it's called the Secret Service.  Understand?  So, for the
record, I'm a trader who's had contact with MI6.  Like your father was,
Julie.  Except I'm an honest one."

"An honest trader .. ."  Men were such skilled Jiars.

"That's like saying a red-hot iceberg."

He smiled, admiring her choice of words.

The final paragraph of the letter was more personal than what had gone
before.  A dead man's farewell to his daughter.  Regrets for not being
the father she deserved, an awkward 'goodbye' and a signature.

"I'm sorry," he murmured.

"Must have been a terrible shock to get this."

Julie bit her lip.  It was the other letter, the one she wasn't telling
him about, that had shocked her more.  She turned her head towards the
house, from where strangulated noises were coming Liam watching a TV
cartoon while he had his tea.  She couldn't help liking this man.  And
she really wanted to believe in him.  But if what her father had
written in the other letter was true .. .

"So .. . Was your journey worth it?"  she asked with a shyly curious
glance.

"Does it make any sense, what he wrote?"

"Well..  ."  Sam hedged, sticking to his line, 'from what the experts
at the Foreign Office say, whatever material your father shipped out of
Russia, it wasn't red mercury, because the stuff doesn't exist. They'll
want to study this letter in detail."  He got to his feet.

"Okay if I take it with me?"

"Of course.  The experts you're talking about being Denise Corby, I
imagine."

"Yes.  Amongst others."

Julie got up too and stood closer to him than she'd intended, her un
spectacled eyes making him appear further away from her than he
actually was.  Sam noticed specks of sand in her hair.  He had to stop
himself from brushing them off.

"Mind telling me why you've taken such a strong dislike to Denise?"  he
asked.

Julie hesitated for a moment.

"Let's just say I'm homophobic."

Sam recoiled in surprise.

"She's got two children."

"Fine.  But the impression she gives other women is that her preference
is for her own sex."  Julie began walking towards the house.

"And I have an aversion to dykes.  You did ask," she added, fearing
she'd been too direct.

"Yes.  I did.  Oh, just a moment."  He put a hand on her arm to stop
her going into the house.  He'd suddenly remembered Jackman's odd
description of his mysterious cargo when they'd dined at the country
club.

"You may think I'm mad to ask this, but did your father ever tell you
the story of Ali Baba?"

"And the forty thieves?  Probably.  He used to read things to me when
he came on his visits.  I don't remember.  Why?"

"Just something he said to me that evening I saw him.  You remember
what the story is about?"

"Not really.  I have a mental picture of big jars full of treasure.
Then the thieves hide in them or is it the people trying to catch the
thieves?"

"That's right."  He'd forgotten about the jars.

"One or the other."

"We could ask Liam," she offered.

Sam shrugged.

"It's not important."

Inside the open-plan living area, Liam sat totally engrossed in his TV
programme.  Sam said goodbye to Julie's mother and thanked her for the
tea.

"It was a pleasure meeting you again," she smiled.

"Safe journey back now, Simon."

Simon.  He still had to discover how they knew that name.  He'd half
expected to find that Jackman had referred to him in the letter, but he
hadn't.

Julie walked with him to the door of his car, moving slowly as if in no
hurry for him to leave.  When he turned to face her, she had that odd
look in her eyes again as if still trying to fathom him.

"Maybe we could meet again some time," he suggested.  The words slipped
out before he could stop them.  Brain on dick-drive.

Her panicky reaction surprised him.  She started to blush.

"For a chat over a drink, perhaps," he added, digging himself in
deeper.

"I'd like to know you better."

"I don't know .. ."  She stared at him in alarm.

"Well, maybe in a week or so, when things have settled down."  He felt
like a downhill skier unable to stop.

"You see, I'm not sure that .. ."

"No, of course not.  I'm sorry.  Shouldn't have suggested it."  He
unlocked the car.  Then to cover his embarrassment he ploughed on with
the question he'd intended to ask.

"Tell me something."

"What?"

"How did you know my name?"

He watched the blood that had flushed her cheeks drain away again.  She
stared past him, avoiding his eyes.

"I don't know.  Denise Corby must have told me," she stumbled.

"I suppose.  Yesterday.  While you were upstairs with my mother,
searching the bedrooms."  She said the last part cut tingly reminding
him of the outrage she'd felt at their intrusion.  But her eyes lacked
the sharpness of her voice.  They were the eyes of a one-time junkie,
he reminded himself.  Of someone who knew how to lie.

He gave her a watery smile then got into the car and wound down the
window.

"Bye, Julie.  Thanks for the letter."

As he drove off, he saw in the mirror that she was still watching
him.

Trembling, Julie turned back to the house.  She found her mother
standing just inside the door with her arms folded.

"You should have said yes," she told her.

"To what?"  Julie demanded, angry that her mother had been listening.

"When he asked you for a drink.  The feller's lovely, Julie.  And he's
interested.  I could see from the way he looked at you."

"Mother .. ."  Julie scolded.

"And he's not married.  He told me so."

"Look, keep out of it!  D'you hear?  You don't understand."

She stormed out into the drive again.  She'd left the beach things in
the car.  And the other envelope.

A quarter of a mile down the road towards Ipswich, Sam stopped in a
lay-by.  For a couple of minutes he sat there with the engine off,
feeling the car rock as the weekend traffic swished past.  He was
irritated with himself for trying to get personal with her.

But what mattered more was the fact that she'd lied about how she'd
learned his name.  He was certain Denise would never have been so
careless.  He picked up his mobile and dialled her home number.

The headquarters woman answered a little breathlessly.  There were
children shouting in the background.

"Be quiet, Fiona!"  she yelled off-mike.

"Sorry, Sam.  What is it?"

She listened frostily as he told her about Julie's phone call to him
asking him to visit her on his own.

"I don't approve, Sam," she told him gratingly, in a voice that said
she thought he probably had his own reasons for wanting to see the girl
alone.

"Anyway, what did the wretched letter say?"

He told her.  When he'd finished there was silence at the other end as
if she were still evaluating it.

"Kovalenko of course is a serious player," she stated eventually.

"I know."

"I'll need to see the letter."

"I'll scan it when I get home and e-mail it to you."

"Fine.  But we'll want the original by Monday for Forensic to check
over."

"I'll get a messenger to collect it.  Oh, and Denise one other thing ..
."

"What?"

"Julie knew my cover name.  Simon Foster.  Yesterday you didn't by any
chance .. . ?"

"No, Sam.  I certainly did not."

A couple of minutes later, back on the road to London, he switched on
the radio.  The lead story on the 7 p.m. news was still the Southall
nail bomb one more victim dead, this time from shrapnel wounds.  A
statement from the PM condemned the attack and there was a footnote to
the story reports of simultaneous anti-immigrant violence in France and
Germany.  Unnamed 'experts' were speculating about a coordinated racist
campaign.  He switched off, making a mental note to pick Stephanie's
brains about the case when they met for their curry later in the
week.

As he drove on, he realised there was only one way Julie could have
learned the name Simon Foster.  From her father.  And if not in the
letter which he had in his pocket, then in another.

In a missive that for some reason Julie was keeping to herself.

SEVEN

Sunday

BY THE TIME Sam Packer got up the next morning, he'd resigned himself
to putting the Jackman case on the back burner again.  Last night after
returning home, he'd reported to Duncan Waddell about the visit to his
sister and to Woodbridge, and been told firmly to leave all red mercury
matters to headquarters from now on.  It was the bad publicity that
could flow from his father's activities which concerned the firm's
hierarchy more.  Waddell had approved his plan to visit Scotland and
Sam had decided on an early flight this morning, although his hopes of
the ferry ticket clue leading him anywhere were slim.

Rain beat against the windows.  The forecast for the north was similar.
The sun that had reddened Julie Jackman's delectable shoulders
yesterday afternoon had been no more than an interlude in an otherwise
hellish summer.

He dressed in dark cotton trousers and a sweatshirt and prepared
breakfast, his mind wandering back to that open-plan living room in
Woodbridge.  He kept imagining a freshly showered Julie and her
scrubbed-faced son digging spoons into cereal bowls.  It worried him
sometimes, his hankering for the domesticity of corn flake ads.

He took his tray of fruit, toast and coffee into the living room,
glancing at the bookcase and the small wooden crest of HMS Retribution
which his father had given him a few months before he died.  Apart from
memories and the tin document box, it was the only memento of the man
that he possessed.

When he'd finished eating he phoned British Airways for the times of
shuttles to Glasgow, discovering that with a mid-morning flight he
could make it onto an early afternoon ferry to Rothesay.  He tidied
away his breakfast things and repacked the bag from yesterday, adding
warm and waterproof clothes.  He was on the point of calling a taxi
when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Morning, Sam."  It was Duncan Waddell.

"Change of plan.  We need to meet."

"What, now?  I've got my kilt on.  Even had porridge for breakfast."

"Scotland's going to have to wait.  See you in one hour, okay?  To do
some brain scouring on the Jackman file."

"You told me I was off the case."

"That was yesterday."

"So what's new?"

"The cousins have taken an interest.  I had Washington on the line late
last night."

Their rendezvous venue this time was on the Thames embankment just
upriver from Hammersmith Bridge.  Both carrying umbrellas, they met by
the flood wall and turned to look at the converted barges moored
alongside.

"So, surprise me," Sam began.

"The CIA's decided red mercury exists after all."

"No way," Waddell snapped.  He wore sludge green cords and a navy
pullover.

"But Jackman's dates match with something on their files."

"What d'you mean?"

Waddell turned his back on the river to check no one was within
earshot.

"I mean the disappearance of five atomic demolition munitions that were
being broken up in Tomsk as part of the arms treaty process."

"Shit!"

Waddell nodded frenetically as if the seriousness of what he was saying
could not be over emphasised  They began to walk along the paved
footpath.

"As you know, those things are small enough to be carried on a
soldier's back," he stressed.

"Designed for Spetznaz infiltrators to use against NATO installations
prior to an invasion of western Europe.  They pack about ten kilotons
of explosive power."

"Handy for terrorists," Sam commented.

"Exactly.  Security at the dismantling site was a joke you know the
form.  The bombs had been reduced to their component parts, but whoever
took them got a full set of pieces for five devices.  Putting them
together again would need skills, but skills that can be bought on the
open market these days."

"When did the FSB latch on?"

"To give them credit, the Russians began an investigation quite
quickly.  They followed a trail as far as Moscow, but there it died."

"When did all this happen?"

"A year ago.  And that's the key point.  The Americans say the dates
fit perfectly with the shipment that Harry Jackman thought contained
red mercury."

"A shipment he feared was destined for some Islamic group," Sam
reminded him.  He was quietly pleased that Waddell's early dismissal of
the business had proved an ill-judgement.

"Which is why we're having this conversation," Waddell rejoined.

"There must've been something Jackman said to you on Tuesday evening
pointing to who they were.  Something you've overlooked."

Sam shook his head.  He'd been through that conversation a million
times.

"I got the impression Harry didn't know who the buyer was."

"That could have been blufF."

"Of course."

The rain had stopped and they furled their umbrellas.  They were
approaching a pub from which several young men were emerging to enjoy
their drinks under the brightening sky.  Sam was about to suggest a
pint when Waddell indicated they should retrace their steps.

"We've been following up wherever we can," he told him.

"The Italians have checked their customs logs for last summer.  They
confirm a flight from Kitwe with a cargo under diplomatic seals."

"But no information about who collected it."

"Other than it was staff from the Zambian diplomatic mission.  Where it
went after that they have no way of finding out."

"Do the Israelis know anything?"

"Harry Jackman was on their files, of course every intelligence service
in the whole damned world seems to have heard of him but they laughed
when I mentioned red mercury.  Now they know what could really be at
stake they're wetting themselves."

"A Hamas team armed with atom bombs would not be funny .. ."

"Too right.  Although after what happened to their embassies in Africa,
the Americans are convinced it's Osama bin Laden who's after the
gear."

"We need to get to the source of all this," Sam stated.

"Vladimir Kovalenko."

Waddell sighed.

"Of course we bloody do.  But he disappeared from our screens several
months ago.  You met him once, I think."

"Met is too strong a word.  I got within twenty feet of him.  A small,
wiry man.  It was at a St.  Petersburg trade fair back in '93 or '94.
He made a lightning visit there.  Wasn't the sort to linger anywhere
for long."

"D'you have any contacts who might know where he is?"

"Can't think of any."

"Well, mull it over."  He stopped and turned on Sam as if the whole
Jackman affair was his fault.

"You're disappointing me.  You know that?"

"I've told you before," Sam responded.

"Mind-reading's not my thing.  Where was Kovalenko last time you
heard?"

"Israel.  The Russians issued a warrant for his arrest for the illegal
sale of state assets.  Pressed Israel's Shin Beth internal security
people to snatch him, but he was tipped off in good time and did a bunk
from Tel Aviv.  Hasn't been seen since."

"Maybe a bullet's found him," Sam suggested.

"If only .. . Enough people have tried.  A year ago three of his
bodyguards got taken out in a drive-by shooting."

"Or else he's enjoying himself in the sun somewhere, waiting for Moscow
to invite him home to run the economy."

They paused by the river wall again to watch a half-empty pleasure boat
steam past on its way up to Hampton Court.  Waddell pursed his lips.

"I'd really hoped you might remember something, Sam.  Chew it over some
more, will you?  Give me a call later."

"From the Highlands and Islands."

"Actually, I'd rather you remained in London today.  The CIA may want
to talk to you."

"I can't tell them any more than I've already told you."

"I know.  But they've asked."  He leaned his elbows on the wall as a
flight of geese cackled their way to a landing on the water.

"There's another little matter I need to raise with you," he
murmured.

"Yes?"

"This Julie Jackman girl .. ."  Waddell eyed him puritanically.

"What are you up to, exactly?"

"Eh?"

"Denise Corby was spitting blood over your interviewing the woman on
your own.  Even suggested you had a personal motive."

"Crap!"  Sam exploded.

"If you must know, Miss Jackman thinks Denise is a dyke.  That's why
she asked me to pick up the letter."

"Homosexuals in the Intelligence Service?  Heaven forfend."  Waddell
clicked his tongue and averted his eyes in mock horror.  Then his face
darkened.

"One question I do want an answer to.  And this is serious.  How come
Miss Jackman knew how to contact you?"

Sam grimaced.

"I let her use my mobile.  She got the number off the screen."

"Well get the damned thing changed."

"I will."

"In fact you'd better start changing numbers more frequently."

"Why's that?"

"Because we've heard your Ukrainian friends have sent a hit man to
London."

"Bloody hell."

"They have as much forgiveness in their black little souls as a hive
full of Iranian ayatollahs.  And they're not beyond using phone
intercepts to track down their victims."

Austria

A lake south of Vienna

Eight hundred miles south-east of London, the Austrian sun had a warmth
to it that was forecast to become uncomfortably hot later in the day.
Families from Vienna had left the city early to get their sunbathing in
before lunch.  In the parking area by a small freshwater lake, the
tailgate of an elderly Volvo estate stood open.  From the inside of the
car, a tall blond Swede by the name of Anders Klason extracted a bright
blue cool-box and a couple of folding chairs.  His evenly tanned bare
chest bore a scattering of golden hairs.  He closed the door again,
locked up and carted the gear across the scorched grass to the edge of
the water where his dark-haired wife Nina had spread a rug on the
ground.  Their two pale-skinned children aged five and seven stomped
around impatiently while their mother tried to smear them with a
high-protection waterproof sun cream.  Nina was German.  She wore a
long, cool skirt and a shirt with baggy sleeves down to her wrists.  To
her, sunshine wasn't a pleasure but a danger to health.  A cancer risk.
But she'd long since abandoned trying to make her husband protect
himself from it.

"The boat, the boat, the boat!"  the children chanted, jumping up and
down.

"Yes, but it's about time you learned to pump it up yourselves," their
father told them, setting down the cool-box and opening the bag
containing the small plastic dinghy.  He wore a tight pair of denim
shorts and Reef sandals.  The hairs on his legs gleamed like a
translucent second skin as he foot-pumped the dinghy to life.

"Don't go far out," their mother called as their son and daughter
carried it to the water.  It was a good lake for children.  The sandy
beach shelved gently and the water never got deeper than a couple of
metres.

Klason stretched out on the towel.

"Don't worry, I'll watch them," Nina told him dutifully.  He was
working twelve-hour days, six of them each week.  Sunday was his only
break and as far as she was concerned he was entitled to seek
relaxation in whatever way he wanted.  So long as it was with her and
the children.

"I told you about the conference in Brussels next Wednesday?"  he
asked, eyes closed against the glare of the sun.

"No.  You're going?"

"Yes.  A 6.30 flight in the morning.  Back late on Friday."

"Oh.  That's really convenient for you," she snapped.

"What d'you mean?"  He raised himself on one elbow.

"Don't pretend you've forgotten."

"What?"

"My mother."

"Oh."  He smacked a hand against his forehead.

"Wednesday and Thursday.  She's coming to stay, yes?"

Nina looked away.

"You always do this."

"I don't."  But on reflection he knew she was right.

"I forgot, Nina.  I've been so busy .. ."

"When won't you be .. ."

Anders knew that his wife had begun to resent his work.  When they'd
first met he was a human rights lecturer at the university in Stockholm
and she an exchange student on the postgraduate course he was teaching.
She'd hoped for a pleasant, unstressed life with him in the Swedish
capital, never imagining he would end up as head of the EU's new racial
equality centre in Vienna, with an absurdly small staff and a
ludicrously heavy workload.

"It'll be better in a few months," he told her.

"We're still settling in."

They spoke in a mixture of German and Swedish, each resorting to their
own language when things got tense.

"Griiss Gott."

Nina spun round.  The voice had come from behind her.  The accent was
local.

"Griiss Gott," she answered.

A couple in their thirties, dressed in jeans and sports shirts, had
stopped by their 'camp' and were pointing towards the lake.

"Are those your children?"  the man asked.  He had a pointed face, like
a terrier's.

Nina looked.  The altercation with her husband had made her take her
eye off them.

"Anders.  They're too far out," she whispered.

"They're okay."

"Anders, please."

"Oh, all right."  He levered himself up and ambled to the water's edge,
muttering about wanting a swim anyway.

The Austrian couple crouched down by the Klasons' towels.

"You can't be too careful," the woman said.  She had dark hair that was
untidily curly.

Nina Klason didn't like these busybodies.  There was something hard
about their faces.  She'd seen many people like this in Austria and
could imagine that it had been the same types lining the streets to
greet Hitler's arrival back in 1938.

"Oh, look over there," the woman said, pointing to the far side of the
small lake.

"Somebody fishing."

"So it is," said Nina, uninterestedly following the line of the woman's
hand.  The lake was narrowest at this point, where the beach was.

"He won't catch anything there."

"No?"

"Not with all the children splashing about.  Better to go out in a boat
into the middle."

"I suppose so."  Nina couldn't care less.  She had her eye on her
husband whose easy crawl strokes had taken him quickly to where the
children were.

"He's saved them now," the woman told her.  The couple stood up
again.

"I don't actually think they were in any danger," Nina insisted.

"But thank you anyway."  Why was she thanking these people for
interfering?  Embarrassment.  That was all.

"Auf wiedersehen."  The couple began to walk away.

' Auf wiedersehen."

Five minutes passed before Anders was back by her side.  She'd watched
his effortless swimming up and down the shore with a degree of envy.
She herself had a fear of water.

"It's so warm, the lake," he told her, picking up his towel to dry
himself.

"So it should be.  We've had over thirty degrees all week."

She watched him drape the towel over his shoulders and work it from
side to side.

"Ouch!"  Suddenly Anders froze in mid motion, arching his back.

"What is it?  Cramp?"

"No.  Something cut into me."  He flicked the towel from his
shoulders.

"Let me see.  You're bleeding," Nina gasped.

Anders felt it, a warm trickle down his back like a bead of sweat.

"How on earth ... Is it bad?"

"No.  Just a small cut.  I'll put a plaster on it in a minute."  She
found a clean tissue in her bag and pressed it against the tiny gash to
stop the flow.

Anders reached down for the towel which he'd dropped.

"Must have picked up a piece of broken glass."  He examined it
gingerly, not wanting to cut himself again.

"Be careful."

"I am."  The fragment wasn't hard to find.  A smear of blood pointed
the way.

"It's a little splinter," he told her.

"Caught in the loops of the fabric."

"Can I see?"  He showed her.

"How strange.  I washed this last night."

"I'd better look on the grass to see if there's any more."  He crouched
down, lightly touching the ground.

"Be careful," Nina warned, fixing the sticking plaster on his shoulder
blade.

"I don't have too many of these."

"Nothing here," he said, standing up again.

Then the same thought occurred to them simultaneously.  They turned
towards the car park.  The couple who'd warned them about their
children were driving off in an old VW Golf.

"Odd," said Klason.

"Very," said his wife.

London

It was late afternoon before Sam got a call from Waddell clearing him
to carry on with his postponed trip to Scotland.  Annoyed about his
wasted day, he was on the point of checking out the flights again when
he discovered the battery indicator of his mobile was close to zero. He
was about to place it on its charger, deciding to catch the first
flight in the morning, when the handset rang.

"Hell!"  He punched the receive button.

"Hello?"

"Mr.  Foster?  Simon .. . It's Julie."

His first reaction was pleasure.  Then he checked himself.

"Look, you really shouldn't be calling me," he said sternly.

"Denise Corby has to be your point of contact, whether you like her or
not.  They're civil servants, these people.  They get upset if you
don't follow protocol."

"Yes, but that's .. . that's not why I'm ringing."  Her voice sounded a
little husky.  He wondered if she'd been crying.

"I'm not ringing about the letter."

"Oh."

"It's just .. . Well, you said we might meet again."

"Yes .. ."  He paced quickly to the window, as if the brief burst of
exercise would help him think straight.  Professionally he knew he
should keep his distance from her after Waddell's cautionary words, but
all he could think of was the addictive fragrance of her orange-blossom
sun cream.

"This evening.  Is it possible?"  she asked.

Taken aback, he groped for a response.

"This evening?  That's not so easy .. ."

"I really do need to talk to you, Simon.  I ... I'm in a bit of a
state."

She sounded it, her voice high and strained.

"Well I can understand that.  It's all been a terrible shock."

"Yes.  It has.  And since you were the last person to speak to him,
Simon, I just thought .. ."  He heard a sniff at the other end.  '..  .
thought that if you could only talk to me about it, about how he was
that evening, it might help."

"Yes.  Of course.  Of course .. . The thing is, I was going away this
evening," he hedged.

There was silence at the other end as if the line had cut.  His handset
bleeped a low-battery warning.

"Julie?"

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have rung," she sniffed.

"No.  Look.  It's all right."  What the hell.  If all she wanted was a
shoulder to cry on ... "I can see you.  But this phone's about to die,
so where and when?  You're ringing from Acton?"

"No.  Woodbridge.  I'm about to catch a train," she said, her voice
brightening.

"Could we make it eight o'clock?"

"Where?  At your flat?"  he suggested, optimistically.

"No.  There's an Italian cafe in the Chiswick High Road.  Corner of
Turnham Green Terrace?  D'you know that area?"

"A little."  It was five minutes away.

"At eight, you said?"

"Yes."

"All right, then."

"Thanks Simo ' The battery died before she could finish.  He replaced
the phone on the charger then returned to the window.  Down below him,
the tide was out, exposing stony banks on each side of the river.

He told himself that it was okay to see her.  He was off the case now,
so it wasn't business any more.  Nothing to stop them getting
acquainted personally if that's what they both wanted.  No rush.  He
would play it by ear.

Then for some reason he thought of Steph.  She wouldn't have minced her
words if she knew what he was planning.

"You're thinking with your dick, Sam.  It'll end in tears."

At fifteen minutes to eight, showered and in clean clothes, he took the
lift to the garage.

He drove eastwards under the M4 fly over and down the Chiswick High
Road.  Traffic was heavy.  The sky was purpling with dusk and the rain
had stopped again.  Restaurants and pizza houses were doing a good
trade.  He saw the cafe Julie had mentioned and drove past it, catching
a glimpse of a lone figure at a table.  A couple of others were also
occupied.  He turned right into a side street and parked, then walked
back, pausing for a few moments in a bus shelter opposite the cafe to
make sure it was her and that she was alone.  He waited for a lorry to
pass then crossed the road.

Julie wore a grey roll neck pullover which accentuated her slenderness.
Sam noted her lack of spectacles and that she'd tar ted herself up with
a bit of eye make-up.  She screwed up her eyes as he approached,
checking it was him.  When she saw that it was, she became flustered.
He liked her shyness.

He sat down opposite her.

"Hello."

"I ... I wasn't sure you would come," she whispered, with a tight,
rubber-band smile.

"Well .. . damsel in distress and all that."

She looked down at her hands, then surprised him by grimacing.

"A little nervous," she murmured.

"I ... I don't really know what I'm doing here .. ."  She seemed to be
waiting for him to take control.

He felt a compelling desire to touch her, to break through the
invisible barrier separating them.  He was considering how to do it
without seeming too presumptuous, when he became vaguely conscious of
chairs being scraped back and some of the other occupants of the cafe
getting to their feet.  Julie lifted her head again, but this time it
wasn't him she was looking at.  Someone had taken up a position
immediately behind his chair.

"Mr.  Foster?"  The voice was male.

Sam's insides dissolved.  As he turned to see who it was, a flashgun
went off in his face.

"Fuck .. ."

"Daily Chronicle, Mr.  Foster.  We'd like to ask you a few questions
about the death of Harry Jackman."

Sam glared at Julie.  There was an expression on her face that he'd
seen once before.  On a woman attending a bullfight.  A knowledge that
although she'd paid to see a killing, she wasn't sure she could stomach
it.

He still wanted to touch that lovely neck of Julie's, but this time
with both hands and to squeeze them together with all his strength.

Some men die early, he found himself thinking.  People like Harry
Jackman went quickly in a hail of bullets.  But others men who were
really, really, unbelievably stupid did it slowly and painfully, in an
act of professional suicide.

EIGHT

sAM CRANED ROUND to see how many of them had ambushed him.

"You work for MI6, Mr.  Foster."  The reporter spoke with a well-bred
accent and stood close to the back of the chair to make it hard for Sam
to stand up.

"I most certainly do not," he fumed.

"Who on earth told you that?"

"Harry Jackman, actually," the reporter yapped.  The camera continued
to flash.

"In a letter posted to my paper after his death.  He also described how
you paid him $250,000 of British taxpayers' money to supply arms to the
rebels in Bodanga."

All there.  Everything.  Harry Jackman's revenge had been total.  The
chasm opened beneath his feet.

"Pretty appalling piece of ethical foreign policy, don't you think, Mr.
Foster?  How many was it who died under the guns that the British
government paid for?  Two and a half thousand.  Most of them women and
children."

Sam shook his head.

"Got your wires crossed, sonny.  No idea what you're talking about." It
amazed him how calm he sounded.

"I've done business with Harry Jackman, yes.  But I don't deal in arms.
And I don't work for the Intelligence Service.  Now if you'll excuse me
.. ."  He shoved the chair back against the reporter's stomach.

The journalist winced but stood his ground.

"Did you kill Harry Jackman, Mr.  Foster?"

The skin crept on the back of his neck.  He shot a glance at Julie. Was
that what she believed?  The thought that she had so misjudged him cut
deeper than the betrayal itself.

"I most certainly did not."

"You were there."

"Tragically, yes.  He was shot by a man in Zambian army uniform.  You
can check that with the Zambian police.  There was nothing I could do
to save him."  He stared fixedly at the girl, his face as
expressionless as he could make it.

"And I came here this evening because in a misguided moment I felt
sorry for his daughter."  Her instant embarrassment gave him a jot of
satisfaction.

He swung his elbow back into the reporter's stomach and stood up.

"So sorry, old chap.  Have to go.  Do try to get your facts straight.
Okay?"

He barged his way to the door, counting the opposition again.  Four two
scribblers and two snappers, one dressed in leathers.  The other
photographer blocked his path.

"Excuse me."  Sam brought his knee up.

"Oof!  Bastard!"

Outside on the street, Sam sucked in air and marched.  A bus drove
past.  Throwing himself under it seemed an attractive option.  He
couldn't go back to the car.  They'd trace him from it.

The winded cameraman caught up and did that perilous backwards walk
which photographers do, snapping wildly.  Sam put a hand over his face,
with half an eye on the road, praying for a taxi.

"The public has a right to know, Mr.  Foster .. ."

"They also have the right not to be hounded by the likes of you."

Suddenly Sam saw what he'd been looking for and dived towards the kerb,
his arm reaching out into the road.  The taxi tucked into the side and
stopped.  As he wrenched open the door Sam heard a motorbike start
up.

'135 Clapham Common South Side," he ordered.  The reporter tried to get
in too.

"Do you mind?"  Sam pushed him back with his foot and slammed the door.
He noted the jour no scribble down the address he'd just shouted out
then leaned forward to the sliding glass.

"Just drive, chum!"

"Clapham Common, you said?"

"Never mind that.  Just get me away from these reptiles."

The driver jerked in the gear and accelerated away, stealing glances in
his mirror to see if he'd got some celeb in the back.

"I had that Nicole Kidman in my cab the other week," he announced
stoically.

They make it up, Sam decided.  He twisted round.  The motorbike was
catching up, the photographer with the leathers astride it.

"Can you lose that bike?"

The driver looked in his mirror.

"Naah.  No chance, mate.  Sorry.  They've got two wheels, see?  Go
anywhere I can and more."

"Then take me to a tube station."  Sam racked his brains.

"Acton Town.  You know it?"

"Course I bloody do," the driver bitched, annoyed his fare would be
smaller than he'd anticipated.

The bike was right behind.  If it came to hide-and-seek in a train
station it'd be him and the photographer.  One on one.  Odds he was
used to.

In four minutes they were at Acton Town tube.  The meter showed 3.20,
but Sam thrust a fiver through the gap.

"Keep it."

"Thanks very much, guy.  Hopes you wins."

Sam sprinted into the station.  An inspector held out his hand for a
ticket.  Sam held up his membership card to a south coast yacht club.

"Police.  Special Branch," he snapped, running straight past.

"Stop that guy in the leathers, okay?"

"Hang on a min'."  Sam knew this station.  There were two main
platforms and several staircases.  He clattered down the first, praying
a train would be waiting.  But the tracks were empty.

He sprinted along the platform, using billboards as a screen.  At the
far end he risked a look back.  No sign of his pursuer.  He'd been
forced to buy a ticket.  Sam reached the stairs at the far end and
climbed.  The landing above was deserted.

He waited, chest pounding.  God, what a mess.  What a stupid, fucking
mess.  How the hell had he fallen for Julie's 'please help me' act?  In
the distance, he heard the snick of wheels on track as a train
approached.  Heading west.

The snapper would expect Sam to get on the first train that came in,
right?  So, he would wait for the second .. . And pray a little.

As the westbound tube came in he heard the hum of an eastbound train
sliding into the platform below him.  He thanked God for this
undeserved blessing, then started down the steps, pausing near the
bottom out of sight of those on the platform, waiting for the bleeper
warning of the train doors closing.  When it came he darted across and
squeezed through.

A handful of occupants in the carriage.  Backpackers from a late flight
into Heathrow and some Asian manual workers heading into town for a
night shift.  Through the glass he saw that the westbound tube had
pulled out already.  As his own train accelerated, he spotted the
photographer on the other platform glaring at him.  He resisted the
temptation to wave.

The next stop was Hammersmith and he got out, willingly coughing up the
10 fine for travelling without a ticket.  A row of phones lined one
side of the station lobby.  He punched in a number.

It rang out.  Went on ringing.  He'd dialled on instinct, needing a
clear head to talk to, someone to get sympathy from before the big guns
opened up on him.  And she wasn't there.

"Hello!"  An angry voice suddenly, out of breath.

"Steph?"

"Sam?"

"Yes."

"God!  You don't half choose your moment.  I was in the bathroom."

"Got to see you, Steph.  Now."

"Too late for a curry, mate.  I've eaten already.  Cooked myself a nice
little stir fry.  Should've rung earlier."

"That's not it.  Got to talk, Steph.  I'm in deep, deep doo-doo."

She heard his anguish.

"What's happened?"

Sam glanced over his shoulder.  There were people in earshot.

"Can't talk here.  Can I come round?"  Steph's flat was in Shepherd's
Bush, a short bus ride away.

"Umm .. ."  He could hear the cogs turning and knew what it was about.
She'd told him that Gerry was the jealous type and had made her promise
not to let other men come to the flat.  Despite his suspicions
yesterday they were clearly still an item.

"Problem with that," she declared.

"Better to meet in a pub."

"So long as it's got a quiet corner where nobody'll see me cry."

"Christ!  You are in a state."

"I've fucked up, Steph.  Fucked up really badly."

"Where are you?"

' Hammersmith."

"Okay."  She thought for a moment.

"There's a place called the Green Dragon halfway up the road that'd
bring you to Shepherd's Bush.  If we both start walking now we should
meet there in about ten minutes.  Okay?"

"Okay.  And Steph "What?"

"I think you're wonderful."

It was nearer twenty minutes before she joined him at the pub.  He'd
taken his pint to a table, which if not in a corner was at least
reasonably secluded.  Stephanie offered him her cheek to kiss, then he
went to the bar to get her a gin-and-tonic.  She had broad shoulders
and a bright, attractive face.  She wore black trousers and a dark blue
sleeveless fleece over a white cotton shirt.  Her straight, brown,
collar-length hair was still damp from the hurried shower she'd had
before coming out.

When he returned to the table he let out a long sigh.

"You're looking at an idiot, Steph."

"Yeah, but I've always known that.  A lovable idiot, though."  She
grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

"Are you going to tell me what's happened or do I have to guess?"

"I walked into an ambush.  Straight in there like a rookie."

She made a point of looking him up and down.

"No bullet holes."

"Flashguns, not rifles," he told her.

"Oh Lord.  Don't tell me.  The bait for this ambush had boobs like a
Barbie doll and legs up to her armpits."

Sam grimaced, embarrassed at being so predictable.  Steph inclined her
head sympathetically.

"I think you'd better start from the beginning if you want me to do a
counselling job."

Sam told her everything, almost.  Steph was one of the few people in
the world he felt he could really trust.

"About five foot four, this Julie woman?  Quite petite?"  she asked
when he'd finished.

He looked away, detecting a touch of jealousy.  He'd always suspected
Steph's interest in him was not as platonic as his in her.

"I mean I'm not blaming you," she went on, unable to resist the gibe.

"A feller who's as bad at relationships as you are needs to take his
chances whenever they come along."

"Thanks, Steph.  That's just what I needed."  He downed the remains of
his pint.

"What the hell do I do, that's the question?"

"Do your lords and masters know about it yet?"

"No.  It only happened an hour ago."

"Well tell 'em fast before they find out from somebody else," she
scolded.

"God almighty, Sam, you're behaving like a ten-year-old."

"I reckon I've got twenty-four hours.  They're bound to get the lawyers
in before publishing anything this sensitive, which'll make it too late
for tomorrow's papers."

"But the sooner you get Duncan Waddell involved, the better your chance
of surviving the mess," she insisted.

"You're right, of course.  I'm just putting off the evil moment."  He
looked down at his empty glass.

"S'pose you want me to buy you a whisky to chase that pint down."  She
got to her feet.

"Well it's your round .. . And if you can see a sandwich in that
cabinet that hasn't curled into a ball, I wouldn't mind it."

"I'll tell 'em to fill it with chicken vindaloo," she muttered, making
for the bar.

When she brought it back, it turned out to be tuna mayonnaise.  She
watched in silence for a minute or two as he ate it.

"I suppose you could try a transplant," she said after a while.

"What are you talking about?"

"The part of your brain that you use for assessing women.  I mean I
assume the brain is involved at some stage in the process."

"Steph .. ."  he warned.

"I mean, this creature a quick flash of thigh arttj a "please help me
I'm so unhappy" and you're putty in her hands.  And that Chrissie .. .
How many years was she pulling the wool over your eyes?"

"Steph, I can do without this."  He glared across the bar which was
crowded with a young clientele.  All looking so carefree.  So together,
damn them.

"I think you'd better go and ring the Belfast bully-boy," Steph told
him, forcing a cheer-up smile.

He reached for her hand and squeezed it.

"Thanks for listening, Steph.  You're the best.  You know that?"

"Go on with you.  What are friends for?"

They finished their drinks, got up and walked out into the street.

"Criminals keeping you busy?"  Sam asked as they stood on the pavement,
delaying the moment of parting.

"Up to my neck in fascists," she told him.

"The Southall bomber .. ."

"The local station's handling the scene of crime, but Special Branch is
trying to establish if there's something wider going on here.  There
were other incidents on the continent at the same time.  Neo-Nazis
torched an immigrant hostel in Leipzig three dead and in Toulon some Le
Pen supporters smashed up shops belonging to Algerians."

"I know.  I heard it on the news."

"Any connection between the incidents is only speculation so far. We've
no intelligence on it."  She kissed him affectionately on the mouth.

"Now be a good boy and go tell Daddy about the mess you've made."

He gave her a bear hug.

"You know the worst thing about it?"

"What?"

"The bloody woman thinks I arranged for her dad to be killed."

She looked at him aghast.

"You mean you didn't"?"

He raised an eyebrow, turned and walked back towards Hammersmith,
keeping an eye out for a taxi.

Thirty minutes later, he'd broken the bad news to an apoplectic
Waddell, collected his car from the side street in Chiswick and
returned to his flat.  Once inside, he closed the front door and leaned
hard against it as if it was his last defence against a vengeful
world.

One part of him hated Julie Jackman for tricking him, wanting to string
her up.  But another part was more offended than hurt, distressed that
she'd believed her father's paranoid ramblings rather than his own
word.

Half of him sought revenge for what she'd done, the other simply wanted
to set her straight.  To make her recognise that he wasn't an
assassin.

But he needed more from her than that, because the wound she'd
inflicted on him affected his pride.

He wanted her to desire him.  With the same blundering blindness that
had driven him onto the rocks this evening.

NINE

Brussels Monday, 11.00 hrs tHE EUROPEAN COMMISSIONER for Social Affairs
was a woman of boundless energy, an elegant and sophisticated Parisian
in her mid-fifties whose paramours had included some of the most senior
politicians in France.  Her left-of-centre credentials dated back to
the barricades in the Paris Latin Quarter in the hot, neo-revolutionary
summer of 1968.

Dressed in a crisp, beige suit with a skirt ending just above the knee,
she walked the short distance from the metro station to the Brussels
headquarters of the Commission.  She was entitled to an official car to
bring her from her home, but on most occasions she spurned it,
preferring to feel the press of ordinary people about her for a few
short minutes before plunging into the rarefied world of Euro
politics.

This was to be a busy week for Blanche Duvalier.  On Wednesday she was
to chair a two-day conference on race relations, a subject close to her
heart but one of the hardest to deal with.  Improving attitudes to the
minorities in their midst required more than brave words.  Race hate
was a sickness endemic to the human species which she'd campaigned
against for most of her adult life.  Most of today and tomorrow would
be spent in preparation for the conference.  Much effort would be
needed to prevent it degenerating into pointless polemic.

The entrance to the Commission building was set back from the road
under a huge porch which gave shelter from the elements for the
official cars as they dropped their passengers at the rotating glass
doors.  A few more seconds and she would be there.

Walking towards her along the pavement was a woman in her forties with
wild brown hair in desperate need of a combing.  For a moment Blanche
Duvalier thought it was one of the journalists from the diplomatic
press corps and began to think of a quote.  Then she realised that she
didn't know the woman at all.  The creature looked an oddity.  Face
flushed, eyes wide and staring as if driven by some inner demon, her
clothes clashed horribly.  She was encumbered by shopping bags, the
control of which she seemed about to lose as she detached a hand from
them to wave it in Blanche's direction.  Did she know this woman after
all, Duvalier wondered?  The Commissioner glanced behind her and
quickly realised her mistake.  The wave had been directed at the driver
of a car which had illegally halted at the kerb a little way behind
her.  The passenger door swung open.

The woman was only a couple of metres in front of her now, eyes locked
on the car, when she began to stumble, tripping over heels far too
narrow for speed.  Too late to take avoiding action, Blanche Duvalier
braced herself for the impact.  The woman tumbled against her, making
no attempt to prevent a collision, her armful of possessions cascading
forward.  Duvalier felt a sharp prick as the corner of one of the bags
jabbed into her just below her left breast.

"Merde!"

As the woman grappled for control of her shopping, Duvalier felt a
second scratch at her flesh.

"Eh alors!"

"Sorry.  So sorry."  The woman spoke in English.  She regained her
balance, and hurried on towards the open door of the waiting car.

Instinctively Blanche Duvalier rubbed at the place where she'd been
hurt.  Her fingers touched moisture and she gasped.  She looked down
and saw blood on her cream silk blouse and a tiny rip in the fabric.

"Merde!"  she said again, spinning round, ready to confront the
ludicrous woman who'd caused the accident, but the car was already
easing its way into the traffic.

She looked down at herself again.  It was the tiniest of cuts, but the
blouse was ruined.  Fortunately she kept a spare in the office in case
of lunchtime accidents.  The blood was continuing to ooze.  She took a
handkerchief from her handbag, slipped it between the buttons to press
against the nick in her skin, then carried on into the Commission
building, trying to regain her composure.

She stepped into the elevator and found it occupied by Piers Hyams, her
English first secretary.

"Madame, good day to you," he began before noticing that all was not
well.

"Something wrong?  What happened to you?"

"Some stupid woman crashed into me on the pavement outside.  Had
something sharp in one of her bags."  She withdrew the bloodstained
handkerchief.

"Oh good heavens!  Do you need a doctor?"

Blanche Duvalier gave him a withering look.

"Really, Piers!  Do I look as if I'm about to faint?"

The young Englishman smiled weakly.

"But really," she continued scathingly.

"There are some people who simply shouldn't be allowed out on the
streets."

Piers Hyams fixed his eyes on the illuminated floor counter above the
doors..

"Madame," he murmured drily, 'as Commissioner with responsibility for
the elimination of intolerance, let's hope the media haven't bugged
this lift."

London

Sam Packer caught a mid-morning shuttle from Heathrow, glad to be
escaping from the recriminations his controller had hurled at him first
thing.  Depending on what the Chronicle published, his employment with
the Intelligence Service was now in jeopardy.  For much of the flight
north he despairingly tried to work out what an ex-spy could put down
on his CV.

The flight landed at Glasgow airport at 2.15 and he carried his
rucksack straight to the car hire desks to pick up the vehicle he'd
reserved.  It was a blustery day in Scotland, dark grey boulders of
cloud charging across a pallid blue sky.  As he stepped out of the
terminal the wind hit him, blowing through his brain like a
purgative.

The motorway led westwards along the white-flecked Clyde.  The tide was
low, the green and red channel markers rising out of the river bed like
giant salt cellars.  On the far bank a shaft of sunlight caught the
russet stone of Dumbarton castle atop its rock.  At Greenock the road
cut inland before emerging on the blustery west coast.  A couple of
yachts beating the choppy, grey waters between Ayrshire and the Cowal
Peninsula had their mainsails reefed hard.

Sam tried to envisage his father coming here twenty-seven years ago but
couldn't.  Couldn't because his memory of the man had no bones to it.
All he had was a naive eleven-year-old's fantasy of a father's life
heroics beneath the waves, interspersed by short periods at home as
head of the family and Sam's temporary ally in a house dominated by
women.  A figure who bore no relation to the sex pest and spy that
others now talked of.  Grudgingly he'd accepted that his sister's
impressions of the man would have been more sharply formed than his
own.  She'd been fifteen already when their father died.  Foreboding
gnawed at him.  This investigation looked set to destroy an icon, the
only one he'd ever had.

The road wound through trees and suddenly he was at Wemyss Bay where
the ferries left for Bute.  To the right stood the terminus, a low
building with half-timbered gables, a red tiled roof and a clock tower
with a sandstone base.  As Sam swung the car into the assembly area, a
youth in a yellow waterproof came over, leaning into the wind.

"You for Rothesay?"  He hurled the words against the gusts.

"Yes."

The marshal pointed to the line of cars at the top of the ramp.  Beyond
it, the ferry waited, a craft like a large trawler, with funnels each
side of the car deck and an "A' frame bridging it.

"Sails in twenty minutes.  Tickets in the station."

"Thanks."

Sam parked behind the last car in the row then struggled into the dark
blue waterproof he'd brought with him.  Inside the terminus, pale green
Edwardian ironwork supported a glass roof above a circular concourse.
Beyond it the platforms curved towards Glasgow, from where scores of
thousands had nocked during the annual holidays in the inter-war years.
A wide, covered ramp swept down from the concourse to the quay, its
glazed grandeur more suited to a transatlantic liner journey than a
boat trip to the isles.

Would they have come here by train twenty-seven years ago, his father
and whoever he'd been with?  Sam stood by the buffers, looking along
the rusty track, picturing a bearded, smiling figure loping towards
him, a guilty grin on his face and his arm round some woman who wasn't
his wife.  It had to have been a woman, he'd decided.  Why else would
he have hung on to the tickets?

He turned and made for the booking office.

The car.  deck was less than half full when they closed the ramp and
slipped the warps.  Sam climbed to the upper deck to watch the mainland
shore slip away, standing in the shelter of the bridge as other
passengers scurried to the saloon to escape the wind.  Despite the chop
of the sea there was no swell and the ferry cut a smooth track across
the water to Bute.  A lone yacht braved the gusts with its storm jib up
and a small triangle of main.

Five minutes later, when a squall hit the bridge wings, he took the
stairs down to the saloon where the small rectangular windows were
obscured by salt spray.  Teenage boys prodded desultorily at electronic
games machines in a corner.  From an open serving hatch he bought a cup
of tea and a cheese roll and took it to an empty seat.  A couple with
young children came inside, shivering, all bravely dressed in shorts.
It took character to holiday in Scotland in a summer like the one
they'd had this year.

As Sam sipped his tea, his mind relived the nightmare of yesterday
evening.  Half of him still wanted Julie Jackman's blood, the other
being consumed with shame at his own stupidity.  He wondered if Waddell
was getting anywhere stifling the Chronicle.

He checked his watch.  They would be approaching Rothesay shortly.  The
sun was out again, so he drained his cup and returned to the deck,
reaching the railings as the ferry rounded a headland.  A line of buoys
led into the bay and to the island's only town.  Neat brownstone houses
stood back from the water, separated from the rocky shore by bright
green lawns.  A couple of minutes later a loudspeaker announcement
summoned drivers to their cars.

From behind the wheel, Sam watched the side ramp drop and the family in
shorts amble down it onto the quay side  For now the sun shone
strongly, warming the children's legs.  He drove ashore, passing a
small basin filled with yachts and fishing boats.  At the promenade he
turned right and found a place to park, trying to decide what to do,
trying to guess what his father would have done twenty-seven years ago.
If it had been him here with a girlfriend, he'd have checked straight
into a boarding house and spent the afternoon in bed.

Amongst the shops along the front stood a small tourist information
office.  He went inside, not sure what he was looking for.  There was
nobody in attendance but an array of brochures on the shelves.  He
browsed one cursorily.

"Can I help you at all?"

Sam looked up.  A stocky, middle-aged woman had emerged from a small
back office.

"I was on the phone," she told him.

"Didn't see you come in."

"No matter."  He hesitated, doubting she would be able to do anything
for him.

"I suppose it's historical information I'm after, really."

"Oh well, then it's the castle and the museum you'll be wanting," she
told him helpfully.

"And we've some magnificent Victorian toilets down by the ferry
terminal.  Maybe you've seen them already.  The restoration's been done
brilliantly."

"That's not quite what I had in mind."

"Oh?"  She cocked her head like a blackbird listening for a worm.

"I'm trying to retrace the steps of a couple who came over on the ferry
twenty-seven years ago for a day or two's break.  D'you have any idea
what they might have done with their time?"

The woman's brows arched like hoops.

"Och, what sort of question is that?  What are you?  A private
detective?"

"No.  A relative."

"Well, now ... A couple, you said?  I suppose it would depend on their
inclinations."  She smiled coquettishly.

"You know, a lot of visitors simply used to hang around the town
looking at the boats during the day.  There's the promenade outside
this very door, the putting green opposite, and in the olden times
there was a tram taking people to the beaches."

"And where would they have stayed?"

"There's no end of hotels and guest houses, mostly along the front.
You've got the brochure in your hands.  If they were keen on walking or
riding, they'd have found somewhere out in the wilds.  There's a
section on that."

The door to the street opened.  A man poked his head round and asked
about caravan sites.

"Come on in," the woman told him.

"I'll soon sort you out."  She turned back to Sam.

"But you know, to be honest, a lot of the time people simply walked up
and down the promenade eating ice creams and looking at the view.  Life
was less complicated twenty-seven years ago.  A holiday meant doing
nothing."  She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, still trying
to guess what it was he was really after.

"I'm not being much help, am I?"

"Oh, you are," he assured her.

"To be honest I don't really know what it is I'm looking for."

"I'll tell you something," she said, seeing the chance of a sales
pitch, 'if this couple of yours were people looking for a wee bit of
peace and quiet just to find themselves, there's no better place to
come than Bute.  And that's still true today."

Sam thanked her for her wisdom and left her to deal with the
caravanner's more routine enquiry.  He crossed the road towards the
promenade gardens, which were ablaze with dahlias.  A signpost pointed
to the Victorian toilets.  He saw the family in shorts emerging from
the grim-looking block, the parents smiling and the children bored.

Was he wrong to think his father had been here with a woman?  Might the
second ferry ticket have been for his Soviet intelligence contact a
quiet outing to discuss the terms under which his father would spy for
the Kremlin?  Sam shivered.  The whole idea of betrayal still wasn't
conceivable to him.

He began to stroll along the front, passing a prettily painted pavilion
housing a cinema and a cafe.  Wind-blown palms and neatly trimmed
shrubs surrounded a green-baize putting green being manicured by a man
with a mower.  Out across the water, shafts of sun dappled the
foam-flecked sea and daubed gold onto the purple mountains to the
north.

Queuing at a white-painted kiosk for a round with the putters was an
Asian family, the women's saris exploding with vivid colour, the men in
white shirts and dark trousers.  Grandparents, adults and
grandchildren, about a dozen in all, they carried their clubs and balls
to the green, chattering and laughing as if at some country club at
Simla.

Suddenly they were confronted by a photographer, a down-at-heel
creature in grey, whose trouser bottoms spread like bells over his
dusty shoes and whose jacket pockets ballooned with films and order
pads.  Aged sixty at least, his bald scalp was covered by a thin flap
of greasy hair, which miraculously or because of glue lay undisturbed
by the blustery breeze.  The man launched into his spiel, pointing to
an old plate camera standing on a heavy tripod at the edge of the
green.  Intrigued at being snapped by an apparatus they thought had
died with the Raj, the Indian family marshalled themselves into a pose.
After much business with a black cloth, the photographer took three
shots, then got them to spell out their family name on his pad.

"Any time after ten tomorrow morning."

He gave them a ticket.  Laughing, the family got on with their game as
the old man re-primed his equipment.  All of a sudden Sam realised the
significance of what he'd been watching.

"Good season?"  he asked, walking up to the photographer.

"Terrible.  Terrible  The man spoke with funereal sorrow, instantly
sizing Sam up as a non-customer with whom he could speak freely.

"It's video that's done it.  Killed the trade stone dead."  He glanced
round to see they weren't being overheard.

"That's why I dug out the old plate camera to inject a little novelty
into the process."

"Clever idea.  Been taking pictures long?"

The old man raised his chin and narrowed his eyes.

"Therrty-two years.  Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce three times.
Oh yes .. ."  He looked set to launch into his life history.

"Always pictures of tourists?"  Sam asked, cutting him short.

"Och no.  Not only the visitors.  Anything.  Anything anybody wants
captured in a photograph, I'll do it for them.  Weddings, christenings,
twenty-firsts .. . Even did a berrth for someone once."

"You must've taken thousands of pictures over the years .. ."

"Oh aye.  Mind you, it'd take me the rest of my life to count them." He
dug a hand into one of the voluminous jacket pockets and came out with
a pack of cigarettes.

"And if I go on using these things, that life may not be so very long."
He chuckled, a sound like chains being dragged over gravel, then
offered the packet to Sam, who shook his head.

"Could you do it?"  Sam asked.

"Do what?  Count up the pictures ah've taken?"  The photographer eyed
Sam as if he were a mental defective.

"What I meant was, do you have a record of them?"  Sam explained.

"Names, dates, that sort of thing."

The man scoffed.

"More than that, laddie.  I have the negs.  Every last one."

For one short moment Sam felt as if a hand had gripped his shoulder and
given it an affectionate squeeze.  A touch he'd not felt since he was
eleven years old.

"Thirty-two years' worth?"  he whispered.

"Absolutely.  It's an archive, ye see.  Worth a lot of money.  My
cameras have recorded the passing of history.  Per instance this is a
wee example -in my possession I have an unbeatable record of fashion
trends in the west of Scotland over the past thirty years."

Sam raised an eyebrow.

"Och yes.  Clothes, hair styles.  All the fashions have come to us here
in Bute.  On the backs of the visitors, y'see.  I've offered it to
Scottish TV.  They showed a lot of interest.  Sent a wee lassie over to
take a look.  They're still thinking about it, mind."

"And you've got all your pictures indexed?"  Sam hardly dared believe
what he was hearing.

"Oh aye.  I live in a big hoose.  No wife or family to clutter it up. I
have three rooms full of filing cabinets."

"So if I gave you a date from twenty-seven years ago, you could produce
the pictures you took that day?"

The man's eyes began to calculate.

"I shouldn't be surprised," he answered.

"It'd take a bit of time, mind.  And of course ... it'd need to be
worth my while."

"Of course."

"I'm expecting four figures from Scottish TV," he added cannily.

Sam made a clucking noise to show how impressed he was by the wealth
the dowdy old man was sitting on.

"Can I put you to the test?"  he suggested.

"How d'you mean?"

"Oh, I don't know."  He screwed up his face as if changing his mind.

"No.  It's a waste of time.  It's too unlikely."

"What is?"

"It's only a personal thing.  Nothing of any great significance.  To do
with my family."

"Go on.  You've got me interested now."

"Well .. . On the twenty-first of May 1971 my mother and father came
here on a day trip or maybe it was to stay a night or two, I don't
know.  My dad was a submariner just back from a patrol, so I guess they
were after some time on their own without us kids getting in the way.
Then, a few days later, when they were driving back home to Portsmouth
they had a car crash.  Both of them killed.  Instantly."

"Och that's terrible."  The man looked genuinely shocked.

"You'd have been a wee hairn."

"Eleven.  With a sister of fifteen.  Yes it -was tough for us.  We were
brought up by grandparents after that."  Sam bit his lip, worried he
was over-egging it.

"Now, I've no idea, but I suppose it's possible you took their
photograph when they were here."

"Aye.  It certainly is."  The old photographer drew heavily on his
cigarette and blew the smoke out of the side of his mouth.

"Care to have a look for me?"  Sam asked.

The man's eyes narrowed again.

"It's the time it takes is the problem," he wheedled.

"Packer was the name," Sam told him.

"Trevor Packer."

"There's always so many other things to do .. ."

"How about a tenner as a search fee?"

The lips pursed round the cigarette.

"Och, I don't know.  It could take me a wee while.  I couldn't be
putting my finger on it straight away."

"Tell you what.  Twenty quid for the search, if you can do it today,"
Sam pressed.  It was mid-afternoon already.

"And I'll up it to fifty if you find a neg with his name on and do me a
print."

"Done."  The photographer slammed his hand into Sam's and shook it
firmly.

"Craigie's the name.  Tom Craigie."  He pulled out an order pad.

"It'll make a change, doing something like this.  Give me that date
again?  You're sure of it, are you?"

"Best check the days immediately after as well.  As I said, they might
have stayed a while."  Sam wrote the date down for him, together with
the name.

"Guid."  Craigie stuffed the pad back into his pocket, the corner of
which had been torn and stitched.  He handed Sam his business card.

"Now if you'd care to put the twenty pounds in my hand right this
minute, I'll call it a day here and get on with your commission."

Sam extracted a note from his wallet.

"Okay if I ring you in a couple of hours?"

"Make it around seven o'clock."  The photographer capped his lens,
hoisted the tripod onto his shoulder and set off with a rolling,
arthritic gait.

Sam watched him go, suspecting he was wasting his money.  No sensible
sailor playing away from home would have risked having his picture
taken with a girlfriend.

He decided to find a bed for the night and drove along the front until
he hit a small hotel which looked cleaner than most and had a vacancy
sign in the window.  A rosy-cheeked couple in their thirties ran it.
Sam paid in advance and the husband showed him to a pleasant room with
a view of the sea.

"Which newspaper would you like in the morning?"

Sam shuddered.

"Do you get any of the English ones?"  he asked cautiously.

"Times or Chronicle?"

He hesitated.

"I'd better have both, please."

"No problem.  Breakfast's from 7.30 to 9.30.  And if you're wanting to
be late out this evening the second key on that key-ring opens the
front door."

Sam thanked the man.  When he'd gone, he glanced into the small, clean
bathroom, finding it generously supplied with shampoos and soaps. There
was even a disposable razor in a cellophane wrapper.

He sat on the candlewick bedspread, fantasising that it might have been
here in this very room that his father and his companion had stayed.
Would they have kept a register from 1971?  He kicked himself.  It was
nonsense to expect anything like that.  Probably nonsense for him to
have come here in the first place.

He suddenly felt desperately tired.  His normal sleep pattern had been
shot to pieces in the past few days.  His life was in limbo.  Waiting.
Waiting for old Craigie to do his stuff.  And waiting for a clutch of
London scandal-mongers to wield their axe on him.  Powerless to
influence any of it.  He felt increasingly bitter towards Julie
Jackman.  Whether or not the newspaper had cajoled her into springing
the trap for him, it had been her decision.  Her action that would
wreck his career.

He felt an overwhelming need to shut it out for a few hours.  There was
a small TV in the corner which he switched on and tuned to Sky News.
Then he took his shoes off and lay back on the bed.  The stories about
a missing child in Essex and the love lives of foot ballers washed over
him like Mogadon.  He let his eyelids droop, but the headlines on the
half-hour prodded him awake again.  Some little known white-supremacy
group had posted an Internet message claiming responsibility for the
Southall bomb.  The police were treating it with caution, the
newscaster said, and asking for more witnesses to come forward.

Sam was on the point of turning the television off again, but the
report that followed stopped him.  It was from the Balkans, a follow-up
on the Albanian Kosovar family seeking asylum in Europe.  Sam leaned on
one elbow, watching angry scenes at a port in Italy as the family one
small part of a boatload of refugees was confronted by protesters
demanding they be sent back where they came from.  Only after police
fired tear gas at the demonstrators were the refugees able to land.

When the report concluded, Sam switched off.  The bedside radio had an
alarm clock.  He set it for 7 p.m. and lay back.

London

In his East End flat, Rob Petrie had also been watching Sky News.  He'd
turned the channel on the moment he was sure Sandra had fallen asleep
after her night shift.  From tomorrow she would be off duty for a
couple of days, which would force him to be more circumspect.

When he'd first seen the TV images of what he'd done in Southall, the
sight of the blood had shocked him, but only in the way that any mortal
would be affected.  Not because it had anything to do with him.  Two
Sikhs dead they were just numbers.  Statistics on the TV.  Not people.
He felt nothing for them.  The link between his execution of the attack
and its consequences was missing.  It hadn't surprised him not to feel
anything for his victims.  After all, what he'd done was a clinically
planned act of war.  He'd read enough about the military in World War
II and the Gulf to know how easy it was for men to kill without
guilt.

Two days had passed since the attack.  With the investigators showing
every sign of clueless ness his natural fear of being discovered had
started to evaporate.  He felt a deep satisfaction at what he'd done,
and pride.  He'd put himself up there.  Voted for what he believed in.
Stuck a finger up the bum of multi-ethnicity, and shown the whole wide
world there were people out here who wouldn't stand for the multi
racism being forced on the European population by its compliant,
Zionist-backed politicians.  He'd even got his erections back.

The Sky News report on the Albanian Kosovars poised to flood into
Europe had done much to reinforce his belief in the need for urgent
action.  Already the streets of Europe's capitals were dogged by
dark-skinned, shaven-headed beggars with baggy trousers and beads of
eyes that could spot a wallet through several layers of clothing.  The
politicians wouldn't stop that tide of gypsies becoming a flood.  None
of them had the guts to say that European culture must be preserved for
the Europeans, a people whose blood had been mongrelised quite enough
over the centuries and mustn't be mongrelised any more.  So it was down
to the likes of him, individuals prepared to use cunning and courage to
achieve their ends.

He could never have acted on his own.  He had neither the fighting
materials nor the vision.  It had taken a man with the power to reach
out and influence the far corners of Europe to stir him into action.  A
leader who appeared well practised in the skills of subterfuge and
non-conventional warfare.  A man whose identity would remain a secret,
even from his closest lieutenants.

It didn't matter to Petrie not knowing who his leader was.  He knew him
by his ideals, by his impressive organisation and by his words.  The
World Wide Web had brought them together, an article posted on one of
the American white-power sites.  On a guest page six months ago they'd
published a treatise on the future of Europe, written by a man with the
pseudonym of "Freeman'.  His words had made perfect sense to Petrie, a
clarion call declaration that encompassed his own beliefs.  Caucasian
Europeans needed to unite against the enemies from outside.  Against
the dark races and the Muslims.  But Europeans were not all one people.
Germans were German, French were French and the English English.  The
homogenisation of Europe being engineered by Brussels needed resisting
too.  There were two enemies to be faced.  The greater, polluting one
from beyond Europe's outer boundaries, and the enemy within, the woolly
liberals and leftie idealists determined to make Europeans all the
same.

There'd been an e-mail address for "Freeman', to which Petrie had
written, saying how much he agreed with his policies.  A correspondence
had ensued using PGP encryption and involving frequent changes of
e-mail postboxes.  Freeman's responses had contained questions, probing
Petrie's own philosophy and his commitment.  Eventually, three months
ago, a request had come for some token demonstration of his readiness
to act.  A simple task, the daubing on a wall of two words Lucifer
Network at a time and a place prescribed for him.  Done in the middle
of the night in an area where graffiti was part of the normal
landscape, it had gone unnoticed by the local populace.  But during the
act itself, Petrie had sensed he was being watched, checked over by the
man who had now become his general.

Then, a month ago, he'd been alerted to the imminence of the first
Europe-wide action by the Network.  A blow for racial purity by
volunteers like himself, men without police records who'd never been
involved in the infiltrated right wing.  He'd been asked to choose
three targets for nail bombs which the Lucifer Network would supply.
He'd acknowledged himself ready, then been given a time and place to
collect the explosives.  He never saw who it was who'd left the package
behind the garden wall of a terraced house ten minutes' walk from his
flat.

Petrie left the TV on but turned down the sound.  He got up from the
two-seater, brown leather sofa one of the few quality possessions he'd
retained from his former life and stepped into the narrow hall,
listening for sounds from the bedroom.  Nothing.  Just shouting from
next door a single mother who'd got too fond of the bottle, arguing
with her troublesome teenage son.  Sandra always slept through it.

Once she started putting up zeds it would take an earthquake to wake
her.

Petrie returned to the lounge.  One thing was troubling him.  He hadn't
had an e-mail from his leader yet.

"Peter' "Freeman' had changed his code name when they went onto a war
footing had -warned him not to expect any instant reaction to the first
of his three missions, but he'd hoped for something by now.  Three
times a day he'd been logging on to check his e-mail.  Four hours ago
was the last connection.

The computer was on a wheeled unit in the corner of the living room
farthest from the window.  A slide-out tray beneath the monitor held
the keyboard.  Shelves below were for the printer and the PC case.
Above it, fixed to the wall, was a cupboard made of MDF and painted
black, its double doors secured with a Yale lock.  Hovering by the door
for a moment to ensure there was no sound of Sandra stirring, he took
the bunch of keys from the clip on his belt and opened this holy of
holies.  The doors swung back.  Neo-Nazi books and magazines were
stacked neatly on each side.  From a pile of CDs at the back he
selected a Skrewdriver album, slipped the disc into the drive on the
PC, then carefully closed and relocked his trophy box.  Sandra had
never seen inside it.

He sat in front of the screen and clamped on a fat pair of earphones.
He got the player going, then with his squat head moving to the beat he
dialled his ISP.  His login was "Anthony Harden', using the initials of
the only man in recent history to attempt to rid Europe of its racial
interlopers.  He had mail.  He smiled.  The message was from "Peter
Stone'.  A different surname every time, but a common theme.  Stone,
Steel, Fist, Blood.

Congratulations!

As you saw, the effort on Saturday was across Europe.  The Lucifer
Network is well established thanks to you and the other comrades.  Now
we must prepare for the next stage.  Further action is needed this
weekend!

He felt a somersaulting in his stomach at the thought of striking again
so soon.

Again your efforts will be matched in many parts of the continent.
Together we will win!  The struggle for the European ideal goes from
strength to strength!

Always the exclamation marks!  Always the sense of urgency.

Petrie liked seeing his own words and ideas in print in the messages
he'd exchanged with Peter.  Liked trawling through the professionally
produced right-wing websites, feeling he belonged to a brotherhood
growing in strength and influence.  Loved the feeling he was in the
vanguard of the Revolution.

Please confirm you have selected a target and will act next Saturday.

Selected?  Not quite.  The racial group yes, the location no.  The
reconnaissance was yet to be done.  The materials were in his garage:
plastic explosive, detonators, timers and nails and a booklet of
bomb-making instructions as simple to follow as a manual from IKEA.

United we shall not fail!

He clicked on the 'new message' button and began to type.

"Yes.  All will be ready.  The revolution goes on."

Rothesay, Isle of Bute

When Sam awoke he could smell onions frying.  The hotel didn't do
evening meals so he assumed it was the couple who ran it preparing
their own supper.

He got up and put his shoes back on, then made the call to the
photographer.  No reply.

"Damn."

Four hours almost to the minute since he'd handed over the 20 note on
the putting green.  He rechecked the number on the business card and
rang it again.  Still nothing.  He grabbed hold of the map of Rothesay
that he'd picked up from the tourist office and spread it on the bed to
locate the street where Tom Craigie had his shop.  Then he locked the
room and went downstairs.  As he passed through reception he noticed a
familiar set of legs by the counter.  The family in shorts were
checking in.

Outside, the wind had dropped.  A huge patch of blue dominated the sky
from which the sun had recently disappeared behind hills to the west of
the town.  Sam found Craigie's photo 'studio' easily.  Next to the
local paper office, it was little more than a booth.  And it was
locked.

He cursed.  Failure hovered over him like a cloud of Highland midges.
He cupped a hand against the window to see if there was a light on in
the back, but the place "was in darkness.  Then he heard footsteps
behind him and a gravelly clearing of the throat.

"Och, now there you are."

"Mr.  Craigie!  I thought you'd run off with my money!"

"Och yes!  So much of it, I was nearly tempted."

Sam made way for him to get at the door with his keys.  He noticed an
old manila folder under the photographer's arm and his spirits
lifted.

"You've had success?"

"Emmm ... I don't know.  I have some contact prints for you to look at
but my confidence isn't high.  That year's files were all out of order
for some reason.  And a lot of the negs were missing their index cards.
It's why I came down to the shop to see if I'd got them here for some
reason.  Come on inside."

He switched on lights and led Sam through a raised flap in the counter
at the back.  Shelves in the tiny shop were decorated with examples of
Craigie's work.  The premises had the sour smell of stale chemicals.

"You can sit in the studio."  He pointed into a minute space with black
walls and a rail with three different colours of curtain.  Room enough
for two chairs and a tripod and something which to Sam seemed oddly out
of place.  A computer and scanner on a corner table.

"Don't tell me you're into digital photography as well as the plate
camera," Sam commented.

"Not yet.  But the Island of Bute has a website and I top it up with
new pictures from time to time.  The web master in Glasgow, so I scan
the shots into the computer and send them by e-mail."

"Amazing," Sam mouthed, unable to reconcile the new technology with
such a down-at-heel character.

"Och, well you have to keep up withe times.  Now if you'd cast your eye
over the prints in the folder, I'll start going through the shelves in
the darkroom."

The snaps were 6X6 centimetres, some crystal sharp, others fading.  Fat
people, thin people, but none that looked anything like his father.

"Any luck?"  Craigie shouted from the darkroom.

"Unfortunately not."  The ferry ticket trail was leading him nowhere.

"Och, I'm sorry.  Looks like I'm going to be letting you down."

"It was always a long shot."  Foolish to have set so much store by
Craigie's archive.

The phone trilled in his pocket, its sound startling him.

"Hello?"

"Where exactly are you?"  asked Duncan Waddell.

"Rothesay."

"Is that anywhere near Helensburgh?"

"About a couple of hours.  Why?"

"An appointment's been made for you there at noon tomorrow.  The man's
name is Ted Salmon.  Mean anything to you?"

"No.  Should it?"

"According to the Submariners Association he was a good pal of your
father's.  They were on the same crew on HMS Retribution.  Our security
friends across the river came up with it, but say they haven't the time
to go and talk to him.  Chasing communist agents who may or may not
have been active twenty-seven years ago doesn't seem high on their list
of priorities."

"You amaze me .. . Give me the address."

Waddell did.  Then he cleared his throat and the voice dropped half an
octave.

"And I have some bad news for you."  Sam's heart sank.

"Do they get the Chronicle up where you are?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Then you'll need to wear a balaclava tomorrow.  The lawyers have
failed to get an injunction.  The first editions are already on their
way north and you're on the front page.  Little Miss Jackman's stuffed
you good and proper, Sam.  Stuffed you as tight as a Christmas
turkey."

TEN

Scotland Tuesday

SOME TIME AROUND three in the morning a foghorn started moaning, its
mournful tone making Sam think of death row.  He put in the foam
earplugs which he always carried when travelling and tried to sleep. At
6.30 he abandoned the attempt and got up to make tea from the tray in
the room.  At seven he looked outside the door for the papers.  When
they weren't there he took a shower.

Fifteen minutes later, when he was putting his trousers on, there came
the dreaded plop from the corridor.  He waited until the footsteps had
receded, then stepped out.

Although he knew what to expect, it shook him to see his own face
staring back at him.  It was as bad as it could possibly have been.
Nothing fudged about the picture, his grizzled visage on the right of
the frame, a straight-on shot looking guilty as hell.  To the left, the
woman who'd set him up, her expression taut with the uncertainty of
what she'd unleashed.

The caption was simple but explicit Ms Julie Jackman, virologist
daughter of the murdered gun-runner, with alleged MI6 officer "Simon
Foster'.  The article itself filled the bottom right quadrant of the
front page under the headline DEATH OF A GUN-RUNNER.  DID WHITEHALL

PULL THE TRIGGER?

"Jesus .. ."

As his eyes flicked through the text his anger grew.  They were as good
as accusing him of murder, of setting up the killing of Harry Jackman
on the orders of the government.

"Bollocks He shook his head in dismay.  That picture would be stared at
over breakfast tables the length and breadth of the country.
Businessmen he'd chatted up in bars abroad would study it on the train
to work and start remembering the confidences they'd let slip.  His
neighbours in Brentford would gossip like hens.

"God damn you, Julie Jackman."

He combed the text in more detail.  Harry Jackman's letter to the
Chronicle had been thorough.  The guns, the money and the
identification of Simon Foster as the rep from MI6, all there.  A
direct quote from the dutiful daughter was the cream on the cake a
statement that ever since the Bodanga coup's embarrassing failure her
father had lived in fear of being silenced by British intelligence, and
by Simon Foster in particular.  She'd nailed him to the cross.  Any
lingering sympathy he had for her, any readiness to forgive had
evaporated.  He wanted her dead.

He conceded that there was a token attempt at balance in the article
-the reporter had damned Jackman's unsavoury career, describing him as
unscrupulous and amoral.  Also a quote from Zambia's police chief about
Jackman being murdered by robbers and a 'nothing to say' from the
Foreign Office.  But the denials wouldn't help.  The mud had been
thrown.

Sam stared at his image on the page.  The beard had been grown two
years ago as a flimsy shield against the Voroninskaya mafiya.  Now it
must go again in an even feebler effort at protection, this time
against his fellow countrymen.

He quickly checked that the Times's early edition hadn't picked up on
the story, then dumped the newspapers on the bed and stepped into the
bathroom.  He filled the basin with hot water, removed the
complimentary razor from its cellophane, lathered his face with hand
soap and began to scrape at his jaw.  It gave him pleasure to be
removing a part of his persona that he'd never liked.

Ten minutes later he had two small cuts underneath a chin that looked
startlingly white.  Not bad for someone so out of practice.  Deciding
to be on his way, he packed quickly, took the shortbread biscuits from
the tea-maker tray and pushed them into a side pocket of his rucksack,
then left the room.  As he passed the dining room the smell of bacon
tempted him, but he strode out into the street, unlocking the car and
throwing his bag onto the back seat.

He sat there for a moment, gripping the wheel and staring out towards
the still choppy waters of the firth.  One way or another the woman
who'd dumped him in this mess was going to have to be taught the error
of her ways.

London

When she began her journey to work on the tube, Julie found herself
sitting opposite a man reading the Daily Chronicle.  To see her own
face staring across the gangway brought home what she'd done. Whichever
way she turned, she imagined people ogling her.  The paper's front page
had been shown on the morning TV news.  She put her glasses on and hid
behind a book, holding it high to conceal her face.

Halfway through her journey she felt a hand totfch her knee and nearly
jumped out of her skin.  She lowered the book to see a grubby-faced
child waving a plastic cup at her.  Towering above the girl, clothed
like a Russian doll, stood her fat-faced, olive-skinned mother holding
a card on which some sad story of suffering had been written in broken
English.  Julie shook her head and raised her book again.  She was fed
up with Balkan beggars.  The other day she'd watched one step from a
train onto the platform and pull a mobile phone from the folds of her
clothes.

Her feelings about her appearance in the newspaper were confused. She'd
had to admit to a sneaky sense of exhilaration.  For the first time in
her life she knew her father would have been proud of her. She'd taken
a big, public stand on his behalf.  But there was a price. She'd thrust
herself into the public gaze and she wasn't suited for it. And it
disturbed her how hard the paper had gone on the insinuation that Simon
Foster had had a direct hand in her father's murder.  She still found
it difficult to believe that a man she'd rather liked could be a
murderer.

She'd considered not going in to work today, but decided she had to
face things.  When with deep trepidation she passed through the doors
of the department, Ailsa Mackinley was the first to confront her,
rising awestruck from behind the reception desk.

"Jul!  Brilliant!"  she beamed.

"You're famous!"

"I hope not, "Julie answered, making straight for her office.

"That certainly wasn't my intention."

"Well I'm with you all the way," Ailsa assured her, hanging on to her
arm.

"People like that shouldn't be allowed to get away with it."

"Oh Ailsa," Julie moaned.

"It's not that simple."

"I'll bet."  She gripped Julie's arm more firmly and blocked her
path.

"He wants to talk to you."  She pulled a long face.

"The professor?"  Julie's heart turned a somersault.

"Asked me to tell you as soon as you got in.  Said you should see him
before you did anything else."

"Hell."

"Don't let him bully you.  Stick up for yourself."

"Oh sure.  Don't fuss, Ailsa."

Inside her office her two colleagues were already at their desks. Janet
smiled awkwardly, then looked away.  George, her unsuccessful admirer,
took it upon himself to voice what the two of them had just been saying
to each other.

"We wondered whether this was your idea or someone else's?"  he asked
without any preamble.

"What d'you mean?"

"This accusation about spies and dirty tricks.  Hardly your style, we'd
have thought.  Someone pressure you?"

He's being patronising, thought Julie.  The little woman unable to take
big decisions for herself.

"It was my choice," she answered sharply.  But yes, she had been
pressured.  By a man now dead.

"And I don't want to talk about it.  I ... I'm not in the habit of
discussing my personal life with the people I work with."

"But you're quite ready to discuss it with the rest of the nation,"
George snorted.  He turned back to his computer and began downloading a
screensaver from the Internet.

Julie put her bag on the floor and sat down, blinking back tears and
forcing herself to ignore what had just been said and to think about
the day ahead.  There were some test results to be studied.  God knew
how she would be able to concentrate.  She picked up the phone and
dialled the professor's number.

"Norton."  He had a soft voice.

"Professor, good morning."

"Ah, Julie "You wanted a word, I believe."

"Yes.  Would now be convenient?"

"Absolutely."

"Good.  Come on in, then."

She stepped out into the corridor and walked to the room where she'd
first crossed paths with Simon Foster four days earlier.

"Come and sit down."  The professor, a tall, thin man, of the old
school as far as women were concerned, rose to his feet, his lined face
a picture of discomfort.

"This business with the newspapers."

"I'm sorry.  I should have told you in advance," Julie mumbled.

"Yes.  I'd have welcomed knowing it was coming, rather than reading it
over breakfast."  He sat down as she sat.

"Now look.  As far as I'm concerned this is your private affair.  I
have no wish to know anything about it.  I have no views on the likely
truth of the allegations you've made, nor on the rights and wrongs of
getting mixed up with the papers like this."  But he did have, Julie
realised.  Strong views.  And they weren't supportive.

"My sole worry," Norton continued, 'is that this institution might in
some way be tarnished by it."

"Tarnished?  I don't see .. ."

"No, I'm sure you don't.  If you did, you'd have discussed it with me
beforehand."  He clasped his hands on the meticulously tidy desk.

"The point is this.  What you've launched yourself into conics under
the heading of scandal.  And scandal tends to stick to anything
mentioned in the same breath.  I was relieved to see that the St.
Michael's Hospital Group and this department were not named anywhere in
this' morning article .. ."

"No.  They weren't," Julie interrupted defiantly.

'..  . but there will doubtless be many more.  Both in the Chronicle
and in other parts of the media.  Presumably the journalists you talked
to know where you work?"

"I don't think I ever said .. ."  She racked her brains, trying to
remember.

"Well it doesn't matter whether you did or not.  The job description
"virologist" will be enough.  A quick search of the websites and
they'll find your name on our department's.  I expect we'll be
inundated with calls in the coming hours."

Julie sank back into her chair.  It hadn't occurred to her there'd be
follow-ups.

Norton pulled himself up straight.

"I've instructed Ailsa to say you're not here today."

"But there'll be legitimate calls for me, there always are," she
responded, startled.

"Others can deal with those.  For now I'd prefer your absence to be
fact rather than fiction."

"What d'you mean?"

"That you stay away from the lab until this blows over."

Julie gaped.

"But I've got loads to do.  What are you saying?  You're suspending me
from duty?"

"Oh no.  Call it compassionate leave.  I just don't want us to be
involved in any way."  He stood up again to show her the interview was
over.

"Why don't you give me a call in a couple of days and we'll see how
things look?"

She hated being railroaded.

"But .. ."

"Best not to hang around," Norton interrupted, opening his office door
as she stood up.

"And best slip out through the goods bay at the back.  In case there
are camera crews."

Julie turned to leave, saying nothing.  A great lump blocked her
throat.  Back in her own room George was on his own.  He watched Julie
pick up her bag and head for the door.

"Anything I can do?"

"No.  I'm taking a few days off."

"And if anyone rings?"

"Better say you've never heard of me."

The deliveries entrance was in a mews which joined the main street
twenty metres from the front entrance.  A quick glance revealed no
media types anywhere.  She headed for the underground station,
uncertain where to go.  The Chronicle people knew about her room in
Acton.  In the clubby world of journalism others would soon know it
too.  She'd do better in Woodbridge, she decided.  At least Liam would
be glad to see her.

Suddenly a hand grabbed her elbow, making her jump.

"Excuse me, Miss Jackman."  A male voice close by her ear.

She turned.  A man and a woman stood each side of her, boxing her in.
Media, she decided.

"I'm sorry," she began, heart thudding.

"I've got nothing more to .. ."

"We're police officers, Miss Jackman."  The man flashed an ID.

"You're to come to Paddington Green for a chat."

"Why?"

"We're investigating your father's involvement in the illegal
transportation of strategic materials," the woman told her.

"But I've already told the intelligence people I know nothing about his
business dealings."

"Except when the newspapers ask you about it, eh, Miss Jackman?"  The
male officer's manner was unpleasantly aggressive.

"Come on, Julie," the woman pressed.

"There's some important people waiting to speak to you."

"Do I have a choice?"  Julie was scared.  This was a whole new ball
game.

"Not really," the man told her.

"I'm entitled to arrest you on suspicion of concealing information
relevant to a breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty."

"This is outrageous .. Julie mouthed.

"Our car's round the next corner," the woman told her as she took
Julie's arm.

"I really would advise you to co-operate.  It'll save so much time."

"They're on their way," said Detective Chief Inspector Stephanie Watson
as she entered the interview room where the SIS woman was waiting.

"Be about fifteen minutes."

"Excellent."  Denise Corby crossed and uncrossed her legs.  She wore
black stockings beneath a dark grey skirt.

"Thanks for setting this up so rapidly."

"Not at all.  I needed a break from the Southall business," said
Steph.

"White nationalists aren't my favourite sort of people."

The arrangement to bring in Julie Jackman for further questioning had
been made little more than an hour ago.  The call to Special Branch
from Vauxhall Cross had found a depleted team on the sixteenth floor at
Scotland Yard because of summer leave taking, but they'd agreed to
spare Steph for the morning.  Which had pleased her, since she had a
personal interest in the case.

"What exactly have you got on this girl?"  she asked, sitting down on
the opposite side of the interview table.

Corby held out a plastic folder.

"Something highly significant.  Proof that she lied about her
involvement with her father's business activities."

"May I see?"  Steph took it.

"When I talked to her on Friday," Corby continued, 'she denied all
knowledge of her father's scams.  And she repeated those denials on
Saturday when the letter turned up.  The so-called red mercury and
Vienna?  It was all in the fax I sent you."

"I read it.  Go on."

"Well, the inquiries we've been making in Austria tell a different
story."  She pointed to the folder.

Steph ran her eye over the pages and handed them back.

"I get the drift.  But what's the UK angle?  There has to be one if
you're involving the Met."

"Conspiracy.  We suspect that the material her father shipped out of
Russia could have been nuclear weapon components.  If we can get her to
admit discussing the smuggling of them with him when he was last in
England, then we've grounds for a prosecution."

"Possibly.  Conspiracy's hard to get past a jury," Steph cautioned.
She'd have liked to see Julie Jackman banged up for life after what
she'd done to Sam, but there were rules to be followed.

"We'll give it a whirl."

"Good.  You're happy for me to lead?"

"Makes sense."  Steph stood up again.

"I'll see if they can get us some coffee.  Like some?"

"Wouldn't say no."

Julie recognised the Paddington police station as the one they took
terrorists to.  She'd seen it on TV.  Her nerves began to fray as they
led her into an interview room.  When she saw who was there she groaned
inwardly.

"Thank you for coming in, Miss Jackman."

"Wasn't given much of a choice," she answered stonily.  She'd hoped
never to see Denise Corby again.

The narrow room had a plain table in the middle with a tape-recording
panel at one end.  The other woman there looked almost as butch as
Denise Corby, she decided, and was staring at her with a curiosity too
intense to be merely professional.  Two bull dykes ready to work her
over.

"My colleague here represents the Metropolitan Police," Corby began.

"No need for you to know her name," she added sourly.

The door opened and a uniformed policewoman entered with a tray of
coffee, this small act of hospitality belying the hostility that
crackled in the air.

"We thought we'd talk informally at first," Corby began.

"If we reach a point where the Chief Inspector thinks you need to be
cautioned, then we'll switch the recorder on.  Understood?"

Julie found it hard not to be cowed by them.

"Would you mind explaining why you've got me here?"

"Because we don't think you've been truthful with us."

"That's nonsense.  I have."

"Really?  That letter your father wrote you claimed it was the first
time you'd ever heard of red mercury and also said you'd never been
involved in your father's business activities."

"Correct."

"We think that's a lie, Miss Jackman.  We have evidence that says
otherwise."  Denise Corby coughed behind her hand.

"It suggests you may even have been his accomplice."

"What?"

Julie shivered.  Her father's warnings about the deviousness of the
intelligence people were coming true.  They were going to frame her.

"July 1997.  Your father was in Vienna setting up the shipping
arrangements for the so-called red mercury.  He said so in his
letter."

"Yes," Julie whispered.  She felt her neck begin to glow.

"A criminal business deal which you claimed to know nothing about."

"That's right," she croaked.

"Which is odd, because you were there in Vienna too.  Weren't you, Miss
Jackman?"

Julie opened her mouth, but no words came.  She shook her head in
dismay.

Denise Corby opened the folder and produced a sheet of fax paper.

"According to the register of the Intercontinental Hotel, on three
consecutive nights that month you had room 115 and your father room
120."

Julie felt the ground opening up.  An innocent happening was to be
twisted and used against her.  The establishment's revenge for what
she'd said to the Chronicle.

"But you don't understand," she protested feebly.

"Yes, I was in Vienna at that time.  But under my own auspices.  It was
pure coincidence my father was there too."

"Coincidence?"  Corby mocked.

"What auspices?"  Stephanie asked, deciding to take a hand.  Still
unsure what to make of the girl, she had a suspicion she was telling
the truth.

"An international conference on HIV.  My boss, Professor Norton was one
of the speakers.  And a few days before I went, my father happened to
ring, saying he had to be there at the same time.  For business but the
point is, I have no idea what business."

"You can't expect us to believe that," Corby insisted.

"Same hotel.  Rooms on the same floor.  You knew exactly what he was
doing there."

"I did not.  We coordinated our plans, of course we did.  We wanted to
see each other."

"How much time did you spend together?"  Steph asked.

"Just one evening.  On the other nights there were conference events."
She noted Corby's disbelieving glance towards the policewoman.

"Tell us about that evening," the Vauxhall Cross woman continued.

"Was your father alone?"

"No.  He had his latest woman with him.  South African, I think.  Quite
nice.  Most of them were, his wives and girlfriends.  I never
understood why none of them lasted."

"Know her name?"

Julie frowned, trying to recall it.

"Linda, I think."

"Where did you meet them?"  Steph asked.

"In the hotel bar.  They were sitting with three or four others.  All
men.  My father introduced me.  The men just nodded, then carried on
with their conversation.  In whispers mostly.  I didn't speak to them
at all."

Stephanie's uncertainty deepened.  Any man with a normal set of tackle
would have made a pitch for a pretty girl like Julie.  Sam had.

"And your father was involved in their conversation?"

"Most of the time, yes."

"What was it about?"

"I didn't hear.  I was talking to Linda.  She and I got on really well.
I'd not met her before."

"You spent the whole evening there?"

"We stayed in the bar for a while, then the three of us went to the
restaurant and had dinner."

"You, your father and Linda," Corby checked.

"Yes."

"What about the men your father was with?  They didn't join you?"

"No."

"Later?"

"No."

"Tell me about them."

"For heaven's sake, "Julie complained, "I hardly looked at them."

"Nationalities?"

"God knows.  It was a year ago."

"But they weren't English .. ."

Julie frowned, trying to think why she'd always assumed they were
foreign.

"I believe not."

"Was one of them Russian?"

"Could have been.  I really don't remember."

"Names?  Does Vladimir Kovalenko ring a bell?"

The name in the letter.  She shook her head.  Only one man had
registered with her that evening, and that was long after she'd bade
her father goodnight.

"What about the Arab?"

She shook her head again.

"I don't remember any Arabs."  She was surprised at how calm she was
sounding now.

For several seconds, maybe as much as half a minute, they just looked
at her, digesting what she'd told them.

"You're quite sure your father never told you the specifics of why he
was in Vienna?"  Steph queried again.

"Certain."

Denise Corby leaned forward across the table.  For a moment Julie
feared a re-run of the hand-holding trick.

"You do understand what sort of deals your father did, Miss Jackman?"
Corby asked, hush-voiced.

"I always assumed they weren't a hundred per cent straight," she
replied.

"Not a hundred per cent," Corby mocked.

"His whole world was a web of lies, Miss Jackman."

"He wasn't a saint," Julie answered defensively, aware that a change of
direction was under way.

"His speciality was avoiding customs controls that's a serious criminal
offence.  He paid bribes to officials also a crime.  His career in
Africa began with the theft of precious minerals that didn't belong to
him, which he sold for personal gain.  A fraud in anybody's language.
Need I go on, Miss Jackman?"

"I'm not sure what point you're .. ."

"Simply wanting to make sure you understand that of all the
considerable wealth he amassed in recent years I doubt whether one
penny was earned honestly.  He lived by lies and deception."

"That's as may be, but whatever my father did, I'm different," Julie
insisted, riled by the implication that she was dishonest too.

"Everything I've got, I've worked for."

"The simple point I'm trying to make," Denise Corby persisted, 'is that
your father was one of the most untrustworthy men you could ever hope
to meet."

"Maybe, but I'm not a liar."

"Oh really?  What about that extraordinary load of tosh in the Daily
Chronicle this morning?  Where did that come from?"

Julie looked down at her hands.

"There was a second letter from my father," she admitted softly.

"We gathered that.  What did it say?"

Julie swallowed.  Her throat was as dry as a bone.  Reluctantly she
told them.

"It said that if he were to die suddenly, then Simon Foster of MI6
would probably be to blame."

Denise Corby sighed with exasperation.

"And you believed him?  Despite knowing what a liar he was?"

Julie turned her face away.  She felt wretched and looked towards the
door, anywhere to avoid them seeing into her soul.  There was no
factual justification for doing what she'd done.  She'd known it all
along.  She'd co-operated with the press to impress her father.  To
make the wretched man love her, wherever he was now.

"Did he give you money when you saw him in Vienna?"  Corby asked, going
for the kill.

Startled, Julie nodded.

"A little.  It made him feel good to be generous."

"How much?"

"A few hundred."

"Pounds?"

"Yes."

"More like a thousand?"

"Possibly."

"He gave you money whenever he saw you?"

"Not every time, but usually.  It was his way of making up for not
being around when I was a child."

"And with you working in a health service laboratory, you wouldn't be
paid much .. ."

"Not a lot," she agreed.

"So getting cash from your dad was something you came to rely on,"
Corby suggested.

"Look I don't know what you're getting at, but the money was to help
support Liam," Julie floundered.  She looked up at the ceiling, a
single lamp burning in the middle of it, protected by a metal grille.

"But you were grateful for the cash.  Probably felt you owed him
something for his generosity.  Felt that one way to repay him was by
giving voice to his lies and fantasies through the media."

"I don't know that they're lies," Julie whispered, wretchedly.

"Well you should do, Miss Jackman," Corby said harshly.

"One final question.  What did you and he talk about when he was last
back in England?  Smuggling nuclear weapons?"

"Of course not.  We spoke about him wanting to come home.  Life in
Africa was beginning to frighten him."

Corby let her eyebrows float up in an exaggerated expression of
derision.

"Really?  And what was he scared of, pray?"

"Of being robbed, mostly," Julie answered, not realising the hole she
was digging.

"He said whites were being killed for the cash in their pockets and for
their cars .. ."

They let her words hang in the air, waiting for it to sink in.

Death by robbery.  Not by conspiracy.  Not through the agency of one
Simon Foster.  Julie felt as small as a flea.

"I think I'd like to go now," she whispered, staring down at her
hands.

"And hang yourself, I shouldn't be surprised," Corby snapped.

"You do realise that your slanderous allegations have destroyed the
livelihood of a perfectly decent businessman?"

"He's not a businessman," Julie retorted.

"He's one of you lot."

Denise Corby folded her arms and raised a sceptical eyebrow.

Steph could see that the girl was on the verge of breaking down and
took pity on her.

"The officers who brought you in can take you back to the West End, if
you like," she offered gently.

"I ... I'd rather walk," Julie sniffed.

"As you wish."

As she stood up, Denise Corby thrust a business card at her.

"In case you've lost the last one I gave you.  If you remember anything
else about Vienna, do yourself a favour and give me a ring."

Julie nodded.  When she reached the door she half turned.

"Would you do something for me, Ms Corby?"

"I'll try."

"Tell Simon Foster I'm sorry."

She left the room.

"That'll be a huge comfort," Corby spluttered when she'd gone.

"A silly little girl," Steph declared, her comment tainted with
personal venom.

"And quite out of her depth."

"But with the power to inflict enormous damage," Corby added, getting
to her feet.

"Thanks for your support, Chief Inspector.  At this point in time it
seems we don't have a case."

"No, but congratulations.  I don't think she'll be talking to the
papers any more."

Denise Corby smiled.

"Probably not.  Unfortunately the harm is already done."

Steph itched to ask about Sam's fate but didn't dare.  Her friendship
with him was private and she wanted to keep it that way.

"Would you like me to run Julie's story past Professor Norton?  just to
see it stands up?"  she checked.

"Yes, please.  It'd be mad not to."  Denise Corby held out her hand.

"Now I think I'd better get out of your hair and leave you to
concentrate on nailing the Southall bomber."

Stephanie grimaced.

"We're painfully short of leads there.  Nothing from the usual neo-Nazi
sources.  Hoping like crazy that there's something on the surveillance
videos.  Sharp eyes and a bit of luck is what we'll need if we're to
catch this little runt before he strikes again."

"Hope you get your break.  And if you do, pass the luck our way.  We've
got a man on our books who could do with some."

ELEVEN

Scotland

SAM HEADED UP the Glasgow road, fortified by a bacon sandwich consumed
on the ferry back to the mainland.  There was a little under an hour to
go before his appointment with Ted Salmon, the man who'd served on HMS
Retribution with his father.  This morning his priority was to try to
prove the innocence of a long-dead sailor.  In the days to come, it was
his own name he would have to clear.

He turned left onto the Erskine suspension bridge that arched across
the Clyde, driving like an automaton.  He wanted to complete his
business in Scotland and get back to London to fight his corner with
his bosses.  Waddell had been unavailable when he'd rung from the ferry
and had yet to respond to the message he'd left.  The distancing
process had already begun, it seemed.

On the north bank of the Clyde, the road wound west through Dumbarton,
following the line of the Firth.  After a few miles a sign proclaimed
the outskirts of Helensburgh, "Birthplace of John Logic Baird, the
inventor of television'.  The town was at the mouth of the Gare Loch
down which HMS Retribution used to pass on her way to the Atlantic from
Faslane.  To the right of the road, soulless, grey estates erupted like
fungus from the hillside, built cheaply to house the workforce needed
when the Navy located its new nuclear deterrent in Scotland thirty
years ago.

Beyond these purpose-built slums lay the old Victorian town, an elegant
resort of wide streets and weathered stone, whose sea front was
dominated by a fun fair a swimming pool and a car park.  Sam pulled in.
He would need directions to find the address where Ted Salmon lived.

He got out and crossed the promenade to the shops opposite.  Amongst
them was a cafe.  The decoration inside was eclectic: Edwardian brass,
sixties kilims on the walls, and in a corner beneath garish computer
game posters, two PCs with a board attached saying "Internet connection
2.50 per half hour."

"Get much call for that here?"  Sam asked the shaven-headed young man
behind the counter.  He had a small gold ring through one nostril of
his bulbous nose.

"Weekends mostly.  Students out from Glasgow.  What can I get you?"

"A cup of tea, please."  f "Assam, Darjeeling or Earl Grey?"

"PG Tips if you have it."

Without batting an eyelid the man produced a box from beneath the
counter.

Sam took his mug to a table by the window and looked out towards the
sea.  He watched the sky darken and let a shower pass before finishing
his drink and asking the cafe owner for directions.

Back in his car, he headed away from the sea, into a grid of streets
lined by grassy verges and hawthorn trees.  Bungalows gave way to
comfortable mansions which became grander as the road climbed the hill.
He turned right into a side street and found Ted Salmon's home easily,
a grey stone cottage in a pretty garden, separated from its neighbours
by high laurel hedges.

When he rang the bell, it chimed somewhere far back in the recesses of
the house.  The front door was metal-framed with dappled glass. Through
it he heard the sound of someone tidying things in the kitchen. He
waited, but when no one came he pressed the bell again.  It took a
third attempt before he saw movement behind the glass and the door was
opened.

"Yes?"

Sad, grey eyes were set in a lined face crowned with untidy white hair.
The man was fiddling with a hearing aid, trying to settle it in his
ear.

"Ted Salmon?"  Sam asked.

"Why, yes."  The eyes widened as if recognising someone from the
past.

"You must be Trevor Packer's boy."

"That's right.  The name's Sam."

"Bless us!  You're the spitting image."

Salmon was a small man who spoke with a south of England accent that
could have been Devon.

"Come on in.  Last time I saw you was at your father's funeral.  You
were in short trousers."

"Well, yes.  I suppose I would have been."

"Not much fun, funerals, are they?"  They were standing squeezed
together in the small hall, Salmon peering intently up at his
visitor.

"One of the worst days of my life," Sam confirmed.

"Cremated my wife last week."  Ted Salmon said it matter-of-factly, but
couldn't disguise the downturn at the corners of his mouth.

"I'm so sorry," said Sam.

"This isn't the best time to call, then."

"That's all right.  It's nice to have company.  Come on in to the front
room."  He led the way.

"I'm afraid I've reached the stage of life where too many of the people
I've known have gone.  Shouldn't complain, I s'pose.  Lucky to have
known them.  And me self I've had a good life."  He turned to face Sam,
extending his hands in an awkward gesture of welcome.

"Can I make you a cup of tea?  I was just about to have one."

"Well .. . that'd be great.  Thanks."

"NATO standard?"

"Without sugar, thanks."

Salmon urged him to take a seat then disappeared to the kitchen.  The
sitting room felt curiously unlived-in.  Lace antimacassars on the
chair backs, a glass-fronted cupboard full of plaques from the ships
the former CPO had served in and a collection of family photos in
silver frames.

"Was it sudden with your wife, Mr.  Salmon?"  Sam asked
sympathetically.  He'd stood up as the old man re-entered the room with
a tray and two mugs.

"Kidney disease.  Been shaky for years.  Two weeks ago she never woke
up one morning.  Good way to go, I suppose."

"How are you managing?"

"Oh not so bad.  I've got a son and a daughter who live nearby.  And I
keep myself busy with the garden."

"I could see that.  It's immaculate."

"Tidy, certainly.  You learn to be as a submariner."  His brow furrowed
as he tried to recall something.

"You had a sister, didn't you?"

"That's right.  She's married with two daughters."

"And your mum?"

"Died five years ago."

"Did she really?"  His eyes widened as if wondering whether everyone
he'd ever known would be dead before him.

"I wanted to ask you about my father, Mr.  Salmon," Sam began, not
wanting to stay longer than he had to.

"So they said on the phone."

"How well did you know him?"

"Pretty well, pretty well.  We'd done a lot of postings together.  The
first was on HMS Andrew.  Remember her?"

"My father probably mentioned the name, but I've forgotten."

"Last submarine in the Royal Navy to have a deck gun.  And the first to
snort her way across the Atlantic submerged all the way.  That was back
in '53.  Your dad and I were on board for that one.  She was a famous
boat, the Andrew."

"And you served together again on Retribution."

"And on a couple of other boats in between.  What're you after?
Researching his life story?"

"Sort of.  Things have been happening that made me realise I never
really knew him."

Salmon shrugged.

"Not surprising.  You was only eleven when he died."

"I knew him as a dad, but not as a man, you could say."  Sam let his
words sink in.

"Can I be blunt?"

"Course you can.  Blunt as you like.  Not easy to shock a Navy man."

Sam took a deep breath.

"I'm trying to find out whether my father betrayed his country, Mr.
Salmon."

The old sailor spilt his tea on his trousers.

"Blimey!"  He put the mug down and took a handkerchief from his pocket
to mop himself up.

"That's a question and a half.  What's brought this on?"

"An allegation's been made that he passed secret material to the
Russians while he served on HMS Retribution."

Salmon gaped in astonishment.

"Never!  I can't believe that.  We was all in it together.  Trev
wouldn't have put his mates' lives at risk.  Who's been telling you
this nonsense?"

"The Russians."

Salmon was flabbergasted.

"The Russians say he spied for them?"

"Yes."

The old man puffed out his cheeks.

"I'm stunned.  Don't know what to say.  If it's true, then I never had
a clue.  But I can't believe it."

"How much did you know about his life outside the submarine service?"
Sam asked.

"Oh .. . some," he replied warily.

"You know.  You chat a bit when you're away on patrol."

"Did he seem short of money?"

"No more than the rest of us."

"Did he talk to you about his girlfriends?"

Salmon lifted one eyebrow.  Then he puffed out his cheeks.

"Oh you knows about that, does you?"

"My mother used to slag him off for woman ising

Salmon gave a wry smile.

"He was the sort of bloke we all used to envy.  Know what I mean?"

"Not entirely."

Salmon looked uncomfortable.

"Don't think I should be saying this.  Sort of speaking ill of the
dead, like.  And you being his son and all."

"Please be frank, Mr.  Salmon.  Totally frank.  There's a very big
issue at play here and I need to know the truth about him."

Salmon blinked.

"Yes, well .. . What I meant by us envying him was that he was the type
who could spot a woman in a crowd of strangers, point her out to his
mates and tell 'em he was going to have her."  He looked up to check
Sam was coping with his bluntness.

"Go on."

"Well, sure enough he always did have her.  I felt sorry for your ma,
of course," he added quickly.

"She put up with a lot."

"So she always said."

Salmon's eyes twinkled suddenly.

"I'll tell you a story, Sam.  Now this is really telling tales out of
school, but if you're after the whole works ..."

"Yes."

"When we was on Retribution your dad made a point of never telling your
mum when he expected to be home.  I mean the patrol dates were secret
anyway, but the point was that Trev wanted a week ashore with some girl
or other before he went home to his marital duties, if you know what I
mean.  Well, one patrol, which had been a particularly arduous one, the
Jimmy the First Lieutenant he sent off a signal when we was approaching
home waters asking that all the wives be told we'd be coming alongside
in a couple of days' time.  Thought it'd be nice for the blokes to have
their loved ones standing on the shore waving as they came in, see?
Well .. . When your dad hears about it he goes potty.  Threatens to nut
the Jimmy.  For two days he's wetting his self in case his local popsie
gets wind of the boat coming in and turns up to welcome him too. Turned
out all right in the end, mind, because your mum was such a hard case
she wouldn't dream of trekking up to Scotland to see the boat in."

"And the girlfriend was there?"

"Don't remember.  I had my own fish to fry, if you know what I mean."
At the thought of his recent loss, the sparkle faded from his eyes.

"D'you remember the name of my father's girl?"

Salmon sucked his teeth.

"There was a few of them over the years, you know.  Some of them was ..
."  He wrinkled his nose.

"Well .. . pretty rough, to be honest with you.  Wasn't always too
choosy, your dad."

Sam swallowed.  Another slash to the canvas of his icon.

"Remember any names?"

Salmon looked blank, then slowly shook his head.

"It's nearly thirty years," he murmured.  Then he looked up again.

"That spying business -you serious about that?"

"Yes, unfortunately.  The GRU had his name on their books."

Salmon pushed fingers through his crown of white hair and whistled.

"You think you know someone and then all of a sudden .. ."  He shook
his head in dismay.

This was getting nowhere.  In the meantime Sam's own fate was being
chewed over down in London, without any input from him.

"Were there any other mates of his who knew him better than you?"  Sam
asked, desperate not to leave Scotland empty-handed.

"Possibly.  Possibly.  But I can't think of one.  And a couple of them
are dead anyway."

"Tell me something else," Sam asked.

"What sdrt of secrets would my father have had access to?"

Salmon pursed his lips.

"Well, to be honest, most of the chiefs on board wouldn't have had a
lot to tell the Russkies.  I was on tactical systems and I certainly
didn't.  The secret stuff was all inside the boxes.  But your dad now,
he was chief signaller.  Knew the codes, the signals routines.  All the
arrangements as to how we'd get our instructions if it came to nuclear
war and we had to fire the missiles."

"The perfect man for the Russians to target," said Sam sombrely.

"Well, yes."

"But you never had a clue?"

"Not a one.  On board, your dad was straight down the middle.  No side
to him.  One of us."

Sam decided he would get nothing more from Salmon.

"Well, thanks for your time," he said, putting down the mug and getting
to his feet.

"Off so soon?"  Salmon sounded disappointed.

"Other people to see," Sam lied.

"Of course."  Salmon pushed himself upright using the arms of the
chair.

"Nice to have met you anyway."

When the old man was steady on his feet Sam shook his hand.

"Could I ask one last favour?"

"Of course."

"Not to speak about this to anyone.  Official secrets and all that."

"Understood.  My lips are sealed."

At the door they shook hands again.  As Sam drove off, he saw Salmon
watching from the step.

He drove despondently back to the sea front and parked overlooking the
water in order to think.  Nothing from Rothesay and now nothing from
Salmon.  He was at the end of the line.  And without evidence to the
contrary, the record looked set to stand.  His father had made a habit
of cheating on his wife, so it was possible he'd cheated on his mates
as well.

"Hell!"  He banged his fist on the wheel.

He looked at his watch.  A quarter to one.  The airport was half an
hour away and Waddell's silence was needling him.  He needed to be back
down in the capital, hammering on doors for a hearing.

He restarted the engine and engaged first gear.  Then as he swung the
car towards the promenade, the phone rang.  He snatched it up, stamping
on the clutch and the brake, hoping the little Ulsterman was deigning
to speak to him at last.

"Yes?"

"Mr.  Packer?"

Sam didn't recognise the voice.  He envisaged a press man having been
given his number by Julie Jackman.

"Who is this?"

"It's Craigie here.  The photographer in Rothesay."

"Mr.  Craigie!  Hello."  He pulled sharply on the hand brake and turned
the engine off.  The old photographer had promised to keep searching
his files and had taken his mobile number just in case.

"Something's come up?"

"Well I'm still not too hopeful, but there's three more negs I've come
across which could be from the dates you gave me."

Sam felt a sudden surge of hope.

"If you'd care to pop into the shop I could show you the contacts. Then
if it's still no, at least you'll be sure I never took your parents'
photo."

"Trouble is I'm not on Bute any more," Sam hedged, quickly calculating
how long it would take to return to Rothesay, then rejecting the
notion.  London was where he needed to be next.

"Och, now that's a pity.  Well I'll keep them aside for when you next
come back."

"Thanks.  But I've no idea when that'll be."

"Or I could post them if you give me your address."

After the spread in the morning paper, he didn't have a usable address
any more.

"No," he answered, searching for a way.  Suddenly he realised that he
was staring at it.  Opposite where he'd stopped the car was the cafe
from earlier.

"Mr.  Craigie .. ."

"Aye?"

"I've an idea."

Ten minutes later and 2.50 poorer, he was staring at a PC screen,
watching the e-mail download.  The attachment contained three 6x6 cm
prints, scanned in together on a single page.  As the bottom one of the
three revealed itself, his breath froze.  His father's grinning visage
inched its way onto the screen.  And he was with a woman.

It felt like being blasted through a time warp to see him there.  Sam
was in short trousers again, re-experiencing his childhood's worst fear
that one day his dad would go away to sea and never return.  He could
even smell the unfiltered Virginia his father used to smoke.  In the
picture, the man was hugging his girl like a trophy.  A very young
woman with peroxide hair.

Sam saved the photos to a disc provided by the cafe owner then reopened
the file in a photo-handling program.  He excised the pictures that
didn't interest him and enlarged the one that remained.

His father had been clean shaven on that day back in 1971, closer to
the image in the wedding photograph than to Beryl's memory of him. More
the way Sam recalled: steady, soft eyes with a twinkle of mischief and
sheepishness.  He'd never thought to wonder why he looked that way. Now
he knew the reason.

The fluffy-haired girl seemed to be in her early twenties.  A pretty
thing with a smile as wide as the Clyde, a grin which said that being
with his father on that island was like winning the pools.

Sam printed the picture twice, then shut down the computer.

"All in order?"  the young man with the nose ring asked.

"All in order," Sam replied.

Back in the car he phoned the Bute photographer again.

"Thanks for all your efforts, Mr.  Craigie.  I got the pictures okay,
but unfortunately none of them were of my parents."  If the spying
story leaked out, the last thing he wanted was to see that snap in the
papers.

"Och, I'm sorry to hear that.  Well we tried.  Can't do more than
that."

"Quite right.  Good luck to you, Mr.  Craigie."

"And to you, Mr.  'em .. . Foster..  ."  The line clicked dead.

"Oh shit!"  Sam gulped.  Craigie had seen the Chronicle.  He smelled
more trouble coming.

He started the engine and drove off.  Within a couple of minutes he was
pulling up outside Ted Salmon's cottage again.  This time the front
door opened at the first ring.

"Forgotten something?"  the old man asked uneasily.

"No.  But a photograph has come into my hands.  I wanted to show it to
you."

"Better come in then."

When they'd moved to the sitting room, Sam presented him with the
computer printout.

"Where's this popped up from all of a sudden?"

"It was taken in Rothesay twenty-seven years ago."

The old submariner reached for a spectacle case on the table beside his
chair and slipped on bifocals with heavy, square frames.

"Bless us!  Look at that.  Large as life and twice as ugly, that's your
dad all right."

"Yes, but the woman?"

He held the photo closer.

"Well I'm buggered!  That was..  ."  He snapped his fingers.

"Wassername.  Oh!  It's on the tip of my tongue.  She -was a lassie who
was er .. ."  He glanced up apologetically.

"Well, in business, is what she was, to be honest.  Looked after the
needs of a number of the lads before your dad came along.  She was
looked on as being a bit special, you know.  Not your average totty."

"And her name?"

Salmon favoured the photo towards the window to catch the light.  He
shook his head.

"It's gone.  Memory's not what it was.  Where was this taken did you
say?"

"On the Isle of Bute.  May the 2ist, 1971."

The old man screwed up his face.

"Wasn't that the year Trevor died?"

"Two months later, in July," Sam reminded him.

Salmon pursed and un pursed his lips.  Then he closed his eyes and
rubbed his forehead.

"Something's coming back.  I don't know if I'm remembering this right,
but I've a feeling he told me it was more than just physical with this
one.  I think he might even have fallen in love with her.  Or thought
he had."  He looked up.

"She was quite young, by the look of her.  Your dad liked them young, I
remember."

"But you can't remember this girl's name?"

The old man closed his eyes.

"This is stupid.  She was from here.  Helensburgh.  Used to see her
around the town from time to time."

"What, recently?"

"Oh yes."

Sam's hopes shot up.

"Think hard.  What was her name?"

"She married a butcher."  The old man's eyes brightened at the
recollection.

"Coggan's the shop was called."  He snapped his fingers again.

"Jo Coggan!"

"That's her name?"

"Yes!  Marriage didn't last long.  Jo Macdonald she was, originally."

"You're certain?"

"Totally.  How come I forgot that?  Jo Macdonald.  Your father called
her his little Josephine."

"Brilliant," Sam smiled.

"Any idea where she lives in Helensburgh?"

"No.  None."  He stared at the photograph again, enmeshed in the
memories it had unleashed.

"Tell you somebody who might know, though, and that's the minister.
I've seen her going into the kirk from time to time."  He looked up
suddenly, his eyes widening.

"You're not going to tell me she was mixed up in this spying thing?
With the Russians?  Sort of Mata Hari?"

"Highly unlikely.  But she might remember something."

Salmon fidgeted a little.

"If you find her will you do me a favour and not mention it was me that
put the finger on her?"

"Of course.  Not a word."

"It's a small town, see."

"I understand."

"Try the manse.  The minister's been here for over ten years.  A decent
sort, even for a Presbyterian.  And this is probably a good time of day
to catch him."

The manse was on the eastern edge of the town close to the Defence
Ministry's Churchill housing estate.  Brown paint peeled from its huge
sash windows.  The dark-suited minister had just returned from a
funeral and was in sombre mood.  Keeping Sam standing in the porch, he
received the request for information about a parishioner with a degree
of suspicion.

"Might I ask why you're seeking to speak with Mrs.  Coggan?"  he
demanded.  His steel-framed spectacles gave him a cold, ascetic look.

"My father was in the Navy.  A submariner."  Sam's explanation seemed
to intensify the reverend's doubts.

"He died when I was young, and I'm trying to piece his life together.
I've just learned that he used to know Mrs.  Coggan when she was Jo
Macdonald."

The clergyman grunted.

"You'd better come into the study."  He led Sam into an oak-panelled
room lined with bookshelves.  In one corner stood an old roll-top desk,
in the other, an exercise bike.

"Do sit down."

"Thank you."

The minister clasped his hands together.

"Can I ask what exactly it is you want with Mrs.  Coggan today?"

"My father's life had many sides to it," Sam began, treading
cautiously.

"And some of them I've only just recently learned about."

"One of those being Jo," said the minister knowingly.

"Exactly."

"Was it a shock?"

"Not exactly.  My father had a reputation for putting himself about. It
was a cause of family friction."

"I can imagine."

"Still is.  I'm trying to ease it by finding out the truth."

"I see.  Well I don't know if Jo will be able to speak to you.  She's
out of it a lot of the time."

"Out of it?  I don't quite understand."

The minister cleared his throat.

"Didn't you know?  She's terminally ill."

"I had no idea."  He had a sudden fear that he would be too late and
she'd be gone already.

"Yes.  I don't think it'll be long now before the Lord takes her. She's
on morphine a lot of the time.  It's cancer.  She's already lasted
longer than expected."

"I see.  Which hospital is she in?"

"It's a hospice.  Here in Helensburgh."  He clasped his hands.

"How did you hear about her?"

Sam showed him the photograph and explained where it had been taken.
The reverend took it in both hands, studying it with fascination.

"She was a pretty wee thing in those days and no mistake.  No wonder
she was in such demand."  They exchanged glances to show that they
understood one another.

"But she's paying a heavy price for the sins of her early life.  I hope
the Lord will be merciful in the next.  You'd need to be gentle with
her.  She's very frail."

"I shall be."

The minister's eyes became thoughtful.

"It might be best if I come with you."

"I'm sure I can find the place," Sam told him, not wanting a witness to
the conversation he hoped to have.

"If you just tell me the address ..."

"Actually it's next door."  The clergyman stood up.

"But I will come with you, because I want to make sure she's prepared
to see you."

Jo Coggan, nee Macdonald, lay propped on pillows in a small, ground
floor room whose windows overlooked a large garden that was dark with
the foliage of rhododendrons.  Her head was without hair, her skin a
bloodless cream.  No way to tell her age, but Sam calculated she was
about fifty.  As he walked towards the bed she lifted a frail hand. Her
eyes were small brown pools of pain which widened in astonishment as he
drew nearer.

The minister had forewarned her of her visitor's identity and as Sam
approached, he backed towards the door.

"Leave you to it," he whispered.

"Thanks," Sam murmured, shaking his hand.

"You're so like him.  "Jo Coggan's voice was cracked and feeble, her
Scots accent broader than Sam had expected.

"It's incredible."

"You're okay then, Jo?"  a nurse called from the door.

"Yes, Jen.  I'm okay."

"Press the bell if you need anything."

"I will' The nurse left them.

For a while his father's one-time girlfriend lay looking up at him as
if all her energy had been drained by the few words she'd uttered. Then
her lips began to move, shaping her thoughts so they could come out as
sounds.

"So you're Sam."

He sat on the chair beside the bed.  There was nothing about this woman
that he could recognise from the photograph.

"How did you find out about me?"  she asked hoarsely.

He showed her the picture and her eyes filled with tears.

"Och, I lost that wee snap years ago!  Where on err th did you get it
from?"

Sam explained about the ferry tickets he'd found in his father's deed
box and the chance meeting with the Rothesay photographer.  She looked
down at the picture, biting her lip.

"We were in love, y'know.  Terribly in love.  It broke m'heart when he
passed away."  Then she looked questioningly at him.

"But this was all so long ago."

"I know.  It's why I've come.  To learn about my father.  And about
you."

She looked afraid suddenly, as if the past was a place she wanted kept
hidden.  She pressed a tissue to her eyes before settling back on the
pillows, engulfed by weariness.

"I get so tired," she gasped, turning her face away.  Her neck
glistened with perspiration.

"Yes.  I'm very sorry.  I'll try not to tax you too much."

"You were eleven years old, when he died," she whispered.

"That's right."  He wondered where to begin.

"Did he ever talk to you about .. ."

"About you?  Oh yes.  All the time.  You were the apple o' his eye.
Couldn't do no wrong.  He always told me you'd go into the Navy one
day, but as an officer.  Because you were clever and because he'd made
sure you got a better edication than he had."  She turned her face
towards him.

"Did you?"

"I did."

"Submarines too?"

"No.  Intelligence Branch."

He watched for her reaction.  When it came it shook him, because it
confirmed his fears.  There was shock, then despair.  Finally a
dreadful weariness passed across her face.  She turned her head away
and closed her eyes.

"Intelligence ..."

"Yes."

"So you know .. ."

"A Russian defector told us."

She nodded and a tear squeezed between her lids.  For a full
half-minute they stayed silent, her tortured features a mirror of the
agony inside his own head.

"I've waited twenty-seven years," she whispered eventually.

"Twenty-seven years waiting for someone to come."  She opened her eyes
and dabbed them with a fresh tissue extracted from the sleeve of her
bed jacket.

"But I never dreamt for one moment it would be his own son."

Sam leaned forward.

"Please.  Will you tell me about it?"

She tugged at the bed sheet as if to cover herself more.

"How much do you know about me?"  she whispered.

He decided to be blunt.

"I've been told that you worked as a prostitute and had several clients
who were sailors."

"Several.  Och, you make it sound like I was big time.  There might
have been a dozen at the most."  She spoke without any sign of shame
and took in a deep breath to sustain herself.

"But yes.  I earned a little money from business.  Life here was dull
in them days.  I had a mother to look after who'd gone senile.  Having
men pay me for doing what I liked doing anyway seemed a harmless way to
earn some cash.  But I was only an amateur at it.  Months would go by
without a single client."  The effort of speaking was exhausting her.
She lay back with her eyes closed.

"Just get me breath," she croaked.

"Of course."

When she opened her eyes again, she forced them wide.  The whites were
yellow and brown veined.

"I gave it all up for ye da, y'know," she said, looking at him
intently.

"After I'd been going with him a while, I gave it up.  Cos I loved him,
you see.  Loved him to bits."

Her mouth puckered suddenly, whether from physical pain or a mental
hurt, Sam couldn't tell.  But he knew he had to press on, to discover
the extent of his father's betrayal.

"These sailors you .. . you took in, you knew from the start that they
had access to military secrets?"

"Och, I didn't know anything of the kind," she protested.

"To me they were just men who'd been shut away in the dark for too
long.  They were all decent fellers.  I made sure o' that because I
turned away the rough ones.  I wasn't that desperate for the cash."

"And many of them were married, of course."  He'd sounded
unintentionally reproachful.

"Och, you're no a prude, are you?"  she snapped.

"Telling me I was a wicked woman taking your father away from your
mither?  Let me tell you something.  In his heart your father left that
woman long before he met me."  She began to pant for breath again.  Sam
gave her time to recover.

"Tell me about him, Jo," he probed, more gently this time.

"Tell me how he came to be spying for the Russians.  Was it
blackmail?"

She nodded.  There was the look of a cornered animal about her.

"They sought him out because he was the wireless operator," she
whispered.

"Followed him around, in secret like, until they knew more about his
life than he did himself She adjusted her position in the bed, then
reached feebly for the glass on the bedside table.  Sam picked it up
and held it for her while she drank.

"Thank you."

She breathed heavily for a few moments, summoning strength and
gathering her thoughts.

"It started the Christmas before Trev died.  I had a foreigner come to
me for business.  I'd just about given the work up because of your da,
but I was in bad need of money that day.  He spoke good English, this
feller, but with an accent.  Said he worked at the naval base and had
heard of me through friends."  She paused, as if to think through what
she was going to say next.

"But when I let him into the house it wasn't sex he wanted.  He was
after Trevor.  Showed me pictures he'd got of the two of us together on
the bed.  Somehow he'd hidden a camera in the room we never found out
how."  Her eyes widened, as if still astonished at his ingenuity.

"And he knew about you and your sister.  Said he'd make sure the
pictures got to you two kids as well as to your mother.  He was
ruthless.  Said if Trevor didn't give him what he wanted, the pictures
would be in the post the next time he went away to sea."

Sam frowned.

"The man didn't approach my father direct?  He did it through you?"

"Aye.  I don't know why."

"Did the man give you his name?"

"Johann.  Like Johann Sebastian Bach, he said."

"And this was a Russian?"

"No.  German.  From the east.  Working for all the peoples of free
Europe, he said."  She flicked up her eyes at the absurdity of it.

"According to Johann, the Russians had been having trouble with MI 5
and were using him because he could move around the country more easily
than they could."

"I see."  Sam remembered a spate of tit-for-tat spy expulsions at
around that time.

"And my father agreed to provide information?"  he asked, resigned to
the worst.

"So that my mother wouldn't learn about your affair?"

Suddenly tears streamed down her face.  She picked up the hem of the
bed sheet and pressed it to her eyes.

"It was because of you," she sobbed.

"Not because of her.  He didn't care if your mother found out about us.
She couldn't think any worse of him than she did already.  But he knew
that you idolised him.  And he couldn't cope with the idea of seeing
your crushed little face after you'd had an eyeful of those pictures o'
us together."

He shook his head, dismayed that he himself could have been the
ultimate reason for his father's agreement to commit treason.

"And he gave Johann some Navy secrets .. ."

"No!  No he never," she protested.

"You mustn't think that."

"I don't understand."

"Nothing that mattered, anyway."  She dried her eyes, her wan face
totally washed out.

"He gave Johann old signal codes that's what he told me.  Information
that looked right but which was already out of date."

"The Russians would have seen through that," Sam told her.

"Oh aye.  They did.  The next time Trevor returned from a patrol Johann
made the threats all over again."

"And?"

"Your father played for time.  Keeping them at bay until he worked out
what to do."

"Which was what?"

"He didn't have to do nothing in the end.  The headaches started and
they found the brain tumour.  Johann backed off when he realised Trevor
was going to die."

"You mean that was it?  Out-of-date signal codes was all he ever passed
to them?"

"Absolutely."

Sam felt absurdly relieved.

"You're quite sure about that?"

"It's what Trevor told me.  And he never did hide anything from me."

"And what about Johann?  Did he just fade away?"

"Aye.  But he was kind to me.  Keep your chin up, he said.  Sounded odd
the way he said it, like he'd read the words in a book.  And then when
Trevor died, he sent me money to buy a wreath for the funeral."

"You were there?"  Sam asked, astonished.

"Och no!  I couldn't be.  But I sent the flowers."

He remembered the scent outside the crematorium, made heavy by the heat
of summer.

As the woman recovered her breath Sam sat back and pondered.  Through
the wide window he saw a uniformed nurse helping a stick-thin man in a
dressing gown inspect the flower beds.

"The German, Johann, you never knew his proper name?"  he checked.

"No.  But .. ."  She put a hand on his arm, looking at him uncertainly
for several seconds as if trying to think through the consequences of
what she was about to tell him.

"But there was something strange as happened a couple of years ago.  I
got a letter.  Written by someone saying he was a friend of Johann."

"Really?"

"He said that now the cold war was over, Johann wanted to say sorry for
the pain he'd caused."

"Extraordinary .. ."  Compassion wasn't exactly commonplace in the
spying business.

"The letter asked me to write back and say how I was."

"And did you?"

"No.  I didn't want to be reminded."

Sam saw her flinch as some internal spasm took control.

"Sometimes it shoots through me like a sliver of glass," she
whispered.

"D'you want me to call someone?"

"No.  I'm not allowed the injections too often.  They'll be round when
it's time."  She closed her eyes and sank into the pillows, her mouth
half open.

"It'll pass in a wee while."

Sam knew he should let her be now, but there was more he wanted to
know.  For his own sake.

"Will you tell me about my father?  Why were you attracted to him more
than the other sailors?"

Slowly her mouth formed into a smile which, if it hadn't been contorted
with the pain, might have been mischievous.

"He was awful good in the sack," she whispered.

"The best there ever was."

That was it?"

"Och no.  But that was the start of it.  He was just lovely.  Kind.
Funny."

"My mother and sister saw him in a rather different light," Sam
murmured.

"Your mother?  Och, what d'you expect from a woman who tells her man
there'll be no more sex?"

"She said that?"

"It's what your father told me.  He said that after giving berrth to
you she wouldn't let him near her."

"No wonder he had a wandering eye."

"And hands."  She managed a laugh.

"He was dead sensual, you know."  She put her hand to her mouth.

"Och I shouldna be saying such things to his son .. ."

"Say whatever you like," he told her.

"Did he ... did he ever talk about my sister?"

"Oh aye."  Another spasm gripped her.  Sam handed her the glass again.
She swallowed some water, then breathed heavily and evenly to control
the discomfort.

"He was dead upset when Beryl took against him too."  Her voice came
out as a whisper.  Sam could see she was fading.

"Said your ma worked hard on her, poisoning her mind against him."  She
picked up the Rothesay photo again and managed a smile.

"It was three days we had together in Bute.  The longest we ever had
alone.  Three of the happiest days o' my life."

The door clicked open and the nurse came in.

"You'll be tiring her out, Mr.  Packer.  I need to give her some
medication."

Jo Coggan grabbed his hand.

"Don't go just yet.  I've talked too much.  I want to hear about
you."

"Would you wait outside while I do the injection," the nurse asked
firmly.

"Of course."  He stood up.

"I'll be back in a minute, Jo."

Outside in the corridor he leaned against the white wall and sucked in
air.  Mysteries had been unlocked.  He understood now about Beryl.  And
he'd learned that although his father had been a rogue, he had probably
not been a traitor.  The icon was torn, but not destroyed.

"You can go back in now, Mr.  Packer," the nurse told him, holding open
the door.

"But not for long because she'll be asleep soon."

"I understand."

Already Jo Coggan was having trouble keeping her eyes open.

"You," she whispered.

"Tell me about you."

"I will.  In a moment.  But I have one more question."

"Questions, questions .. ."

"The man who wrote to you from abroad with the message from Johann.  Do
you remember his name?"

"No.  But .. ."  She turned her head towards the side of the room where
a dark brown wardrobe stood.

"In there."

"I don't understand."

"On the floor.  A small green case."

He opened the cupboard door.  A few clothes hung from the rail.  Below,
next to a pair of trainers was a vanity bag.

"This one?"  He held it up.

She nodded.  He placed it on the bed and she indicated he should open
it.  When he lifted the lid she reached in and brought out a bundle of
letters held together with an elastic band.

"From your da, mostly," she croaked, sleep rapidly overtaking her.

"But there's one in there with a foreign stamp."

Sam flicked through the letters, recognising his father's immature
hand.  He dearly wanted to read them but knew it would be a mistake to
do so.  Eventually he found the envelope she'd meant.  Franked in
Vienna.  From it he extracted a single sheet of white notepaper.

As he read the address at the head of the page, a shiver ran down his
spine.  It was startlingly familiar.  He turned the letter over to be
sure.  The signature was neat and forward-leaning.  The name Gunther
Hoffmann.

Sam shook his head in amazement.  This was extraordinary.  The letter
had been written by a former Stasi officer whom he'd helped debrief
several years ago.

He felt a hand on his arm.  The woman was almost asleep, but she knew
he was about to go.

"Will ye come an' see me again?"  she whispered.

"I will," he promised, staring disbelievingly at the page.

Her lips quivered as she summoned up her failing strength.

"We were to be married, you know, your da and me.  I'd have been your
step-mummy, Sammy.  Would you have liked that, d'you think?"  She fell
asleep before he could think of a reply.

TWELVE

London

FROM THE POLICE station in Paddington Julie had returned to Acton to
collect a bag before heading for Woodbridge.  She'd found photographers
outside her flat.  Before they could spot her she'd fled back to the
underground and thrown herself onto the first train.  She had a
desperate need to be away from people from everybody.  At Hammersmith
she'd left the tube and walked over the bridge to the south bank of the
river, finding a bench amongst the horse chestnut trees.

An hour later she was still sitting there, watching a rowing club eight
carry their razor-shell craft down to the water.  Strongly built boys
and girls with nice accents.  Normal teenagers at the end of the summer
hols.  She imagined secure, two-parent homes with siblings and dogs,
and she envied them.  On the bank opposite, people in suits stood
outside pubs, enjoying an extended lunch break in one of the few bursts
of good weather they'd had that summer.  Her spectacles were smudged.
She took them off, polished them with a soft cloth from her bag, then
watched a police launch pun-past, heading upriver.

She knew that if she didn't talk to someone about the mess she'd got
herself into she would probably explode.  It wasn't just the Simon
Foster business.  Her personal relationships had always been a mess.
For the past year she'd been having an affair with a man much older
than herself which was going nowhere.  The man, who was married, was
kind and generous and seemed happy for their arrangement to continue
indefinitely, but she knew it couldn't.  She didn't love him.  Never
had.  The relationship had been fun, jet-setting, and trouble-free.  It
had taken her out of herself.  But its very easiness was stopping her
looking for the soul mate she'd always hoped to meet.

Her mother was too judgmental to talk to in situations like this.  And
anyway Julie hadn't told her about the affair.  Most of her friends
were too preoccupied with their own problems to be interested in hers,
but there was one she could talk to a girl she'd met at university not
through her studies, but through the shared misfortune of having
unplanned children.  They'd met at the ante-natal clinic, both grossly
pregnant by men who'd abandoned them.  Rosemary Smith had given birth
on the same day as Julie and the traumas of single-motherhood had
forged a bond between them which had lasted.

Soon after their confinements, their paths had separated, Julie
returning home to her mum and Rosie getting lucky with a man.  A
westernised Iranian postgrad studying textile technology had fallen in
love with her and her darkly beautiful child and insisted she should
marry him.  She'd abandoned her degree course and become a housewife.
Her husband now traded in oriental carpets and they lived in some
affluence in north London.  Rosie was a kind and constant friend, but
above all she was a listener.

Julie got up from the bench and walked back towards the bridge to look
for a telephone box.

Rosemary's apartment in St.  John's Wood was paved in marble and dotted
with gilded objets and classical bronze statuettes.  Julie didn't know
whether it was good taste or bad.  All she was certain of was that
Rosie's life was very different from her own.

"How's Liam?"  Rosemary asked within seconds of her welcoming
embrace.

"Gosh!  New glasses?"  she commented, not waiting for a reply.

"He's fine and yes they are," Julie answered.

"Got to keep up with the fashion."

She was led through into what her friend called the 'family room', a
spacious extension of the kitchen where the furnishings were more
child-friendly.  The two younger ones were there, being given their tea
by a dumpy Filipina.

"Andrew will be back in a minute," Rosemary told her.

"He'll be thrilled to see you, Julie.  Absolutely thrilled.  That's if
the football practice hasn't totally worn him out.  I think it's
ridiculous making them do so many things when they're that young, but
the head insists it does them no harm and the school's academic results
are fanta-as-tic  She whispered the last word as if afraid the whole
world would discover how successful the place was at getting their
pupils into the best public schools.

Andrew.  Such an unsuitable name for a child with dark Arab looks.  The
father who'd vanished had been an overseas student from Kuwait.

"Cup of tea?  It's so good to see you again."

"That would be wonderful.  And it's great to see you too."  Julie
decided her friend had put on weight since they'd last met, but
refrained from commenting on it.

Rosemary plugged in the kettle.  She was dark haired and had a nose
that most Englishmen would consider indelicately large.  She wore a
voluminous purple patterned dress that was probably made of silk.

"How sweet of you to ring," she said, pouring water into a silver
teapot.

"Only the other day I saw a little boy in the supermarket who reminded
me so much of your Liam.  I've been wanting to get in touch for ages,
but you're so high-powered and busy these days."

Typical, thought Julie.  Blaming her for her own failure to
communicate.

"Busy, yes.  High-powered?  Hardly."

Rosemary gave a knowing smile as if' modesty was Julie's middle name.

"Well .. . I'm so glad you rang.  How's things?"

Julie looked about her to see if there was a newspaper in evidence.

"You don't take the Chronicle, do you?"  It would be easier if Rosemary
had seen the story already.

"No.  Mehdi reads the FT.  I don't have time for papers.  Get my news
from the TV."  Suddenly her eyes lit up and she clamped a hand to her
mouth.

"Don't tell me!  I've missed it.  There was an announcement.  You're
getting married!"

Julie shook her head.

"Sorry to disappoint you."

"Oh, no.  I'm sorry.  Always saying the wrong thing .. ."  One of the
little girls came over to complain about her sister.  Rosemary picked
the child up and cuddled her.

"What about your Austrian millionaire?"

"Sort of still happening," Julie told her.

"But I'm not sure I want it to.  Could we .. . ?"

The doorbell rang before she could suggest they went somewhere more
private to talk.

"That'll be Andrew."  Rosemary put her daughter down and headed for the
hall.

"We have a rota for the school run.  My day off, but it's still bedlam
at this time of day.  "Just before the door she stopped and turned.

"Once I've got him settled, you and I will go into the drawing room and
put a "do not disturb" sign on the door."  She winked
conspiratorially.

Julie crouched down to talk to the two girls.  They were nice children,
relaxed and open with adults.

"Have you been to my house before?"  one of them asked.

"Yes, but the last time I came you'd gone to bed already."

When Andrew was wheeled in he solemnly shook hands with Julie, his dark
eyes anything but thrilled to see her.  He was dog-tired, his mind full
of the day just passed.  Dressed in the smart, private school blazer
and grey shorts which set him apart from her own son, a smudge of earth
on his forehead showed he was a boy like any other.  The Filipina took
charge of him.

Rosemary touched Julie on the arm and beckoned.

The large living room had a huge Persian rug on the floor and a window
bay that had been extended and glazed like a conservatory.  Yuccas and
flowering plants decorated it.  They sat on softly upholstered cane
chairs and put their teacups on a small glass table.

"So why did you ask if I read the Chronicle?"  Rosemary asked, burning
with curiosity.  Julie bent down and extracted the cutting from her
handbag.

"Because of this."

Rosemary took it from her.  As she read it, her jaw dropped.

"Oh Julie, how awful for you!  And God .. . your father!  I had no
idea.  I'm so sorry."  She leaned forward and put her hand on Julie's
knee.

"It must have been a dreadful shock."

"It was.  But what d'you think?"

Rosemary frowned.

"About .. . ?"

"The article.  Was I mad to get involved in defending him?  You know
what a crook he was."

"Yes but he was your dad.  You loved him."

Julie had always envied Rosemary's uncomplicated perspective on
relationships, but on this occasion it wasn't enough.

"You're not answering my question, Rosie."

"Aren't I?  I can't really say any more than that."

"Why not?  You must have a view."

"Don't be silly!"  she scolded.

"I don't have views.  Except on things to do with children.  But I can
see that you think you were mad to get involved.  It's written all over
your face."

"Well .. . half of me does."

"And the other half "Suspects that MI6 did kill my father."

Rosemary let a nervous hand flutter up to her mouth.  This was
territory well beyond anywhere she wanted to go.

"Well if you really think that, why not tell the papers about it?"

"Because of the man involved," Julie breathed, looking down at her
hands.

Rosemary's brown eyes widened.  She looked at the picture more
closely.

"This man .. . ?"

"Yes.  He's probably going to lose his job because of me."

"But if he .. ."  The hand floated up to the mouth again.

"If he killed your father .. ."

"That's just the problem, Rosie.  I mean, I'm sure he works for them,
but I don't really think he could have done it.  Not him personally.
He's too nice."

"Too nice," Rosemary whispered, her eyes widening further.

"Julie!  You're not saying what I think you're saying?"

"I don't know what I'm saying, Rosie.  Except that I'm in a dreadful
mess over it."  She felt tearful all of a sudden and turned her face to
the window.

Rosemary leaned forward again and squeezed her friend's hand.  At times
she'd envied Julie her degree, her career and her exotic parentage, but
just now she was extremely glad to be a mere wife and mother.

"Have you talked to Max about it?"

"God no," Julie spluttered.

"With Max I talk about European politics which I know nothing about
fashion, food and the best ski resorts.  Occasionally we discuss
virology, since that's the subject that brought us together, but most
of the time our chat is simply a polite prelude to the real reason for
his wanting to see me."

Rosemary tittered, glad to be back on ground she understood.

"But you sound so bitter," she frowned.

"Last time we spoke you were perfectly happy with the relationship."

"I was," Julie confirmed.

"It gave a bit of glamour to my life.  It was a break from Liam and
from routine, a chance to travel a little.  And Max always paid for
everything air fares, a separate hotel room for the sake of my
reputation he said, although of course it was for his.  Meals.
Concerts.  Ski passes "A true sugar daddy."

"Yes.  "Julie allowed herself a little smile.

"But actually he's not bad in bed either."  The two women giggled.

"So, you got yourself a sexy fifty-year-old millionaire!"

"Sexy .. Julie pondered the word.

"That might be over-egging it.  He's a good physical fit, but .. .
well, he doesn't have much imagination."

"Oh dear.  A stolid fifty-year-old.  Winds up the cuckoo clock, then
lights out.  Tell me, does he keep his socks on in bed?"

They giggled again sillily.  Julie was terribly glad she'd come.
Laughter had been in short supply in the past few days.

"Oh Rosie, I don't know what I'm doing."  She was in need of explaining
things to herself as much as to her friend.

"It was the sort of relationship I thought I could do with.  Pleasure
without involvement.  I mean, whenever I do get involved with someone
it goes horribly wrong."

Rosemary's eyes harboured thoughts which she wasn't revealing.

"What?"  Julie demanded.

"Oh .. . no.  It's none of my business .. ."

"I'm making it your business.  What did you want to say?"

Rosemary's mouth puckered as if she were sucking a lemon.

"It's just that I've always felt the reason your relationships go wrong
is that you try too hard and give in too much.  Tell me to shut up."

"No.  Go on."

"You see, you're such a lovely person, with a wonderful personality,
yet when you fall for a man you suppress it all.  You become a mouse.
His plaything.  It's almost as if you're frightened of letting yourself
be yourself in case you put him off."

Julie stared at her hands.  Her mother had said the same.  She knew it
to be true but could do nothing about it.  Whenever she fell in love
with a man, she was ready to be his slave.

Beyond the kitchen door a child began wailing, then they heard the
raised voice of the Filipina trying to calm things.  Instinctively
Rosemary stood up, but checked herself and sat down again, realising
that the 'child' in front of her was in greater need of help than her
daughter.

"You should try to be yourself more," Rosemary added, always reluctant
to give advice.

"I've tried.  But it's how I am, Rosie.  It's the way I'm made."

Rosemary took a deep breath, about to say it was because Julie had
spent her entire life trying to win her father's approval, but she
reached for the silver teapot instead.

"More?"

"Please."

Rosemary spilled a little on the tray and dabbed it up with a linen
napkin.

"But returning to the subject of Max," she continued.

"The relationship's begun to lose its charm, is that what you're
saying?"

Julie nodded, her misery written on her face.

"So, have you decided to stop seeing him?"

Julie sighed.

"I think I should.  He's asked me to go to Vienna this weekend.  The
ticket's booked.  I just have to pick it up.  But I'm not sure about
anything at the moment."

"No.  Because you're in a bit of a state, poor love."  She picked up
the newspaper cutting and re-read it.

"God!"  Julie hissed.

"Why can't I ever get things right?"

"Oh you do, dearest Julie.  Lots of things."

"As long as it's not to do with men.  I always fall for the wrong
ones."

Rosemary looked up and cocked her head on one side.

"Did I just miss something there, darling?"

Julie reddened slightly.

"I just keep thinking about him, that's all."

Rosemary waved the press cutting at her.

"You don't mean this one?  You're not seriously telling me you've
fallen for the man you've exposed to the papers?"

Julie pressed her lips together and shrugged.

"Oh dear."

"Yes.  Oh dear, Rosie.  I can't seem to get him out of my head.  It's
those pheromones or whatever they're called."

Rosemary gawped at her, lost for words.

"Sometimes I think I'm a sackful of chemicals rather than a human
being.  Hit me with the right whiff and I turn from a decisive,
professional female into a broody duck."

"Now you're being daft."  Rosemary tugged at a tuft of her hair,
twisting it round her finger.

"I think I've lost the thread of all this somewhere," she cautioned.
The truth was she was beginning to suspect her friend might be having
some sort of breakdown.

"Go back a few pages and explain how this divinely complicated
infatuation of yours came about?"

Julie told her about her father's death in Africa, the letters and the
mysterious shipment he'd referred to as red mercury.  Then she
described how the Chronicle people had cajoled her into entrapping
Simon Foster.  She talked about the backlash from the laboratory after
the newspaper piece came out and the grilling she'd been given by the
police that morning.

"You poor, poor thing," said Rosemary when she'd finished.

"If it had been me going through all that I'd have just burst into
tears and found a hole in the ground to hide in."

"No you wouldn't.  Anyway, you'd never have got yourself into such a
mess in the first place."  Talking it through had left Julie more
undecided than ever.  She leaned forward and grabbed her friend's
hands.

"Oh Rosie .. . what should I do?  Please tell me what I should do."

Rosemary pulled her old friend into her arms and gave her a huge hug.

"I don't know.  But whatever you do, be careful."

Sam was met on the air jetty at Heathrow by a fidgety man called
Bennett from SIS security who wore fawn trousers and a navy blue
pullover.  He led him down a staircase onto the tarmac and into a
waiting car.

"We're taking you out the back way, just in case," Bennett explained as
he drove off.

"The media have rumbled your flat already.  Been staking it out since
lunchtime.  Nice neighbours you've got.  At least three of them phoned
the papers."

"They'd sell their own mothers if the price was right," Sam grumbled.

"Anybody give you trouble in Scotland?"

"Not exactly.  Although there's one bloke in Rothesay who knows more
than he should."

"Give me a name and address and I'll have him taken out for you."

Sam smiled grimly at the joke.  He settled back in the passenger seat
as they sped through the security barrier and onto the loop road that
led to the exit tunnel.  His controller had called him shortly before
he boarded the flight from Glasgow.  They were to meet later in the
afternoon.

Bennett glanced at him as he drove onto the motorway.

"That clean chin helps," he commented.

"Might be wise to lighten the hair though, and start wearing
spectacles.  We can arrange all that this afternoon."

Sam cringed at the thought of another identity-change.

"I'd rather leave it a day or two.  I'll be going abroad as soon as
I've fixed a flight."

During his wait for the shuttle from Glasgow he'd reflected on his
conversation with Jo Macdonald, and been left dissatisfied.  He'd begun
to question whether a young prostitute could really have known whether
the information his father passed on was sensitive or not and decided
he needed to hear it from the horse's mouth.  The 'horse' being Gunther
Hoffmann.

He'd made a phone call from Glasgow airport to an old friend in the
German equivalent of MI6, the END.  Fifteen minutes later he'd been
called back with confirmation that Hoffmann was currently at his
Karl-Marx Hof apartment in Vienna and, judging by recent form, was
unlikely to be going anywhere.

But before heading for the Austrian capital, there were two pressing
issues to sort out.  The first was to find out where he stood with his
employers, and the second was to procure a change of clothes.  The
latter could prove difficult.  If the media were outside his apartment,
returning there to get them would be impossible.

"So where are you taking me?"  he asked Bennett.

"We've found you a room in Haling for now.  In what they call a private
hotel."

"Sounds like a knocking shop."

"No such luck.  It's full of refugees.  Half of them Ukrainian."

"Ukrainians!"  Sam jumped.

"Have you read my file?"

"Course I have.  Don't worry.  You'll be in good company.  These people
are dodging the mafiya too."

"I don't think much of your sense of humour."

"It's only for a few days until the grownups decide what to do with
you."

"What about my stuff?"

"All done.  One of my girls went to your place last night.  There's a
couple of suitcases waiting for you in Ealing."

"Efficient of you."

The Arcadia Private Hotel was in a side street off the Uxbridge Road. A
dozen rooms, the rent for eleven of them paid by the local authority.
Bennett showed him upstairs and handed him the key.  The room was
little wider than a corridor.  There was a single divan with his cases
on it and a cracked sink in the corner.

"I'll be leaving you now, sir."  Bennett stood by the door with a silly
smirk on his face.

"S'pose you're after a tip."

"Never know your luck.  Here."  He handed Sam a card.

"Give me a ring when you want your hair done.  My bloke who "does" is
as gay as a glee club, but he's got a lovely touch."

"Thanks a million."

When the security man had gone, Sam peeked out of the grubby window.
The yard at the back was of cracked concrete surrounded by bricks
blackened by decades of pollution.  Two small children played on
rickety tricycles while their mother watched listlessly.  All three
were black and very beautiful.  Somali or Ethiopian, Sam guessed.
Refugees from the sort of injustice he'd spent his life fighting.  A
fight which Julie Jackman had sabotaged with a single flick of an
eyelash.

He moved back from the window and contemplated the plain, peeling walls
of the stale-smelling bedroom.  His mind flashed back to the cell in
Baghdad two years ago, his fate then also determined by a woman.

He flipped open the suitcases and was impressed.  Bennett's girl had
chosen sensibly.  He would need one of the bags for Vienna, so began
hanging some of the clothes in the cheap wardrobe.  When he'd done, he
sat on the bed to gather his thoughts.

Vienna.  A city of spies, where twelve months ago an elusive Russian
called Vladimir Kovalenko had conned a gullible trader called Harry
Jackman into shipping nuclear weapons to Arab terrorists, telling him
the boxes contained a fool's gold known as red mercury.  Vienna, where
a few years earlier an old Stasi spymaster called Gunther Hoffmann had
set up his retirement home because he wanted to be away from the witch
hunts in his newly united homeland, and to be close to his beloved
opera.  Two men who held answers to most of the questions hammering in
his head.

Hoffmann would be the easier to find.  He'd chosen a sedentary life
after the winding up of the Staatssicherheitsdienst.  Sam had last met
him a few years after his move to Vienna, by which time he and his wife
had been well settled in their small apartment.  He'd claimed to have
turned his back on his old world an assertion that wasn't entirely
true, Sam had discovered a short while later.  In exchange for being
spared further investigation by the German authorities, Hoffmann had
agreed to spy for them on former KGB contacts setting up businesses in
Vienna.  Sam was crossing his fingers that Kovalenko might have been
one of them.

He had little doubt that the "Johann' who'd blackmailed his father was
none other than Hoffmann himself.  A field officer in a foreign land
was exactly the sort of job he'd have been doing twenty-seven years
ago.  And it would have been typically pretentious of him to have used
a composer's Christian name for his legend.  Also characteristic to
have taken such a personal interest in the fate of his victims the man
had an odd compassionate streak.

It was as a direct consequence of the dismantling of the former East
German spy network that Sam had met Hoffmann.  Stasi documents
uncovered by German counter-intelligence in 1991 had revealed the
existence of "Papagena', a female informer who'd operated inside
British Rhine Army headquarters during the last decade of the cold war,
her controller being Gunther Hoffmann.  Sam had been sent to Berlin to
sit in on the interrogation of him being conducted by the German BfV
counterintelligence service, but the man had refused to reveal
Papagena's name or position, saying that to identify her would wreck
her marriage and alienate her children.  His concern for her well-being
had seemed strangely decent in a man who'd exploited people so
ruthlessly for so many years.  Only when Papagena developed a terminal
illness in 1995 had Hoffmann agreed to name her.

Sam's sporadic contacts with the old spy had spanned the best part of
five years.  He'd even grown to like the man, a clever, cunning foe
from a nobler era when spying had been fuelled by ideology rather than
cash.  Sam had pondered whether to telephone him to arrange a meeting,
but had decided it wiser to turn up unannounced.  The German had a
knack of avoiding confrontations when he knew one was coming.

Sam extracted the telephone from his rucksack, intending to ring the
airlines about flights to Vienna.  When he switched it on, he saw the
message icon flashing.

"Damn!"  He kicked himself for not asking Bennett for a replacement SIM
card.  Julie Jackman or Tom Craigie had probably sold his number to
every media outlet in the country by now.  There'd be invitations from
Newsnight, offers from the tabloids.  Full of trepidation, he dialled
into voice mail

"You have two new messages.  First message: Mr.  Foster Simon it's
probably mad of me to ring .. ."

The wind left his lungs.  The voice was Julie Jackman's..

"I just wanted to say I am terribly sorry about what happened."

Sam's eyebrows shot up.

"Sorry?"  She soon would be if he had anything to do with it.

"I just got in a total muddle over my father.  And I let myself be
bullied by the press.  I realise I've put you in a terrible position.
I'm really, really sorry.  I shouldn't have done what I did."

Sam listened hard, searching for some give-away in the voice. Something
to back his suspicion that there was a press man at her elbow.

"If you'd only let me see you again, I'd try to explain."

"Of course, sweetheart.  Any bloody time you like."  The submissive
tone she'd injected into her voice incensed him.

"But I don't imagine for one moment that you'd agree .. ."

"Too bloody right."  The woman was out of her tiny mind.

"But just in case, you can reach me through e-mail.  I'm avoiding
phones at the moment."  She rattled off a web address.

"Well um .. . goodbye.  And again please accept my apologies."

He erased the message and disconnected the line.  The second message
could wait.  He leaned back against the wall savouring what he would do
to the woman if by some chance they met again.  The dark side of his
nature fancied murder, but the more reasonable part simply wanted to
shake some sense into her.  To make the silly bitch understand once and
for all that he hadn't killed her father.

The phone trilled.  He froze, imagining it was her again.  He let it
ring until the system diverted to voice mail  A couple of minutes later
he dialled in.

"You have two new messages.  First message: Hi.  I've been thinking of
you all day.  Give me a ring if you get the chance."

Sam smiled.  Good old Steph.  A friend in need.

"Second message: King me will you?  I'm in your neighbourhood and we
need to meet."  Duncan Waddell, sounding like he had a ferret up his
arse.

Sam rang straight back.  His controller was parked round the corner
from the Arcadia Hotel.

"I'll be there in five," he told him.

"Make it four.  The clock's ticking."

Sam stood up, collected his thoughts for a moment, then left the room,
locking the door behind him.

Waddell had found a parking meter on the main road a couple of hundred
yards away.  There was ten minutes on the clock.  Sam got into the car,
which smelled overpoweringly of Waddell's deodorant.

"We'll keep this short," his controller snapped, not looking at him.

"I can tell you there's been blood spat today.  There are even people
washing their mouths out after talking about you."

"Do me a favour ..."  Sam complained.  The car rocked as a bus passed,
its brakes squealing as it approached a stop.

"The point is this, laddie.  If it were simply Jackman's word against
ours on Bodanga, the FCO would have walked it.  But with your
guilty-looking mug shot in the paper, the opposition's been given a
huge shove up the ladder."

Sam let his head fall back against the rest.

"So?  What's the verdict?"

"Still making up their minds."

"About?"

"Whether to stuff your corpse in an incinerator, or to invite you to
find a new job on the other side of the world."  Waddell spat out the
words, still staring straight ahead.

"Thanks, Duncan."

"I can tell you that my vote was for the former," the Ulsterman added
without a trace of humour.

"Of course."

"Heavens above, man!  D'you ever stop to think how much easier your
life would be if you followed your instincts instead of your gonads?"

"For me sex is an instinct, Duncan."

Waddell let out an explosion of air.

"But one to be kept separate from your professional activities, for
Christ's sake!  Anyway, this isn't getting us anywhere."

"No.  Look, perhaps we can hurry up with the execution.  I've got a
plane to catch."  Sam had already told Waddell about Hoffmann and
Vienna, when they'd spoken on the phone from Glasgow.

"The truth is there were two options," Waddell went on, calmer now.

"One plan was for you to make yourself available to the press and
proclaim your innocence.  The other was for you to keep well out of the
way until the media get bored with the story."

"And?"

"The latter.  Nobody trusted you to pull the first option off."

"Quite right too.  Duelling with lions isn't my thing."

"So get yourself over to Vienna, but make it a quick in and out.  I
need to be able to produce you if I have to."

"Why?"

"For the politicians.  The PM's on holiday in Italy, but the
opposition's stirring like crazy.  Determined to make Bodanga and Harry
Jackman's death the scandal that gets them back from the wasteland."
Waddell tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.

"Vienna," he murmured.

"Seems to be the centre of the whole damned universe all of a
sudden."

"How d'you mean?"  Sam turned to stare at him.

"Our American cousins have heard unconfirmed reports that Kovalenko's
back in town .. ."

"Ah .. . But no actual sighting of him?"

"Not yet."

"Anything more on the backpack nukes, or bin Laden?"

"Nothing.  However it is still the favoured view of what this Jackman
business is all about."

"And the other Vienna connections?"

Waddell turned to face him at last.

"You may find this rather interesting."  He watched for Sam's
reaction.

"Julie Jackman was there when her father struck the red mercury deal
with Vladimir Kovalenko a year ago."

"Was she, by God?"  Sam blinked.  He was suddenly remembering the words
in Jackman's letter.  Kovalenko knew about you, Julie.  Now it made
sense.

"The lying little minx."

"We found their names on the hotel records," Waddell continued.

"Denise Corby and a Special Branch officer worked her over yesterday
morning.  Julie claimed she'd been there for an HIV conference.  Said
being there at the same time as her old man was just a coincidence."

"Bollocks.  Nothing's a coincidence with that woman."

"Actually her story checks out," Waddell assured him.

"There was an HIV conference.  And Denise's view is that she probably
didn't know what deals her dad was sewing up there."

Sam shook his head.  There was no room for charity in his heart.

"If I've learned one thing about Julie Jackman, it's not to believe a
sodding word she says."

There was a sharp tap on the window.  Sam flinched.  When he turned to
look it was a couple of black schoolgirls not more than ten years old
giggling and making faces at him.  A bit of fun on the way home.  He
made as if to open the door and they quickly ran off.

"Ever get the feeling the whole fucking world's against you?"  he
muttered.

"When you're around, quite often," Waddell assured him.

"Now you'd better be running along before those kiddies tell the cops
you tried to abduct them.  Touch base with the station head in Vienna.
His name's Patrick de Vere Collins.  You'll be okay there.  He's not as
posh as you'd think from the name.  And we've filled him in.  Keep in
regular touch with me.  Every few hours.  And for God's sake keep your
head down.  And," he added as an afterthought, 'keep your goddam dick
in your trousers."

Sam decided against hitting him.  He had a nasty feeling that inside
the Intelligence Service, Waddell could well be the only friend he had
left.

Stockholm, Sweden

About a thousand miles north-east of London, in the Swedish capital, a
thirty-two-year-old schoolteacher with straight, fair hair that flopped
forward across his forehead locked the filing cabinet in the staff room
where he'd been working late, then crossed to the door, latching it as
he left.  There'd been a spate of vandalism in the school in recent
months with pupils' personal files being doctored and teachers'
property being stolen or destroyed.

The young teacher had spent the past hour marking his class papers for
a history test which he'd set that afternoon, its subject being Gustav
II Adolf, the seventeenth-century Swedish king who'd died in action
battling to victory over the Germans.  A compelling leader of dazzling
abilities who'd turned Sweden into the strongest power in Europe, he
was a man every Swedish child had to know about before completing their
education.  The Lion of the North.  A character the teacher admired.

The school was in Stockholm's western suburbs, an area where the fabled
prosperity of this neutral nation was not particularly obvious.  As he
drove down the road towards the home where his wife and young son would
be looking forward to his return, the teacher glanced at a group of
youths on the pavement who were darker skinned than his fellow
countrymen.  Turks or Albanians, he guessed.  The sight of them made
him bristle with dislike.  Being a rational man, he'd often tried to
analyse why he felt afraid of these swarthy foreigners.  As a tourist
he'd seen them in their own lands, so it wasn't a fear of being
attacked by them.  It was a cultural matter, fear that their alien ways
would spread through his land like knotweed, choking the native customs
into extinction.

He turned off the main road into a recently built shopping centre,
finding a parking space easily.  Most shops would be closed by this
hour of the afternoon.  He removed the radio and locked the car,
checking nothing thievable had been left lying on the seats.  A neatly
paved path led him to the retail area and to the cafe where he planned
to take a quick cappuccino before returning to his family.  The girl
behind the bar beamed in recognition, taking his money for the drink
and for the use of the computer.  He watched her pull at the lever on
the espresso machine, then squirt steam into a jug of milk.  An
attractive girl, dark haired and round hipped, with disturbingly
perfect teeth.  As the milk hissed and boiled she flashed him a smile.
When she'd done her business he carried the cup and saucer to the PC at
the end of the row where the screen would not be overlooked by
others.

While the machine dialled its way onto the net, he sipped at the
coffee, glad she hadn't made it too hot.  Then, checking he wasn't
being watched, he connected with Hotmail and found two messages waiting
for him.  The first was the usual spam from a porn pedlar, but the
second was the one he'd been expecting.  A message in English from a
man he'd never met, a man who called himself Simon.

Comrade!  The Revolution is under way.  The time has come for you to
act.  The comrades in England, France and Germany have already shown
their strength.  Now it is your turn!

Always the exclamation marks.

You will not be alone.  All across Europe this weekend, men of right
minds will stand up to be counted.  It is war, comrade!  We must fight
for what we believe in, a Europe preserved for the people who have
inherited it from their ancestors!

Are you ready to commit yourself to the Lucifer Network?  You have
talked bravely of your intentions.  Will you act this weekend?

The target and the method are for you to choose.  I'm sorry it has not
been possible for my people to bring you weapons.  Our resources are
limited, but they will grow as our campaign of action grows.

Remember!  It is only the acts of extreme violence which attract the
attention of the media and the politicians.  There must be deaths!
There is no other way if the revolution is to gather pace and the enemy
is to be defeated.

I wait to hear from you.  To know you are with us and that you are not
a coward.  That you will join in the action this weekend which will
shake the pillars in Brussels.

The teacher picked up his coffee cup and drained it.  He looked towards
the counter.  The girl sat behind it on a stool, reading a paperback.
Coward.  In truth he feared he was one by nature.  If not he might have
made some effort to chat up that beautiful creature with the perfect
teeth.  To capitalise on her inviting smile.

But now there was a much greater reason for him to show his mettle.  A
chance to help change the political direction of the European
continent.  A dream that could only become reality if hundreds like
himself were ready to fight for what they believed in, so that
thousands, then millions would be inspired to join them.  He turned
back towards the screen and clicked on "New Message'.

Yes, he typed.  We are ready.  The enemy will suffer losses this
weekend.

He looked at what he'd written then added an exclamation mark at the
end.

London 9.00 hrs

Sam climbed the stairs to his second-floor room and let himself in. The
air inside smelled stale and sad.  Morbidly he imagined some miserable
refugee sitting here contemplating suicide, even carrying it out.  Or
some homeless, redundant car salesman wan king himself to sleep.  He
would be glad to leave this place.

After finishing with Waddell he'd booked a seat on a flight to Vienna
for first thing the next morning, then phoned Stephanie.  She'd had
half an hour to spare before picking up her man Gerry from a Paris
flight at Heathrow.  They'd sat in her car round the corner from the
hotel, eating greasy hamburgers while she commiserated over 'the media
coverage and told him about the interview with Julie Jackman that
morning.  He'd found her more preoccupied than usual.  The Southall
bomb investigation was getting nowhere, she'd said, describing the
detective in charge of the investigation as a brain-dead moron.

"But something big's starting," she'd confided.

"I can feel it in my water.  There's something very nasty going on. The
deaths in Southall are the tip of an iceberg.  Before long we'll all
have our work cut out."

When their time was up she'd kissed him on the cheek and wished him
well.

And now he had to pack.  Then he needed to catch up on some sleep if he
wasn't going to stumble round Vienna like the undead.

"Damn!"

He'd wanted to take his file on Hoffmann with him, a dossier compiled
over his years of dealings with the man.  To jog his memory.  The
papers were in a safe in the flat in Brentford.  He pulled Bennett's
card from his trouser pocket, thinking he'd get him to send his girl
back.  But it was after ten.  It'd take an age to find someone to do
his bidding.

He decided to go himself.  A foolish idea on the surface, but the more
he thought about it the more it appealed.  He'd take a look first to
see if the snappers were still hanging around.  If they were, he'd give
up on the plan or else treat it as a challenge to get in and out
without being spotted.

He dug into the suitcase which he hadn't emptied.  The headquarters
girl had packed some of the scruffier clothes he used for disguises. He
put on a pair of old jeans and some grubby trainers, then slipped a
faded fleece over a grey sweatshirt and found a knitted hat to pull
down over his hair.  With a shuffling gait and a surly stare, he'd be
the sort of street trash sane people avoided eye contact with.

He caught a bus to Haling Broadway, then another to Kew Bridge at this
hour it was mostly youngsters travelling, heading for a late night out.
As the bus passed the block where he had his flat, he looked for
evidence of people waiting for him, but saw none.  He got off on the
bridge and walked slowly back, keeping to the shadows.  Fifty metres
short of the block he loitered in an office doorway and watched.  A
police car cruised by, its occupants eyeing him.  The vehicle stopped
for a better look, then drove on.

Sam decided to move.  He'd considered entering the block by the fire
escape, but remembered it was alarmed.  He would use his card and go in
the front.  There were no security staff in the building at night, the
place being watched on CCTV by a control centre half a mile away.

With one last check for press men, he slid his pass through the reader
and pushed on the door as the lock clicked.  The lift took him to the
floor below his own, then he used the emergency stairs for the last
flight.  The fire door onto the main landing creaked as he opened it.
He peered through the narrow gap and looked along the full length of
the passageway.  Doors to the flats on either side, all closed.  No one
waiting by the lifts.  He walked swiftly and silently to his own front
door and let himself in.

Inside, he used the torch he'd brought, the beam shaded by his fingers.
With windows everywhere, turning on lights would be a give-away.  In
the living room he removed the small painting from the wall above his
computer.  Behind it was a wall safe, which he opened with a key.  He
pulled out a plastic folder containing a photograph of Hoffmann and
several pages of biographical notes, then closed the safe again.

He felt pleased with himself.  He looked across at the drinks cabinet,
tempted to sink a whisky or two, then remembered the damned thing
played a tune that would be audible through the walls a heads-up to all
those neighbours who'd taken bags of silver from the media.  He'd got
what he came for, so after a quick check of the security camera, he
slipped back into the corridor.

The emergency stairs took him all the way down to the underground
garage.  His dander was up by now and he'd decided to take the car.  He
paused in the doorway, eyes probing the dimly lit cavern that reeked of
petrol and rubber.  Then, convinced he was the only human there, he
stepped towards the Mondeo, pulling his keys from his pocket.

Suddenly he heard a click.

His heart stopped.  He spun round, saw the glint of the knife, then the
face of the man holding it.  His mind tumbled back two years.  The
grimacing visage inching towards him was last seen in the catacombs of
Odessa.  The man was a shpana a mafiya bodyguard Sam had all but killed
when he'd rubbed out his boss.  Cold, unblinking eyes boring into his,
checking, checking that this was indeed the man he'd been sent to
murder.

Sam made a feint towards his car then darted back to the door he'd just
come through.  The assassin was fast and agile despite the bullets Sam
had put in him two years ago.  As he pounded up the stairs, he heard
the man's trainers crunch behind him.  He kicked a waste bing into the
path of his pursuer, then shouldered the bar of the fire exit and burst
into the garden, blind terror powering his legs.

The gate to the towpath was locked.  Sam swiped his card and tugged,
slipping through.  He clicked the gates behind him just as the knife
slashed down, then melted into the darkness of the towpath, telling
himself the killer would have a gun, to be used if the blade proved
ineffective.  He ran, weaving from side to side in anticipation of a
bullet.  Legs brushing nettles and willow herb, he heard the clang of
wrought iron as the Ukrainian climbed the railings, then a light thud
as he landed on the path behind him.  To his right converted barges
glowed with light.  Geese honked.

Sam's feet hit rock.  He pitched forward, his knees slamming into
something hard.  Clutching the Hoffmann folder with his left, his right
hand felt bricks.  He remembered builders had been working on a wall
here.  He struggled to stay on his feet but the ground rolled away
beneath him.  Scaffolding poles.  He crashed on his back beside them,
his hand grabbing, fingers closing on a pipe that proved mercifully
short.  The shpana loomed above him in the gloom, a faceless shape
lunging down with the knife.  Sam rolled and swung the pole, enjoying
the thump of steel against bone.  He heard a gasp and a scrabbling on
the ground as the killer looked for his weapon.  Sam clambered to his
knees, gripping the steel tightly.  He jabbed forward into the
darkness, heard teeth break and a howl of pain.  Then he was running
again.

Ahead were the lights of the bridge.  Cars passing.  Behind him a
couple of shots cracked out.  The shpana was getting desperate.
Weaving, he reached the steps to the roadway.  A bullet chipped the
stonework as he pounded up them, his head tucked below the balustrade.
He flagged down the first vehicle that came his way.

"Stop, for fuck's sake," he hissed.

"Get me outa here!"

But he was still holding the scaffolding pole and the car swerved and
accelerated.  Realising he must look like an escapee from an asylum, he
ran across the road and skittered down the steps on the far side of the
bridge to a low road running parallel to the river.  A glance behind
showed no sign of his pursuer.  Dumping his weapon in a hedge, he dived
into a side street.  He knew his way around here and prayed that his
assailant wouldn't.  Left, then right, then left again and he was on
the main road.  A bus was disgorging a passenger at a stop thirty paces
away.  He ran, waving wildly, shouting to it to wait.

"Thanks, mate," he panted as he swung himself aboard.

"Where to?"

"Anywhere, chum.  Absolutely anywhere.  Just close that fucking door
and drive."

"Not until you pay.  Where you goin' to?"

Sam restrained his desire to reach for the door lever himself and dug
into his pocket for coins.

"Two stops," he croaked, having no clue where the bus was heading.  He
fired a wild glance over his shoulder.

"Sixty pence."

Sam took his ticket and slumped in a seat, conscious of other
passengers looking at him.  No holes in his body.  No blood.  A
miracle.  He began to tremble, the shock catching up with him.  For two
years he'd lived with the threat of a revenge attack by the
Voroninskaya.  Now it had happened.  And why?  Because a pretty but
malicious woman had caused his picture to be plastered all over the
media.

He leaned his head against the window glass.  The dark side of his soul
had taken over.  No room for compassion any more.  He needed to hurt
Julie.  To hurt her badly in whatever way it took.  To damage her life,
to perch it on the edge of a precipice in the same way she'd done to
his.

THIRTEEN

The Adriatic Sea, off the coast of Montenegro Wednesday morning

DEEP BELOW THE surface of the Adriatic Sea, some 200 kilometres east of
the Italian coastline, a long black shape sped westwards, unseen,
unheard and undeclared.  HMS Truculent 280 feet of two-inch-thick
welded steel, filled with men and electronics was moving towards a spot
on the chart where a helicopter would meet them after dark that
evening.  The submarine's mission to eavesdrop on the rapidly
developing conflict in Kosovo was over and there was a bagful of
interception tapes to be offloaded.  Inside the nuclear-powered hull,
130 souls had lived in artificial light and scrubbed air for two and a
half months.  The end was in sight, however.  By Friday night they'd be
in Crete for some much-needed shore leave with wives and girlfriends,
before the long haul back to Britain through the Strait of Gibraltar.

On the uppermost of Truculent's three decks, just forward of the
control room, five blue-shirted sonar specialists listened on padded
headphones to the newly detected clatter of a diesel engine a few miles
to the north of their course.  The sound room was small.  If one man
moved, others had to bend their backs.  A dozen raster screens filled
two sides of the space, the herringbone patterns and green smudges on
their displays logging every detectable sound in the water around
them.

One of the two leading artificers manning the 'waterfall' screens for
the bow sonar swung round in his seat.

"One shaft, three blades, chief."  The youth was little over twenty,
his accent from Plymouth, Trucuknt's home port.

Behind him on a tall stool his watch leader nodded.

"Fishing vessel," he confirmed, pressing the headset microphone against
his lips and clicking the transmit switch.

"Ops, sonar control."  He spoke in a high, clear voice.

Beyond a thin bulkhead, in the submarine's control room, watch officer
Lieutenant Harvey Styles heard the intercom call and swung his seat to
face the screens of the Submarine Automated Command System known as

SMACS.

"Bearing zero-five-seven, one shaft, three blades, diesel engine
audible," the sonar controller announced.

"No evidence of trawl.  Suggest small merchant vessel, range outside
ten thousand yards."

"Thanks, sonar control."

No threat to them at that range, but one to keep an eye on.  Nets were
a submariner's nightmare.

"Cut it through."

"Cut.  Track eight-six-seven."

A small green square appeared on the SMACS VDU, showing the fishing
vessel's position relative to the submarine.  A thin line indicated its
heading.

"We have that, sonar.  Thanks," the SMACS chief acknowledged.

"If he stays on that course we don't have a problem, men," Styles
announced.

"But if he comes any further south to catch his squid then I can't
promise to stay friends with him."  They were due at periscope depth in
twenty minutes to receive a scheduled radio broadcast.

Harvey Styles was the submarine's Tactical Systems Officer, a short,
broad-shouldered man in a sand-coloured shirt with a fuzz of fair hair
and brown eyes.  As he crossed to the navigator's station to check the
chart, he spotted the captain emerging from his cabin.

"We've got a fishing vessel at more than ten thousand yards, sir, on
green zero-five-seven."

Commander Talbot nodded and strode over to the command seat.

"I don't see any conflict at this stage, sir," said Styles, following
him.

"Thanks, TSO."

Truculent'?"  captain was a stocky, dark-haired man with a deceptively
mild expression, who wore a white, open-necked shirt with his rank
insignia on his shoulders.  Talbot let his gaze wander round the
control room.  Millions of pounds of electronics were packed in here,
controlled by men whose minds -were beginning to cloud with
testosterone in anticipation of the upcoming 'run ashore'.  Brains in
going-home mode could easily lose concentration.  They needed to know
he was watching them.  He stared hard at the Command System screens,
breathing down the necks of the operators.  Then he stood up again.

"You have the submarine, TSO."

"I have the submarine, sir."

Talbot made his way forward past the conning tower access hatch and
into the sound room.

"Let me hear what you've got," he announced, clamping on a pair of
headphones.

The bow sonar operator swung the beams through the three main targets
on the screens.

"The heavy beat is the US carrier the Theodore Roosevelt, sir," the
sonar controller told him.

"Ten miles to the south.  The louder three-blader's a small merchant
vessel heading for Dubrovnik and the lighter beat's the fisherman to
the north of us."

HMS Truculent was a 'special fit' Trafalgar class submarine, whose
primary role was intelligence gathering.  She had experimental sonar
processors on board as well as a sophisticated signals intercept
suite.

Talbot removed the headphones.

"You all happy bunnies in here?"

CPO Smedley eased round on his stool and slipped his own cans halfway
towards the back of his head.

"Shall be, sir, so long as I trap in Souda at the weekend."

"Shouldn't worry, chief.  You usually do."  Smedley had a reputation
for finding women ready to perform for him.

"The wife's not coming out, then?"  he needled.

"Hates flying, sir," Smedley answered, poker-faced.

Talbot suppressed a smile.

"Just watch out for that ouzo," he cautioned.  No one drank alcohol on
board, but they all made up for it on a run ashore.

He left the sound room, stepping into the tiny 'trials shack' opposite,
where the men from GCHQ did their stuff, huddled over scanners and
frequency analysers, picking the interesting bits out of 'enemy' radio
transmissions.  For most of the mission Truculent had loitered at
periscope depth a short distance from the Yugoslav coast, with her
highly sensitive domed intercept mast poking above the surface.  All
transmissions picked up that were deemed significant had been taped for
shipment to Cheltenham and a more detailed analysis.  The last batch
was packed up ready for the rendezvous with the helicopter in a few
hours' time.

There were six GCHQ specialists on board, each with a knowledge of
Russian and Serbo-Croat.  For much of the past two months they'd manned
their scanners around the clock, but at this moment just one of them
was in the trials shack.  Communications Technician Arthur Harris sat
on a padded bench with a map spread out on his knees.

"What're you up to, Chief Harris?"  Talbot demanded.

"Your war's meant to be over."

"Planning my next summer holiday, sir," the CT answered without a
moment's hesitation.  Then he stood up, holding out the sheet of
paper.

"Actually, to be honest, I was hoping for one last bite of the cherry."
He pointed to an island marked on the map, which was a large-scale
sheet of the Adriatic coast.

"When we come up to periscope depth for the broadcast, sir, we be about
fifteen miles south of Lastovo island.  There's a naval base there. 
Just a small one, but I'd be glad of the chance to listen in."

"Don't want to dick around here for long," Talbot warned him.

"Mustn't be late for the budgie."

"Twenty minutes would be better than nothing, sir."

"I'll see what I can do."  He turned towards the door, then
hesitated.

"Oh, just a thought.  If you happen across any cricket scores when
you're listening in, do pass them on."  It was an old joke, wearing a
little thin at this end of the tour.

"Certainly will, sir."

Talbot stepped back into the control room.  They were cruising at
fifteen knots at a depth of eighty metres, halfway between the surface
and the sea bed.  In a few minutes he would slow down and bring the
boat shallower, ready for the raising of the periscope and radio mast
and now the intercept mast too.

Arthur Harris folded his map, deciding to fetch a smaller-scale sheet
which showed all the known telecommunications sites on the Adriatic
islands.  He walked briskly through the control room, down the
companionway to 2 deck and along the passageway leading forward.  As he
passed the galley he caught a whiff of pastry baking.

A few paces short of the forward bunk spaces where the junior rates had
their berths, an open hatch gave onto a ladder down to the 'bomb shop',
the weapons compartment that had been the living quarters for himself
and the other CTs for the past ten weeks.  He swung himself onto the
rungs, taking care not to bang his head on the hatch handle, and
dropped down to the deck below.  Long black Spearfish torpedoes and
Harpoon anti-ship missiles lay strapped on racks behind the polished
brass caps of the launch tubes.  Some of the weapons bays were empty,
however, fitted instead with bunk pallets.  Feet protruded from a
couple of them.  In the gangway between the weaponry were boxes of
spares and recording tapes for the myriad sensors on board.  One of
them contained the CTs' maps and manuals.  To get at it Harris had to
remove two others.

He was of average height with a thick shock of dark hair and a narrow,
expressionless face.  He was unmarried, though not by choice, but at
sea he invented a wife to deter comments from the more homophobic
senior rates.

He glanced up.  Feet were descending from the deck above.  They
belonged to a young, dark-haired sailor whose pretty-boy looks prompted
regular ribbing from some of the older men.  The youth's name was
Griffiths.  Not more than eighteen, Harris reckoned.

"Sorry to disturb you, chief.  Got to clean the place."  Griffiths
spoke softly so as not to disturb those sleeping.

"That's all right.  I'll be gone in a moment."

Harris reached the box he was looking for and opened the lid.  The
orderliness with which he and his team had begun their mission had
rather fallen apart.  There was even an old paperback in there that
he'd finished reading a week ago.

"What's the book, chief?"  Griffiths had come up beside him as he made
his way to the aft end of the compartment looking for anything on the
deck that shouldn't be there.

"Clive Cussler.  It was okay."

"Never get the time, me," Griffiths complained.

"Only reading I do is manuals.  I've got a promotion exam when I get
back to England."

"Good luck 'with it."

"Thanks."

Griffiths moseyed on down to the end of the compartment, then finding
nothing amiss made his way back to the torpedo tubes and began rubbing
their brass caps with a cloth.  Harris remembered hearing that the lad
had got some girl pregnant back in Plymouth and was intending to do the
decent thing.  Married at eighteen.  The thought of so much
responsibility so young made him shudder.

Suddenly the hull began to tilt.  They'd begun the transition to
periscope depth.  He found the map he'd been looking for and replaced
the storage box under the others that had covered it.  He had no
particular reason for wanting to listen in to the Croatian naval base
on Lastovo, but he hated wasting an opportunity when it was there.  He
squeezed past the boxes, then climbed the ladder back to 2 deck.

In the control room, the TSO crossed to the navigator's position and
nudged his fellow lieutenant aside so he could look at the chart.  From
beneath the navigation table a dot of light shone, marking their
position on the chart as plotted by the Ship's Inertial Navigation
System.  The TSO jabbed his finger at it.

"Plus or minus how much, Vasco?"  The SINS had been drifting of late.

"A mile at the most.  When we stick the mast up we'll get a GPS
correction."  A mile of error wouldn't matter in the open sea and the
Global Positioning System satellites would quickly locate them to
within a few metres of their exact position.

Styles liked to throw his weight around when he was officer of the
watch.  He knew he'd make a damned good skipper when he'd passed his
"Perisher'.  Fail the stressful commander's course and he would never
serve in a submarine again.  Pass and he should have his own boat to
drive within five years, so long as the captains he served under didn't
take against him.  Flag rank was what he was aiming for.  A
vice-admiral's job at least.  Maybe even the very top.

He crossed the control room to check data on the small screen next to
the Command System panel.  A graph recorded changes in salinity and the
biological condition of the water around them as they came up from the
depths, all of which could affect the way sound waves reached them.  A
sharp kink in the trace showed they'd passed through a layer that could
have blanketed out noise from the surface directly above them.

Commander Talbot had seen it too.  Warily, he ordered eighteen metres
periscope depth and a speed of three knots.

Styles hovered by the search periscope ready to seize its grips when
the order came to raise it.

"New contact, sir!"  An alert from the sound room.

"Damn!"  Talbot grunted.  The submarine was at its most vulnerable just
below the surface.

"Bearing?"

"Red zero five.  One shaft, five blades.  Large merch."

"Damn!  Starboard thirty," Talbot ordered.  The planes man pulled hard
on his wheel.

"Moving left."  The sonar chief again.

"Range five to seven thousand yards."

"That's better," Talbot muttered.  Far enough for safety and moving
away from them.  Everyone in the control room relaxed.

"Three minutes to the broadcast, sir," Styles cautioned.  If they
missed the slot it'd be four hours before they could try again.

The boat began to wallow in the surface swell, the planes man riding
his controls to keep her level.

"Ops, control.  No more contacts."

"Thanks control.  Raise the search periscope."

The stainless steel shaft hissed up from its well.  Harvey Styles
pressed his face to the soft rubber of the eyepiece.  Water splashed
silently against the outer glass of the sight.  Overhead the sky was
overcast.  The slate grey sea heaved and chopped in a stiff breeze
which flicked spray from the wave crests.  Styles checked the horizon.
Satisfied it was clear ahead of them, he swept the sight through a full
360 degrees.

"No visual contacts, sir."  He began a second sweep to make sure.

"I estimate visibility at five thousand yards."

"The Radar Warner has low level E and F band," another voice shouted.
Civilian radars.  No threat.

"Risk of detection nil."

"Good."  Talbot relaxed.

"Raise the com ms mast and the intercept mast.  Let's make the CTs
happy."

Three minutes later the signals officer reported that the satellite
broadcast from London had been taken in successfully.

"Excellent."  Talbot beamed.  Apart from routine operational matters
the signal should include the solution to yesterday's Telegraph
crossword.  He stepped across to the periscope as Styles relinquished
it.

"Nice sailing weather up there?"

"Depends on your stomach, sir."

A few feet from the control room, Arthur rfarris and two of his fellow
communications technicians hunched over the racks in their shack.
Harris's knowledge of Serbo-Croat was basic, Russian being his main
skill.  He was due to attend a course in the language when he'd
completed his leave at the end of this patrol.  His two companions were
fluent, however.

This far from land their expectations of intercepts were low.  A week
ago they'd been close in to the mainland, monitoring tactical chat
between Serb units in the Kosovo mountains to the north of them. Harris
watched the squiggles on the spectrum analyser, randomly selecting
transmissions to dip into.  Dull stuff, mostly.  Marine band VHP the
ramblings of local boatmen.  If the Croatian Navy was active on
Lastovo, it was being damned quiet about it.  Harris kicked his shoes
off.  His feet had been itching of late some fungal infection between
the toes that seemed resistant to athlete's foot powder.

Suddenly a new spike appeared on the VHP display.  He tuned in quickly,
activating filters to minimise the background hiss to the voices he was
hearing.  The transmitter must have been on low power or at the limits
of its range.

Then he sat bolt upright, pressing the headphones to his ears, his
interest galvanised.  What he was listening to wasn't Serbo-Croat.  It
was Russian.

Coming from a place where no Russians ought to be.

Vienna

Sam's flight touched down at Schwechat Airport just after midday.  The
attack by the shpana from Odessa had left him badly rattled.  Stumbling
into ambushes seemed to be becoming a habit.  Last night after escaping
from the mafiya killer, he'd phoned Bennett with a description of his
assailant, but they'd both known the chances of his being found were
slim.

Sam walked from the arrivals gate past a long line of overpriced
boutiques.  He was dressed in his light grey suit.  A bored official on
the EU passport counter waved him through, then while waiting for his
bag, he queued at the tourist desk and booked a room in a small pension
near the Ringstrasse.

When he'd phoned Hans Kesselring his German intelligence contact
yesterday to check on Hoffmann's whereabouts, he'd asked for an update
on the man when he got to Vienna.  The response was waiting outside the
arrivals door, a copy of Spiegel magazine clutched in his fist.

"Fischer," said the fair-haired German, introducing himself.  He was a
centimetre taller than Sam and wore a dark blue suit.

"I am in post at the Embassy here in Vienna."

"Packer' said Sam, happy that the man's English was okay.  His own
German had become rusty through lack of use.

"Good of you to meet me."

They headed towards the exit and waited until they were in the car
heading in to the city before talking again.

"May I ask why you still have an interest in Herr Hoffmann so long
after he retires?"  Fischer asked.

"History," Sam replied.

"We think he can throw light on something that happened in Britain
twenty-seven years ago."  Sam didn't feel the need to elaborate
further.

Fischer's eyes narrowed.

"So long ago .. . We know little about him at that time.  Many of the
oldest Stasi files were destroyed during the days before the wall came
down and Herr Hoffmann is not a man who gives information unless he
absolutely must."

"I'm well aware of that.  It took me four years to get a name out of
him."

"Ah yes.  Herr Kesselring told me about "Papagena", the woman in the
British army headquarters.  So what exactly do you want to know?"

"Anything you can tell me about him.  Is he still active?"

"I think that he is not.  Or not very.  Herr Hoffmann is nearly
seventy.  He lives with his wife in the Karl-Marx Hof.  They are lovers
of music and fresh air.  They go to concerts and for long walks in the
Wienerwald."

The answer was too glib.

"You don't think he's still active?  You mean he's not sending you
reports any more?"

Fischer's jaw hardened.  Sam suspected he wasn't sure how much he was
allowed to reveal.

"Herr Hoffmann still has good contacts," he replied enigmatically.

"And he still informs us about certain people who do business in
Vienna."

"People like Vladimir Kovalenko .. ."

Fischer glanced sideways and ventured an awkward smile.

"Except we don't think Kovalenko is in Vienna at the moment.  Everybody
is looking for him.  You too?"

"That's not the reason I'm here, no.  But d'you think Hoffmann ever
dealt with Kovalenko?"

"I have not seen his name in Herr Hoffmann's reports.  The truth is
that we don't hear often from him.  The arrangement we made when we
ended his interrogation was a good idea but it has not proved very
useful.  Herr Hoffmann has many loyalties, but they are not to us."

"Loyalties to his old friends, you mean.  I know about that."

Fischer nodded.

"Papagena," he murmured..

"But let me get this straight.  D'you think he's done business with his
old Russian chums here in Vienna?  Like worked with them on some of
their scams?"

"It is possible.  Herr Hoffmann has good connections in the German
speaking world.  He could be very useful to Russians."

"And they would pay good money for those connections?"

"As I have said, we only know what he tell us, Herr Packer.  If he make
money from these people, then he keeps it well hidden."

"No private" Schloss in the Tyrol .. ."

Fischer smiled.

"No private anything.  Herr Hoffmann has strong political principles.
Still very much a socialist, I would say.  Puts the national interest
above personal comfort.  The apartment where he lives has only three
rooms.  He passes a lot of time at the Staatsbibliothek the national
library studying the history of the German peoples.  Every Saturday
afternoon and other days also.  His only big expense is the Opera.  If
he was making big money he would use it for some cause that he believed
in, not spending it on himself."

"When did you last see him?"

Fischer pursed his thin lips.

"Maybe two month ago."

"He contacts you, or you contact him?"

"The first.  As I said, we don't expect much from him these days.  He
is too old.  The Russians in Vienna are most aged thirty to forty."

Sam glanced out of the window as they crossed the wide, brown streak of
the Danube.  He smiled, remembering Hoffmann saying that only a
musician could have convinced the world that Vienna's river was blue.

"So you think he's on the same side as you now?"  Sam suggested.

"Or on no side at all," Fischer answered briskly.

"How long do you stay in Vienna?"

"For as long as it takes.  It'll be my luck to find that Hoffmann's
gone away this morning."

"Your luck is not that bad.  He is still here.  One of my assistants
telephoned him one hour ago to check."

"What?  And mentioned I was coming?"

"Of course not.  He was pretending to offer financial advice.  Here in
Austria there are many companies that make such calls."

"Makes a change from double glazing."

Ten minutes later Fischer dropped him at his hotel.  He handed Sam a
business card.

"Please, before you leave Vienna, you will tell me if you learn
anything interesting?"

"Of course."

Brussels

Commissioner Blanche Duvalier called the meeting to order.  It was
already mid-morning, the session having been delayed by the
late-arriving flight from Vienna bringing in Anders Klason, head of the
EC's new racial equality unit.  Klason was scheduled to give the
opening address, so the day's programme couldn't start without him.

Blanche Duvalier watched Klason settle down at his place in the
horseshoe of the Salle Bertrand at the Commission headquarters.  His
bearing, his bright blue eyes and golden skin made him a godlike
figure.  A Nordic Adonis.  If the opportunity arose she had every
intention of adding him to her list of lovers.  This morning however
there seemed to be something wrong with him.  He was frowning a lot, as
if trying to catch up with himself.  Unsettled by the delayed flight,
she decided.  She would give him a moment to compose himself.

It was an important meeting this morning.  The European Union faced a
punishing influx of refugees from the war-torn Balkans and the bankrupt
states of Eastern Europe.  And matters were worsening, with experts
predicting a catastrophe in Kosovo.  The vast majority of European
citizens had been tolerant of the new arrivals in their midst, but
there'd been demonstrations of intense xenophobia by fascist groups in
several member states, culminating in the violence of last weekend.
Blacks, Asians and Jews had also been subject to renewed hostility in
many parts of the continent.  What the meeting today needed to achieve
was a strategy for dealing with the issue, so that ministers could
discuss it at their next council session in three weeks' time.

Blanche Duvalier looked around her.  A pleasantly spacious conference
room with glass panels at the far end behind which the linguists sat,
ready for their gruelling stint of simultaneous translation.  There
were twenty-six delegates seated at the horseshoe, most of them
appointed by member governments, many of them academics well used to
theorising and pontificating, a good half of them with an excessive
fondness for their own voices.  Her task would be to keep them
ruthlessly to the point.  If she didn't, then the chances of anything
useful coming out of the two-day session were remote.

Thank God they had Klason here to kick things off, she thought.  Anders
was one of the most down-to-earth men she'd ever met.

Anders Klason, however, felt very peculiar this morning.  It had
started when he woke up.  For a few moments he hadn't known where he
was, even though it was his own bed with Nina's warm nakedness beside
him.  At first he hadn't been able to remember what it was he had to do
today.  Then, later, on the journey to the airport, he found he
couldn't remember which airline he was flying with and had needed to
look at his ticket.  Other things had stayed perfectly clear in his
head.  The speech he was to give, and the fact that by making this
journey to Brussels he was avoiding one of his mother-in-law's visits.
But there were gaps.  As if someone had bored holes in his memory.

"Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues," Blanche Duvalier began,
speaking her native French.

"May I welcome you to this meeting and wish us all success in
formulating ideas for countering the resurgence of racism in Europe
which we all fear."

Anders Klason gaped.  The sounds from her mouth weren't words to him at
all, but strange animal twitterings.  He searched the faces of his
fellow delegates.  Attentive.  Listening.  Pretending, all of them.
Pretending things were normal when they so obviously weren't.  A smile
flitted across his face.  This was laughable.  The woman at the desk
bridging the two ends of the horseshoe, whom he thought he knew but now
couldn't quite place, was playing some extraordinary game.  And
everyone else was conniving at it.  Like the Emperor's new clothes.
Everyone except him.  Then he looked closer at the faces around him and
realised there wasn't a single soul here that he recognised.  An
assembly of strangers.  He'd made a terrible mistake.  Gone through the
wrong door.  He pushed the chair back and levered himself to his
feet.

Suddenly he heard his name.  Spoken by the woman at the head of the
table.  He stared at her.  How did she know him?  They were all looking
at him.  Expectant faces.  Total strangers into whose midst he'd
suddenly been dropped.  He had no recollection of how he'd come to this
place, or why.  No idea where this place was.  He stared down at the
desk, his vision strangely tunnelled.  There were papers there with
words that made no sense.  He felt desperately tired.  He knew he must
lie down.

"Anders?"  Concern and curiosity on the woman's face.

Klason wanted out of there.  Back to bed, away from this mistake.  No.
He wasn't all right.  His legs suddenly gave way.

Blanche Duvalier stood up in horror.

"Call an ambulance, someone!"  She walked round the back of the
horseshoe to where Anders lay, his mouth gold fishing eyes fixed on
nothing.  His face was ashen, a tail of saliva dribbled from the corner
of his lips.

"He's had a stroke," she whispered.  She'd seen it before.  A French
government minister with whom she'd had a long affair.  She screwed up
her face.

"Anders!  Can you hear me?  Say something."

But he couldn't.  They didn't know it then, but Anders Klason would
never speak again.

HMS Truculent

Commander Talbot ordered the boat to eighteen metres for the second
time in an hour.  The periscope slid up.  The sea around them was
clear.  They were safe, at a distance of about five miles from Lastovo
island.

He'd diverted from his track towards the evening's rendezvous with the
helicopter at the request of Communications Technician Arthur Harris.
The direction-finding equipment in the intercept mast had located the
source of the Russian voices as being east of the island, in an area of
rocky outcrops which the charts on board described as uninhabited.  The
biggest of them and the most likely source of the transmissions was
called Palagra.  They still had a hundred metres of sea beneath the
keel.  Any closer in and the waters became significantly shallower.

Talbot had been reluctant to deviate from his original course.  He'd
wanted a steady, risk-free transit to their rendezvous with the Lynx
from the frigate HMS Suffolk in six hours' time.  The tapes of the last
ten days of intercepts of Serb and Kosovan military communications were
urgently needed back in the UK.  They still had a hundred miles to run
to the pre-arranged point in the ocean.  Four hours was the minimum at
a full-power dash, but their sonar would be degraded by noise at that
speed.  He preferred a more modest cruising rate.  He'd told the CTs
they could have an hour to play with.  At a pinch he would give them
two.

Lt.  Harvey Styles was studying the chart, familiarising himself with
waters they'd not explored before.  One more hour on duty for him
before the watch changed.  He noted the arrival of the captain's lean
deputy, Lt-Commander Martin Hayes, the only man on board apart from the
skipper who'd passed the command course.

The captain saw him too and stretched.

"Keep the CTs on a tight rein," he cautioned as Hayes took up position
by his elbow.

"Don't want them delaying us so we end up blowing a gasket trying to
make the R.V with the Lynx."

Styles overheard and moved closer to the two senior officers.

"The First Lieutenant's a demon on the exercise bike, sir.  Hook him up
to the shaft and we might get a few more revs out of the propulsor."

Talbot smiled and slid off the command seat.

"I shall be in my cabin.

You have the submarine, First Lieutenant."

"I have the submarine, sir."

Martin Hayes had the race-bred looks of a greyhound, a body on which
there was not an ounce of flesh that wasn't sinew.  Keeping fit was
hard for submariners.  Life on board for most of the men revolved
around work, sleep and large meals.  There was an exercise bike in the
swelteringly hot machinery spaces aft of the reactor, and a running
machine on the lower deck next to the coxswain's office.  Hayes used
them both whenever he could, but most of the crew didn't.

In command of the boat for the next couple of hours, he began to take
stock of their position.  The Command System screen showed half a dozen
small contacts off the coast of Lastovo, none fast moving and all more
than three miles distant.  He crossed to the chart table as Styles
vacated it to take over the periscope from the ship control chief.
Clear of these islands the Adriatic was deep, but if they ever had to
go in amongst them great care would be needed.  The bottom shelved to
less than the sixty metres which was their normal operational
minimum.

Styles's quip about the exercise bike had irritated him.  An innocent
enough witticism to the others, but to Hayes it was just one more jibe.
Six months ago his relationship with the TSO had become unpleasantly
personal, when the girl he planned to marry switched allegiance.  From
the moment this patrol began, Styles had lost no opportunity to talk
about his 'delightful' Frances whenever Hayes was in earshot.  A
Chinese water torture of deliberate insensitivity.

Hayes brushed past Harvey Styles and stepped into the trials shack.
Seeing the First Lieutenant walk in, Arthur Harris removed his
headphones.

"They're not sending at the moment, sir.  Quiet as the grave."

"What exactly did you pick up earlier?"  Hayes asked, perching on a
stool.

"It appeared to be com ms between a boat called the Karolina and
someone ashore.  Two men, the first saying they'd be alongside in five
minutes. Complaining about how many boxes he had on board and how it
wasn't his job to hump them all.  The complaint seemed to work, because
the other man said he'd be at the landing stage to help."

"Holidaymakers bringing in fresh supplies of slivovitz," Hayes
suggested.

"That's not impossible, sir," Harris conceded.

"But a little unlikely.  The Russians go for jazzy resorts like
Limassol where they can flash their money around, not remote Croatian
rocks."

"Well whatever, we can't hang around for ever waiting for them to
transmit again."

"I know that, sir."

Hayes stood up again.

"Keep me posted."

"I will, sir."

Vienna

The air in Vienna was hot and dry, a wind known as the Fohn, blowing in
from the Sahara, a fickle breeze, said to induce migraines in the
susceptible and to drive the suicidal towards their ultimate ambition.
When Sam had come here last, three years ago, it had been early winter,
before the snows had iced the roofs, but with a fetid fog clinging to
the dank waters of the Danube.  Sam had bought Hoffmann a Viertel of
new wine in a Heurige, then been taken back to his flat in the
Karl-Marx Hof to be told at last the real name of the woman who'd spied
on the British Rhine Army headquarters.

Sam left his bag at the pension off the Ringstrasse, then boarded a
U-Bahn heading north from the baroque city centre.  Fifteen minutes
later, the almost empty train emerged from its tunnel, passing
factories and oil storage tanks before terminating at the suburb of
Heiligenstadt on the edge of the Wienerwald.  Facing Sam as he emerged
from the station was the monolithic, ochre and terra cotta apartment
complex built with tax levies by Red Vienna's socialist administration
at the end of the 19205.  He remembered Hoffmann being proud of his new
home's history.

He waited for a bus to pass, then crossed the road and walked through
one of the building's wide arches into an enclosed garden on the far
side of the block.  Young women lounged and chatted on a bench while
their children swung perilously on a climbing frame.  He turned to
stare up at the building.  Social realist statues looked down from
their keystones.  It had puzzled him how Hoffmann had been able to move
from Berlin and immediately find a flat here.  Accommodation was hard
to secure in Vienna Austrians even joined political parties in an
attempt to bump their way up the housing lists.  He'd come to the
conclusion that thirty years in the Stasi must have given Hoffmann a
thick file of Austrian contacts to pressure and cajole.

Sam found the staircase he needed and made his way to the third floor.
He remembered Hoffmann's wife as being a homely woman of indeterminate
shape with drawn-back hair, the sort it was impossible to imagine being
young.  She'd worked as a schoolteacher in East Berlin, he recalled,
but had been forced to retire after the fall of the wall because of her
inability to separate history from dogma.  Sam remembered her stiff
greeting in the small hallway, the doors to all rooms except the lounge
firmly shut.  She'd brought them coffee and cake, then retired to some
other part of the flat.  He'd imagined her listening in to their
conversation on headphones.

It was a shared love of the sea that had got him close to Gunther
Hoffmann.  The old spy stemmed from Greifswald on the Baltic coast and
had inherited a small family house there in the fourteenth-century
Altstadt.  Hoffmann told how he and his childless wife would spend
weekends there in the summer, sailing their elderly ketch.  It was a
coastline Sam also knew, having spent a summer in the 19805 sailing
from Denmark to Leningrad.  Accompanied by an unnervingly virginal WREN
and equipped with two Irish passports, they'd observed Warsaw Pact
harbours from the cockpit of a sloop.

The stairwell he was climbing smelled of disinfectant.  Somewhere
nearby a cleaning bucket clanked.  On the small third-floor landing
were four front doors.  Number 12 Hoffmann's place was the only one
without a name.  A glass spy hole was set into the panel above the bell
push.  Sam pressed it, then turned his face away, far from sure his
visit would be welcome.

He heard no sound from inside and pressed the bell again, holding the
button for longer.  He could still visualise that living room where
Hoffmann had talked with pride and sadness about Papagena, who was by
then close to death.  There'd been a wooden model of their Baltic ketch
on a bookcase, and above it a perfect copy of a work by the German
Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, done by a Stasi forger.

With still no response, Sam tried a neighbour's bell.  The door opened
a crack, held back by a chain.  He saw a bespectacled eye, a beak of a
nose and caught a whiff of cats.

"Griiss Gott," he smiled.

"Gruss Gott.  Wer sind Sie?"  The woman's voice scratched like a broken
quill.

"Ich suche Herr Hoffmann .. ."  Sam inclined his head towards her
neighbour's flat.

"Weiss night."  She made to close the door, but Sam's foot prevented
it.

"Sorry .. . Entshuldigung.  Wissen Sic wo .. . ?"

"Nein.  Weiss night wo er iss.  Die Frau ist neulich tot."

Sam blinked, unsure he'd understood aright.

"Frau Hoffmann, she's dead?  Frau Hoffmann tot?"

"Letzte Woche.  Wer sind Sie?"

"Ein Freund.  A friend."

"Englisch?"

Sam nodded.

"Spater.  Versuchen Sic spater.  Come later."

The door pressed against Sam's foot and this time he removed it.

"Vielen Dank," he murmured as it clicked shut.  He turned to find that
an elderly couple making their slow way up to the floor above had
paused to listen.

"You look for Herr Hoffmann?"  the man asked.

"His woman dead," his wife added.

"Letzte Woche."

"You know where he might be?"  Sam queried, glad of their English.

"In Friedhof," the woman suggested.

"The funeral was yesterday," the man explained.

"Do you know which cemetery she's buried in?"

"The Zentralfriedhof, I believe."

"Thank you."  The couple continued on their way.

"Danke schon," he called after them, two portly figures, as puffed as
the cream cakes they'd probably just been consuming at a local
Konditorei.

He made his way back downstairs, then extracted a map from his pocket.
The cemetery was on the other side of town.  He headed back to the
U-Bahn.

HMS Truculent

Arthur Harris sat spellbound.  Suddenly after nearly two hours, his
screens had sprung to life.  A string of spikes like an earthquake. The
same frequency as before.  VHP on a band not normally used in this part
of the world.

One of the voices was the same as before, a whingeing litany of
complaint in a Moscow accent.  The other speaker was from further east.
This time the moan wasn't about lifting boxes.  There was a major drama
unfolding.  A search was under way.  A search for a man.

Harris checked the tape machine was recording, then balanced an A4 pad
on his knees, making shorthand notes and logging key words against time
codes.  The transmissions were uneven, breaking up.  Hand-held
walkie-talkie sets, he guessed, with a range of a mile or two normally.
Given a clear line of sight over the sea, the intercept mast was
picking it up at more than twice that distance.

Suddenly a new voice cut in.  Harder.  More authoritative.  Urging the
others on to find their quarry.  A voice that to Arthur Harris sounded
chillingly familiar.  Holding his breath, he jotted harder.

Find the bastard!  Check the Karolina is secure.  He may use the boat
to escape.

Circle the island on foot, two men in each direction.

No violence.  We need him back alive.

Harris felt a hand on his shoulder and jumped.  The First Lieutenant
stood beside him tapping his wristwatch then drawing a finger across
his throat.  The window was closing.  HMS Truculent was about to dive
again.

"Five more minutes, sir?"  Harris pleaded.

"They're sending."

"No can do.  Sorry.  The masts are coming down now."

As he said it, the voices in Harris's ears turned to hiss.  He pulled
off the headphones.

"In that case, sir, I have a most exceptional request to make."

Lt-Commander Hayes raised a far from co-operative eyebrow.

"Try me."

"When we surface for the rendezvous with the helicopter I would like to
transmit what we've just recorded direct to London."

"God!  The captain won't like that," Hayes cautioned.  There'd be no
chance of keeping their position secret with their satcom mast
radiating like a beacon.

"How much tape have you got?"

"About five minutes, sir."

"Why can't you ship it with the others?  It'll be in Cheltenham within
twelve hours."

"Because it can't wait that long, sir.  I believe I recognised one of
the voices.  There's a man at my HQ who can confirm it."

Hayes frowned, intrigued suddenly.

"Who is this bloke?"

"Well actually, sir, if it's the man I think it is, he's a top Russian
scientist.  A biological warfare expert special ising in viruses.  And
a man known to have something of a cash flow problem.  The bastard's
been offering his skills on the open market to anybody prepared to pay
his price."

FOURTEEN

Vienna

THE TRAM STOPPED directly outside the number 2 entrance to Vienna's
vast central cemetery.  When the doors hissed open, half a dozen souls
got off before Sam, all making for the main gates.  On the far side of
a wide, cobbled yard stood a row of flower stalls.  At the sound of the
tram's arrival, four pinafored proprietresses had emerged from their
separate huts and bustled towards the visitors like an operetta chorus
line, arms brimming with blooms for sale.  On the opposite side of the
courtyard, cut-price gravestones were on sale 50 per cent off for ends
of lines.  To Sam it seemed he'd arrived at a supermarket of death.

Passing through the cemetery entrance, tree-lined avenues fanned out
into the distance.  At the far end of one stood a huge domed church.
Sam realised that if Hoffmann were in this graveyard, he would need a
grid reference and a GPS to find him.  He spotted an administration
office.  Inside, a helpful young woman looked up the Hoffmann name on
her computer and directed Sam to plot D 175.  "It's up towards gate
number i," she told him.

"Close to the Israeli section."

Israeli.  He blinked at her use of the word.

"Thanks."

He found signposts pointing to zone D and followed them.  To his left
and right, mausoleums in marble and blackened bronze held the remains
of Vienna's great and good.  Further on the plots became less
presumptuous, but some screamed their presence with gaudy displays of
red and pink begonias.  Large labels stuck into the turf advertised the
companies that maintained the graves.  But the commercial neatness of
the cemetery ended abruptly at the Jewish sector.  Here, stones were
crooked and `>551' untended, their messages obscured by moss.  Plots had lost
their shape to the weeds, and footpaths were overgrown from lack of
use.  A red deer using the area for grazing took off at Sam's
arrival.

He read off some of the names Adler, Goldstein, Kohn.  The dates of
death were all before 1938, the year many Austrians had lined the
streets to welcome Hitler in.  These graves looked like they'd been
unattended ever since, abandoned, he assumed, because the families that
would have cared for them had vanished in the Holocaust.  A moment ago
the admin girl had referred to this as the Israeli sector.  He pulled
from his pocket the tourist map of Vienna.  There it was in print.
Israelit Abteilung Israelite sector, as if the nation had taken a
conscious decision to forget that the Jews buried here had been
Austrians.

He turned away.  Zone D was back in the vast Christian sector, down a
gravel track running along the edge of this abandoned ghetto.  Here the
stones and plots set amongst trees looked new.  Dates were from this
year and the last, some freshly planted, others still bare earth.  Sam
rounded a bend in the path and stopped.  There, some twenty metres
ahead of him sat a dark-suited, silver-haired figure, his backside
straddling a folding canvas stool, his chin supported by his hands as
he gazed forlornly at a mound of earth.

Sam held his breath.  It felt an invasion of privacy to approach the
old spy at such a time, but he reminded himself that this same man had
abused the sanctity of his own father's life without the slightest
compunction.

Sensing his presence, the leathery face turned towards him.  It bore a
defeated look, as if life had been deprived of its meaning.  For what
felt like a full minute, Gunther Hoffmann stared at him, his expression
one of puzzled half-recognition.  Eventually he made the connection and
his eyebrows lifted.  Then for a moment his face registered fear.

"Herr Maxwell .. ."  he exclaimed.

"Was machen Sie denn hier?"

Maxwell.  Another pseudonym for another time.

"Herr Hoffmann."  Sam closed the gap between them.

"Your wife .. . I'm very sorry."

"Ja."  The German stood up with a grimace, then extended his hand.  He
was a tall man, aristocratically handsome, though age had turned his
face into a relief map.  His eyes were as slate grey as the Baltic in
winter.

"It was a big shock for me, Herr Maxwell."

"Of course."

Hoffmann frowned.

"But you are not here because of Use."  He bent down to fold up the
chair.

Sam could see the man's brain whirring, trying to guess what undeclared
aspect of the Papagena case might have emerged unexpectedly from the
woodwork.

"No.  But I could have chosen a better time, perhaps."

"Ach, Herr Maxwell, we do not choose time," Hoffmann responded,
philosophically.

"Time chooses us."  He shot a last look at the mound of earth.

"And for Use this choice came much too soon."  He sucked in his cheeks,
holding in his grief.

"They will plant flowers here tomorrow."  He seemed embarrassed by the
plainness of the grave.

"Komm.  We will go from here.  Perhaps I must be grateful to you.  If
you didn't come I would stay here until the night."

"It was sudden, her death?"  Sam asked as they began to walk.

Hoffmann took a cigarette pack from his pocket and lit up.  His
fifty-a-day habit had turned his slicked hair yellow at the temples.

"It was her heart.  She have two attacks before this year .. ."  He
shrugged, as if the rest was obvious.

"I'm sorry."

"Ja .. ."  Hoffmann sounded dismissive.

"But we all must die, Herr Maxwell."  A largish stone lay in the middle
of the path and he moved it aside with his foot.

"She wanted to be buried here?  Not in Germany?"

"Because she was born in Vienna," he explained.

"And brought up."

"I see."

Hoffmann paused to tuck the folding stool into a carrier bag.  He
pointed to the wilderness on the far side of the path.

"Jews."

"I know," said Sam.

"It's a mess."

"Austrians have never felt they must conceal their anti-Semitism,"
Hoffmann explained, matter-of-factly.

"They weren't re-educated after the war like we Germans.  The Allies
chose to believe that Austrians were innocent victims of the Nazis
instead of collaborators.  So there was no pressure for a change of
attitude."

The old man sounded almost envious of Austria's freedom to be
prejudiced.  They carried on walking, a silence developing between
them.  Overhead a jumbo jet growled powerfully as it climbed to
altitude from the airport a short distance to the east of them.
Hoffmann scowled up at it.

"I hate those things," he muttered, grouchily.

"I never fly these days."

When they reached a T-junction the German's curiosity finally became
too much for him.  He looked at his watch it was nearly five then
squared up to Sam.

"Why you have come, Herr Maxwell?"

For a couple of seconds Sam let him sweat, enjoying the discomfort in
Hoffmann's eyes.

"Because of Jo Macdonald," he told him eventually.

Hoffmann blinked.  He took a small step back.  Then as quickly as he'd
reacted, his face was still again, calm and expressionless.  The steady
gaze of a poker player.

"Jo Macdonald," he murmured, as if the name were new to him.

"She knew you as Johann, I believe," Sam prompted.

For a few seconds Hoffmann remained as still as a statue.  Then without
replying, he took Sam by the elbow and they began to walk up the long
avenue of poplars towards gate number i. Red squirrels darted across
the stones in front of them.  After a minute Hoffmann stopped again and
studied Sam's face with a new intensity.

"You know, Herr .. . Maxwell."  He laid an ironic stress on Sam's cover
name.

"At this time of the afternoon in Vienna, it is customary to visit a
cafe.  You have a saying in English: when in Rome .. . So, if you want
to talk about things that happened a very long time ago, then we should
find somewhere more gemutlich than a graveyard."

"As you wish."

They walked more briskly towards the gate.

"You still have your boat?"  Hoffmann asked.

"Unfortunately not.  Lack of time," Sam explained.  Time was what
Hoffmann was playing for, he realised.  Giving himself space to
think.

"You miss it, of course," Hoffmann insisted.

"Yes."

"I too.  Vienna is a long way from the smell of the sea."

They reached the gate and crossed into the middle of the road to wait
at the tram stop.

"But Vienna has its compensations for you," Sam continued.  It was a
nonsense conversation which he longed to abandon.

"You go to the opera a lot."

Hoffmann rambled on for several minutes about the variable standards at
the Staatsoper, then, to Sam's relief, a tram came.  On the ride back
into the centre of the city, they hardly spoke.  At one point when the
machine stopped at traffic lights, their view was blocked by a
political poster the smiling, film-star face of a charismatic
politician called Jorg Haider on which a small, black moustache had
been daubed.

"They have elections here next year," Hoffmann commented, pointing to
it.

"I think maybe this country will see big changes."

"To the right, you mean?"

lja.  This Freedom Party says in public many of the things that
Austrian people think inside their heads.  Particularly about
foreigners.  Uberfremdung they call it.  Too much immigration.  They
want to stop it.  Even I as a German am not always welcome here."

"You mean the Austrians didn't all support Hitler's invasion .. ."  Sam
remarked.

"No.  Of course not.  But Germans are more acceptable here than most
foreigners, so if I feel some hostility, what must it be like for
people from other countries?"

The tram sped on, transporting them to Schwarzenbergplatz where they
found a secluded booth in a cafe smelling of fresh-baked cakes which
overlooked the Russian war memorial.  They ordered melange and small
glasses of schnapps.

"So .. . You came because of Jo Macdonald," Hoffmann sighed.

"She showed me your letter," Sam explained.

"And you think that I was Johann."

"Yes."

He paused, then let a little smile play on his lips, like a child
caught cheating but who didn't care.

"You are correct, of course .. ."  He examined Sam's face with the
intense eye of a portrait painter trying to get the mouth right.

"You know, Herr Packer, it is strange that in all the times when you
and I are meeting, I never make the connection.  You look so like
him."

"So people keep telling me."

"A remarkable coincidence that I use the father to help protect
communism, then I am used by the son when it failed."  He smiled
grimly.

"You call it turning the table, I think."

"Something like that."

Hoffmann nodded reflectively.

"Please, tell me about Jo."

"She's terminally ill."

Hoffmann's face crumpled.

"I feared it.  Because she will not reply to my letter.  You have seen
her?"

"Yes.  She's not expected to last much longer."

Hoffmann nodded sombrely.  Then he frowned.

"How did you find out about her?"

"It's a long story which began with one of your old Russian buddies
defecting to America with a list of names."

"So you began to investigate your father's life .. ."

'..  . and found a photograph of him with Jo."

Hoffmann licked his lips.

"But why you have come to see me?"

"To hear your side of the story.  I always try to be professional."

The waiter arrived with their coffees, a slender young man with a
single gold earring and a bearing that was overtly gay.  Hoffmann fixed
him with a look of loathing, then stared down at his coffee as if it
had been contaminated.

"Such men disgust me," he hissed, after the waiter had left them.

"We must be grateful for AIDS don't you agree?"

Sam was surprised by his vehemence.  He ignored the comment.

"I want to know what information my father gave away," he said.

Hoffmann shook his head.

"For that you must ask the GRU.  Twenty-seven years ago I was only
their messenger boy."

"But a persistent one, according to Jo."

"I also have always tried to be professional," Hoffmann countered.

"Jo Macdonald told me the GRU weren't satisfied with the stuff my
father handed over."

"They said it was old," Hoffmann confirmed.

"And they sent you back for more."

"Ja.  But then he became sick, your father, so I told the Russians he
was no more use to them.  Jo ... she didn't explain this to you?"

"She did, but I wanted to hear your version."

Sam felt disappointed.  He'd expected more from Hoffmann.  He watched
the old spy sip his coffee then throw the schnapps back in one.

"You know, I really don't understand you."  Sam's remark made the
German look up.

"You had no qualms about ruining a man's life, yet you cared enough
about him to send flowers to his funeral."

"A good general cares for his soldiers," Hoffmann countered, 'however
rough he must use them to fight his war."

"And Jo Macdonald?  Why did you write that letter of apology to her?"

"Because in war we always do things we feel bad about after."

"But she was just my father's girlfriend .. ."

There was mockery in Hoffmann's eyes.  Sam groaned inwardly.  The
camera in the bedroom that had caught his father inflagmnte.  Jo
Macdonald's wide-eyed bafflement as to how it got there.

"It was not very original," Hoffmann apologised.

"Using a prostitute to catch Navy men."

"You'd recruited her first," Sam grunted.  Hoffmann nodded.

"For money, or were you blackmailing her too?"

"Not blackmail," Hoffmann protested.

"She was afraid of nuclear war.  So I could persuade her that if she
helped me get information about how the British would launch an attack,
then it could help prevent one.  And yes, I paid some money.
Expenses."

"So she was never in love with my father?"

"Oh yes.  She fell in love.  She even wanted to tell him what she has
done, but I warned her it would make her his enemy.  Better to live
with a He .. ."

'..  . than for him to die knowing the truth."

Sam didn't blame her for deceiving him about her involvement with
Johann.  She'd had precious little dignity in her life, without being
branded a traitor at the end of it.

He glanced around the cafe.  The other customers were mostly
twenty-somethings in office clothes, making a pit stop after work.
Gabbing.  Spinning the little untruths that made the world turn.

Hoffmann looked at his watch.  Half-past six.

"You like opera?"

"Some .. ."

"Tonight it is Traviata.  The ticket I had bought for Use if you would
like .. ."

"Why not," Sam murmured.  He needed more time with Hoffmann.  There was
another pressing matter to pick his brains about.  A matter of far
greater significance to world security than the Packer menfolk's
unfortunate predilection for women who deceived them.

Brussels 19.10 hrs

Nina Klason arrived at the University Clinic of St.  Luc by taxi. She'd
come straight from the airport, numbed by what had happened and with no
idea what to expect.  It had been early afternoon in Vienna before
she'd learned about her husband's sudden illness.  The Commission staff
had tried to reach her from mid-morning but she'd been out of the house
taking her visiting mother shopping.

The hospital's reception desk sent her to the tenth floor.  When she
stepped out of the lift she was met by a nurse, whose grim face spelled
the worst.  Suddenly it all became too much and Nina began to cry.

"Please, the doctor will explain everything in a few minutes."  The
nurse addressed her in English and ushered her into a small consulting
room.

"Please wait here.  He will not be long."

Nina clung to her arm.

"Is Anders dead?"

"No, Mrs.  Klason.  But he is very ill.  The doctor will tell you."

"I want to see him."

"I'm sorry.  You must wait for the doctor."

The silence of the room after the nurse left was broken only by the
sound of her heartbeat.  She'd left Vienna in a panic, putting her
reluctant mother in charge of the children.  The Commissioner for
Racial Affairs had told her Anders had an unidentified brain infection.
Surely by now they'd know what it was.

A couple of minutes later the door opened again.  She knew how long it
had been, because she'd been staring at her watch from the moment the
nurse left.  She looked up to see a very white coat topped by a very
black face.

"Madame Klason, vous parlez Francais?"

"Non.  But English."

"I'm Dr.  Gouari."  They shook hands, then the medic sat down in the
chair opposite her.

"Your husband is very ill, Mrs.  Klason."  He spoke clearly, but with a
heavy African accent.

She knew Anders was very ill.  Why did they keep repeating it?

"At this moment we still don't know what is causing his illness.  His
blood shows viral antibodies, but we haven't been able to identify the
virus yet."

"I don't understand.  Can't you do tests?"

"Tissue cultures take time.  The laboratory is working on it."

"I want to speak with him."

"It's not possible.  His brain function has been severely impaired by
the infection."

"I ... I don't understand," she stammered.

"He will be all right?"

The Congolese doctor hesitated.

"Until we know what the infection is .. ."

"I want to see him now, please."  She stood up, pushing back the hank
of dark hair that had fallen across her thin, pale face.

"Please, Mrs.  Klason.  You can see him soon.  But first you must
understand some things."  He held out his hand, indicating she should
sit down again.

She complied, but reluctantly.  Nina's compelling desire to be out of
that room was not simply because of her desire to see her husband.
Although she espoused the idea of racial equality and was married to
one of its champions, she felt deeply uncomfortable with black men.
She'd been brought up to think of them as savages and had a physical
fear of them.  The fact that her husband's fate depended on the
competence of one of them was hard to come to terms with.

"The first thing I should tell you is that you won't be able to touch
your husband, Mrs.  Klason."

"Why not?"

"Because he is being barrier nursed.  Inside a plastic tent where the
air is kept at negative pressure so that the infection is contained."

"But I'm his wife," she protested.

"This disease may be dangerously infectious."

Nina began to panic.  Maybe she and the children had been infected
already.

"How .. . how could he have caught this illness?"

"That's what we must find out.  As soon as possible.  I'd like to ask
you some questions."

"Of course."

"Has your husband been in contact with animals?"

"I don't think so."

"You don't have a dog at home?"

"No pets at all.  My son is allergic to cat hair."

"Your husband hasn't been bitten by an animal recently?"

"No."

"Or by some insect?"

"I don't think so.  He is very thin and mosquito bites always show on
his body.  I would have seen.  Why?  What is it you think he has?"

The doctor clasped his hands together.

"His symptoms are not consistent with any known illness, but some of
them resemble rabies.  And the rabies virus enters through a break in
the skin.  A bite or a cut, normally."

Nina felt her face burning.

"A cut," she whispered.

"Yes."

Her lips moved silently at first.  Then the words came.

"On ... on Sunday he was cut."

The doctor's eyes widened.

"By an animal?  A scratch with a paw and then a lick perhaps?"

"No, no.  No animals.  It was a little piece of glass."

"Glass .. ."  The doctor looked disappointed.

"It was caught in his towel we were at the lake, for swimming."

"There would have been animals around.  The towel had been on the
ground?"

"Yes but there were no animals where we were.  I am always so careful
where we put our things, because of dog dirt.  The children can get
sick.  So I looked carefully.  The ground was clean and there were no
animals that I saw.  But there were two people who came and talked to
us, a man and a woman.  They said the children were too far out in the
water.  I was distracted by what they were saying, but I think they
could have put the glass on Anders's towel.  When he came out of the
water he cut himself when he dried his back."

The doctor frowned.

"I don't understand.  You mean this piece of glass was on the ground?
It got caught in the towel when he picked it up?"

"It's what we also thought at first.  Then after, we realised the glass
piece must be on the top of the towel, not on the underside.  We don't
understand it because the towel had just come out of the wash machine.
Then we remembered the strangers.  We wondered if they had put it
there.  Like crazy people, you know?"

The doctor sat very still, digesting what she'd told him.

"I see.  And this man and woman you mentioned, you don't know who they
were?"

"No.  We never saw them before.  And after, they drove quickly away,
like they were criminals."

Dr.  Gouari rose slowly to his feet.

"Please wait here, Mrs.  Klason.  Just a little longer.  There is a
telephone call I need to make."

London

"Peter' had said the next attack should be on Saturday, but that was
the wrong day for what Rob Petrie had in mind.  This time his target
wasn't to be blacks or Pakis but ZOG the Zionist Occupation Government
whose tentacles spread through the northern hemisphere controlling the
white race's lives in ways the average guy in the street would hardly
credit.  Sure, the Lucifer Network needed simultaneous action across
Europe, but the Sabbath was a bad day for killing Jews.

It had crossed his mind to bomb a synagogue full of the bastards, but
he'd ruled it out.  Attacks on religious sites were distasteful to the
British, even to the right wing whose political voice the network
needed to mobilise.  So he would hit them at work.  At the places where
they wielded their power, where they accumulated their wealth.  And for
that it would have to be Friday.

His first thought had been to secrete the bomb on the directors' floor
at the Golding Brothers headquarters on Bishopsgate, revenge against
the Zionists who'd sacked him eighteen months ago.  But it was too
obvious.  Too personal.  And anyway, it would have been impossible to
get in and out of the building without being seen by someone who would
recognise him.

This afternoon he'd dressed in a suit for the first time in months,
camouflage for penetrating the streets of London's financial centre. He
exited from the tube at Bank, headed down Threadneedle Street, then
into the courtyards where the wine bars were doing good business.  It
was the first time he'd been back here since the sacking and it hurt.
They all looked so damned cocky, the peer group he'd been a part of,
strutting to the bars with their wallets full of twenties and
plastic.

He needed a target that was overtly Jewish.  He walked on through the
paved squares and narrow lanes to Bishopsgate, forcing himself to look
up at the edifice of brown bricks and glass where he'd worked for eight
years.  Nearly a decade of bonus cheques the sky the limit until it
fell on his head.  Sandra had been with him for the last of those
years, impressed by his lifestyle as much as by him.  Holidays in
Phuket, dinners at Marco's and loads of sex under a mirrored ceiling in
a fifteenth-floor Docklands loft with river views and gold-coloured
taps in the bathroom.  Then he'd lost it all and Sandra had been forced
on to night shifts because the pay was better.

Suddenly it became patently clear to him that he'd made a mistake.  He
was in the wrong place.  A bomb in the City would be crazy.  Yes, there
were Jews and Asians here, but the majority were like him.  The focus
for the attack had to be sharper than that if the thick-heads in the
press were to understand its meaning.

He quickened his pace away from the Golding Bros building, heading back
to the tube.  A new thought had occurred to him.  He knew precisely
where he needed to go.

Stepney

Sandra Willetts stepped out of the lift on the twelfth floor of Windsor
Court carrying a couple of Tesco bags.  It annoyed her that Rob was so
useless about shopping for food.  He spent most of the day hanging
round with nothing to do, so why couldn't he bloody well buy the
groceries instead of leaving it to her to do on her days ofF?  She
walked along the concrete landing then dumped the bags on the ground
while she stuck her key in the lock, psyching herself up to have a go
at him when she got inside the flat.

"Rob?"

No reply.  She stepped into the tiny kitchen and put the bags down on
the draining board.  He'd left an empty beer can on the breakfast bar
and a greasy lunch plate in the sink.  The place stank of burnt fat.

There'd been times lately when she'd wondered why she stuck with him.
The main reason was pity, she'd decided.  He'd been a real turn-on when
they first met, and she hadn't forgotten it.  She'd tried to convince
herself that if he could only get a decent job he'd be his old self
again.  Relationships were like the stock market, he'd said to her
once.  You don't dump your best shares when the price drops.  You hang
on in there until it goes up again.

But of late she'd begun to doubt whether it ever could.  Being sacked
had changed Rob into a bitter no-hoper, a change that felt permanent.

Sandra was five foot six.  A few years back she'd had an all-over
suntan she could afford to maintain right through the winter, which
looked great with her blonde hair.  In the Docklands days she'd gone to
a gym three evenings a week.  Rob used to say her tits were well up to
page three and the sight of her bum could give a dead man an erection.
But in the last eighteen months she'd put weight on in the wrong
places, her skin had turned pasty and most of the time her roots
showed.  Rob used to take it for granted that she loved him; nowadays
he kept needing to ask.  She always said yes, but she didn't really
know any more.

And where the hell was he?  They'd had breakfast together a rare event
with her shifts and he'd said nothing about going out.

Listlessly she unpacked the groceries then went to the bedroom to
change into trainers.  She'd been on her feet all day, clothes shopping
in Oxford Street.  Just looking.  The only place she could afford
anything these days was at charity shops.  Although it was nice to have
a break from work, she almost dreaded these days off, tending to find
reasons to go out because Rob got on her nerves if she stayed at home.
He'd started playing heavy metal, which she couldn't stand.  And in the
evenings they both drank.  Not for pleasure, but so that when they went
to bed they were too pissed to think about why they weren't having sex
any more.

She wandered into the living room and was about to switch on the TV
when she noticed he'd left his computer on.  She stared at it.  The
screen was black it turned off automatically but the power lights
glowed on the tower.  He never left it on when he was out normally. The
computer was his private world.  She never used it couldn't because you
needed a password to start it up.  She knew how computers worked,
though.  One of the girls who shared the night shift had a laptop which
she brought in sometimes.  Sandra walked over to the trolley, listening
to the soft whirr of the machine's cooling fan.  Listening too for the
sound of Rob's key in the lock.

Timidly she reached out and touched the mouse.  The screen hummed and
came to life.  She'd half expected to see pictures of girls showing
their fannies he spent hours on the Internet when she was out.  She
knew that, because whenever she rang to say hello, the line was
engaged.  But on the screen it was his e-mail program.  Her friend on
the ward had the same software on her laptop.  One very quiet night
they'd dialled into the net from the ward extension for a few minutes,
totally against the rules, because her friend wanted to show her what
it was all about.

The main window on the screen said Inbox.  There was a list of e-mails
he'd received, many from people called Peter.  Different surnames, but
always Peter.  Odd.  She turned away.  This was wrong.  Rob was
entitled to his privacy.  She thought of shutting the computer down, as
he himself must have meant to do before going out, but there was so
much about him she didn't know now.  Like that cupboard of his on the
wall which he always kept locked.

She swallowed her fear, put her hand on the mouse and ran the cursor up
the list of mail.  The last one received had been two days ago.  She
glanced over her shoulder.  Through the open living room door she could
see into the hall and to the glass-panelled front door.  Nobody there.
Nobody about to come in.

It couldn't harm.  He'd never know.

She double clicked.  The letter appeared in the bottom half of the
screen.

Congratulations!

She began to read.

After she'd read it once she sat down, covering her mouth with her
hands.  It had to be a joke, this.  Some game.  Some piece of
cyberspace role playing.

Then she read it again and began to feel sick.  Sick at what it might
mean and sick with guilt.  Quickly she stood up, closed the screen
window, then shut down the computer.  She was finding it hard to
breathe, as if she had a heavy weight on her chest.

Suddenly there was a shadow outside the front door.  Metal grated on
metal as the key went in.  Rob .. .

Sandra ran for the bathroom.  She locked the door behind her and turned
on the taps.

Vienna

In the third act of La Traviata, as Violetta lay dying upon the stage,
Sam became aware that Gunther Hoffmann was overwhelmed by grief.  He
half turned and saw by the light spilling from the set that the old spy
was holding a handkerchief to his face and his shoulders were shaking.
A few minutes later as the final applause died and the audience got to
their feet, Hoffmann remained where he was until a silk-gowned lady to
his right made it rudely clear that she wanted to pass.  It wasn't
until they'd filed out into the cream and gold lobbies that Hoffmann
could bring himself to speak.

"It was Use's favourite opera," he confided hoarsely.

The departing audience carried them through the main doors and out onto
the Ring.  Once in the fresh air Hoffmann shook his head like a dog.

"Urn Gottes will en  I need a drink."

"Better than that," said Sam, "I'll buy you dinner."  He'd begun to
feel sorry for the old spymaster, but told himself to get a grip.

The night air was stickily warm.  They squeezed onto a tram for a
couple of stops to get away from the opera crowds, then found a
restaurant which Hoffmann said was good for schnitzels.  To a muzak
track of Strauss waltzes they ordered food and a large carafe of
Wachauer Riesling.  Hoffmann said it was better than the usual Griiner
Veltliner.  The wine arrived quickly.  When he took a mouthful he
puckered his lips.

"Ach.  This is not so good."

"No, it's pretty vile," Sam concurred.

"You know, in German we have a name for such a wine," Hoffmann told
him, a twinkle returning to his slate grey eyes.

"Something like rats' piss, you mean?"

"Ja.  Similar.  We call it Hemdzieher.  You know why?"

Sam frowned.

"Shirt-puller?"

"Ja.  Because the wine is so sour it suck the shirt up your backside."
Hoffmann smirked at his own crudeness.

"We would have been better with the Veltliner.  We can change it."

Sam shook his head.

"As rats' piss goes, I've tasted worse.  The second mouthful was better
than the first."

He wanted to broach the subject of Vladimir Kovalenko, but decided it
was wiser to do so obliquely.

"Will you stay in Vienna now you're on your own?"

Hoffmann ruminated for a moment.

"It is too soon for such a question."  He picked up a beer mat and
tapped its edge on the table.

"But .. . when it is my time to die, then I would like to be at
home."

"Home?"

"Greifswald.  The house of my parents it is still there.  Someone rents
it now, but perhaps in a few years I will go back.  It depends."

"On what?"

"On how it is in Germany then.  What sort of country it has become."
His eyes flared for a moment, then he looked away as if to hide some
secret passion.

"But most of all when I die, I want to smell the sea," he added
quickly.

"Like Caspar David."

"The painting in your apartment .. ."

"Ah.  You remember.  Caspar David Friedrich he was born in Greifswald.
He wanted his last days there, but must die in Dresden, because of no
money for the journey."

"You won't be in a hurry to move from Vienna, surely?"  Sam suggested,
edging the conversation to where he wanted it to be.

"You must have many friends here."

"Some friends, yes," Hoffmann replied cautiously.

"Old contacts passing through .. ."

Hoffmann grew wary, suspecting new ground was being broken.

"I lose touch with people," he answered firmly.

"Even with Vladimir Kovalenko?"

Hoffmann blinked, then quickly got his face back under control.

"Kovalenko .. . ?"

"He's lived in Vienna almost as long as you."

"Why do you ask about him?"

"Oh, because there are a lot of people trying to find him.  Including
the Kremlin.  He disappeared for a while, but I'm told he's back in
town."

Hoffmann's leathery face became a mask.

"So, you had another reason to come here."

Sam shrugged, as if it didn't matter that much.

"Have you seen him?"

"Kovalenko ... I met him once."  His expression was as blank as
fresh-washed paint.

"A playboy.  Why do you want to speak with him?"

Sam was saved from answering by the arrival of their schnitzels, vast
slices of meat that filled the plates, with side dishes of potato salad
and lettuce.

"Guten Appetit!"  said the waiter, checking they had all they needed.

"It is not easy to starve in Vienna," Hoffmann mused, surveying the
plates.  He looked up again.

"Why you are looking for Vladimir Kovalenko?"

"Because of something he was involved in a year ago.  Supplying
dangerous materials to terrorists."

Hoffmann stopped in mid chew, his eyes widening.  He put down his knife
and fork and took a swig from the glass.

"What materials?"

"Something pretending to be red mercury."

The eyes stayed rock steady.

"Red mercury does not exist."

"It's not what the label said," Sam countered.

"It's what was inside that we're worried about."

"What do you think it was?"  Hoffmann asked, unblinking.

"Something nuclear."

"Ah, yes."  The German nodded.

"And you know who is the customer?"  His question was studiedly
casual.

Sam shrugged.

"We have an idea he spoke Arabic."

For some reason Hoffmann appeared relieved.

"You know where Kovalenko is?"  Sam pressed.

"A man such as he have many reasons why he don't want to be found," the
German said, swirling his glass as if to sniff the wine's bouquet, then
thinking better of it.

"You ever work with him?"  Sam prodded.

"Give him introductions?  Contacts?"

"I?"  Hoffmann looked pained.

"I am an old man living on my pension."

And I'm the Queen of Sheba, thought Sam.

Hoffmann cut another chunk from his schnitzel and chewed it
thoughtfully.

"You know why we can never live in peace with the Arabs?"  he asked
suddenly.

"I can think of a few reasons."

"Because their music is strange to us."

"That's one I hadn't thought of."

"If they like Brahms and Puccini then we can live together with them.
In Europe each country is different, but because we like the same music
so we can be friends.  But Islam makes a sound which hurts our ears. It
makes people here afraid of them.  And when people are afraid of
foreigners they get angry.  It was like that in the Nazi time."  He
stopped, as if deliberating how far to pursue the point.

"And like that in Austria today?"  Sam prompted.

"Is that what you're saying?"

"This is a small country," Hofmann explained philosophically.

"Keeping their race pure is always important for such peoples.  And
with the Balkans on their borders they fear being drowned by refugees.
It is the same in Germany.  And in your country.  It is why so many
people want that the refugees are sent back."

"Europe is drifting towards the right .. ."

"It is inevitable.  In France, Germany and England there are socialist
governments now, so the next swing will be in the opposite way.  People
can feel sorry for the victims of the Serbs but .. ."

'..  . won't want them in their own back yards."

"Exactly."  He ate another mouthful.

"I agree with them.  Don't you?"

Sam shrugged.  He didn't want to get into a debate about refugees.

"But you ask about Kovalenko," Hoffmann said, returning to the point.

"I cannot help you to find him."  He said it with a galling finality
that brought the topic to a close.

As they finished their food they chatted about the meanderings of
European politics since the collapse of communism.  Eventually Sam paid
the bill and Hoffmann asked the waiter to call him a cab.

"For you too?  They come usually very quick."

"Thank you, but I'll walk.  My hotel's not far."

They made their way outside to wait for Hoffmann's car.  The night air
was still muggily warm.  When the taxi came, Hofmann reached out his
hand.

"It was a pleasure to meet you again.  Please give my regards to Jo."
With that he ducked inside and the vehicle sped off.

It was nearly midnight.  Sam heard a church clock striking early. Trams
still lumbered past, but he guessed they'd be heading for their depots.
He began to walk, returning to the Pving and then eastwards towards
the 3rd District and the Pension Kleist.  He needed to be on the other
side of the road.  He paused in front of the luxury Marriott Hotel,
where there was a pedestrian crossing controlled by lights.

Suddenly, as he waited for them to turn green, a limousine brushed the
back of his legs as it swung into the bay in front of the hotel
entrance.

"Hey, watch it!"  he yelped, stepping quickly out of its way.

It was a chauffeur-driven car, a fat silver Merc, which halted under
the Marriott's canopy.  The rear door opened before the driver could
get to it.  A woman in a blue dress got out, followed by a man in a
dark suit.  She turned as if to say goodnight to him, her face towards
the road.

It was Julie Jackman.

FIFTEEN

tHAT VILE WINE must have got to him.  This had to be an illusion.  He
shook his head like an idiot, but the image didn't change.  Julie was
dressed in something blue and satiny, with jewels at the neck that
could have been diamonds.  She was got up like a goddam princess, her
hair pinned back with a shiny clasp.

Behind him the crossing light ticked, evenly at first then more rapidly
as the green light flickered its way to red.  He stood motionless,
unseen by the couple standing in the hotel entrance who were engrossed
in a tense conversation.  After a matter of seconds the car that had
delivered them swished away again and they went inside, the man's hand
pressing against Julie's back as if forcing the issue.  Some completely
irrational part of his brain told Sam that this was Vladimir Kovalenko
that Julie was with.  But the height was wrong and this man had hair.

His mind began to fizz.  He felt a strong impulse to hurl himself into
the lobby and get his fingers round that slender neck, but he
suppressed it.

There was a reason she was here and it couldn't be coincidence, he
decided.  Some hack must've spotted him leaving Heathrow that morning.
She was here because he was, and the man with her had to be another
sodding journalist.

A tram bell clanged behind him he'd inadvertently stepped into the
road.  He hopped back onto the pavement then gingerly approached the
hotel's entrance, keeping to the shadows.  Through the glass he
observed the pair standing by the lifts, Julie gleaming like a
kingfisher, but keeping at arm's length from the man.  Sam saw his face
for the first time.  Older than her by about twenty years.  Dark,
straight hair.  Well-built and upright.  The lift doors opened and
closed and the couple were gone.

On the right-hand side of the lobby was a row of booths.  He passed
through the doors and picked up the house phone.

"Could you give me Miss Jackman's room number, please?"

"Three-two-eight.  I connect you?"

"No thanks.  It's late.  I'll call her tomorrow."

"From the lobby phone you dial one first, then the room number."

"Thanks."

He stepped smartly back into the street, crossed over to the outer side
of the Ring, then looked up at the hotel's third floor.  Half a dozen
rooms had lights on.  A new one lit up, then went off, then lit up
again.

He'd thought of another possible reason why she was here.  Julie had
visited Vienna a year ago when the red mercury deal was set up Waddell
had told him.  She might have come back with a warning that enquiries
were being made, perhaps for the man he'd just seen her with.  He
stopped himself.  Guesses were pointless.  He needed certainties.

He stood there trying to decide what to do.  From his own personal
point of view he had a score to settle, apart from the multitude of
questions he wanted to ask.  A siren sounded somewhere to his left.  He
looked along the Ring and saw blue lights approaching.  An ambulance
screamed past; his eyes followed it automatically.  When it disappeared
he looked back at the hotel again.

There was movement at the glass doors.  A man was emerging.  He paused
to light a cigarette.  Sam moved a few feet along the pavement so he
could see more clearly there were parked cars in the way.  The male
stepped out uncertainly, like someone who hadn't expected to be on a
pavement at this time of night.  It was the same dark suit, the same
straight back.  Sam's pulse quickened, almost certain it was Julie's
companion.

The man looked both ways, smoking nervously, searching for a taxi as he
moved slowly along the kerb.  On the other side of the road Sam kept
level, then walked quickly to the next lights, crossed the Ring again
and turned back towards the hotel.  When the man glanced in his
direction he stepped into a tram shelter so he could watch without
being seen.  It was Julie's companion, striding along with the bruised,
semi-defiant stare of someone who'd just lost an argument.  And it
wasn't a cigarette he was smoking but a small cigar.  He had a long,
narrow nose almost sharp enough to cut paper and was dressed in the
manicured style of a banker or politician.  As Sam watched, a taxi
pulled up for him.

When it had driven off, Sam re-emerged from the shelter and walked
towards the hotel.  His conviction that this was a journalist had lost
its strength, and his theory of a link with Jackman's business dealings
was on hold.  All bets were off.  As he neared the Marriott's glass
doors there was only one thought on his mind.

Harry Jackman's daughter would now be alone in her room.

Julie sat at the beech wood dressing table in room 328, staring at her
weary reflection in the mirror as she undid the clip holding back her
hair.  A large glass of brandy stood comfortingly in front of her,
chosen because it was the strongest drink in the minibar.  The evening
had left her wrecked.  She'd got through to Max in the end, but it had
been an uphill struggle.  He'd made light of her wish to end the
affair, assuming she was after a bit of extra cosseting and would
succumb in the end.  Rather than risk a scene in the lobby, she'd let
him come up to the room.  Once inside, he'd turned the lights off in an
infantile effort to get her in the mood, but when she'd told him no and
he'd realised she meant it, his face had crumpled like a bag of crisps.
Then he'd kissed her forehead once and once only, and let himself out.
That had been it.  She felt relieved it was over, but empty too.  Yes,
the affair had been unsatisfactory, but at least it had existed.  What
she'd replaced it with was an impossible dream.

As soon as Max had gone, she'd taken off the blue dress he'd given her
in Paris the last time they'd been together.  The frock had been a part
of their relationship and she'd needed to feel free of it.  She was
considering leaving the thing behind when she returned to London, but
wasn't sure she could, the garment being of a style and quality well
beyond her normal budget.  She'd slipped on the white to welling robe
that hung on the back of the bathroom door, then found herself a
drink.

She took a big mouthful of the brandy and let it burn its way down her
throat, feeling its almost instant effect on her head.  The mirror
showed the tension round her eyes and mouth.  She tried a smile.  The
lips moved as intended, but the eyes stayed sombre and sad.

There was a sharp tap at the door.

"Oh God," she gulped.  Max had come back.  She froze.  No idea what to
do.

A second tap, louder this time.

"Who is it?"

"A fax for you, madam."

Relieved that the voice wasn't Max's, she stood up.  The accent was
vaguely European.  She tried to connect it with the faces of the hall
porters downstairs.  A fax?  Who from, for heaven's sake?  No one knew
she was here apart from Max.

"Could you slip it under the door?"

"You must sign for it, please."

Nervously she slipped the latch.  To her horror the door kicked inwards
with a force that knocked her backwards.

"Simon!"  she gasped, clutching her hands to her throat.  He'd followed
her from London bent on revenge.

Sam banged the door shut behind him, then swung her round, gripping her
from behind with an arm across her neck and a hand clamped over her
mouth.

"Don't make a sound!"

He pushed her into the room, checking no one else was there.

"You and me are going to have a little talk."

His voice grated in her ear like a stone crusher  Julie's brain turned
to spaghetti.  When he'd burst through the door there'd been murder in
his eyes.  She felt his fury radiating like fire.  It had been insane
to imagine he could ever forgive her for what she'd done.  His
wristwatch pressed on her windpipe and she was finding it hard to
breathe.

Sam hustled her further into the room and tightened his grip.  The feel
of her soft, bathrobed body against his own was stimulating him in a
way he didn't want.  And her smell, a musky mix of perfume, alcohol and
sweat, was shooting straight up to his brain.

"Fucking bitch!"  he fumed, angry at the effect she was having on him.
His mouth was inches from her neck.  Her hair brushed softly against
his face and the curve of her behind pressed against his groin.  For a
mad moment he thought of stripping the to welling off her and doing
what he'd wanted to do ever since he first clapped eyes on her.  Then
she started choking and he came to his senses.

"No dramatics," he warned, removing his hand from her mouth and
transferring his grip to her shoulders.

"No dramatics," she coughed.

"We're going to talk."  He manoeuvred her into the chair by the
dressing table.

"Or rather you are."

"Yes."

"The truth."

"Anything you want."  She noticed for the first time that he'd shaved
his beard off.  And looked even better as a result.  Her attraction to
him was stronger than ever, despite the coldness in his eyes.

"First question.  What are you doing in Vienna?"

"Look, I'm sorry about last Sunday," she gabbled, desperate for him to
understand she meant it.

"I made a dreadful mistake.  Please believe me that I'm very, very
sorry."

"Answer my question.  What are you doing in Vienna?"

"I came to see someone," she explained.

"Who?"

"His name's Max Schenk."

"When did you see him?"

"This evening."

"What's your connection -with him?"

"There isn't one any more.  He'd been a boyfriend .. . of sorts."

"The sugar-daddy sort by the look of him."

His comment startled her.  He must have been watching her for hours.
Watching and waiting until Max left.

"You could say that," she admitted.

Sam turned away, noticing the room itself for the first time.  Standard
hotel layout.  Chinese print on the wall behind the king-size bed.  A
dark cover on it that matched the curtains.  A single armchair and a
table scattered with tourist literature.  Beside the bed was a drawer
unit with a phone and an address book.  He picked it up.  Open at S for
Schenk.

"That's private," Julie protested, then bit her tongue.

He ignored her, flicking through the pages.  Women's names, mostly.  UK
phone numbers.  He searched under K, but found nothing for Kovalenko.
Max Schenk's was the only overseas number she had.  Not even one for
her father.  Damn the woman.  If she was involved in her old man's
shenanigans, she was covering her tracks with skill.  He closed the
book and patted it against the palm of his left hand.

"Okay.  So why did you do it, Julie?"

"You mean .. . ?"

"Why did you set me up?"  His eyes roamed the room, still searching for
something that didn't fit.

Julie sighed.  She'd thought long and hard about how to explain.

"This is going to sound pathetic."

"I'll be the judge of that."  He prowled over to the wardrobe.  Inside
was the blue dress he'd seen her in earlier, hanging next to a brown
skirt and dark cotton trousers.  A smell of cigar smoke left on her
clothes by her companion's habit.  It had been the same at the flat in
Acton.  Smart, black shoes sat on the floor beside a pair of trainers.
Shelves empty.  She'd left the rest of her clothes in her suitcase.

"I'm listening."

"I was in a state, that's all I can say.  Confused to bits.  My father
had just been murdered."

"Not by me."

"No .. . No, I accept that now."

Surprised by her easy capitulation, he turned round.  This was what
he'd needed to hear, but it washed over him because there was no way of
knowing whether she meant it.  He pushed open the bathroom door and
shot a quick look inside.  Towel on the floor from the shower she'd had
before going out.  Empty Badedas bottle lying in the tub.

"What are you looking for?"  she asked as he re-emerged.

He didn't know.  Something to say that she hadn't come to Vienna simply
to see a lover.  Her suitcase sat on a folding stand with its lid open.
He fiddled through the contents.  Clothes, women's things.  A paperback
with an airport receipt sticking out of it Men are from Mars, Women are
from Venus.  And a leather box with the necklace he'd seen earlier they
certainly looked like diamonds.

"You say it's over with this Max Schenk bloke.  Who ditched whom?"

"I was the one who ended it."

It fitted with what he'd seen.  He ran his fingers inside the pocket in
the lid of the suitcase and pulled out an air ticket.  Her return
flight was on Friday.  He checked the picture in her passport. Prettier
in the flesh.  Much prettier.  Which had been the whole damned trouble.
His anger flared again and he turned on her, pressing his face to
within a few inches of hers.

"Have you any idea what you've done to my life?"  he snarled.

She looked down at her hands, biting her lip.

"I'm sorry."

"Sorry ..."  He leaned forward and nicked her chin up with his
finger.

"Because of you, someone tried to kill me last night."

Julie blinked, trying to grasp the enormity of what he was saying.

"I don't understand."

"They found out where I lived by watching the TV news."

"Who did?"

Sam pulled back, shaking his head.  He'd said too much.

"And don't you dare pass that little tit-bit on to your media
friends."

"They're not my friends," she demurred.

"There was just the reporter from the Chronicle that I talked to and I
had no idea it would lead to all this."

"No idea .. ."  Sam mouthed.

"Pay well, do they, the Chronicle?"

Julie closed her eyes, realising the impossibility of redeeming herself
with him.

"It wasn't for money."

"What, then?"

She took in a deep breath and let it out again.

"I did it for my father.  Because it was his last wish.  I felt ... I
felt a duty to him."  She arched her eyebrows in exasperation at
herself.

"God knows why.  He never felt one to me."

Sam stood with his back to the curtained windows, arms tightly folded.
Julie shot him a quick glance then stared at the floor, bunching
together the lapels of the dressing gown.

"I wish there was something I could do to make it up to you," she
whispered meekly.

Sam looked at her sitting there.  She was infuriatingly attractive and
convincingly contrite.  He suspected that if he told her to take her
clothes off she would comply.  But it was something even more potent
than sex that he wanted from her.  Somewhere in that cotton wool mind
of hers was, he suspected, a piece of information that could peel open
her father's secrets.  He kept remembering Jackman's dying words. Julie
knows.  And something about the certainty -with which the old rogue had
said it made him feel it wasn't just because of the letter that he knew
would be sent after his death.  There'd been some other reason. 
Something to do with Julie being here in Vienna a year ago -when the
deal with Kovalenko was struck.

"How long have you known Max?"  he asked, fumbling for a bigger
picture.

"We met last year.  Here in Vienna.  I came over for a conference."

Everything seemed to have happened a year ago.  Too many simultaneous
events to be coincidental.

"And to see your father," he reminded her.

"That was incidental."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she hissed.

"As I've said a million times, I have never had anything to do with his
business activities."

"How did you meet Max?"

"He's a doctor.  Has his own clinic.  The hotel I was staying in was
full of medical people.  For the conference."

"So you met by chance.  Locked eyes with him at a seminar and that was
it?"

"Not exactly.

"Julie straightened her back and pulled the robe's belt tighter round
her waist.  She had no wish to get into all this, but didn't see an
alternative.

"Max was delivering a conference paper on viral mutation.  I was just a
lowly scientific officer, brought along by my boss to try to pick up
tips about laboratory techniques.  Max and I weren't exactly moving in
the same circles at the conference.  But everyone was staying at the
Intercontinental.  And so, coincidentally, was my father.  Most
evenings there were social events connected with the conference,
although I did manage to spend one with my father and his girlfriend I
told your colleagues."

"I know.  Go on."

"Well, after dinner, I'd said goodnight to Dad and gone up to my room.
Then a little later I realised I'd left a folder somewhere with my
conference papers in it.  I came downstairs to look around the bar and
that's when Max spoke to me.  He knew my name.  Said he'd seen me
around and had made up his mind to get to know me.  I was flattered.
And he had my folder in his hand.  Said he wouldn't return it unless I
had a drink with him."

"And the rest is history."

"Well, yes.  He impressed me.  He'd done his homework.  Knew a lot
about me.  Pressed the right buttons.  He's a nice man, actually.  And
I'd reached a point in my life when I was ready to meet one."  Still
was, she thought to herself.

"How come Max knew so much about you?"

"I don't know.  I never really thought about it.  Too busy enjoying the
warmth of the attention he was giving me."  She frowned.  Delicate tram
lines spread across her broad forehead.

Sam's antennae twitched.

"What sort of things did he know about you?"

"I don't really remember."

Try."

She shrugged.

"Well ... he seemed to know or sense that I'd had some bad experiences
with men."  She grimaced, unhappy about the way that had come out.

"Where would he have got that from?"

"I don't know."

"Professor Norton?"

"No way.  I'm not even sure he's aware that I have a child."  Julie
knows Jackman's words still niggled.  Could it be, Sam wondered, that
she didn't yet know that she knew?  But that her father had thought she
did?

"Is it possible your father could have told Max about you?"  he
suggested, the words emerging simultaneously with the thought taking
shape in his head.

Julie looked at him as if he'd just appeared from outer space.

"Max had no connection whatsoever with my dad," she said
dismissively.

"You quite sure?"

Totally."

Then the frown came back and Sam realised he'd got her thinking.  She
wasn't sure at all.  Not any more.  He perched on the end of the bed
and leaned towards her.

The men your father was doing business with a year ago you told Denise
Corby that you met some of them."

"Met is too strong.  They just happened to be sitting in the same
corner of the bar.  I don't remember anything about them."

Sam narrowed his eyes.

"So, if you don't remember anything about those men sitting in the bar
with your father, Max Schenk might have been one of them."

Julie blinked as if blinded by what he'd just suggested.

"I can't believe that ..."  she whispered.

Sam stroked his chin.  The trail he was following had no logic to it.
Even if Schenk had for some reason been able to quiz Harry Jackman
about his daughter it was hardly likely he'd have been the gun-runner's
partner in the illegal shipment of nuclear materials.  The man was a
doctor.  He ran a clinic.

But it was a lead.  And one which made sense, if Jackman's dying words
had had more meaning to them than a reference to a letter not yet
sent.

And, if there was even the smallest chance that Max Schenk and Harry
Jackman had been in conversation at the time the 'red mercury' deal was
struck, then it needed investigating.  Sam leaned forward and took hold
of Julie's hands.  She saw that his eyes had become as soft as
chocolate again.  She had a nasty feeling she wasn't going to like the
reason for it.

"A few minutes ago, Julie, you said you wished there was some way you
could make up for what you did to me last weekend."

"Yes," she croaked, certain now that what he was about to ask of her
was going to hurt.

"I want you to see Max Schenk again."

SIXTEEN

HMS Truculent Thursday

THE SUBMARINE HAD rendezvoused on time with the Lynx from HMS Suffolk
at midnight local, surfacing under a starlit sky at a point on the
chart precisely defined by the Global Positioning Satellites.  The
helicopter, its nav lights off, had homed in on their fin, using its
thermal imager for guidance.  The winch line had snaked down with a bag
of mail, then jerked up again with the sack of tapes destined for GCHQ.
Ten minutes.  Another five for the satcom transmission of the voices
detected by Arthur Harris and their sojourn on the surface had been
completed.  Now the boat was deep again, heading south to Crete and the
crew's first break ashore for ten weeks.

Arthur Harris was troubled.  For him the game was being abandoned
prematurely.  There was more to be uncovered.  Four hours to the east
of them a drama was unfolding, the outcome of which he was desperate to
know.  His gamble was that when the tape of the Russian voices was
played back at Cheltenham the bosses would want to know it too.

He lay on his mattress in the bomb shop surrounded by torpedoes, quite
unable to sleep.  In Tmcuknfs proper bunk spaces little curtains closed
off the narrow shelves that passed for beds, keeping out the light, but
here the fluorescent tubes in their shock-proof mounts between the
loading rails blazed day and night.  But it wasn't the light that was
keeping him awake, it was the memory of the voice he'd heard coming
from that small island east of Lastovo.

He was almost certain he'd heard it before in one of the small
Cheltenham listening booths used for updating CTs before a patrol. Most
of the tapes played to them for this mission had been in the
rough-tongued Serbo-Croat of Balkan military commanders, but dropped in
amongst them like a pinch of spice was a long-distance phone
conversation recorded by the Echelon satellites of the US National
Security Agency at their base at Menwith Hill.

The recipient of the call had been sitting in a small, single-storey
house in Maryland, a Russian scientist who'd made the leap into the
American economy three years earlier.  The call had originated in a
Moscow phone booth, placed by a disgruntled biochemist who'd rung his
friend to test the water.

"It's impossible here," Harris remembered him saying, the voice heavy
with disgust.

"One way or another I'm going to leave Russia.  But I need a job, Yuri.
Don't forget me.  Otherwise I'll go to the people we all know about
that none of us wants to work for.  I have to eat, Yuri.  I have to
have a life."

Chursin.  Igor Chursin.  An assistant director at the Russian State
Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology, known as VECTOR, based
in Novosibirsk in Siberia.  At the end of the Soviet era the laboratory
had been the Moscow government's main centre for biological weapons
research.  The work continued today, but in even greater secrecy.

It had been the head of the Biological Warfare desk at GCHQ who'd
slipped the tape into the briefing session.  He'd done it as a 'heads
up' to alert them.  As far as anyone knew Chursin was still in Russia,
but if he decided to carry out his threat to leave then he'd be a prime
catch for any renegade nation looking to develop biological weapons.
Iraq and Iran had been obvious candidates, but with Serbia suspected of
preparing for war against NATO, it made sense to cast the net wide.
However, the last place in the world any of them expected Chursin to
turn up was on a barren lump of rock in the Adriatic.

Which was why Harris had a sneaking suspicion that he could have been
wrong.  That it hadn't been Chursin's voice on the VHP.  Cheltenham
would know for sure.  And in four hours' time when they came back to
periscope depth to receive the broadcast, the submarine would know too.
There was nothing he could do until then.  He turned his face away from
the light and made a determined effort to sleep.

Vienna

Sam Packer was woken by the phone.  He fumbled groggily for the
handset.

"Mmm?"

"Sam Packer?"

"Yes."

, "Oh dear.  Sorry if I woke you up."

"Who is this?"

"The name's de Vere Collins."  The SIS head of station in Vienna.  The
accent was surprisingly down market

"A friend in London told me where to find you."  Waddell Sam had
checked in with him when he arrived in Vienna.

"And since I didn't hear from you yesterday I thought I'd save you the
trouble today."

He was being reprimanded for failing to make contact.

"Good of you," Sam grunted.

"My apologies."  He should have rung.

"Accepted.  Now look, there's been a development overnight.  It stands
everything on its head, rather."

"What's happened?"  He was suddenly wide awake.

"May I suggest we discuss it in the privacy of breakfast?"

Sam focused on the bedside clock.  It was just before nine.

"Where?"

"The Intercontinental does a good spread.  It's not more than ten
minutes' walk from where you are."

The hotel where Julie had met Max Schenk.  Wouldn't do any harm to look
the place over, he decided.

"Fine.  Say half an hour?"

"Spiffing, old chap."  De Vere Collins said it fake posh.

"I'll be in the coffee shop.  In the far corner, reading a copy of
Newsweek."

Sam showered quickly and ran a shaver over his face.

He tried to second-guess what development Collins might be talking
about, but couldn't concentrate, his mind preoccupied with last night's
encounter with Julie Jackman.  To have such a strong urge for intimacy
with someone who'd done him so much harm was a contradiction he was
finding hard to rationalise.

He dressed in the business suit he'd worn the day before.  There were
things to be done before Julie saw Max Schenk again assuming she
managed to tempt him into another date.  He intended to ask Collins to
find out if Austrian security had a file on the doctor.  As he
straightened his tie, the phone rang once more.  This time it was
Duncan Waddell.

"Thought I'd better warn you the screw's tightening," he cautioned.

"I don't know what you've done to the women of this world, but they're
out to get you."

"What's happened now?"  Sam sighed, sinking onto the bed.

"The Daily Chronicle's struck again.  This time it's your real name up
in lights.  Not only that the subjects you were good at at school, your
favourite food at around the time your father started spying for the
Russians..  ."

"Bloody hell!"  The story about his father had finally leaked.

"Where the hell's all this personal crap come from?"

"From your loving sister, mostly."

Sam groaned.

"But the real culprit's a man called Craigie who picked up a couple of
grand for telling the Chronicle you'd been in Scotland looking for
pictures of your father."

Sam put his head in his hands.  He should have accepted the SIS
security man's offer to have the Scotsman taken out.

"After getting that little tip-off, the hacks started digging," Waddell
continued.

"They traced your sister and she poured it all out like sick.  She must
really hate you."

"Yes, but it's not personal."

"Must hate your dad too."

"That part is."

"So, in a word, I'd say you've been stuffed again."

"Thanks a million."

"The government's been "no commenting" ever since the first editions
appeared.  I'm afraid you're not exactly popular with the bloke at
Number Ten.  Brains a lot bigger than mine are still trying to work out
what to do with you.  Best thing is to stay where you are for now. Ring
me again around midday.  And don't go giving interviews to anyone."

"That I can't promise," Sam replied sarcastically.

"Oh.  By the way.  What did our friend Gunther have to say for
himself?"

"Very little.  His wife's just died."

Sam outlined their conversation, saying that everything Hoffmann had
said served to confirm his father had not given away anything
sensitive.

"Glad to hear it," Waddell grunted.

"And Duncan ... I met someone else last night."

"Not the man whose name begins with K?"

"No.  A woman whose name begins with J."

"Good God!"  There was a stunned silence at the other end.

"What the hell's she doing there?"

"Kissing goodbye to a sugar daddy, apparently.  Someone, it turns out,
who may just possibly have had some connection with her dad."

Another short silence.

"You don't mean a connection of the nuclear kind .. . ?"

"I don't know yet."

"Jackman had many irons in the fire," Waddell warned.

"Anyway, what d'you propose to do about it?"

"I'm making further enquiries.  With Julie's co-operation."

"Co-operation?"  Waddell spluttered.

"What is going on over there?"

"The girl's said sorry."

"I shouldn't pay too much attention to that," Waddell warned.

"You're sure there's no media around?"

"As sure as I can be.  Anyway, I propose to rope Collins in.  I'm
meeting him for breakfast in a few minutes."

"Make sure you explain exactly what you have in mind.  He's a stickler
for doing things by the book.  Which at this stage in your career is no
bad thing."

"Point taken.  By the way, he said there'd been a development
overnight.  What's it about?"

Waddell cleared his throat.

"Nothing's come across my desk," he replied cagily.

"Ring me when you've spoken with him."

"I will."

He reached the Intercontinental by 9.35.  To the left was the bar where
Jackman must have sat with his cronies a year ago and where Julie had
met Max Schenk.  Clusters of armchairs around low tables.  He turned
his back on the bar then paused at the news-stand in the lobby in case
the London papers were in.  They weren't.

Collins had secured a remote table for two in the brasserie overlooking
the Stadtpark.  He recognised Sam and held up his magazine as a
signal.

"Pat Collins."  They shook hands.

"You've seen this, have you?"  He passed Sam a faxed copy of the
morning's Chronicle story.

"Just been told about it," Sam grimaced.  He skim-read a few paragraphs
then put it aside.

"If I read the rest it'll ruin my breakfast."

"Why don't you do the circuit," Collins suggested, pointing to the
buffet, 'then we can talk."

Sam took himself off to the servery and helped himself to a plate of
fruit and some scrambled eggs and bacon.

De Vere Collins was an untidy-looking man with a reddish, pock-marked
complexion and straggly hair.  He'd finished eating, leaving the
tablecloth in front of him covered in crumbs.  Their table was in a
corner, out of earshot of the others.  Collins poured himself another
cup from a cafetiere, then glanced round to check nobody was standing
near them.  He leaned forward.

"There's been a pretty startling development in the Jackman case," he
murmured.

"That theory the Yanks had about him shipping atomic demolition
munitions to Osama bin Laden it doesn't stand up any more."

Sam blinked.

"Why not, for Christ's sake?"

"The ADMs have been found, that's why."

"Good Lord!  Where?"

"Still in Moscow.  An undercover police squad raided a Chechen mafiya
hideout yesterday looking for drugs, and there they were.  Still in
component form.  The nasties hadn't found anybody to reassemble them,
it seems.  And there were a few key bits missing."

Sam let out a gust of air.  Their house of cards had collapsed.  Back
to square one.  Then he frowned.

"But I've just spoken to Duncan Waddell.  He didn't mention any of
this."

"He may not know it yet.  I got it from a friend at the US Embassy."

"Well .. ."  Sam gulped, thrown into confrisionv'Where the hell do we
go from here?"

"Makes it more important than ever that we find Vladimir Kovalenko and
persuade him to tell us what Jackman shipped for him," Collins reminded
him.

"Trouble is it's only been rumours so far that he's back in Vienna."

Sam had little faith in Kovalenko ever being found, which made it vital
to know whether Julie's friend Max Schenk had been a business contact
of Harry Jackman's.

"There is one other avenue I'm pursuing," he ventured cautiously.

"It may not take us anywhere, but it'd be mad not to explore it now we
don't have any other leads."  He explained about stumbling across Julie
Jackman last night, and his suspicion that her boyfriend could have
been a contact of her father's.  When he'd finished, Collins wrote Max
Schenk's name in a notebook.

"I'll see what Austrian security have on him.  Sometimes they're
helpful, sometimes they aren't."  He puffed out his cheeks and gave Sam
a sideways look.

"How come the little bitch talked to you?  I thought she considered you
the devil incarnate."

"Believe it or not she's apologised for what she did.  Claims she got
it all wrong."

"Wonders'll never cease!"

Sam finished eating and glanced around.  The coffee shop was built like
a conservatory.  Sleek men in suits were scattered amongst the potted
plants.  He tried to picture it a year ago, full of woolly-haired
scientists discussing the idiosyncrasies of HIV.

Collins's mobile phone bleeped.  He dabbed the button.

"Yes?"

Suddenly his eyes bored into Sam's.

"Bloody hell!"  He jotted something on a paper napkin, grunted a couple
of acknowledgements and ended the call.

"What's happened?"  Sam demanded.

"Vladimir Kovalenko."

"He's been found?"

"He certainly has.  The Kriminalpolizei were called to an apartment in
the second district first thing.  The bugger's been murdered."

Collins's embassy car was waiting outside the hotel.  The driver
refused to break the law and took them through the traffic at
regulation speed.  Collins rapped his knees impatiently.

"First Harry Jackman gets it and now Kovalenko," Sam murmured, in a
voice low enough for the driver not to hear.

"Somebody's making damn sure we don't find out what was in that
shipment out of Moscow."

"There may be no connection, of course," Collins warned.

"There's a whole string of people who wanted Kovalenko dead."

They crossed the brown streak of the Danube Canal and turned right by
the Prater amusement park with the giant Ferris wheel towering above
them.  Then they hit a traffic jam.  A tram had had a minor altercation
with a car.  The police were sorting things out.

"Shouldn't be long," their driver commented.

"Doesn't seem to be much damage."

Sam noticed a copy of the International Herald Tribune on the seat next
to the driver.  Anxious to know whether the allegations against his
father had reached the international press, he picked it up.

"Mind if I have a look?"

"Help yourself," the driver told him.

He checked through the pages but found nothing.  Then Collins pointed
to an article headed MYSTERY VIRUS STRIKES EU OFFICIAL.

"That one's getting interesting," Collins told him.

"The bloke had some sort of brain meltdown and they think he was
infected deliberately."

"How d'you mean?"

"Bio-terrorism with a racist motive.  The victim was the head of the
EU's anti-racism centre here in Vienna.  Infected with a virus no one's
ever seen before.  Through a cut with a chip of glass, they think."

Sam turned to him.

"Any connection with the Southall bomb and the other racist incidents
in Europe?"

"Nobody knows.  But that's what they're working on."

Sam stared fixedly through the windscreen.  Max Schenk was a
virologist..  .

He shook his head.  No good getting ahead of himself.

The traffic began to move again and soon they were passing the
Messegelande, Vienna's huge International Trade Fair site.  Beyond it,
monolithic apartment blocks lined the road.  The driver turned left
then pulled up outside a drab-fronted building where four police
vehicles already stood.  The street was curiously empty of onlookers.

"If this were London, there'd be rubbernecks everywhere," Sam
murmured.

"The Viennese tend to keep themselves to themselves," Collins
explained.

They got out of the car and Collins gave his name to the uniformed
officer guarding the door to the apartment house.  After a few words
into his walkie-talkie he saluted and told them the Herr Inspektor was
on his way down.

When the plainclothes officer appeared, Collins greeted him as an old
friend, then introduced him to Sam as Inspektor Pfeiffer.  The security
policeman led them up a stone staircase that smelled of some undefined
unpleasantness.  He had the ruddy complexion of a Tyrolean mountain
guide and spoke reasonable English.

"The police were called by a neighbour at five of this morning," he
told them.

"She heard much noise from the apartment next door.  Like a fight."

They reached the floor where the incident teams were at work.  The
apartment was small and in severe need of refurbishment.

"Our high-living friend had come down in the world," Sam murmured.
There were three doors off the narrow hall, all open.  From one of the
rooms came flashes of light as a police photographer captured the
scene.

"At first the officers thought it must be a robbery.  That the thieves
were discovered by the victim and killed him.  But one look at the body
and it was clear this was a planned murder."

"Because of the way he was killed?"  Collins asked.

"Yes.  They used a garrotte."  Pfeiffer raised his eyebrows.

"Quite special, I think.  Come.  I show you."

The bedroom he led them into looked as if a hurricane had passed
through.  The cheap bedside table and lamp were overturned and a
wardrobe door had been wrenched of fits hinges.  Books and clothes were
strewn round the floor.  In amongst them lay the prostrate figure of a
man sprawled on his side on the brown carpet, the blue of his distended
face almost matching the indigo of his silk pyjamas.  Round his neck
was a thick metal strap with a thumbscrew at the back.

"Jesus.  That's medieval," Collins gasped.  He turned to Sam.

"Recognise him?"

"It was years ago," Sam whispered.

"And I only saw him from a distance."

"How did you identify him, Herr Inspektor?"  Collins asked.

"The crime officers found six passports in a suitcase, including his
original Russian one with a photograph taken before he had the cosmetic
surgery to change the way he looked.  That's when I was called in."

"Any idea how long he'd been living here?"

"Four weeks only.  The woman in the next apartment, she saw him arrive
with two bags."

"Alone?"

"Yes.  And she say he never have visitors."

"Because he knew that if he did, they'd probably kill him," Collins
commented.

"So it looks.  But this garrotte, I have never heard it to be used by
criminals in Vienna.  The people who do this are not from here, I
think."

Sam stared miserably at the remains of the witness they'd placed so
much rto re in finding.

"Have you found any other papers in the apartment?"  he asked
forlornly.

"Diaries, business contracts, notebooks?"

The Inspektor shook his florid head.

"Only the passports and some plastic cards.  We already make
investigation about the bank accounts he have."

A forensic specialist had begun dusting the furniture for the
attacker's prints.  Sam guessed there wouldn't be any.

Collins turned from the room and pulled Sam with him.

"That garrotte's the sort of toy the KGB used to play with," he
whispered.

"My guess is the Kremlin's behind this.  Kovalenko knew too much about
the people at the top."

Inspektor Pfeiffer had followed them out into the hallway and
overheard.

"I think you can be right.  The FSB have wanted to find Herr Kovalenko
very bad since six months.  Every week we speak about him with Moscow.
We had new information that he had been seen back in Vienna, but in the
west of the city, not here."  There was a bullish ness about his manner
which Sam interpreted as contentment.  One more undesirable foreigner
out of the way.

"How fat is your dossier on Kovalenko's activities?"  he asked.

"Fat I would not say.  Such people are not easy to check.  There are so
many like him in Vienna.  And they all have some legal business to hide
their activities.  Many are in joint venture with Austrian citizens. We
don't have enough officers to watch them as close as we would like."

"What about in the last twelve months?"  Sam checked.

"For most of this year he has not been in Vienna.  And before that we
had nothing for many months.  What I want to know most importantly is
how the killers found him here."

"A man like Kovalenko would never function totally alone," Collins
stated.

"He'd have used someone local to find him the apartment and watch his
back.  But such a person normally works for money, not loyalty.  So if
a better payer comes along .. ."  He shrugged.

The explanation was tidy, but it was the timing of the murder that
disturbed Sam, as much as the killing itself.  Kovalenko had been
eliminated just a few hours after he'd told Gunther Hoffmann why they
were looking for him.  He shook his head.  It had to be coincidence. It
couldn't be anything else.

He looked at Collins and they nodded at one another.  There was nothing
to be gained from hanging around this morgue.

They thanked the Inspektor and left.

Out in the street they paused by the car without attempting to get into
it.

"I'm going back to the Embassy," Collins told him.

"Drop you somewhere?"

Sam thought for a moment.  He'd arranged to meet Julie Jackman at
lunchtime to hear what she'd arranged with Schenk, but he had a couple
of hours to kill.  Time enough for another -word -with Hoffmann.

"I saw a metro station close to that Ferris wheel.  If you can drop me
there it'll do me fine."

"No problem."

They got back into the car.  Sam drummed his fingers on his thigh,
thinking hard.

Harry Jackman ships a mysterious cargo out of Russia after setting up
the deal with Kovalenko in a hotel full of virologists, one of whom was
Dr.  Max Schenk.  A year later a virus is being used as a weapon .. .

"I've been having some more thoughts about the rendezvous Miss
Jackman's trying to arrange with her former lover," Sam announced.

"Go on."

"I want her to wear a wire."

"That's a little OTT, isn't it?"

"She'll be under a lot of stress.  Can't expect her to remember
everything that's said.  She might forget something important.  And I'd
like to hear his voice."

"I take your point."  Collins chewed it over for a moment.

"Well, fine.  There's a bloke I use occasionally who could help with
that.  Give me a ring this afternoon when you know when and where it's
to happen."

"Thanks.  I will."

Ten minutes later Sam was on a train heading for Heiligenstadt again.
When he reached the third-floor apartment in the Karl-Marx Hof, he
found the door to the neighbouring flat open and the beak-nosed woman
cleaning the threshold.  A couple of her cats were curled up on the rug
behind her.  He gave her a courteous smile.

"You again!"  she remarked in German.

"You always come when he's out."

He pretended not to understand and knocked at Hoffmann's door anyway.

"There's no point," she commented.

"He's in the hospital."

"What?"

"Last night.  An ambulance came."

Sam gaped.  He had visions of another murder.  Hoffmann's neck with a
strap round it this time.

"Heart attack," the crone went on, gleeful at the drama that had come
into her tedious life.

"That's what they said.  Like his wife.  Unheimlich, night?"

Uncanny indeed.  Sam asked when it had happened and she told him it was
around midnight.  Which would have been shortly after the man had got
home.

"He didn't seem too bad," the woman concluded.

"He could still talk.  Told me not to worry."

Sam asked which hospital he'd been taken to but she didn't know.

He thanked her and made his way downstairs again, making a mental note
to try to trace the clinic later and check on his condition.

One thing was clear.  If the old spy had been hospitalised last night,
he could hardly have been connected with the death of Vladimir
Kovalenko.

Brussels

On the tenth floor of the University Clinic of St.  Luc, two of the
four twenty-five-bed units had been turned into isolation wards.  In
the past twelve hours the Brussels police had traced and brought to the
hospital every person known to have been in contact with Anders Klason
since his arrival in the Belgian capital the previous day.  Thirty of
those who were now sitting on beds or standing around chatting had been
involved in the conference where Klason had collapsed.  Sitting alone
at the far end of the second unit was a scared, uncomprehending Turkish
taxi driver, the man who'd brought the Swede from the airport to the
city centre.

In a room on her own lay a terrified Commissioner Blanche Duvalier.
When she'd heard about Klason's incident with the broken glass at the
Austrian lakeside, she'd told Dr.  Gouari about her own confrontation
with a sharp object outside the Commission building three days earlier.
Within minutes she'd been isolated.  Since then she'd been questioned
thoroughly by the police and subjected to hourly blood tests
administered by a masked nurse with coldly observant eyes.  Klason,
she'd learned, was still alive but little more than a vegetable.  She
knew too that her description of the woman she'd collided with bore
similarities to the one provided by Nina Klason.  Something evil was
under way in Europe and the two of them were its first victims.  She'd
sent word to Paris where her daughter worked for UNESCO.  Annette was
on her way.  She'd been praying to God that she would arrive in time.

In the last hour she'd begun to feel confused, as if parts of her
memory were being unplugged and then reconnected.  She remembered
Anders Klason disintegrating before her eyes in the Salle Bertrand.
Remembered his fear.  She was experiencing panic interspersed by
patches of incomprehensible calm.  One such more restful moment was
engulfing her now.  Her lips widened in a smile at the irony of it all.
All along she'd been hoping for a closer relationship with the tall
blond Swede, but not in separate beds.

The door to her small room opened.  She didn't recognise the three who
came in because their faces were masked.  they were can-vino- pnninmpnr
which they began to set up.  A roll of transparent plastic.  Stainless
steel frames.  Drips, tubes.  To her it looked like the paraphernalia
of death.

One of the masked faces came closer.  A black face that she was quite
certain she had never seen before.  And it spoke..

"Je suis de sole madame."

Nina Klason was also occupying a single room.  No masks for the medical
staff here though, because her blood tests had shown none of the viral
antibodies now surging through the veins of the Commissioner for Racial
Equality.  The African doctor's initial assessment was proving the most
likely one.  That the virus was like rabies and needed broken skin to
enter the body and attack the brain.

A small table had been brought to her room for the plain-suited,
Neanderthal-faced Belgian police officer to set up his laptop.  He
liaised with Interpol, he'd said, and had been showing her disks full
of photographs.  Men mostly, hard faces with shaven heads.  A few sour
women too.  A cast of hundreds from a half-dozen nations, all with a
record for racially motivated crime.

Nina Klason shook her head for the hundredth time.  None of the faces
was familiar.  None matched the couple who'd crouched next to Anders's
beach towel less than a week ago.  By now she was numb with exhaustion.
No sleep last night and a day of talking today.

She'd spoken on the phone to her mother in Vienna, who was at the end
of her tether coping with the Klason's two attention-seeking children.
The woman had agreed to hold the fort for one more day on the
understanding that Nina made alternative arrangements after that.  Nina
was torn about what to do.  The Congolese doctor had told her that if
her blood tests were still negative the next morning, she would be free
to go home.  The children needed her, but so did Anders.  The doctors
had warned her he could die, and deep down she'd already accepted it.
She wanted to be there when it happened, whether or not he was aware of
her presence.  But someone had to look after the children.  She'd tried
three of her Viennese neighbours.  All had expressed concern that
whatever infection Anders had been hit by, the Klason infants might be
carrying it.

"Es tut mir leid," she whispered, apologising to the policeman for not
recognising the last of the faces presented to her.  The Flemish
officer had been conversing with her in German.

"Thank you for trying, Frau Klason," he replied, powering down the
computer and shutting the lid.

"I didn't expect anything, to be honest with you.  Most of these are
football hooligans.  The people who attacked your husband are in
another league."  He stood up and shook her hand.

"I hope the doctors can do something for him."

Only if they can work miracles here, thought Nina Klason.  Only if they
can work miracles.

HMS Truculent

Arthur Harris was lunching in the senior rates' mess.  In the corner of
the small, beige-panelled space a couple of chiefs were looking through
a box of video cassettes, trying to decide which films would bear
watching for the umpteenth time this patrol.

Harris had resigned himself to the idea of playing no further part in
the "Russians on the Rocks' mystery, as the affair was being referred
to on board.  The boat had been due to take in a broadcast at six that
morning.  He'd slept through until nine, but if there'd been a
follow-up he was sure he would have heard about it.

There was a different atmosphere on board today.  An end of term feel,
yet one the men were reluctant to grasp.  The operational phase was
over, but it would be three weeks before they saw the lights of
Plymouth again.  Meanwhile the weekend lay ahead.  Many of those with
partners coming out to Crete were suffering from nerves.  Sitting
beside Harris was one of the 'back aft' chiefs, a nuclear reactor
technician.

"It's like starting again every time I get back with the wife," he
complained.

"I know what you mean," Harris affirmed, living his small private
lie.

"They say being married's like riding a bike.  You don't forget how to
do it.  But each time you get back on top you ask yourself if
anything's changed.  Any bits broken or worn out.  Anybody been oiling
it while you've been away .. ."  The chief picked up his empty plate.

"Shouldn't have fucking said that," he muttered, returning it to the
serving hatch.

"Got me self all worried now."

Harris drank down the remains of his coffee and stared absently into
the corner.  He would miss this companionship when he got back to
Cheltenham.  The only regular company he had at home was his mother,
whom he'd moved down from the north after his father died.

The sonar chief Brian Smedley dropped into the chair opposite with a
plate of spaghetti, which he began to devour.

"You stopping in Crete before heading home?"  Smedley asked, tomato
sauce sticking to his lips.

"No.  Got a flight booked for Saturday night.  The CTs' job is over."
No need for the GCHQ team to stay on board for the long underwater
transit to the UK.

"Looking forward to Souda?"

"Not much, to be frank," Smedley confided.

"Have to behave me self now there's a spy on board."

"How d'you mean?"

"That pretty-boy lad with the panda eyes."

"I'm not with you.  You mean Griffiths?"

"Yes.  Bloody Griffiths.  It were my daughter he got pregnant, the
dirty little rascal.  I'm gonna be his bloody father-in-law in a few
months' time.  Can't have him reporting back to the wife."

"I had no idea," Harris breathed, trying not to smile.

"Cramping your style a bit then."

"Just this once, yes.  Won't happen again.  The coxswain's getting him
transferred to another boat."  Smedley stuffed his face with another
forkful.

"Mind you, we mightn't even get to Crete, the way things are going."

"How d'you mean?"  Harris's hopes soared suddenly.  Perhaps they were
going Russian-hunting again after all.

"We detected a bloody submarine this morning.  Went into the
ultra-quiet state.  Didn't you hear the pipe?"

"Must've slept through it," he mumbled disconsolately.

"Just before six, when we were going to PD for the broadcast.  Had to
go deep again.  We thought it was one of the Yugoslav boats at first.
Turned out to be an Italian way out of his box."

"So what happened to the broadcast?"  Harris asked, his hopes rising
again.

"Lost it.  Had to stay deep.  Next access time is about now."

They both glanced at the depth repeater on the mess bulkhead.

"Thirty metres," Smedley nodded.

"We're on the way up again."

Commander Anthony Talbot nodded with satisfaction as the sound room
reported no new sonar contacts.

Earlier, when the first trace of that other submarine had been picked
up, the control room had gone electric.  He'd marched into the sound
room to listen to the rustling noises that Chief Smedley assured him
was the water flow round a submerged hull.  With no NATO boats
scheduled in the area, he'd had to assume it was a potential enemy
which they needed to identify.  They'd diverted from their course south
to track it.  From his own point of view he'd have been delighted to
have missed the run ashore in Souda Bay if it meant a bit of action.
For the most part, this mission had been tediously routine and it was
his last patrol before a staff job ashore.  But when the 'enemy' boat's
signature was identified as an Italian Sauro class submarine, the
relief on the faces of the crew told him that if he'd cancelled the
-weekend's leave he might have had a mutiny on his hands.

"Twenty metres."  The planes man had shouted the depth every ten metres
as they came slowly up.

"Keep eighteen metres," Talbot ordered.  He got to his feet, standing
behind the ship control panel.

"Revolutions for three knots."

As the submarine's fin grazed the surface of the sea the boat began to
wallow, the planes man pushing forward to decrease the ascent angle,
then pulling back sharply to stabilise the response.  Riding the
bubble, they called it.

A red figure 18 appeared on the digital depth gauge and stayed there.

"Depth steady at eighteen metres, sir."

"Thank you, ship control.  Raise the search periscope."

Watch officer Lieutenant Harvey Styles grabbed the handles as the shiny
tube slid upwards.  When it locked in place he walked the sight all the
way round.

"Nothing visual, sir."

"Raise the WT mast," Talbot ordered.  Two minutes to go to the
broadcast.

The periscope video camera showed a grey morning up above, with large
waves splashing foam over the optics.  The boat rolled uncomfortably.
Submariners' stomachs weren't used to surface motion.  They'd want to
go deep again the moment the broadcast was in.

Talbot noticed Arthur Harris hovering by the chart table, waiting to
know if there was a reaction to the recording they'd transmitted twelve
hours earlier.  A man obsessed by a voice.

In the W/T room LED displays flickered as bursts of data were sucked in
from the satellite 24,000 miles above them.

"Broadcast reception successful, sir," the operator announced a few
seconds later.

The signals officer broke off a strip of punched tape containing the
day's code and fed it into the reader.  A few seconds later the
dot-matrix printers perched on top of the equipment racks purred into
life.  The officer fingered the leading edge of the paper to read the
heading.

TO HMS TRUCULENT.  FOR THE CAPTAIN'S EYES ONLY.

Arthur Harris stood by the chart table staring down the passageway
leading aft.  The W/T office was off it.  He noted the rating emerge
with his clipboard and followed him with his eyes as he approached the
captain.  Talbot took the sheets of signals.  He read the heading, then
ordered Styles to take the boat to thirty metres again.  Frowning, he
walked towards his cabin.

Once inside -with the curtain drawn across the doorway, Talbot sat at
his tiny desk and began to read.  As he did so, his heart sank.  Then
almost simultaneously he experienced a surge of excitement.

The shore leave at Souda Bay had been cancelled.  They were to return
to the waters near the island of Lastovo and prepare for a special
forces mission.  There'd be action after all.

He sat quietly for a moment, thinking.  Selling the idea to the crew
would have to be done with care and compassion.  Expressions of regret
over the loss of leave, rather than being too gung-ho about their new
task.

After a couple of minutes he stood up and returned to the control room,
pausing by the navigation table.  He looked at the chart, measuring
their distance from Lastovo with a pair of dividers.

Lieutenant Harvey Styles came and stood beside him.

"We're going back," Talbot told him.

"On full power."

Styles pursed his lips but didn't say anything.  In a few moments the
captain would need to make a pipe, a task he didn't envy him.

Talbot saw Arthur Harris standing by the door to the trials shack.

"You win, Chief Harris," he grinned.

"We're going back for your Russians."

Arthur Harris allowed himself a smile.

Vienna 12.25 hrs

As Julie Jackman walked from the Marriott Hotel to the cafe where she'd
agreed to meet Sam, she was in a state of perplexity.  Stuffed into her
shoulder bag was a copy of that morning's Daily Chronicle, bought at
the stall in the hotel lobby.

The midday sun beat down strongly, but she hardly noticed it.  After a
night of bad dreams, she'd woken this morning in a cold sweat at the
thought of what she'd agreed to do.  Deciding that delaying the dreaded
phone call would only make it harder, she'd rung Max at the clinic soon
after nine to tell him she wasn't sure she wanted to end their
relationship after all.  Sounding remarkably unsurprised by her change
of heart, he'd suggested they meet for a drink in the late evening 'to
talk things through'.

Julie had agreed to set up the meeting with Max partly because she owed
it to Sam after making such a mess of his life, but more importantly
because in the restless small hours she'd come to the conclusion she
was definitely falling in love with him.  But now as she approached the
cafe everything was up in the air again.  This latest article in the
Chronicle painted him as a thoroughly suspect character, a man just as
untrustworthy as all the others she'd fallen for over the years.

When Sam saw Julie walk into the cafe, her appearance touched him.  Her
face was ashen with worry.  Her glasses had slipped a little, giving
her the forlorn look of a fresher student still trying to work out
where the library was.  She was dressed in a pale grey T-shirt and her
dark trousers were baggy with cargo pockets.  He felt an urge to hug
her, until he reminded himself of the havoc she'd caused him.

As she approached the table, he stood up.  It was an old habit from his
Navy days.

"Hello," he smiled.

She nodded a greeting but avoided his eyes.

"Is it fixed with Max?"  he asked softly.

"Tonight at ten," she whispered, putting her shoulder bag down on the
floor.

"Sort of She cast a glance around the cafe, looking anywhere but at
Sam.  The place was large and open and only half full.  There were hat
stands in the corners, big windows onto the street and black-jacketed
waiters ignoring the customers.

The 'sort of had worried him.  Sam saw the newspaper poking from
Julie's bag and guessed why she was reluctant to meet his gaze.  He
cleared his throat.

"I gather your media friends have been having fun again."  He spoke
aggressively, deciding to confront the problem head-on.

Julie rounded on him.

"They're not my friends!"  She didn't like the way he was staring at
her.  Not the bruised look of someone cruelly misrepresented in the
media, but the calculating glare of a manipulator.  She pushed her
glasses up the bridge of her nose, as if to sharpen the focus of this
different view she was having of him.  She straightened her back.  His
catty gibe about her relationship with the press had decided things for
her.

"I've changed my mind," she announced, returning his glare.

"I won't be seeing Max this evening after all."

Sam gritted his teeth.  He should have expected something like this.
The woman was as dependable as a chocolate teapot.  He waved an arm at
the waiter and ordered two beers without bothering to enquire what
Julie wanted to drink.

"May I ask why you've decided that?"  he demanded, when the waiter was
gone.

"I have to return to London this afternoon," she insisted stonily, her
resolve strengthened by his chauvinism over the drinks order.

"I sooke to the lab an hour ago and they need me urgently."  She lifted
her chin, daring him to challenge her veracity.

"Your ticket's for tomorrow," Sam countered, determined to make her
change her mind again.

"It's an unchangeable reservation."

"They're paying for a new one," she retorted.  It was a lie.  All the
lab had said when she'd spoken to them that morning was that they would
welcome her back as soon as she could make it.

"And why do they need your presence so urgently?"  he prodded.

"I thought you'd been suspended."

Her face reddened.

"Because of the Brussels virus.  They're working flat out to identify
it and develop a vaccine."

"Brussels virus?"  Sam asked, slow to make the connection.

"You must have read about it.  It's been in the papers.  Two EU
officials ill with a brain disease nobody's ever seen before."

He narrowed his eyes.

"Yes, I've read about it.  But the story I saw only mentioned one
official."

"There's been another taken ill this morning.  A woman the European
Commissioner for Racial Equality, or something .. ."

Sam felt a buzz of alarm.  Something very nasty was developing, making
it more important than ever to discover whether there was a Jackman
connection.

"If the problem's in Brussels why's your lab involved?"

"Because Professor Norton is big in genetic engineering.  The theory
they're working on is that someone's combined rabies with another virus
so that it gets into the brain faster."

Combining viruses..  . Wasn't that the same as viral mutation, the
subject Dr.  Max Schenk gave a paper on a year ago?  Sam rubbed his
forehead.

"Explain that bit, would you?"

"Human skin is an effective barrier to most viruses," she explained.

"But when there's a break in it a cut, or whatever then rabies can
enter.  It gets into a nerve fibre and makes its way up to the brain,
moving very slowly.  It can take weeks before it gets there and
destroys cells.  But combining rabies with another infection which
reaches the brain through the blood instead of a nerve means it could
be got to work within a couple of days, before any vaccine has a chance
to fight it.  That's the theory, anyway."

"Devilish," Sam murmured.

"What sort of skills would a person need to do that?"

"I don't know.  Somebody who specialised in genetic engineering, I
imagine.  Viral mutation, all that sort of stuff."

"Someone like Max Schenk."

Julie's jaw dropped.

"That's ridiculous," she gasped.

"Is it?  We don't know what your father shipped out of Russia, Julie.

Nuclear, biological .. . All we know is that the whole shipment was
shrouded in secrecy, with a cover story floated saying it was red
mercury."

"But Max never met my father.  I'm sure of it."

"Ask him, Julie.  This evening.  It's important."

Julie felt her resolve crumbling, but she was still furious with him.
The nub of the issue was that he hadn't been straight with her.  Not at
all.  Not when they'd first met.  Not when he'd come to get the letter
in Woodbridge.  Not last night.  All this time he'd pretended to be
someone else and she wasn't going to stand for it.

"Look.  I know it's my fault all this stuff about you has come out in
the press, but what the hell am I supposed to believe?"  she blazed,
pulling the Chronicle from her bag and slapping it on the table.

"I mean, it turns out you're not called Simon Foster at all but Sam
Packer.  And it says here your father spied for the Russians, for
heaven's sake!  And your sister seems to hate you so much she's
prepared to tell the whole world what a two-faced rat you are."

Sam didn't answer.  He sensed that she didn't want to believe what had
been written about him, but convincing her wouldn't be easy.

"I mean, I just don't know what to make of you, "Julie went on, her
fears about him pouring out.

"I..  .in my own life I work with normal people who don't have to lie
about what they do.  But you ... I mean, first you lied to me about
being a businessman okay I never really believed you on that one.  But
now I find that your name was a lie too and that you come from a long
line of liars and cheats."

"Hold on a minute," Sam protested.

"If you think bad blood is passed from generation to generation like
red hair, then you'd better worry about your own salvation."

"Okay, okay," she conceded, 'we all know about my father.  What I don't
know about is you, Simon Sam.  You're asking me to spy on Max.  But
who's it for?  What are you, for God's sake?  You've got to be straight
with me."

Sam knew he'd have to bend the rules.  Knew he would have to open the
door into his life.  Just a crack.

"Okay.  My real name is Sam Packer, and I do work for the government.
And that stuff you've read this morning about my father having been
recruited by the Russians has some truth in it.  But you've got to
understand there are many, many things I simply can't talk about."

"Why not?  Everybody else is," she goaded.

"There are laws..  . Official Secrets Acts."

Julie bit her lip.  She wanted to believe in him.  Still wanted him,
but she had to be able to trust.

"There is something I need to know,"  She shook her head at her
confusion.  A wisp of hair settled on her lips and she brushed it
away.

The waiter came with the beers and surlily suggested they order food
while he was there.  They chose omelettes and salad.

Julie waited until he was out of earshot then repeated her demand.

"There's something I must know if I'm going to help you."

"What?"

"The full truth about why you were in Africa with my father."

Sam felt her eyes bore into him.  He remembered Waddell's warning not
to give interviews.

' You need to know?  Or is it your friends in the press?"

Julie closed her eyes momentarily, wondering what she had to do to
convince him she wasn't in league with the media any more.  She took in
a deep breath.

"Is it true or not that you paid my father to supply guns to the
Bodanga rebels?"

Sam ground his teeth.

"I really can't get into that "Look.  If you're not prepared to be
straight with me, then I am going to stand Max up tonight."

Her mouth set in a thin line.  Sam felt a silly urge to kiss it into a
more friendly shape.  He leaned forward, his brow furrowing as he
prepared to concede more ground.

"The things your father wrote to you about MI6 and Bodanga," he said in
little more than a whisper, 'that's only half the story."  He glanced
round to check no one could overhear and to underline the confidential
nature of what he was about to tell her.  He described the background
to the Bodanga coup attempt, carefully pointing out that if it had
succeeded people -would have been singing the government's praises
instead of damning it.  Then he told her how her father had been using
his inside knowledge of the coup to blackmail Whitehall into giving him
immunity from prosecution for a whole host of unnamed crimes.

Julie listened intently.  When Sam had finished, she rubbed her
forehead.  It all fitted.  What he'd said had an awful ring of truth
about it.  She guessed that whatever deceptions Sam Simon may have
indulged in during his life, it was small beer compared to what her
father had got up to.

"Thank you for telling me all that," she whispered.

"It won't go any further.  I promise."

Sam trusted her as much as he trusted a wet paper bag, but if it made
her deliver Max Schenk to him this evening then the risk of telling her
these things would have been worth it.

Their food arrived.  The omelettes were undercooked but the surliness
of the waiter deterred them from sending them back.

"I'm sorry," Sam murmured, indicating her untouched beer glass.

"I didn't have the courtesy to ask what you wanted to drink.  Was that
all right for you?"

"It's fine," she replied taking a sip.

He left it for a few moments before asking her what her arrangement was
with Max.

"Ten o'clock tonight.  He's got a dinner to go to first, but he'll pick
me up from the Marriott.  I've asked to go somewhere quiet for a
chat."

"How did he sound?"

Julie lifted one eyebrow.

"I got the impression he thought it perfectly natural that I'd come
crawling back to him."  She shivered.

"You'll be okay," Sam reassured her.

"We're going to protect you tonight."

"How?"

"I want you to wear a wire."

"A wire?  What's that?"

"A small microphone the size of a pinhead attached by cable to a little
box hidden in your clothes.  It'll relay your conversation with Max.
We'll be in a car nearby."

Sam saw that he'd terrified her.  Her composure crumbled before his
eyes.

"It'll be okay, I promise."

"I can't do this.  Any of it," she whispered.

"I'm no good at pretending things."

He grunted in astonishment.

"You did all right in that cafe in Chiswick."  He wasn't going to let
her off the hook.  He noticed that she had the grace to blush.

"But what on earth am I going to say to him?"  she whined.

"He thinks I want him back."

"Up the stakes to a level he won't go for," Sam suggested.  Tell him
you want to go on seeing him but only if he divorces his wife."

She looked aghast.

"Suppose he agrees?  No way."

"It's just for one evening, Julie."

"What else am I going to talk about?  I can't just plunge straight in
and say, "Were you involved with my father in something smuggled out of
Russia which he called red mercury."" "He's talked to you about his
work in the past?"

"Yes.  From time to time."

"Well, get him to do it again and then pop the question about what sort
of business he was doing with your father."

"Pop the question.  Anyway it's only your paranoid suspicion that he
was connected with my dad."  She was desperate to devalue the plan.

"I'm far from convinced."

"Paranoid suspicions are what my trade is all about," he reminded
her.

"What has he told you about his work?"

"He's talked about the clinic.  How he and his brother built it up."

"Where does the virology come in?"

"It's his special interest.  Or used to be.  He worked as a physician
in one of the main labs in Vienna when he was, younger.  And he
established a state-of-the-art virology lab at the clinic when they set
it up four years ago.  He still takes an interest, although these days
at the clinic he's more of an administrator.  His brother was killed in
a skiing accident eight months ago.  Hansi was older.  The financial
brains.  Max runs the place on his own now."

"They'd been close?"

"I get the impression his whole family is.  They own a big estate in
southern Austria somewhere.  Max told me once that his grandfather
bought it for next to nothing from some Jews who wanted to flee the
country when Hitler moved in.  After the war they tried to get it back,
but the courts blocked them.  It happened quite a lot in Austria, Max
said."

Sam felt the back of his neck bristling.

"He told you this with pride?"

"Well... he didn't seem embarrassed by it."

"What are his politics?"

"Oh, I don't know.  That sort of stuff doesn't interest me.  He did
talk about some new Austrian nationalist party or other once.  It's
getting stronger, apparently.  But I used to switch off when he got on
to politics."

"Ever talk about there being too many foreigners in Austria?  Ever use
the word IJberfremdungT Flustered, Julie knitted her brow.  Sam had
taken on the intense look of a terrier.

"I don't remember.  He seldom used German words with me.  But I know
that it's not just Austria he's concerned about.  He thinks the whole
of Europe should be keeping the foreigners out.  Turks, Bosnians,
Albanians, gypsies Sam swallowed, reminding himself it wasn't only
active racists who held such views.  He let his eyes wander from
Julie's troubled face and over to the window.  He felt like a hound
that had scented the fox.  The smell was still weak, but it was
definitely there.

"It's going to be okay tonight, Julie," he said, giving her hand a
squeeze.  He felt a strong urge to give her a hug.

"Just a matter of eliminating Max from our enquiries.  And don't worry
about it.  I'll be within shouting distance.  I'll look after you.  I
promise."

She looked doubtfully at him.  It was a promise men always made and, in
her experience, one they never kept.

SEVENTEEN

London.  St.  Stephen's Hospital, Stepney 19.45 hrs

SANDRA WILLETTS ARRIVED a little earlier than usual for her night shift
on the elderly care ward.  There were grey bags under her eyes from
lack of sleep.  She hadn't dared confront Rob about the e-mail she'd
seen on his computer, but the thought of it had filled every waking
moment during the past twenty-four hours.

St.  Stephen's Hospital was an old Victorian building of blackened
brick, scheduled for replacement within the next couple of years.
Inefficient, draughty and lacking in modern facilities, but Sandra
found it a pleasant place to work because the staff were nice.  The
night shift wasn't what she wanted to do.  Lack of daylight didn't suit
her.  But nights paid better.  So did caring for the elderly.

Sandra climbed the stairs to the third floor.  She always walked up
when she arrived for work because the lift was out of order half the
time.  Also she was overweight.  She was fifteen minutes early this
evening, but had been desperate to get out of the flat.  Rob had become
even more withdrawn and uncommunicative, too wrapped up in himself to
realise how uptight she herself was.

"Hi, Mary," she breezed, stepping into the nursing office and putting
her black leather shoulder bag down in a corner.

Staff Nurse Mary Cowan was alone in the little room and peered
pointedly at her watch.

"What's with all this keenness, may I ask?"

"Misread the time," Sandra lied.

"How's the day been?"

"Not so bad.  We've six empty beds this afternoon, which must be a
record.  Two new patients.  A woman with a broken hip and a man who's
just been catheterised.  They're considering him for a transurethral
prostatectomy tomorrow."  She frowned.

"You look as if you could do with a good lie-down yourself.  What's
up?"

Sandra shook her head.  She longed to tell someone about it, but held
back.

"It's Rob, isn't it?"

Mary Cowan was a small Irishwoman with dark hair and a thin, watchful
face.  They'd known each other for years and often chatted about their
partners during these hand overs  Mary was married to a policeman.

Sandra nodded.

"Up to something, is he?"

Sandra tried to shrug it off.

"They usually are," Mary stated.  Then she became concerned.  She could
see this was no ordinary tiff.

"What's it about?  I mean I know I'm being nosy, but .. ."

Sandra looked away.  She felt loyalty to Rob, yet was desperately
scared about what he'd got himself into.

"You think he's seeing someone?"  Mary persisted in a soft, low
voice.

"Another woman?  No."  Sandra shuttled her head.

"Although how would I know what he does in the evenings when I'm on
shift?  All I know is that the bed's left in a mess and smells of him
when I get home in the mornings.  No.  It's not that."

"What, then?"

Sandra looked towards the door.  It did seem remarkably quiet out on
the ward.

"He's doing stuff on the Internet," she mumbled.

Mary Cowan looked a little dismissive.

"What, like porn and that?"

"No.  Well ... I don't know.  He may be for all I know, but that's not
what I meant."

"Go on."

"Well, yesterday I'd been out shopping and when I got back to the flat
he'd left his computer on.  He was out, see.  Now, he always turns it
off, normally.  Never lets me see what he's looking at on the net.  So
.. ."

"So you thought you'd give it the once-over.  Don't blame you."

"It was e-mail."

"It's like picture postcards, isn't it?  If you leave 'em lying around,
you've only yourself to blame if other people read them."

"Well .. . yes."

"So, what did it say?"

Sandra bit her lip.  Rob would kill her.

"It was a message from somebody who was congratulating him.  Talking
about the "effort on Saturday" all across Europe.  Thanks to Rob and
the other comrades, it said some network has been established."

"A network?"  Mary wasn't getting the drift at all.

"About football, was it?"

Sandra shot a guilty glance behind her, almost as if she expected to
see Rob there.

"Not football, Mary.  The message called it the Lucifer Network.  You
remember what happened last Saturday?  Here and across Europe?"

Mary frowned.  Then suddenly her eyes were as big as marbles.

"You don't mean .. ."

"I mean Southall, Mary ..."  Sandra gulped.

"No!  But why, in the name of God?  Why d'you think that?"

"Well, to be honest, Rob's always been a bit of a racist .. ."

"So's my Colin and he's a copper, but blowing people up .. ."

"I know.  It's crazy, isn't it.  My mind's gone doolally thinking about
it."

"But that is crazy, Sandra.  You can't seriously think that Rob ..."
They held each other's look for several seconds, knowing that men were
capable of almost anything.

"Have you asked him?"

Sandra laughed bitterly.

"You have to be joking.  He'd knock the breath out of me if he knew I'd
read the stuff on his screen.  I never used to be scared of him, Mary,
but I'm petrified of him now."

"But hang on a minute .. ."

"Look.  All I know is he's up to something he shouldn't be.  And it's
serious.  I've never seen him so uptight, so secretive."

"But that bomb in Southall .. . That was murder," she gasped.

"I know," Sandra moaned.

"It couldn't really have been him, could it?"

Mary didn't answer.  It wasn't for her to judge.

"What're you going to do?"

"I don't know."  She was about to tell her friend about the last part
of the e-mail, the bit asking him to select a target for the coming
weekend, but a buzzer sounded.

"Duty calls," said Mary Cowan as she bustled from the room.

Duty.  For the past twenty-four hours Sandra had been trying to work
out where hers lay.

HMS Truculent

The submarine passed at periscope depth through the channel between
Lastovo island and the rocks a few miles to the east.  The tiny piece
of land named Palagra where the Russian voices had been detected was
now just two miles distant, in a wide stretch of inter-island water
known as the Lastovski Channel.

"Depth under the keel?"

Talbot had been pacing nervously between the navigation table and the
planes man position.  Charts of this part of the world weren't famous
for their accuracy.

"Thirty-eight metres, sir," the navigator reported, reading off the
echo-sounder.

They were navigating with every means at their disposal.  GPS, bottom
contour analysis and visual sightings through the periscope.  They had
the attack mast up on this moonless night, slimmer and less visible
than the search periscope and equipped with a thermal imager which
produced ghostly outlines of the islands around them.

"Single flash, five seconds, bears that," barked Lieutenant Harvey
Styles, his face pressed to the periscope sight.  He swung the optics
to the east, where another light was visible.  He counted the flashes
and timed the pause between the bursts.

"Flashing five, thirty seconds, bears that."

Talbot stalked to the chart again.  The navigator had noted down the
bearings and was pencilling in the plot.  Everything matched.  Just as
it should.

On a small monitor behind the ship control position the periscope's
thermal imager showed the stumpy, flat-topped outline of Palagra island
dead ahead: 300 metres long and about 100 wide, it was uninhabited,
according to the preliminary archive research done in London.  The
submarine's task was to approach as close as they dared and photograph
it from every angle to find a landing place for the reconnaissance team
London was sending out.

Depth would limit how close they could get.  The chart showed sixty-two
metres a mile offshore, perilously close to the minimum for a submerged
nuclear submarine.  Talbot also feared uncharted rocks and fishing
boats.  Getting snared in a net or going aground well inside Croatia's
territorial waters would be an embarrassment of world-shattering
proportions.  He marched into the sound room and hovered.  Every man
concentrating, every sensor straining for some noise that shouldn't be
there.

In the trials shack, Arthur Harris also had headphones clamped to his
ears, but there'd been nothing on the frequencies the Russians had
used.  Disappointment was written on his face.  Disappointment and
annoyance.  Time had been lost when the boat had headed for Crete.
Precious time, which if they'd returned to the surveillance straight
after the rendezvous with the helicopter, might have given him another
piece of the jigsaw.

He checked the digital time display at the top of the equipment rack.
It was after 11 p.m. local.  An inactive hour.  The broadband frequency
analyser showed a flat trace, apart from the blip from two fishing
boats on marine band VHP.  He lifted off the headphones, and nudged the
CT wedged next to him on the bench.  He was going for a leg stretch. As
he emerged into the control room, a voice rang out from the intercom
speakers.

"New contact bearing red zero-five."  Chief Smedley's voice.

The control room was electrified.

Talbot marched into the sound room and craned his head towards the bow
sonar screens, staring at the thin green trace that had suddenly come
up.

"Contact is track number nine-zero-one," Smedley called.

"Cut it through."

"Cut."

"Motor boat, sir."

"Somewhere near the island," the captain growled, hurriedly returning
to the control room.  He stopped by the periscope.

"See anything, TSO?"

Harvey Styles had the optics on full magnification.

"Yes, sir.  Small boat just visible, heading left to right."

"How small?"

"Fifteen, twenty metres at a guess, sir.  Looks like there's a little
harbour at the east end of the island."

There was nothing on the chart to indicate it.

"Let me see."

Styles relinquished the eyepiece.

The craft was a powerboat, moving at a good speed, judging by the bow
wave.  As he watched, Talbot saw it turn and settle on a course heading
straight towards them.

"Starboard twenty," he barked, handing the periscope back to Styles.
The risk of their mast being seen in the black of night was minimal,
even if the powerboat passed close, but he would take no chances.  He
returned to his command seat and watched the video screen as the craft
veered away to their left.  Styles switched the sight to full
magnification.  The front half of the boat filled the frame.  There was
lettering on the bow, barely distinguishable on the thermal imager.

"I think there's a "k" and an "I" there, sir," Styles commented.

"Could be the Karolina."

Talbot glanced round and saw Arthur Harris hovering by the conning
tower access hatch.  He beckoned him over and pointed to the monitor.

"I have an awful feeling, Chief Harris," he opined softly, 'that those
are our Moscow birds in that boat.  And if so, they may have just flown
the coop."

Vienna 22.10 hrs

The dark blue Passat had been rented by a twenty-six-year-old Cambridge
graduate called Malcolm who had the shoulders of a rowing blue and the
nervous enthusiasm of a teenager.  Through the windscreen, Sam and he
watched Max Schenk double-park his Audi outside the Marriott, then walk
quickly into the hotel.

"Off you go," Sam murmured.  fMalcolm pushed open the driver's door,
hurried over to Schenk's car and crouched by a rear wheel arch,
pretending to tie a shoelace.  Fifteen seconds later he was back.

"Okay?"

"Yep.  He'll only see the transmitter wire if he goes looking for
it."

Sam opened the portable computer on his lap, waiting for the red dot to
appear on the screen which would tell him the tracer was working.  It
came up a split second before Schenk re-emerged from the hotel with
Julie.

"Well done, Male.  We're go for launch."

Harry Jackman's daughter wore a jacket and skirt and looked drawn and
tense.  Sam caught her glancing about to see if she could spot him.

The Audi started up and turned onto the Ringstrasse.  Malcolm swung the
Passat out to follow it.  On the roof of the rented car a small
additional antenna had been fixed by magnets to pick up the
transmissions from the car in front.  The lead from it came down
through a gap in the window and connected to a small receiver the size
of a Walkman.  Sam put on a pair of headphones and listened, praying
the system would work.  Malcolm kept glancing at him to check.

Sam gave a thumbs-up.  As they progressed through the evening traffic
the signals broke up now and then, which was to be expected.  The
transmitter taped to the inside of Julie's jacket was low powered, its
output weakened by the metal shell of Schenk's Audi.

Sam had spent most of the afternoon with Collins planning the
operation.  The station chief had remained sceptical about a link
between Jackman's cargo and the Brussels virus and was insisting on
keeping a diplomatic distance from his activities.  He'd offered the
assistance of a junior, however, a man who worked for a British bank in
Vienna, but freelanced for SIS.  According to Collins he was reliable
and knew the city well.

The kit they were using was commercial, bought by Malcolm at a 'spy
shop' that afternoon.  Sam had taken it to the Marriott at around eight
to wire Julie up.  He'd hidden the tiny microphone in the lapel of a
dark blue blazer which she'd bought after their lunch together, taping
into the lining the slim transmitter box and a credit-card-sized
digital recorder that would provide back-up if there was a failure of
the radio link.  He'd warned her to be careful not to snag the thin
wire antenna that hung down the inside of the jacket.

"Wherever you go, I'll be right behind you," he'd told her, less
confident than he sounded.  He'd shown her the small black object half
the size of a matchbox they would attach to Schenk's car.

"It's a tracer which sends a tiny signal to a satellite."

"Will it take my pulse?"  she'd quipped, momentarily allowing humour to
lighten her terror.

The car braked suddenly, Malcolm mouthing expletives.  A tram had
turned at a junction in front of them, cutting them off from the
Audi.

"You have to watch these bastards," he hissed.

"They've got priority and they use it."

Seconds later the headphones died.

"Now we've bloody lost them," Sam snapped.  Then the traffic lights
went red, compounding their problems.

"Damn!"  Malcolm banged on the wheel.

The notebook computer on Sam's lap was linked through the car's
cellphone to a satellite terminal in the Embassy.  Its glowing screen
showed a street map of Vienna.  Superimposed was the flashing dot of
the tracer.  Waiting for the lights to change, Malcolm leaned over to
look.

"He's going for the Franzen bridge, then towards the Prater," he
opined, pointing out where he meant.  When the lights turned green he
jammed his foot down, glancing in the mirror for police cars.

Sam had become anxious about what he was putting Julie through this
evening.  If Max Schenk discovered that wire, he might not be the
gentleman she thought he was.  A fresh crackle in the earphones brought
some relief.  They were getting back in range.

'..  . taking me .. ."

'..  . nice and quiet.  We can .. ."

Tantalising but useless.  Sam loathed so-called hi-tech devices that
promised more than they delivered.

"Catch up, for Christ's sake," he fumed.

"I'm getting sod all."

They accelerated past a bus, then braked for a fresh set of lights
turning amber.

"God, you're no bloody Schumacher, are you?"

"Look.  If the police stop us because I jump a light it'll be game
over," Malcolm protested, his hands fidgeting on the wheel.

More headphone crackles.

'..  . changed your mind?"

Sam winced.  Schenk had started to question her.

"Which way at the Praterstern?"  Malcolm asked, glancing down at the
screen then back up at the lights.

Sam checked.

"Looks like they've gone straight ahead."

"Show me."

Sam swung the laptop towards him.

"Okay.  No problem.  I know that road.  We can still catch them."  The
green came up and he zoomed off.

Collins had been full of praise for Malcolm's navigational skills that
afternoon.  Knows Vienna better than the shape of his own wedding
tackle was the way he'd put it.  He'd better, thought Sam.  He'd bloody
better.

To their right the sky flashed and flickered with the lights of the
amusement park, the spill from them illuminating the cabins of the
giant Ferris wheel as it ground slowly round.  They were close to where
Kovalenko's corpse had been found that morning.  It would have taken
two killers to slay a man with a garrotte, Sam had calculated, one to
restrain the victim while the other screwed the cutting bolt into his
spinal cord.  Two people of a very special mindset.  The same kind, he
realised, as might use a virus to addle a man's brain.

The trouble was, everything they had was supposition, not fact.  The
link between Jackman's death and Kovalenko's, the connection between
Max Schenk and Jackman.  And his suspicion about Schenk had weakened
after Collins's enquiries with the Austrian Security Police had turned
up nothing on the doctor.

He was due some luck, but tonight they weren't getting any.  The
earphones had gone dead again and the tracer dot was streaking away
from them.  His anxiety began ratcheting up.

"Bloody move it, Malcolm.  If you get booked, I'll pay the fine."

"It's not the money, Mr.  Packer, I can assure you of that."

Malcolm was a nervous driver, hunching over the wheel.  He drove with a
jerky unevenness that made Sam want to retch.  Goaded by the drumming
of Sam's fingers on the dashboard he suddenly swung out to overtake a
bus, putting his foot hard down.

Ahead was another junction.  More lights.

"Oh Jesus!"  Sam moaned as they clicked to amber.  Malcolm dabbed the
brakes, but Sam swore at him and he trod the accelerator again.

"Good man .. ."  His voice trailed away.  Out of the corner of his eye
he'd seen a small shape dart from a side street.

"For fuck's sake!"

Malcolm swerved, but too late.  The motorcyclist skidded, wobbled and
banged against their rear wing.

"Shit!"

Malcolm swung over to the kerb.  They looked back.  The bike was on its
side in the middle of the road, its rider getting gingerly to his
feet.

"He's okay, Male," Sam insisted, glowering at the laptop and its
winking red dot.

"Forget him.  He's okay ..."  But he heard the door open and Malcolm
sprinting back.

"Bloody hell!"

He was imaeinine the worst by now.  Schenk's arm round Julie's
shoulders.  A groping hand slipping inside the jacket.  The unexpected
feel of wires and metal against the back of his fingers .. .

He wrenched open the door.

"Malcolm!"

A few seconds later the young man was back, checking the rear wing
before slipping behind the wheel again.

"Pissed, thank God," Malcolm muttered as he crunched in the gear.

"Unhurt.  And fortunately the bugger thought it was his own fault."  He
accelerated away.

"Where does the tracer put them?"

"In Germany," Sam snarled.  He would have words with Collins later, to
tell him Malcolm's knowledge of his own genitalia was winning hands
down.

"Seriously."

"They've crossed the Danube already."

"Floridsdorf Bridge?"

"If you say so."

"Then I've a bloody good idea where they're headed."

"Where's that?"

"Stammersdorf.  It's a village right on the edge of the city.  There's
a street full of Heurigen there.  You know, wine taverns.  Not like the
tourist traps in the Wienerwald.  It's where the locals go for a quiet
jug."

They had no chance of catching up.  Schenk was driving fast and had
been luckier with the lights.  But Malcolm had guessed right.  Ten
minutes later the red dot ceased moving in Stammersdorf.  Three minutes
after that they arrived there too, a pretty village whose straight main
street was lined with pastel-painted hostelries.  Halfway down they
spotted the Audi, parked by the kerb and empty.  They pulled up near
it.

Sam's nerves were like crushed bamboo by now.  They should have been
picking up signals from Julie's wire again, yet they weren't.They
looked up and down the narrow, lamplit street.  There were at least
half a dozen taverns close by.

"Any ideas?"  Sam demanded.  Malcolm shook his head.

Sam slipped the Walkman-like audio receiver inside his jacket and they
began to move, praying for a sudden earphone crackle to tell them
they'd got near.

"Shall I try this one?"  Malcolm suggested, pushing at the door of the
first tavern they came to.

"Might as well."

Within a couple of seconds he was out again.

"Closing.  And the place was empty."

The next they came to was the same.  Then Malcolm touched Sam's arm and
pointed across the road.  The zumphing sounds of an accordion wafted
through an archway which formed the entrance to a cream yellow tavern
with bottle-glass windows.

"That one's got life in it."

They crossed the road.  Beyond the arch was a vine-bedecked, cobbled
courtyard set with tables and lit by coloured lights in the trees.

"Check it out," Sam ordered.

"If Julie's in there and sees me it'll put her off her stroke."

As Malcolm walked in, a waitress came up to him, tapping her watch.

"Looking for a friend," Sam heard him say.

Suddenly he jumped.  The headphones had come alive.  A male voice,
crisp and close, with a strong Germanic accent.  Schenk.  And he was
angry.

"You tell me on the telephone you have a new thought about us.  That
you change your mind from last night.  But now you say you don't want
to make love.  You must explain to me, Julie."

"I told you in the car.  I just want to talk."

Sam was extraordinarily relieved to hear Julie's voice.  She seemed
okay, if understandably tense.

"I just felt I should give us another chance," she went on,
unconvincingly.

"We've been seeing each other for a year, yet I hardly know you.  I've
no idea what you think about a lot of things.  We never talk about
anything important."

"Important?  What d'you mean?"

"Well, personal things.  I don't even know where you live.  Is it a
house, aflat?  Large, small?  I know you have a wife called Cara.  I
know you have children, but you've never given me their names or their
ages."

"These things you have no need to know," he answered, icily.

"You know a lot more about me.  Even when we first met, you seemed to
know loads already.  I've no idea how."

Sam heard a fluffing noise that sounded as if the microphone was being
banged.

"No, Max!  Get off me!"

He imagined Schenk trying to remove her blazer.

"N'ja Julie.  Why do you want to know such unimportant things?"  There
was a kissing sound and Schenk's nasally breathing.

"You enjoy it with me.  That's what matter.  I don't believe you have
been pretending when we are in bed."  Another clunk on the lapel
mike.

"You cannot have all of my life, Julie.  Apart of me belongs to other
people.  You know that.  It is our understanding."

More grappling noises, then a squeak of protest.

"No, Max.  I..  . I'll only have sex with you if you tell me some
things I want to know."

Sam winced.  Her commitment to his cause was beginning to astonish him
"What things?"  Schenk's voice had turned into a menacing growl.

"What is it you want to know?"

"How you knew so much about me when we first met?"

There was no reply.  Somewhere in that room they were in a clock was
ticking.

"Was it from my father?"

Another silence.  Even Schenk's breathing had stopped.

"Why do you think that?"

"Oh, because I know he used to talk about me a lot .. . Even to
strangers, sometimes."

If there'd been a pin in that room Sam would have heard it drop.

"I didn't meet your father, Julie."

Sam's heart sank.  Was that it?  All over.  End of story.

"Didn't you?  "Julie persisted.

"That's odd.  I could have sworn I saw you with him earlier that
evening."

Sam perked up again.  She wasn't giving in easily.

"Well, you were wrong," Schenk told her with a little laugh.

"What is this game you play with me, Julie?  What is it?  Mmm?  What do
you want, you funny little girl?"

More rustling against the microphone.  Much more.  Then a sharp intake
of breath.

"Hands off, Max.  I do not want to go to bed with you."

"But I have answered your question."

"I don't know if you were telling the truth."

Schenk exploded with rage.

"Get off!"  Julie squealed.

Sam whirled round, trying to use the receiver as a direction finder,
but the level was almost constant wherever he pointed it.

"You play some game this evening.  What it is?"  Schenk repeated,
gravel voiced.

Sam looked about wildly.  Blank walls everywhere.  She was only a few
paces away yet he didn't know where.

"Take me back to the Marriott," Julie begged.

"Please, Max."

"Oh no.  I don't take you anywhere yet.  We are not finished.  Perhaps
you don't understand what we have been doing for the past year."

"What d'you mean?"

"I think maybe you have never understood."

"I want to go back, Max."  Julie's voice was beginning to crack.

"Please let go of me.  I'll get a taxi."

"We are not finished."

"Yes, Max.  It's over.  I love someone else .. ."

Schenk snorted in surprise.  Then he chuckled.

"Well then, I am happy for you.  I too love someone else.  But what you
and I have done this year, it has never been love."

"That's true."

"And we didn't pretend so."

"No."

"Because it was just business, yes?"

"Business?"

"I give you airplane tickets, clothes, good food and wine, take you to
beautiful places.  And .. . in return, you give me what I want.  It is
simple, Julie.  We have been like customer and supplier for each
other."

No response.  Sam knew what was coming next.

"And you still owe me for this time, my little Julie."

"Look, Max, I'll pay you for it."  Her voice trembled.

"The flight, the dinner, the hotel.  I'll write you a cheque .. ."

All of a sudden Malcolm emerged from the Heurige, shaking his head.

"Not here," he grunted.

Sam held up a hand to silence him.

"They're in a bedroom," he snapped.

"Which of these places lets rooms?"

Malcolm peered round looking for ZIMMER PREI signs.

"I'll ask inside."

"Be quick, for Christ's sake."

Sam heard more rustling of clothing near the microphone, then Julie's
voice, much more frightened than before.

"All right, Max.  Fine.  We'll do it.  But I have to go to the bathroom
first."

"No.  First I undress you."

"I don't want you to."

"It doesn't matter what you want .. ."  His hiss tailed away suddenly.
Then he grunted with surprise.  The mike banged and grew muffled, as if
fingers had closed over it.

' What is this?"

"Please, Max Sam heard a slap, then a whimper of protest.  There were
sounds of the jacket being wrenched off.

"Verdammt!"

Then silence.  Total electronic death.  Not even a hiss.  The antenna
or microphone ripped from its socket.  Sam's throat was blocked by a
huge lump.  He'd promised to protect her.

He began walking, listening for raised voices from behind the windows
closest to him.  Seconds were ticking away.  Soon they'd be minutes and
Schenk was doing God knew what to her.

Suddenly there was a bang from the other side of the road.  He shot a
glance at the tavern opposite.  Curtains moved in an upstairs window. A
dark-haired head was being shoved back against the glass.

He ran, bursting in through the bottle-glass door.  Ignoring the
protests of the landlord, he saw some stairs and pounded up them.  At
the top was a pine-floored landing with a handful of doors.  Thumps and
muffled sobs came from behind one of them.  He tried the handle.
Locked, but it gave way to his shoulder.

Inside, it smelled of Schenk's vile cigar habit.  Julie was cowering on
the bed, her shirt half off, one small and vulnerable breast pulled
free from the bra.  Schenk was whipping her, her handbag bunched in his
fist like a lash.  At the sound of Sam's entry he lurched round, face
white with rage and fear.  Then he flung the bag at Sam's head and
barged towards the door.

Sam ducked low and went in with a tackle, but Schenk showed a
surprising agility and twisted from his grip, hammering both fists
down.  Sam staggered from the blow to his head.  By the time he could
steady himself, Schenk was out of the room.

Sam grabbed Julie by the shoulders, mouthing apologies.  Her face was
red with slap marks, her lower lip split and bleeding.  Eyes locked
shut, her body shook with sobs.  He pulled her shirt back on, then held
her in his arms and hugged her.

And it had all been for nothing.  The secret of Harry Jackman's
damnable deal was as obscure as ever.

He heard feet on the stairs.  The landlord appeared at the door.

"N'ja.  Was geht los hier?"

"Can you walk?"  Sam asked.  Julie nodded.

"Then let's get out of here."  He draped the torn blazer over her
shoulders, then gathered up her bag and the pieces of bugging equipment
that lay scattered on the floor.

Malcolm was at the foot of the stairs as he helped her down.

"Schenk came crashing out of the place like a mad bull," he announced
breathlessly.

Behind them Sam heard the landlord remonstrating.

"Got any money?"

"Some," Malcolm answered.

"Give it to me so I can pacify mine host.  Then get in that damned car
and see where Schenk runs to."

Malcolm thrust a wad of notes into Sam's hand, then left, jangling the
car keys.

"Sit down a sec, while I sort this out," Sam whispered, helping Julie
to a chair.

He apologised to the landlord in the best German he could muster and
counted out notes until the man was satisfied.  Then he asked about
taxis and was told there were usually a couple waiting fifty metres
down the road.

He took Julie into the street, and found one.  He helped her onto the
back seat and slid in beside her, ordering the driver to take them to
the Marriott.

"Tell me you're all right," he croaked, putting an arm round her
shoulders.

But she told him nothing.  Instead she stared blankly ahead, stunned by
the fact that the world as she knew it had irrevocably changed.

"I'm sorry," said Sam, helplessly.  His prime concern was to ensure she
was okay, but at the same time he was desperate to know if she'd
learned anything useful.

"I heard Max say he hadn't met your father.  You think he was telling
the truth?"

She still didn't answer.  He had the feeling she wasn't registering
what he was saying.

She couldn't stay at the Marriott tonight, he realised.  Not with
Schenk running amok.  He thought of ringing Collins to ask if he and
his wife had a spare room they could let her use, but remembered the
station chief's insistence on being kept out of play.

"Look, it won't be safe for you at the Marriott tonight."  He shot her
a glance.  She blinked.  The first indication that she was hearing
him.

"I'll find you some other hotel, okay?  I'll ring round."  He began to
think of the modalities, wishing he had a mobile with him.

"Or there's the pension where I'm staying," he suggested cautiously.

"They may have a room free.  If not you could use my bed.  I'll sleep
in a chair."  She blinked again.  Then after a few moments'
consideration nodded her assent.

Julie didn't look at him again during the rest of the time it took to
drive back into central Vienna.  Her eyes were wide open but they
weren't seeing anything.  Nothing except the black misery of knowing at
last how abjectly she'd been used.

"Do you want to see a doctor?"  Sam asked, suddenly fearing Schenk had
done her some serious injury that he couldn't see.

She shook her head.

They turned onto the Ring.  The Marriott loomed ahead.

"Give me your key card and I'll get your things."

She didn't respond at first, her mind in turmoil.

"Julie?  D'you have the key card?"

When at last she turned her puffy red face towards him, he flinched at
the hurt he saw in her eyes.

"Give me your key card and I'll collect your things from the room," he
repeated.

She pointed to the blazer he was holding.

"In the pocket," she whispered.

It took him a little over five minutes to pack her case and check with
the front desk that the bill was being settled by Dr.  Max Schenk.
Outside by the car again, the taxi driver took the suitcase from him
and slipped it into the boot.

The Pension Kleist was unstaffed at night, which Sam was grateful for.
Arriving with a bruised woman would have brought the police round.
Inside the hotel, when they got into the small wood-panelled lift,
Julie kept her eyes averted.  Sam assumed she was blaming him for what
had happened.

When they reached his room he asked her again about her readiness to
make do with his bed.  She nodded, then made straight for the bathroom.
He heard a stifled sob as she saw for the first time what had happened
to her face.  When she emerged, her hairline was wet from the water
she'd splashed on her swollen cheeks.

"This place doesn't run to mini bars Sam apologised.  He was in bad
need of a drink and imagined she was too.  He kicked himself for not
raiding the fridge at the Marriott.

She ignored him, walking towards the bed.  She slipped out of her
shoes, then lay down on her side, pulling a pillow over her head.

Sam watched her shoulders begin to shake, telling himself it was good
for her to cry.  He sat on the edge of the bed, and put a hand on her
arm, but withdrew it when she gave no sign of wanting it there.  He got
up, moved to the chair by the dressing table and flopped into it.  It
had been a good plan this evening, he told himself.  The fact that it
had gone wrong and produced nothing was bad luck.  The same bad luck
that had dogged his whole fucking life since the death of Harry
Jackman.

Her handbag was on the end of the bed, together with the blazer she'd
been wearing and the bits of equipment he'd retrieved from the tavern
bedroom floor.  To occupy himself, he began to reassemble the pieces.
It wasn't long before he realised the back-up recorder was missing.  He
felt inside the jacket where it had been taped, running his fingers
along the lining in case it had slipped.  Eventually he found it and
turned it over in his hands, examining it.

Julie seemed to be withdrawing further and further into herself.  She
had her knees tugged up and her arms wrapped round them.  Sam was
beginning to think she was making a meal of it.  Turning a crisis into
a drama.

Then, it dawned on him that her extreme distress could have been caused
by something that had happened in the couple of minutes between Schenk
ripping out the antenna and his bursting into the room.  A couple of
minutes' conversation he hadn't heard.  He peered at the
credit-card-sized recorder, trying to work out how to play it back.  It
was Malcolm who was the expert on the gear, and Malcolm was chasing
Schenk's car.  Turning it over, he found a socket for a headset and a
cluster of tiny control buttons.  He plugged in the phones from the
Walkman and put them on.  Then, holding the device under the dressing
table light, he began prodding at the controls with the point of a
pen.

It began to play.  The first part of the recording was disjointed, the
in-built, voice-activated mike only cutting in when words spoken in the
Audi rose well above the background noise.  Two minutes from the start
of the replay they were at Stammersdorf.  Car doors slamming.  Schenk's
steel-tipped heels on the pavement.  Stilted, awkward words spoken.  A
hard edge to Schenk's voice, nervousness in Julie's.  There was the
noise of them entering the tavern, Julie pointing out a nook where they
could sit in private.  Then Schenk telling her to follow him.  More
footsteps, clumping on wooden stairs.  Julie saying she wanted to sit
in the Stube, Schenk telling her the room upstairs was paid for and the
champagne chilled.

Then came the conversation Sam had already heard.  He listened again to
the way she'd led Schenk down the path that he'd asked her to pursue.

The slaps to her face when they came had a digital crispness, as did
her cries for him to stop.  He heard Schenk ripping into the blazer
lining, the snap of the transmitter wire, the straining to pull the
microphone from its cable.

"Why you do this?  Who is this for?"

Another slap when she didn't answer.

"You will tell me .. ."

Julie gasped as Schenk did something unspeakable to her.  She began to
cry, then between gulps spat out her reply.

"For me!  It's for me, Max.  I was going to blackmail you.  For money
.. ."

Sam closed his eyes in admiration and humility.  She could so easily
have said that she'd been forced into it, but instead she'd covered up
for him.

Two more smacks followed.

"You greedy bitch."  Schenk's voice was acid-edged.

"Greedy like your shit father The words hit like a punch to the
stomach.  Sam stopped breathing.

"My father," Julie gasped.

"So you did .. ."

"Yes.  Yes, it was your father who told me all about you."

Sam stared at the crumpled figure on the bed and understood her
despair.

"He gave you to me.  You can have her, he said.  I will help you get
her."

Sam put his head in his hands.

"You remember those conference papers?"  Schenk's relentless voice
continued.

"You leave them in the restaurant when you have dinner with your father
and Linda.  After you go upstairs he comes looking for me in the bar
and gives them to me.  Play your cards right and she'll do a number for
you, he said.  His words, Julie.  His own words.  Your own pimp
father."

"No .. ."  she whimpered.

"This isn't true .. ."

"He said you look for a new relationship.  Something uncomplicated with
an older man with money who will be nice to you.  He tell me about your
past affairs.  All those useless young men.  He tell me what you didn't
like and what you did.  He told me what interest you."

"I don't believe you," Julie moaned, but Sam could hear that she did.

"Why?"  she howled.

"Why would he do that?"

"Business, Julie.  As I just tell you.  You and me, our relationship
has always been business, nothing more.  He .. . your father I was
buying something from him.  His price was too high.  I make him come
lower, but not low enough.  Then he say he will fix it for me to have
you as my mistress.  As part of the deal.  Like the salesman gives you
the sun-roof when you buy a car."

"It's not true .. ."  she repeated, so low Sam could barely hear.

"I didn't believe it also," the Austrian answered in a bitter chuckle.
"I thought it was a joke.  Or some trick and you were part of it.  Then
when we talk in the bar, I realise how innocent you are, Julie.  So
naive.  Everything he tell me about you was right.  He made it so easy
for me.  You were so ready for someone like me.  You remember how long
it was before we went to your room?  Forty minutes, Julie.  Forty
minutes after we first speak we have our first fuck."

Sam bit his lip, willing her to have the strength to ask the vital
question what it was that Schenk had bought from Harry Jackman.

But a new sound began to swamp the recording.  A thin, high howl like
an animal in pain.  The awfulness of what her father had done had
broken through.  Then came the clatter of a fight.  Schenk firing off
German expletives.  More smacks.  Grunts and stifled screams, then
finally the crash of the door breaking in and Sam's voice shouting.

He pulled off the headset.

Julie knows.

She did now.  Knew that the man who'd been her lover for the past
twelve months had done business with her father.  And something far
worse than that she'd learned the depths to which her father would sink
to achieve his ends.

Sam looked up and let out the breath that he seemed to have been
holding for ever.  Julie had raised herself onto one elbow and was
staring at him, her eyes blurs of bewilderment.

"Julie," he croaked.

"I heard it, love.  Heard it all."  He walked over to the bed and sat
on the edge of it.

"I'm so sorry."

Sony.  A useless word.  Always inadequate.  A word with no power to
reveal the feelings behind it.

He tried to think of something to say which might ease the pain of
discovering that the man she'd spent a lifetime trying to please had
sold her like a bag of sweets.  But, if such words existed, they
weren't in his vocabulary.

Slowly and stiffly, Julie swung her legs round until she was sitting
next to him.  She turned to face him, her eyes begging for answers.

"Am I really worth so little, Sam?"

He took hold of her hand.  It was feverishly hot.

"No, Julie.  You're worth millions," he told her.

"The whole fucking bank."

He moved closer and touched his mouth against her swollen lips.  She
flinched from the pain, but hooked an arm round his neck, resting her
forehead against his.

"Could you please turn the lights out," she whispered.

"I'd prefer it if you can't see me."

They sat without moving, digesting the thought of what was about to
happen.

"I will," he answered eventually, 'but you'll have to let go of me
first."

Reluctantly she uncurled her hand from the back of his head.  He turned
off the switch by the door, leaving the room bathed in the soft orange
glow of the street light that was filtering through the net curtains.

When he returned to the bed she was lying on it.  He knelt beside her
and she took his hand and slipped it under her shirt.

"Will you show me, Sam?  Show me what you think I'm worth?"

He leaned down and kissed her neck just below the mole that was half
hidden by the lobe of her ear.  Then as he freed her from her clothes
piece by piece, he kissed the rest of her feverish body until it began
to move and sway like a field of corn.

EIGHTEEN

Vienna.  Schwechat Airport Friday, 09.00 hrs

At VIENNA'S INTERNATIONAL airport the departure hall was seething.  Sam
stood to one side of the check-in desks, studying every face within
pistol range as Julie presented her ticket.  First thing, he'd switched
her to an earlier flight from the one Schenk had booked her on.  He was
taking no chances.  The last thing in the world he could allow to
happen was for the killers who'd eliminated two of those who'd known
about Jackman's sinister deal to turn it into a hat trick.

Julie's suitcase disappeared down the conveyor and she returned to
Sam's side with her boarding pass in her hand and her handbag over her
shoulder.  Thick make-up covered her bruises.  They walked without
speaking towards the Departures sign.  She'd been lost in thought that
morning, hardly exchanging more than a dozen words with him.  Just
before the barrier, she stopped and touched his arm.

"There's something I want to say," she whispered, turning to him.  Her
eyes were as dead as stone and stayed focused on the middle of his
chest.

"Okay," he replied.  But nothing came.  She seemed to be trying to
pluck up the courage.

"What is it?"

She bit her lip.

"It's this.  I'm glad that my father's dead."  She said it without any
emotion.  A statement of cold fact.  Slowly she lifted her head and
looked him in the eye.

"Glad because it means he can't betray me any more.  And," she added,
letting out a long sigh, 'if the same thing were to happen to Max ... I
wouldn't mind at all."  One of her thin eyebrows lifted, then she
turned away.

Sam swallowed uncomfortably.  She was telling him that if he had after
all orchestrated the death of her father and were to mete out the same
treatment to Max Schenk, she would consider it a service to mankind. He
reached out an arm, intending to put her straight, then decided there
was little point.

Julie glanced towards the passport check.  Although eager to get away
from Vienna, she was dreading saying goodbye to Sam.  Having made him a
part of her life last night, she had a horrible feeling he would lose
interest in her now she'd delivered Max to him.

"I'd better go through."  She turned back to face him, taking hold of
the hands that had caressed her back to sanity last night.  Do you..
. d'you know when you'll be back in London?"

"No."

She searched his eyes for some clue as to what he was thinking, but
found nothing.  The blank mask of a man who seldom gave anything
away.

"Will I ... will I see you again?"  she asked plaintively.

"Would you like to?"

"What do you think .. . ?"  She fingered the lapel of his jacket.

He kissed her mouth, careful to avoid the part of her lip that was
split.

"Then you will," he murmured.

"Au revoir, then."  She backed away.

"I'll ring you.  Take care of yourself."

Sam watched her disappear through the security barrier, then turned
towards the exit doors.  There was nothing more he could do to ensure
her safety and he had to move on.

Earlier he'd phoned Collins to alert him to the fact that Schenk had
done business with Jackman.  The station chief would soon be at the
Embassy, wanting a full rundown on last night before he contacted the
Austrian authorities.

As he walked out towards the taxi rank, Sam was remembering the
intensity of Julie's hunger for him last night.  The first sexual
climax when they'd joined their bodies had been quick for both of them,
a cathartic release of the tension that had wound them as tight as
clock springs.  Later, after they'd sated themselves further, Julie had
clung on as if he were the only thing in her life preventing her from
sinking.  They'd fallen asleep bodies touching, but she'd stirred many
times in the night, crying out unintelligibly.

When they'd awoken this morning she'd been awkward with him, as if
embarrassed at the weakness she'd shown in the face of Max's
revelations.  She'd used the bathroom first, spending a while fixing
her face.  Some time later, when Sam emerged from it after shaving,
he'd caught her looking through his file on Gunther Hoffmann, which
he'd left in his suitcase.  The lid had been open.  She'd turned
quickly away, pretending not to have seen anything and he hadn't
pursued it.

It was obvious she hadn't wanted to talk this morning, so he'd turned
the TV on, finding Sky News.  The saga of the Albanian refugee family
was continuing.  The camera crew had followed them to Germany where
they'd been received without much enthusiasm in some northern town
whose name he didn't catch.

Outside the terminal there were half a dozen people queuing for taxis
but no shortage of cars.  He slipped onto the back seat of a cream
Mercedes and gave the driver the Embassy's address in Jauresgasse.

Sam wasn't at all sure what to make of Julie.  A part of him was a
little in love with her, another part felt pity.  What he was certain
of was that their coitus last night had fulfilled him in a way that he
hadn't experienced for some considerable time.

St.  Stephen's Hospital, Stepney, London

07.40 hrs

Considering that the ward had six empty beds in it, the night shift had
been unusually busy for Sandra Willetts.  It hadn't helped that she'd
been bog-eyed from lack of sleep when she'd arrived for work twelve
hours earlier, nor that two of the patients had developed chest pains
which wouldn't respond to their angina medication.  Now, just before
handing over to the day shift, she'd finally managed to complete the
toilet round.

The one good thing about being so busy was that it had left her little
time to think.  But as she sat in the ward office updating the patient
notes and preparing for the han dover to the day team, her worries
about Rob began to bite again.

Twenty minutes later with the new shift settled in, Sandra pulled on
her raincoat and set off for home.  She'd heard the rain beating
against the windows in the ward and was glad of the telescopic umbrella
she kept in her bag.  It was a seven-minute walk to the flat, against a
trickle of bleary eyes coming the other way, people living on the
estates heading for work.  The people who had jobs, that is.  It
unnerved her that Rob had stayed unemployed for the last eighteen
months.  He could have found something if he'd tried, but it wasn't any
job he wanted.  It had to be back in the City, a high-rolling post that
would let him look his old mates in the eye.

She and Rob were both East End kids.  They'd known each other since
school but only started going out three years ago, following a blind
date.  A good piece of matchmaking which, three months later, had seen
her moving into his classy Docklands flat with its picture window views
down the river.

She reached the foot of the grim tower that had replaced it as their
home and had to wait a couple of minutes for the lift.  When it came, a
black girl emerged with three children under five.  Sandra smiled wanly
at her.  Seeing the joyless struggle of most of the mothers in this
block was putting her off having kids.

The door to the flat was double-locked, which meant Rob was out.  She
heaved a sigh of relief.  She'd been dreading having to look him in the
eye.

"Blimey!"  she breathed when she got inside.  The bed had been made.
The place was tidy.  His breakfast things had been washed up.  Then she
saw the note.

Her heart flipped as she picked it up from the small table in the
kitchen, her instant thought being that he'd left her.

Out for the morning.  Back 2ish.

Howsabout we go out for a pizza before your shift?

See ya.  R. She felt unbelievably relieved.  He was making an effort.
He wanted to communicate for once.  Recently it had been down to her to
engineer the occasional meaningful conversation.

A chance to talk.

Then a dreadful thought occurred to her.  That his sudden wish to speak
was because he'd found out she'd read his e-mail.  Found out and wanted
to sort her out for it.

HMS Truculent.

Commander Anthony Talbot read the new signal from London in the privacy
of his cabin.  They'd been given just under twelve hours in which to
prepare and it would be no mean feat to achieve the deadline.  The last
time the submarine had trained for such a mission was six months ago
and there was much brushing up to do.  He looked at his watch.  Twenty
minutes to his Heads of Departments meeting in the wardroom when the
responsibilities for the mission would be defined.  But before that he
needed to talk to the men.  There was bitter resentment at the loss of
shore leave and he needed to fire up the crew for the task ahead.

He walked the half-dozen paces to the control room where the First
Lieutenant was in command, standing by the chart table.  Hayes looked
up expectantly.

"We're go for tonight," Talbot told him.

"What's happening up top?"

They'd moved well to the west of Palagra island to use their
communications mast.  Now they were heading east again to continue
their reconnaissance.  But daylight was making it difficult for them.

"Looks like there's a sailing flotilla up ahead, sir.  About a dozen
yachts.  I've altered course to the north to try to keep clear of them,
but there are small boats all over the shop."

"It's vital we're not detected," Talbot reminded him unnecessarily.

"One of those craft could have our Russians on board."

They'd detected no further activity on the island since spotting the
powerboat leaving it last night.  The radio channels the Russians had
been using had remained silent.

"I'm going to do a pipe," Talbot announced, stepping over to the
command seat and unhooking the microphone that hung on a rack behind
it.

"D'you hear there," he began.

"This is the captain speaking.  I have just received our new orders
from the Ministry of Defence."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Arthur Harris emerge from the
trials shack.

"As you know, the CTs recorded some VHP com ms from the island of
Palagra and one of the voices belonged to a Russian biological warfare
specialist.  Defence Intelligence in London thinks he may have set up a
germ warfare factory on the island.  With trouble brewing in Kosovo and
with a heavy contingent of NATO forces in Bosnia, the
commanders-in-chief are very concerned.  If BW stocks are being
produced on Palagra, then they're a potential threat to our servicemen
and women.

"In just under twelve hours' time a special forces team will parachute
into the sea about thirty miles west of the island.  We will bring them
back to the waters off Palagra and insert them some time in the early
hours of tomorrow morning.

"That's a tight schedule.  But understandably tight considering the
nature of the threat being investigated.  I realise we're all pretty
rusty when it comes to this sort of op, so once the heads of department
have been briefed, all the relevant sections of the crew will close up
for training.

"The next twenty-four hours will be some of the most testing and
challenging any of us have ever faced, gentlemen.  But it's the sort of
job we all joined the Navy for.  I know you will all acquit yourselves
brilliantly.  And remember, if our efforts help prevent some Balkan
madman murdering our troops, then we can be justly proud of the
personal sacrifices we've all made to achieve it.

"That is all."

The First Lieutenant nodded his approval.

"Well put, sir."

Suddenly there was a shout from the watch officer at the search
periscope.

"Surface contact bearing that.  Looks like a small ferry."

The bearing he indicated was to the west.  Coming up behind them out of
the haze.

Talbot took his decision.  They had enough data on the island to
furnish the marines with landing information.  Continuing the
observation in daylight in a tourist area was a mug's game.  He touched
the First Lieutenant on the arm.

"Take us to thirty metres and keep us out of trouble until sunset.
We'll have time for a last recce in darkness before heading west for
our RV with the special forces."

Hayes nodded.

"Yes, sir."

Arthur Harris watched the goings-on in the control room with an intense
feeling of satisfaction.  So much of his working life was spent sucking
up trivia for others to analyse.  This time he'd made things happen all
by himself.  But he felt anxious, and humbled too.  As a result of what
he'd done, other men would soon be risking their lives.

Vienna, the British Embassy

Patrick de Vere Collins's cratered face was anxious and solemn when he
collected Sam from the embassy reception desk.  He led him in silence
up to the SIS suite which was separated from the rest of the diplomatic
quarters by a door controlled by a swipe card.

"Malcolm tells me it all blew up on you last night," he said, offering
Sam a chair in his chronically untidy office.

"Hope to God the fallout's not going to blow my way."

"You're safe enough," Sam replied, 'thanks to Julie telling Schenk she
was intending to blackmail him.  Did Malcolm catch up with him?"

"Eventually.  Your target fled Vienna and took off at a rate of knots
to his family seat near Klagenfurt.  That's at least four hours away.
Malcolm's sleeping it off somewhere.  Now .. . what exactly do you have
on the man?"

Sam placed a plastic bag on Collins's desk.

"Here's the kit."  He put his hand in and extracted the recorder.

"This is the piece that matters."  He ran through in detail what it had
picked up.

"Fascinating," Collins muttered when he'd finished.

"I'll get a transcript done for my Austrian friends."  He frowned.

"What state's the poor girlie in today?"

"Recovering," Sam told him.

"On her way back to London."

"Safest place for her."  He rubbed his lumpy forehead.

"You think Schenk believed her story about the bugging device being for
blackmail purposes?"

"Initially yes, but the sight of me turning up may have changed his
mind for him.  Which could be why he got out of Vienna in such a
hurry."

"Hmm.  He didn't say what it was he bought from jackman I suppose?"

"Unfortunately not.  Julie's questioning of him rather fell apart at
that point."

"Understandably."

"But Max Schenk is a specialist in the mutation of viruses, Pat.  The
Russians were up to their necks in that type of research.  It is
utterly possible that Jackman's cargo contained viral material of some
sort and that Schenk was the customer."

"Oh we certainly can't ignore that possibility," Collins replied
cautiously, 'but it's still a hell of a hop, skip and jump to tie it in
with the bug that hit those two EU officials in Brussels.  And I'd have
preferred something firmer to go on before trying to persuade my
Austrian colleagues to pull the man in for questioning."

Sam snorted with frustration.

"Well if they won't quiz him then I bloody will."

"No you bloody won't," Collins retorted.

"This is a sovereign country.  We can't go around interrogating
Austrian citizens.  Have to use the proper channels, squire."  He tried
in vain to flatten his haystack hair.

"But don't "worry.  They should bite.  There's enough circumstantial
stuff in Schenk's past to make them curious."

"Meaning?"

"That the Security Police have been looking a bit further into his
family background.  They've found a strong tradition of Fascism there.
Max's father Heinrich was an active anti-Semite.  Served in the SS.
When the Jews were driven out in 1938 he took possession of a couple of
their houses Julie told you this, you said."

"Yes.  Max volunteered it."

"Well, what he didn't tell her was that the houses were stocked with
significant works of art.  The original owners perished in the gas
chambers, so old Heinrich thought he was sitting pretty.  But twenty
years after the war, some Jewish relatives turned up to demand their
property back.  Old man Schenk managed to produce documents showing
that the houses and their contents had been legally acquired and a
court dismissed the relatives' claim.  But the whole affair left a bit
of a smell and, once the paintings were sold, enough capital in the
family coffers for Max and his brother Hans to set up one of the swish
est clinics in the city."

"Interesting."  Sam locked his hands together and flexed the joints.

"What do they know about Max's own politics?  Any evidence that he's
been involved in racism?"

"He's a member of the conservative Volkspartei, which doesn't mean
much.  Political organisations in Austria are like masonic lodges in
Britain.  People join for the sake of their businesses.  And no he's
never done anything that's overtly racist."

"What's known about his immediate family?  His wife's called Cara."

"And he has two children.  She's from Croatia.  Zagreb, they think. The
link between her family and the Schenks is an old one, dating back to
the Habsburgs when Croatia and the rest of Yugoslavia belonged to the
Austro-Hungarian empire."  Collins flattened his hands on the desk.

"Look, let me have a word with my friends at the Interior Ministry.  In
the meantime use the link to Vauxhall Cross.  Duncan Waddell's eager to
talk to you."

Sam was shown into the shielded communications room with its secure
channels to SIS headquarters.  Within a minute he was through to his
controller.

"Take me through it, Sam."  Waddell sounded distant.  Thoughtful.

Sam told him everything that had happened and everything that had been
going through his head.  When he'd finished there was a prolonged
silence at the other end.

"You still there?"  Sam checked.

"Very much so," Waddell muttered.  Then after a short further pause, he
added, "You know, what you're suggesting about the nature of Jackman's
cargo is not altogether preposterous."

Sam's eyebrows shot up.  Waddell was usually deeply suspicious about
hunches.

"I'll tell you a little story," Waddell went on.

"It's about seafaring folk.  One of Her Majesty's submarines has been
bugging some Russians on a tiny island in the Adriatic.  One of the
voices picked up belonged to Igor Chursin, a senior scientist with
VECTOR.  The suspicion is he's been paid a wad of dosh to set up a
biological warfare lab on this little piece of Adriatic rock."

Sam sat bolt upright.

"Picture a map of that area," Waddell went on.

"Doing that."

"Then you'll quickly realise that from Rome, where Harry Jackman's
famous shipment supposedly ended up, it's only a few hours' drive to
the east coast of Italy.  And only a short hop from there by powerboat
to the islands of the Adriatic."

"Indeed it is," Sam purred.  The pieces were falling into place.

"There is an investigation under way.  Being run by Defence
Intelligence.  Their own spin on the BW lab if that's what it proves to
be is that it could be producing germ stockpiles for one of the Balkan
military factions.  Serbs, presumably.  The NATO military committee
fears that if they have to put soldiers into Kosovo in the coming
months, they could face attacks with anthrax and botulinum toxin."

Sam scratched his head.  This was a different scenario and not
implausible.

"So what are the military doing about it?"

"The MoD is sending in the SBS to take a look."

"When?"

"Tonight."

Sam looked at his watch.

"There's something else you ought to know.  Schenk's wife is
Croatian."

"Is she now .. . ?"  There was a prolonged silence again.  Then the
sound of a deep sigh.

"You know, the trouble with "booties" is that they have a one-track
mind," Waddell mused, as if talking to himself.

"They'll be looking for whatever their military guvnors tell them to
look for and nothing else."

"Yes."  Sam's pulse was beginning to race.

"So from our point of view I think it might be wise if we sent someone
with them.  Someone who knew this Jackman case inside out.  A bloke
with his mind set on proving once and for all whether our little
theories have any substance.  Don't you think, Sam?"

"I couldn't agree more, Duncan."

Another pause.  Sam needed Waddell to come out with the idea that was
in both their minds.  As much as anything else in order to show that
despite the PR disasters of the past week he was still on the team.

Waddell cleared his throat.

"Ever jumped out of an aeroplane, Sam?"

London 11.40 hrs

Rob Petrie left his ancient Ford Escort in a residential turning off
the main north London shopping street of Golders Green Road.  Slipping
on the sunglasses and baseball cap which he'd worn in Southall, he
walked past suburban houses until he reached the shops.  In his right
hand was the Tesco bag containing the second instalment of his
contribution to the Lucifer Network's campaign for ethnic purity.  It
would be a day earlier than Peter had wanted, but circumstances
dictated it.

When he'd come here two days ago to choose his target, being amongst
these people had made his skin crawl and it was doing so again today.
The sinister men with black felt hats and stringy beards, the dark
eyed, ringleted children, the rectangular foreign script in the windows
of the shops: he'd stepped into an alien culture which sat like a
cancer in his own land, an inward-looking community that was a part of
the great Zionist conspiracy.  These were the faces of ZOG.

The door to a hairdresser's opened in front of him and a man stepped
out dressed in a long, black satin frock-coat, the crown of his newly
trimmed head covered by a skull-cap.  He pulled up the aerial on a
mobile phone and punched in a number as he hurried down the street.
Petrie shivered with loathing.

The first thing he'd looked for on his recce on Wednesday were the
video cameras the police had mounted on tall masts all over the
capital.  He'd seen two in the High Street up towards the tube and bus
station, but down this end where the kosher delicatessens were, none
was visible.  Rob Petrie wore dark trousers and a light blue sports
shirt.  He kept his head low as he moved towards the target, the peak
of the baseball cap pulled firmly down.  He paused by the kerb to let a
delivery van go past, then crossed the road towards a bagel bakery and
a small shop called Treasures of Jerusalem, its windows full of
Menorahs.  The shopping centre was drab, a line of between-wars,
redbrick commercial developments with flats above.  A trading site that
had been deprived of business in recent years by nearby shopping
malls.

He slowed his pace to avoid attention.  He was almost there.  He
glanced up at the sign Segal's Kosher Restaurant.  He'd noticed on
Wednesday the first floor level had been popular at lunchtime, the
tables by the windows the first to be occupied.  Outside on the
pavement was a rubbish bin lined with green plastic, five metres from
the windows whose splinters would slice through the diners when the
bomb went off.

Petrie faltered.  Suddenly his nerve went.  He felt a thousand eyes on
him.

He marched on, needing to distance himself from the scene of his
forthcoming act of war.  The line of shops and restaurants ended at a
public library.  Outside it was a bench.  Petrie sat on it, wedged the
carrier bag between his feet and pulled out a newspaper.  He pressed
his ankles against the hard metal of the biscuit tin containing the
killing device.

He stared at the tabloid's headlines, seeing them but not reading.  He
was conscious of a crocodile of primary school children chattering
past, being ushered into the library by a pair of watchful teachers. He
glanced up at their faces.

"Now remember to speak softly when inside, children," he heard one of
the teachers say.

"Libraries are places where people go for a bit of quiet."

A quiet that would soon be shattered by his bomb.  He looked at his
watch.  Five past twelve.  The timer was set to detonate at a quarter
to one.  Although he had faith in the technology, having the device
between his legs was making him uncomfortable.

His stomach fizzed and bubbled like a sulphur spring.  If he didn't get
it over with quickly he would shit himself.  He stood up, stuffed the
newspaper loosely into the top of the bag to make it look like rubbish,
then walked back along the pavement and dumped it in the bin outside
Segal's.

As he made his way back to his car he murmured.

"Enjoy your meal, Yids."

Vienna

Before Sam left the Embassy, Collins got a positive response from the
Austrian Security Police.  Max Schenk would be interviewed as soon as
he could be contacted, if he agreed to it.

"They say our suspicions are nowhere near strong enough to justify an
arrest," Collins explained.

"A mistake, in my view," Sam muttered, his gut instinct telling him
that Schenk needed to be detained as soon as possible, in a cell with
thick iron bars.

"But it's better than nothing."

He shook hands with Collins, leaving him with the task of finding out
if the family of Schenk's wife happened to own a small island in the
Adriatic.

He'd booked a seat on a 13.30 flight.  A taxi took him to the Pension
Kleist to collect his belongings.  As he was stuffing his clothes into
the suitcase, he suddenly remembered his promise to Fischer, the German
intelligence officer who'd briefed him when he'd arrived.  He picked up
the phone and persuaded him to drive him to the airport so they could
talk.

In the heat of the last twenty hours, he'd had no time to check on
Gunther Hoffmann's state of health.  The old spy's heart attack was the
first thing he mentioned when Fischer picked him up.  The German
expressed surprise.

"It is the first I hear.  It must have been a false warning," he
suggested, cutting through a side street to join the main route out to
the airport.

"Because I saw Herr Hoffmann yesterday afternoon and there was nothing
wrong with him."

"Really?"  Sam was nonplussed.

"He contacted you?"

"Yes."

"May I ask why?"

Fischer looked uncomfortable.

"He felt it advisable to report to me your visit."

Sam bristled.

"Why, for God's sake?"

"Because of the murder of Vladimir Kovalenko," Fischer continued
stiffly.

"He said you had been asking for his help to find him."

Sam stared through the windscreen.  A tram was blocking the road in
front of them.

"And he showed me an article in a British newspaper which linked your
name with a situation in Africa," Fischer went on, clearing his
throat.

"The old bastard," Sam grated.

"Don't tell me he actually suggested that I'd taken out Kovalenko?"

"He didn't exactly say it..  ."

"But it was the gist of his message."

Fischer nodded.

Sam was flabbergasted.  Why go to the trouble of sowing suspicion about
him?

"For the record, my friend, my aim was to question Kovalenko, not kill
him.  I wasn't involved in his death or that of Harry Jackman in
Zambia."

"I am pleased to hear this."  The tension seemed to slip from the BfV
man's shoulders.

"And your discussions with Herr Hoffmann?"

Sam described his meeting at the cemetery and their subsequent
conversations.

When he'd finished, Fischer clucked his tongue.

"It is odd that Herr Hoffmann did not tell me his wife had died."

"I get the feeling he's quite selective about what he does tell you,"
Sam commented.

"Yes."  Fischer reflected.  He pursed his lips for a moment before
continuing.

"Oh, there is some more information about his career in the Stasi which
came to me yesterday.  It might interest you.  You understand it has
been a slow process to uncover the full story of the former GDR's state
security activities."

"Too many people with too much to lose."

"Of course.  But we have recently learned that for two years in the
middle 1980s Herr Hoffmann was in control of the Stasi section which
monitored Austria.  The Czechs let the Stasi have a listening post in
Bratislava.  As you know, it is just across the border from Austria,
only fifty kilometres from Vienna.  From Bratislava they monitored the
telephones of 270 Austrian politicians and businessmen."

"No wonder he knew how to jump the housing list," Sam remarked.

"Yes .. ."  Fischer paused reflectively.  The car turned off the
autobahn onto the airport approach road.

"And because of this information I think it may be very possible that
Herr Hoffmann has been more active in Vienna than I told you when we
first met, Herr Packer," he added with a degree of discomfort.

They pulled up outside the terminal.  Sam thanked the German and ran
inside, making the check-in just as they were closing the flight.

Was it spite, he wondered as he marched briskly to the gate?  Hoffmann
spreading suspicions about him as some sort of revenge for Sam
uncovering his relationship with his father?

Later, as the plane taxied to the end of the runway, he opened the
newspaper he'd picked up when he boarded.  The story in the bottom
right-hand corner leapt off the page at him.

DEATH OP A SCOTTISH MATA HARI.

With a heavy heart he began to read.

A statement from the Home Office late last night confirmed that Mrs. Jo
Coggan (nee Macdonald), who died yesterday in a Scottish hospice had
co-operated with Russian military intelligence in the early igjos in an
attempt to blackmail a British submariner into betraying his country.
Her victim, Chief Petty Officer Trevor Packer, whose involvement with
the Soviet Union was revealed yesterday, died in 1971.  The Home
Office statement said there was no evidence that any significant naval
secrets were lost as a result of the activities of Mrs.  Coggan and CPO
Packer.

Sam put the paper down and stared at the ceiling.  So now it was
official.  His father had not betrayed his country.  To see it there in
black and white had come as a relief.  But he felt sad for Jo Macdonald
who'd hoped to die in obscurity.  If it hadn't been for him digging up
the past she'd have kept her shameful secret to the end.

North London

Inside the children's reading corner at Golders Green Public Library
the two young teachers bustled round their brood, urging them to
replace their books neatly on the shelves.  It was time to get back.
The children's lunch boxes were waiting for them in the classroom,
lined up like soldiers along the back wall.

"Come along now."  The young teacher had fair hair tied into an
old-fashioned ponytail and wore a red pullover above blue jeans.  Her
companion was darker haired and broad hipped.

They trooped out of the library and turned left.

"Keep away from the kerb, children," the plumper teacher ordered,
bringing up the rear of the crocodile.

"No straggling.  Keep up with the ones in front."

They were a tightly bunched little group as they passed Segal's.  The
blast from the waste bing bomb lifted most of the tiny bodies
completely off their feet.  A good half-dozen of them were fired like
soft bullets through the plate glass windows of the restaurant.

It was mid-afternoon when Rob Petrie closed the garage door with the
Escort safely inside.  He'd been sick a couple of times after hearing
the report on the radio, throwing up into a spare shopping bag lying on
the floor at the back of the car.  According to an ambulance service
spokesman, one of the little girls from St.  Mary's Roman Catholic
Primary School had been sliced in two by a jagged shard of glass.  The
children had taken the full force of the blast, cushioning its effects
on the diners.  The Jews he'd intended to kill had sustained cuts and
shock, but eight of the children were dead.

He carried his bag of sick to the rubbish skips behind the lift shafts.
He needed to hide.  To bury his head and pretend it hadn't happened.
How he could face Sandra he didn't know, but home was the only place he
could go.

He pressed for the lift and waited.  He'd told himself that in a war,
accidents happened.  That you had to turn your back and move on.  But
he'd seen those kids.  Remembered their faces as they walked into the
library.  Eight little lives snuffed out.

He'd had his war now.  He knew he couldn't go through this again.  It
would be down to others to take up the fight.

The lift came.  As he raised his finger to the button he heard a shout,
then running feet.  His heart began to race but it was only a kid
wanting him to hold the door.  A black girl, fourteen, fifteen.  White
teeth, big lips, woven hair, wearing the navy skirt and sweatshirt of a
school uniform.  She lugged a small rucksack, heavy with books.

"Thanks, mister," she whispered, fingering the button for the sixth.

Petrie pressed himself back against the wall and held his breath.  A
week ago he might have imagined the kid naked and spread out for him,
bound with ropes, but today she was something to fear.  She was a part
of the enemy that would want its revenge.

Thanks, mister," she repeated as she stepped out.

On his own landing, the sound of children's voices wafted up from the
playground below.  He clutched the rail and gagged again, but there was
nothing left to come up.  Recovering, he reached his door, put his key
in the lock and turned it.

As he stepped across the threshold he sensed all was not well.  The
door to the living room was closed, which it never was.  Very quietly
he shut the front door behind him, listening.

Suddenly a large man in body armour stepped out of the kitchen,
pointing a pistol at his head.

"Don't move, Rob.  Not so much as a fucking eyebrow."

NINETEEN

R.A.F Lyneham, Wiltshire Friday, 16.30 hrs

THE HANGAR SMELLED of kerosene.  At the far end two Hercules transports
stood like lowering beasts, their engines stripped to their innards.
The eight men from No.2 Special Boat Section stood just inside the huge
folding doors which were open the width of a truck.  Identically
dressed in black roll necks with trousers tucked into thick socks, some
were crouching, all were concentrating as they checked the kit laid out
neatly on the floor.  There was a lot of it.  The four largest
waterproof canisters contained the inflatable boats and their outboard
engines.  Four smaller bags were for weapons and four for special
clothing.

Sam stepped out of the Land Rover that had brought him from the front
gate and walked into the hangar.  Bennett's girl had met him at
Heathrow with clothes to change into from his suit dark trousers, a
blue sweatshirt, pullover and trainers.  The marines turned to look at
him, their faces solemn and expressionless.  None wore rank insignia,
making it impossible for Sam to tell which was the lieutenant in
charge.  He was about to ask when a short, ginger-haired man in his
mid-twenties stepped forward.

"Mr.  Packer?  I'm Willie Phipps."

"Hello.  Glad to meet you.  Sam's the name."

He felt the pale blue eyes size him up, knowing full well how reluctant
the SBS would have been to include an untested stranger in their
mission.

"You made good time," Phipps remarked.

"We've just finished checking the gear.  In fact, once we've got you
sorted, we'll be ready to roll that's if the PvAF can get their act
together.  When was your last jump?"

"Eight or nine years ago.  Before I left the Navy."

"And never into the sea."

"Fraid not."

The lieutenant sucked his teeth.

"In that case we'd better do some talking."  He took Sam to one side to
introduce him to his kit.

"Immersion dry suit."  He held up a drab green one-piece with thick
waterproof zips and soft rubber seals at neck and wrists.

"We don't put them on until fifteen minutes before the drop, otherwise
it gets like a sauna inside.  You'd better try it for size."

Sam forced his feet down the legs and tugged at the zips until the neck
seal fitted snugly across his throat.

"Could have been made for you," Phipps commented briskly.  He picked up
a short plastic tube attached to a strap.

"Cyalume," he explained.

"Fix this to your wrist.  If we lose you in the oggin, snap the tube
and it'll glow like a beacon."  Sam was familiar with the chemical
lights from his service days.  The lieutenant handed him a life jacket
then, when he had it in place, helped him on with the parachute harness
and adjusted the straps.

"We'll be on a static line, so the chute'll open automatically.  Never
fails.  If it does, you've got your reserve," he added drily, clipping
it across Sam's middle.

"We'll be jumping low, so be ready to yank the ring damned fast if the
main chute doesn't deploy.  Soon as you're sure it's open, ditch the
reserve, otherwise the weight of it'll sink you when you hit the water.
Use your torch to see when you're about to get wet feet and release the
main harness immediately.  Same problem as the reserve.  Get rid of it
fast or it'll drag you down with the canopy on top of you.  You'll sink
several metres anyway because of your own body weight, but the life
jacket self-inflating and will pull you back up."  He handed Sam a nose
clip.

"Happy so far?"

Sam had never been less so, but he nodded.

"The met men say it'll be as dark as a cow's insides tonight," Phipps
continued.

"No moon and one hundred per cent cloud, so no stars either.  If you
don't see anyone else near you in the water, stay put.  We'll find you.
Shout from time to time.  The submarine will be watching on thermal.
They should have a Gemini ready to pick us up and tow the gear
alongside.  Glad you joined?"

"Scared to death."

"So am I. You'd have been lying if you'd said anything else.  One final
piece of kit."  He handed Sam a small metal canister with a line
attached.

"Underwater beacon.  Clip it to the ring on your life jacket  If you
really think you're lost and the world's forgotten about you, turn the
switch to the green, unwind the line and let it dangle beneath you. The
sub will get a bearing on it."

They turned at the sound of a diesel engine and watched a grey, covered
lorry reverse into the hangar.

"Okay, boys," the lieutenant said, rubbing his hands, 'we're on our
'way."

Stepney 17.30 hrs

Rob Petrie stared at the grubby red carpet in the boxy living room.
He'd been back a couple of hours, but the police hadn't told him how
they'd found out about him.  Not told him anything.  He knew it was to
do with Sandra.  She'd been acting oddly with him for a couple of days.
Withdrawn.  Uncommunicative.  Suspicious and hostile.  As if she'd got
wind of what he was involved in.  He'd guessed she'd read his computer
files somehow.  He hadn't seen her since he arrived home, but could
hear her voice in the kitchen.  The police had mugs of tea which she'd
made after letting the bastards in.

Four of them were in the small living room.  Three men one in uniform
and a woman who'd only arrived twenty minutes ago and who had a quiet
authority the others lacked.  The armed policemen weren't visible any
more.  He guessed it was their voices he could hear talking with
Sandra.  The computer was on in the corner, a young officer with steel
glasses operating the keyboard as if it was a natural extension of his
fingers.  One by one they'd dug out every e-mail he'd ever sent or
received in the past few months.  All the items he'd thought were
deleted.  All the secrets he thought he'd buried for ever.

They'd also taken his keys so they could remove the Escort from the
garage and pull it apart.  By now they would have found the third
bundle of explosives and detonators the Lucifer Network had provided.
And they'd taken all his clothes away for forensic tests, ignoring his
request for a blanket or a towel.  He sat on the sofa naked, his hands
cuffed behind his back.

A few minutes ago someone had brought in a video tape to show him the
Golders Green massacre as filmed by the London Fire Brigade.  Vile
scenes, so horrific they would never be shown on TV.  It was true about
the little girl who'd been cut in half by glass.  Seeing the bloodied
bits had made Rob throw up again, retching onto his knees until they
brought a bucket.  But he still told them nothing.

A detective chief inspector from Southall CID had been firing questions
about the bombs where he'd got the explosives from, who his contacts
were, how many people were involved with him?  But Rob had told them
nothing.

They'd browbeaten and insulted him, calling him arse hole and scrotum.
Shown him the e-mails telling the whole story of his relationship with
"Peter'.  The different names used.  The string of addresses to prevent
tracing.  The encryption keys.  It was all there.  Where to go to pick
up the bomb kits.  His message describing the targets he'd selected.
The reports of mission accomplished and the congratulations. Everything
they needed to put him away for life.  But he still wouldn't talk. 
However much he regretted Golders Green, he consoled himself with the
knowledge that mistakes were made in the most professional of
conflicts.  A battle had been lost, but the war would go on.  He
himself had fallen, but others in the Network wouldn't.  Not while
"Peter' still functioned as leader of the white revolution that was now
firmly under way in Europe.

"Tell us about him, Rob.  It might go in your favour," the DCI from
Southall urged, struggling to curb his exasperation.

Petrie kept his eyes averted and his expression blank.  Then the woman
officer who'd been hovering by the computer screen moved directly in
front of him.  He didn't look up, but felt his privates shrink under
her contemptuous glare.

"You've never met Peter, have you, Rob?"

It was the first time he'd heard her speak.  He closed his eyes as if
bored.

"You don't even know what country he's from, do you?"  To Stephanie
Watson the e-mails had made it as clear as day.

It was true.  Petrie knew precious little about the man, except that he
had the power to inspire.

"Did you two ever discuss using germs to kill people?"

Her question surprised him.  He'd seen the story in the morning papers
about the two Brussels officials hit by a brain virus, but hadn't made
the connection.  The fact that she'd asked him suggested they thought
the Lucifer Network was behind that too.  It excited him to think the
people he'd been involved with had such resources and he was tempted to
say 'yes'.  To rub her nose in the fact that she was up against an
enemy of substance.

"You didn't know what you were getting into, did you, Rob?"  There was
a softer edge to her voice, now.  Not quite pity, but close to it.

"Liked what you read on the Internet and just went along with it.
Yes?"

There was an element of truth in what she'd said.  He'd never
envisioned being responsible for what had happened at Golders Green.

"All a bit of a game to you."

Game?  He bristled at the word, but it made him think.  Yes, he'd got a
buzz from taking part.  From being involved.

"Then it went wrong."

It had today.  Horribly.

"You never meant to kill those kids, we know that."

No.  But Jews, yes.  He had meant to kill them.  Wanted them dead.
Wanted his London cleaned of the ZOG.

"So .. . Tell us about it.  Get it off your chest."

Stephanie looked down at the lumpen, deflated figure in front of her.
She found his nakedness and his spew-smeared thighs revolting.  The
broad shoulders were fleshy rather than muscular and had dark hairs
sprouting from them.  He'd been a turn-on once, according to the woman
in the kitchen who'd loved him.  Cocky, confident and well paid.  Now
the sullen cropped head with its putty nose looked as if it had come
straight off the hooligan end of a football ground.  A thug.  A
creature from the arse-end of humanity.  He lifted his face to look her
coldly in the eye and she knew there was no soft spot in this man.  She
turned away and nodded to the detective from Southall.  All yours, she
indicated.

"You know, Rob, your girlfriend says you've lost it," the man goaded,
his mouth twisting with frustration.

"Says that limp apology for a sex organ that you're hiding between your
thighs you can't get it up any more.  Not with her, anyway."  He paused
to let the insult take effect.

"Going with fellers now, are you?"

Petrie flinched.  The extent of Sandra's betrayal of him was something
he would never have imagined possible.  Only days ago she'd told him
she loved him and would support him through thick and thin.

"Hitler was a fairy, you know," the detective sneered.

"That what you're trying to be?  Fucking Adolf Hitler?"

Petrie smiled.  If only .. .

The detective snorted in disgust.

"Know what happens in prison to toe rags like you?  They'll give you a
cell with a nigger.  He'll have a knob as big as a baseball bat and
fists the size of frozen chickens.  You'll be all shit and blood before
you've had your first slop out.  Your own mother won't recognise you.
Not that a bastard like you's ever had a mother."

Rob felt a ripple of fear.  He'd never thought about what prison would
be like.

Suddenly the CID man turned to the uniformed officer guarding the
door.

"Get a track suit on him for fuck's sake and take him out of here.  The
smell's getting to me."

Stephanie had stepped back to her position behind the wizard at the
computer.  She folded her arms as Petrie was led from the room.

"Waste of fucking breath," the Southall man fumed, after Petrie was
gone.

"Yes, but everything we need's on that hard drive," Stephanie told
him.

"Open and shut," the DCI agreed.

"However, I would like a blackout on the arrest," she told him
firmly.

The Southall man got to his feet, hands on hips.  He had an Asian
community to pacify.

"Why's that?"

"Because if we tell the whole world we've nailed the bomber, we'll
never hear from Peter again.  Leave it twenty-four hours and there's a
chance of another e-mail."

"Why bother?  We've more than enough for a conviction," the detective
insisted, sourly.  This was his investigation.  To him Special Branch
were snooty elitists.

"Sure.  Petrie will go down," Stephanie agreed, 'but what about the
bloke who's pulling the strings?  He's the one we've got to nail."

"What makes you think he'll send another message?"

"Because Petrie's owed one.  You've read the e-mail he sent last
night?"

"Moaning about how his girlfriend's become suspicious of him?"

"That's the one."

The detective scratched his chin.

"Odd show of weakness, don't you think?  Why would he tell Peter about
it?"

Stephanie pushed a hand through her straight brown hair, then retrieved
the relevant message from the sheaf of printouts next to the PC.  She
re-read it, trying to think of a sensible answer.  There was something
almost plaintive about it.  Don't know what's come over her..  . Always
been loyal before .. . As if she's got wind of it..  . Can't think how
.. . Never given any hint..  . Almost as if seeking guidance from his
mentor.

"I suppose Peter was the only bloke in the world he could talk to about
it," she concluded.

"His only friend.  And even a loner needs one sometimes."

New Scotland Yard 19.55

Two hours later, Stephanie Watson sat in the Fraud Squad's Computer
Crime Unit at Scotland Yard, watching while the hard disk from Rob
Petrie's PC was examined file by file.  As she'd expected, there'd been
a certain amount of pornography scattered across it, the random
pickings of a man who'd let his curiosity have its way on the World
Wide Web.  Petrie had a catholic taste, she'd noted.  There'd been a
selection of well-hung erect males amongst the heterosexual and
girl-on-girl images.

Slowly, item by item, the specialists in this section of SO6 would
build up a detailed history of Rob Petrie's obsession with white
supremacy.  Already they'd identified half a dozen white power sites
that he'd frequented.  The analyst working on the drive was the same
bespectacled civilian who'd made the initial exploration of the
computer at the Stepney flat.  He'd volunteered to work through the
night in an effort to find a clue to Peter's identity.

Stephanie realised there was little she could do except wait for the
results of the analysis.  As soon as anything significant turned up she
would get a call.

As she made her way back to the sixteenth floor, it was an earlier
phone conversation that kept going round in her head.  Sam had called.
He was back in England, but on his way to some place that he couldn't
talk about.  He'd explained how little Miss Jackman had made up for her
earlier mis behaviour and then sketched out his suspicion of a link
between Harry Jackman's so-called 'red mercury' and the Brussels virus.
It worried her that he seemed to have little firm evidence for his
suspicion.

The conversation had done two things for Stephanie.  It had reminded
her how pig ignorant she was about viruses in general and it had made
her intensely curious to have another look at Julie Jackman.

As soon as she reached her office she put in a call to the St.
Michael's Hospital virology centre which she knew was working round the
clock.

St.  Michael's Hospital 20.45 hrs

Julie Jackman was alone in the laboratory, continuing the tests begun
by her colleagues earlier in the day when the latest blood serum, stool
and saliva samples had arrived from Brussels.  She'd volunteered to
carry on until midnight, despite feeling numb and exhausted after
Vienna.  The near certainty that the virus could only be passed on
through broken skin meant that work on the samples could be done at a
low level of containment.  No need for the plastic suits with hoods and
respirators and sealed Level 4 cabinets with their remote handling
mechanisms.

Laboratories in four European countries were co-operating in the race
to isolate the virus and to develop an antidote.  She sat at her bench,
a white coat over her slacks and shirt, injecting enzymes into tubes
containing serum and viral antigen.  Research would accelerate if one
of the patients died, yielding up brain tissue packed with the virus.

Julie was glad to be back at the lab, needing the distraction of it.
The discovery of the way her father had used her was still eating at
her soul.  Sam's lovemaking had brought her back from the brink, but
the feeling of worthlessness that Max's revelations had filled her with
could best be countered -with work, she'd decided.

There'd been two letters waiting in Acton when she'd got back to the
flat at midday, both from tabloids offering five-figure sums for her
story.  She'd lit a match and burned them.  Later in the afternoon when
she arrived at the lab, Ailsa Mackinley had handed her a sheaf of phone
messages.  Most were from the media, which Julie had dumped in the bin,
but one was from her St.  John's Wood confidante Rosemary.  Yes, she'
wanted to talk to her again, but not for a few days.  She needed to get
her head straight first.

Sam had told her he would ring.  That they would see each other again.
And in her heart she badly wanted that.  Since making love, her longing
for him was strong, but her head was still full of uncertainties.  She
wanted a soul mate, not just a lover.  Someone to be open with.  Sam
had a life boxed into compartments, most of which would stay closed to
her.

She kept telling herself to stop thinking about him.  That the chances
were he wouldn't even contact her again.  But she hoped he would, and
very soon.  Because there was something she needed to tell him.
Something about what she'd seen in that hotel room of his in Vienna.

Suddenly she sensed she wasn't alone any more.  She looked up.
Professor Norton was watching from the doorway.  He pulled a tense
smile and walked over to the bench, clasping and unclasping his
hands.

"There's someone here," he told her.

"She wants to talk to you."

Julie tensed, suspecting some media type had broken through the
professor's de fences

"From Special Branch," he explained.

"A Detective Chief Inspector Watson.  She says you know her."

Julie guessed it was the woman who'd questioned her at Paddington Green
along with Denise Corby.

"I'm in the middle of this assay at the moment," she protested.

"Then it can wait until you've finished pi petting  I'll tell her."

Julie blinked.

"D'you know what she wants?"

"To understand more about viruses, she says."

"You're the expert, professor."

"I've filled her in on the basics, but she's asked to see how the tests
are done."

Julie shrugged.

"Well, all right."

"I'll bring her along in a few minutes.  I've told her not to touch
anything."

Julie bent her head back to her work, loading and injecting the
multi-pipette until all the tubes were full.  As she dropped the last
of the used nozzles into the waste bing the policewoman walked in.

Julie pulled off her thin rubber gloves and discarded them,
deliberately ignoring her.  She wasn't ready to forget the hard time
the two women had given her at Paddington Green.

"Hello again."  Stephanie reached out a hand, then withdrew it,
remembering the -warning not to touch.

"I'm sorry to disturb your work."

Julie noted the humbler tone this time, but wasn't reassured.

"What is it you want?"  she asked.

"First, to say that I'm aware of what you went through in Vienna,
Julie.  I've spoken with Sam."

"Oh.  "Julie was taken aback.  She felt herself colouring, wondering
exactly how much Sam had revealed.

"Secondly, I wanted to say that as an investigating officer on this
case we're very grateful for the help you gave the authorities in
Vienna."

Authorities .. . Yes, she realised.  That's what Sam was.

"Yes, well .. ."  Julie felt utterly wrong-footed.  She'd expected a
slap on the face and was getting a pat on the back.

"And apart from that," Steph continued, "I'm keen to understand the
processes you go through to track down a virus."

"Yes.  Well I suppose it's a little like detective work," Julie
gabbled, relieved to be getting away from personal matters.

"How much do you know about viruses already?"

"The professor's been blinding me with science," Stephanie smiled.

"But it'd be best if you imagined you were explaining things to a
four-year-old."

"Okay.  Well..  . viruses are extremely small, that's the first
problem.  One hundredth the size of bacteria.  Some are visible on the
electron microscope, but many are too small even for that.  And they
come in different shapes.  So, when we start our search for a virus
whose effects we don't recognise, it's worse than a needle in a
haystack, because we don't even know what the needle looks like."

A sparkle had come into Julie's eyes which made Steph understand
exactly why Sam had gone for her.  From her coy reaction when she'd
mentioned his name she guessed that they'd slept together.

"In a case like this, "Julie went on, 'we start by studying the de
fences the body puts up to fight the infection.  That way we hope to
narrow it down to a particular family of viruses.  There are various
tests we can do .. ."  She indicated the array of tiny tubes which
she'd just filled.

"These I've just started on.  Excuse me a moment."  She pulled on a
fresh pair of gloves, picked up the samples, placed them in a covered
tray and set it on the vortexer so the contents would mix.  After a few
seconds she removed it and pushed it into a temperature-controlled
cabinet.

"The assays are kept at body heat and in a couple of hours we'll have a
set of results which may or may not get us any closer to the
mystery."

"Professor Norton mentioned something about growing the virus."

"That's right.  On tissue samples from rhesus monkey kidneys or human
embryos.  Aborted foetuses, in other words."

Stephanie recoiled.

"I know.  It's not a nice thought to be working with jars full of dead
babies, but you get used to it."

"You'd have to," Stephanie murmured.

"So, if you manage to grow the virus, you can identify it under the
microscope?  Oh, no.  You said some are too small."

"That's right.  We look under the light microscope for any changes to
the cells.  That shows us the virus is there, even if we can't see the
virus itself.  We isolate its nucleic acid and use PCR - polymerase
chain reaction to multiply it."

"I'm sorry.  You've lost me."

"I'll go back a step.  Viruses are tiny pieces of genetic material DNA
or RNA that are programmed to do one thing and one thing only, which is
to replicate themselves.  They can only do that inside the cells of
plants or animals.  And each different type of virus is programmed to
seek out a different type of cell in which to multiply.  As I said, the
shapes vary.  Some are round with knobs on, others are like tiny
threads.  The rhabdoviruses and that's what we think this is are
normally rod shaped.  Like little bullets.  The problem with the
Brussels virus is that it seems to have been modified.  It behaves like
rabies, but may look very different."

"Like a terrorist dressed as a nun," Steph suggested.

"Exactly.  The disguise carries it swiftly to the target cells in the
brain, then it sheds its outer shell before dividing and multiplying
and finding more cells to take over."

"Sounds like viruses want to conquer the world."

"That's the nightmare.  That one day some new virus will emerge, cross
from animals into human beings and rip through an unprotected
population."

"Like Marburg and Ebola might have done if they hadn't been
contained."

"Precisely."  Julie shuddered at the thought that her own father and
the man who'd been her lover for the past twelve months might have been
involved in such horrors.

Stephanie watched Julie's face closely.  She was coming across very
differently from the silly, out-of-her-depth creature she'd interviewed
three days ago.  And her calm explanations had given no hint of the
horrors she'd been through twenty-four hours earlier.  Steph noted the
swelling to her lip.

"How're you feeling?"  she asked, gently.

"I mean, inside."

Suddenly Julie became tearful.  The dreadfulness of what had happened
twenty-four hours ago came back in a rush.  She shook her head and
looked down.

"I'm sorry.  Shouldn't have asked."  Steph touched her arm.

"You're a brave girl."

"You'd better wash," Julie whispered quickly.  She pointed to the sink
by the door.

"The risk of picking anything up from my coat is minimal, but the
professor would kill me if I didn't make you do it."

Stephanie crossed to the basin and washed her hands with soap.

Julie went with her.

"I'd better get on.  There's a lot more I have to do."

"Of course."  Stephanie dried her hands.  She sensed Julie wanted to
ask her something.

"You've been so helpful.  Is there anything I can do for you?"  she
checked.

Julie shook the hair back from her face.

"You said you'd spoken to Sam ..."

"Yes."

"He's here in London?"

"I don't know where he is.  It was on the phone."

"Ah."

Steph saw the disappointment on her face and guessed it was because Sam
hadn't rung her.

"You wanted to talk to him again?"

"There's something I need to tell him.  Quite urgently."

Steph had a good idea what it was.  She wondered whether to warn the
girl about her old friend.  To tell her that plenty of other women had
fallen for the rogue, then been ditched for the sin of trying to get
too close to him.

None of her business, she decided.

"Will you be talking to him again soon?"  Julie asked.

"Quite possibly.  If I do, I'll ask him to call you."

"Thanks.  It is quite important."

Love always is, thought Steph, stepping back into the corridor.

On board R.A.F 130 Papa Victor Zulu Golf

There was a smell of hot oil inside the back of the Hercules, which was
doing nothing for Sam's stomach.  The aircraft had dropped below the
cloud layer, flying a thousand feet above the ink-black water and
descending steadily, hammering through the turbulent air like a jeep
over potholes.

They had their full kit on, ready for the drop.  The head phoned
dispatcher, a blonde woman in shapeless overalls but passably good
looking, held up a hand with fingers for five minutes.  The voice in
her ears said the cockpit had contact with HMS Truculent.  Lieutenant
Willie Phipps sat next to Sam on the webbing seats along the edge of
the huge cargo space, part of which was taken up with extra fuel tanks
so the aircraft could return to the UK without landing.  Phipps turned
and mouthed "All right?"  Sam nodded, grim-jawed, glad of the deafening
noise, which prevented the possibility of speech.  He was as nervous as
a kitten.

When the dispatcher signalled two minutes, the rear ramp clunked its
latches and began to open, swirling cold air into the cavernous cabin.
Sam and the marines stood up.  Two crewmen released the tie-downs on
the pallets holding the marines' kit, then the drop team lined up
behind the gear.  Sam clipped his parachute release line onto the
overhead wire and clamped on his nose clip.  As he sucked in air
through his mouth, he tried to close his mind to what was about to
happen.  There were men in front to follow and men behind to push him
if he froze.  The plane bucked and wallowed, threatening to knock them
all off their feet.  Phipps gestured for them to crouch.

One minute to go.  Sixty excruciating seconds, each a lifetime long. It
didn't help knowing that the hard cases he was wedged between were also
plagued by fear.  No matter how many times you did this, the risks were
the same.  Their lives would be hanging by threads.

Red on.

They stood again, hands grasping the man in front.  Sam's heart
hammered.  Beyond was a big square void.

Green on.

"Go!"  A yell split his ears, whether from behind or from his own
throat he didn't know.  The pallets rolled and were gone.  Then one
man, two, three.  A jab in his back and the slipstream hit him.  Cold
air that took his breath away.  Then the bang of the harness opening.
He hung from his straps.  The reserve chute clung to his stomach like a
fat blister.  His lifesaver if anything went wrong, but it had to go
now the main canopy was open.  He pulled the release and felt it fall
away.

The night was as black as death.  Not a speck of light.  He'd forgotten
to count.  Phipps had said ten.  Sam shone the torch down, searching
for a reflection off the waves.

Six, seven, eight .. . Breath held, hand on harness release.  The water
hit as soon as he saw it.  He yanked at the D-ring and felt the harness
let go of his crutch.  Then he went down beneath the water.  It felt
like for ever.  At last, with a hiss, the life jacket cuddled his
neck.

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen .. . An eternity of gurgling ears, then air
suddenly.  He could breathe again, but not see.  He flinched,
anticipating a wave pounding down.

A light came on.  Beside his head.  The lamp on the life jacket
reliable as paint drying.  Enough light to show a gentle swell.  Waves
of no consequence.  He turned his head.  Wherever he looked, more
lights twinkling.  Like fairy dust.  A couple of the men had cracked
the cyalume tubes too.

"Sam?"  A shout off to his left where several lights were grouping
together.

"Here!"

"Okay?"

"Yep."

He checked he was free of the canopy lines, then swam towards the
voices.  They were further off than he'd thought and progress with the
life jacket was slow.  After a few minutes, a pencil of light reached
out from the darkness, sweeping across them, pausing when it picked out
a figure in the water.  HMS Truculent had surfaced close by.  Sam
looked away to preserve his night vision and kept swimming.

As he neared the cluster of bodies, he saw that something was wrong.
Five of them together, a daisy chain round one man at the centre who
wasn't moving.

Lieutenant Willie Phipps held up a waterproof radio, telling the
submarine of their casualty.

"Hit by something .. . Unconscious ..."  The lap of the water broke
into his flow of words.  He acknowledged Sam with a nod.

"Stick close.  The submarine's coming over.  Don't get anywhere near
the stern.  Those propulsors can chop up torpedoes."

The submarine doused its spotlight.  Sam looked towards the vessel and
saw the flicker of torchlight on the casing.

"They don't have a Gemini out, but there'll be a diver to help you,"
Phipps told him.

"There'll be a scrambling net to get onto the casing.  Look after
yourself, okay?  I'm busy."

"No problem."

The submarine switched on a deck light so they could see it more
easily.  It had stopped some fifty metres away.  Sam struck out.  He
saw water splash as a diver from the boat jumped in to help.

The man waved an arm.

"Over here!"

Sam reached him.

"You the civvy?"

"Does it show?"

"Not what I meant.  You're on your own, that's all.  Follow me to the
casing.  Feel for the net with your hand."

"Thanks."  Sam banged against the hull, scrabbling along its smooth
surface until he touched the thick rope of the net.  He jammed his toes
in and struggled to raise himself from the water.  His limbs were like
lead.  Hands reached down and pulled him up onto the casing.

"Welcome on board, sir.  Name, please?"  asked a brisk, efficient
sailor in white roll neck clutching a clipboard.

Sam gave it.

"Straight down below please, sir."

A hand took his elbow and guided him firmly to an open hatch.  He felt
an up draught of warm air, the stale warship smell that he'd once known
so well.  A CPO met him at the bottom and helped him remove his dry
suit.

"Any injuries or immediate needs?"

"Yes to the second.  A stiff drink."

The chief smiled.

"There's hot tea in the senior rates' mess.  The lad here'll show you
down below.  The bomb shop's been cleared for you."

Sam nodded at a young sailor with spots on his chin and a label on his
chest that said Griffiths.

"We're hot bunking to make room for you lot," the youth complained as
he led Sam down the companionway.

"We had a full complement already."

"Sorry to inconvenience you," Sam muttered.

In the chiefs' mess a mug was pressed into his hands and he gulped the
tea gratefully while the rating waited outside for him to finish.  When
Sam rejoined him in the passageway leading forward, he seemed eager to
make it clear that he hadn't been complaining.

"I didn't mean it were an inconvenience having you on board," Griffiths
explained awkwardly as they reached the ladder down to the weapons
storage compartment.

"Most interesting thing that's happened all trip.  You okay now, sir?
Got to go for the others."

"Fine.  Thanks."

Sam looked round at the packed stowage area.  In his years in the Navy
he'd never served in a submarine.  He noted the bunk pallets fixed onto
empty torpedo racks, but knew there'd be no time for sleeping.

Over the next fifteen minutes the rest of the landing party gathered.
There was little chat amongst the marines, just the clipped grunts of
men used to working closely together.

Last down was Lieutenant Willie Phipps, stepping off the bottom rung as
the pipe announced they were diving again.

"That's a bugger," he murmured.

"Macko was our linguist.  Fluent Russian and Serbo-what sit

"How is he?"  Sam asked.

"Severe concussion, by the look of it.  The MO's got him in the sick
bay.  How's your Russian?"

"Not good enough."

"Then I'd better ask if there's anyone on board who can come ashore
with us."

"When do we go?"

"In about two hours."

They heard footsteps on the ladder and turned to see a lieutenant
commander's epaulettes emerge below the hatch.

"Everybody comfy?"  the First Lieutenant asked as he reached the
bottom.  He had a folder clutched under his arm.

"Like pigs in shit," growled a voice from the back.

Hayes grinned.

"Okay.  Happy for me to brief you now?"

"Sooner the better," Phipps told him.

"Fine."  Hayes set his folder down on one of the boxes where the GCHQ
team stored their tapes.

"We're currently about thirty miles west of Palagra," he explained,
opening a chart of the Lastovski Channel.

"We'll be in position to surface again in about ninety minutes."  He
pointed to a circle on the chart.

"There's only one easy way onto the island as far as we can see."  He
spread out a small-scale plan that had been faxed from London.

"A natural inlet at the eastern end, sheltered from the north
westerlies  The rest of the coastline is rocks and cliffs about ten
metres high with thick scrub on top."

"When we left Lyneham, the intelligence picture was like a fog in the
Channel," Willie Phipps interjected.

"All they said was the island's supposed to be uninhabited.  Nothing
about what's on it."

"We can do better than that now.  The place used to be lived on by
monks, until Tito's communists turfed them out so the big man could use
their monastery as a guest house for his cronies.  When Yugoslavia
broke up, the place was reclaimed by the Church, but, strangely enough,
they couldn't find any young men wanting to shut themselves away there.
So they leased the building to an Austrian religious foundation as a
retreat."

"Austrian foundation," Sam repeated, his interest sharpening.

"D'you have a name for it?"

"Sorry.  Nothing more than that."

"The monastery's the only building on the island?"  Phipps asked.

"There's one other house, occupied by a Croatian family.  They run
goats and chickens and have a few patches of maize, peaches and
vegetables.  Used to supply food to Tito's guests when they were in
residence, and when they weren't, they'd look after the place for
him."

"How many bods on the farm?"

"Don't know.  A "family" is all it says on the signal."

"Okay.  So tell us about the Russians?"

"The CTs picked up four different voices.  There may be more.  Our
assumption is they've been occupying the monastery.  And not for a
prayer meeting.  The last transmission monitored suggested panic.
Something had gone badly wrong and a manhunt -was under way on the
island."

"But they may have all left," Phipps prompted.

"A boat was seen leaving?"

That's right.  A cluster of people on board.  Hard to tell numbers.  At
least four, maximum six.  We'll show you the video."  He pointed beyond
the line of gleaming torpedo tube hatches where a small monitor and
video player had been set up.

"No police or Croatian armed forces on the island?"  Phipps queried.

"We don't think so.  There's no reason for them to be there."

"And what's the met picture?"

"Cloud cover may break up after midnight Zulu London time.  If it does
there's a moon."

"A new moon, thankfully," Phipps told him.

"Not so bad."  Total darkness suited them best because their night
vision gear was brilliant.

"One thing .. . That casualty of ours Macko he was our linguist.  We'd
like a Russian and Serb/Croat speaker with us if possible.  Anybody on
board who could fill in?"

"Will he have to swim?"

"No.  We'll carry him on our backs if he can tell us what we're
listening to."

Hayes scratched his chin.

"I could try the CT who identified the voice of Igor Chursin.  He'd be
ideal if I can persuade him."

"Good."

"He's racked at the moment, but coming on watch in an hour or so.  I'll
give him a shake when we've finished our briefing."

"Fine.  Let's have a look at your pictures."

Martin Hayes crouched in front of the recorder as the SBS team bunched
closer to the screen.

"Okay.  These first shots are of the boat seen leaving the island."

Sam peered over the heads of the marines.  A modern glass-fibre utility
boat, with a forward wheelhouse and cabin and a long open stern section
for passengers or goods.  Ideal as a work boat for someone running a
covert laboratory.  Two figures visible behind the wheelhouse windows,
with more on the open deck.

"As you can see, an accurate head count is hard."  There was a grunt of
affirmation from Phipps.

"The next bit of tape is our circumnavigation of the island.  I'll
speed through.  You'll soon get the message.  Pretty unapproachable
because of the cliffs and dense woodland.  You could get ashore that
way, but it'd take an age."

The marines' eyes drilled the screen.

"Can you see any of the buildings from the sea?"  one of them asked.

"Nope.  The trees are too tall."  The First Lieutenant cleared his
throat.

"And now we're back at the inlet."  He slowed the tape to normal
speed.

"I've done some hard-copy printouts which you can study at your
leisure.  As you can see, there's what looks like a quay there. Perhaps
"quay" is too generous.  It's rocks cemented together."

"Freeze it, could you?"  Phipps spread his fingers and thumb and
measured the image on the screen.  He estimated fifteen or twenty
metres of landing space.

"When was this taken?"

"Twenty-four hours ago."

"There's a family living at the farm, you said?"

"Yes, but I've no idea how current or sound that piece of intelligence
is," Hayes cautioned.

"If they're still there, they're bound to have a boat too, that's all,"
Phipps added ruminatively.

"Out fishing?"  Hayes suggested.

"Or gone across to Lastovo for supplies.  Probably find it back there
when we arrive."

"How close can you take us?"

"Half a mile at a pinch."

Sam looked at his watch.  A quarter to eleven Zulu.  Nearly one in the
morning local.  Ninety minutes until they neared the island.  Fifteen
minutes to get the boats loaded and off the casing once they'd
surfaced.  Two hours ashore at the most before the approach of daylight
forced them to withdraw.

"It's essential the submarine stays undetected," Hayes told them, 'and
that you do too.  NATO does not want to find itself at war because of
this operation.  Weapons for self-defence only.  Absolute last resort.
If we have to leave you ashore overnight to prevent detection of the
submarine, then so be it.  We'll collect you the following night.  Or
else you could become tourists and make your own way back."

The thought of being stranded in the Adriatic horrified Sam.  His
instinct was to be back in Vienna as soon as he could, snapping at the
heels of Max Schenk.  As the briefing continued he detached his mind
from it.  Phipps and the First Lieutenant were on to technicalities
communications frequencies and procedures for every balls-up
imaginable.

Sam perched on the edge of a bunk pallet watching the faces of the
marines, his unease growing.  They were a tight-knit group of men, all
under thirty.  Single-minded and with a clear agenda, but one that was
different from his own.  Their mission was to look for signs of
biological weapons being prepared for use against NATO troops, but
their priority was to remain unseen.  They'd keep their distance.
Observe from afar, as they were trained to do.  His need was to gather
the sort of hard evidence that might only be found by taking the place
apart.  He wanted tangible proof that this rock was where Harry
Jackman's shipment had ended up.  And confirmation that what had been
produced here was now being used by European racists.  To get it could
well mean becoming very visible indeed.  It might even come down to
sticking guns in the Russians' mouths to encourage them to talk.

And unless he could persuade them otherwise, the men he was travelling
with would do all in their power to stop him.

Stockholm After midnight

Twelve hundred miles to the north of where HMS Truculent was making her
preparations, a Saab 900 drove through a western suburb of Stockholm.
The vehicle was stolen and so were its plates.

Although the centre of the Swedish capital stayed abuzz until late on a
Friday night, out here, where many immigrant families had settled close
to one another for support, the streets were empty after midnight and
the apartment windows for the most part dark.

The history-loving schoolteacher behind the wheel wore a long, brown
wig over his straight, fair hair, and heavy-framed spectacles without
any lenses in them.  It was a cold, wet night in eastern Sweden,
justifying the parka he'd put on.  He drove slowly through a bleak,
run-down commercial centre, scanning shop fronts  Buildings of three
floors business premises at street level, with apartments above.

It didn't take him long to spot the doner kebab house on the opposite
side of the road that he'd checked out a couple of days before.  He
slowed the car and glanced up at the apartments.  To his relief, the
windows were in darkness or curtained.  No one to see him.  He stopped
a little way down the road.

He'd thought about this moment for days, doubting he would dare go
through with it.  I wait to know that you are not a coward.  The words
of the e-mail had lingered in his mind like a stain.  He wasn't brave
by nature.  But on this issue he was determined.  Determined that
something had to be done to stop the contamination of Europe by the
dispossessed from other lands.

He swung the car in a U-turn and drove slowly back to the take away
stopping outside.  He pulled the parka's hood over his head, then got
out.  From the boot he removed a sledgehammer, a Molotov cocktail and a
can of petrol, hurrying them over to the shop before he could change
his mind.

He unscrewed the lid, lit the rag in the half-filled bottle with a
Zippo, then swung the hammer at the glass, shattering it easily.
Snatching up the bomb, he hurled it down on the stone floor inside.
Flames splattered as the petrol sugar mix spread, licking up the legs
of the handful of chairs and tables.  He slung the petrol can after it,
then ran for the car as flames leapt up behind him.

Foot hard down on the accelerator, he put some streets between himself
and the scene of his crime.  Then, fearing a heart attack if he didn't
calm down, the schoolteacher slowed the car.  Concentrating, he drove
carefully so as not to draw attention to himself, his mind reliving
every moment of what he'd just done.

Eventually he spoke.  Not to himself, although anyone watching would
have thought so, but to the man who called himself Simon, a man whose
face he'd never seen.

"You see, comrade?  I did it.  I am not a coward.  And I am with
you."

TWENTY

HMS Truculent Saturday, 01.40 hrs Zulu

COMMANDER ANTHONY TALBOT sat glued to the attack periscope monitor as
the marines made their preparations on the casing aft of the fin.  He
had a deepening sense of dread about the mission.

The monochrome thermal images were crisp and clear, the men's warm
faces and hands showing up white.  Bulky in their kit, the ten marines
were grouped round the Geminis, inflating them with compressed air from
bottles and attaching the silenced outboards to the transoms.  Beyond
them, where the casing slipped into the sea, the submarine's rudder
swung slowly from one side to the other like the tail of a basking
whale.  Standing a little apart from the SBS men, looking ill at ease,
were the two 'passengers' on the mission, Sam Packer and Arthur Harris.
It hadn't taken much to persuade the CT to step in as translator, but
Talbot knew he'd be more scared now than at any time in his life.

His misgivings concerned the other man, however.  Harris was military
and would obey the lieutenant's orders, but Packer was a civilian, and
a shady character judging by the press summary that had been included
in the last broadcast from Northwood.  It wasn't at all clear why the
man had been sent.  No explanation from London except 'security
reasons'.  But whatever they were, the man had his own agenda, which
meant the mission had split aims, something naval commanders were
trained to avoid.

The periscope swung away as the watch officer scanned the sea around
them.  Fishing boats were what Talbot feared most.  If there was a
danger of being discovered by one inside Croatian territorial waters
then he would have to abort.

Lieutenant Harvey Styles aligned the periscope sight with the Palagra
shoreline and cranked up the magnification to check the landing inlet
again.  The work boat they'd seen leaving a day ago was back at the
jetty.  They'd expected to spot a second vessel there, belonging to the
family who farmed on the island, but there was no sign of it.

He switched back to wide-angle and focused on the casing again.  Drum
tight and loaded with their kit, the inflatables were being shoved
towards the edge ready for the off.  As the control room watched the
monitors, two of the men unzipped their dry suits to urinate, their
warm flow creating a white arc against the darker background.

"One for the album, sir," Styles commented before swinging the scope
away for another all-round look.

Standing next to the captain, a young signaller had been monitoring the
VHP from the landing party.  Suddenly he began hopping like an electric
toy.

"Signal from Sunray, sir.  They're ready for off."

Outside, the night was black, the cloud cover not yet broken.  Good SBS
weather.

"Fine."  Talbot stood up.

"Shut and clip the engine room hatch.  Clear the bridge.  Officer of
the watch, come below, shut and clip the upper lid."

A few seconds later his order was acknowledged.

"Bridge cleared.  Conning tower upper lid shut and clipped.  Engine
room hatch shut and clipped."

"Ship control.  Open one and four main vents."

"One and four main vents open, sir!"

Air roared from the ballast tanks.  On the monitor they saw a blow of
spray from the outlet in front of the rudder.  Slowly, as the submarine
settled, the sea began to wash over the casing.  Catching a surge, the
SBS launched their wallowing craft into the water and flung themselves
on board, yanking the outboards into life.  Both Geminis swung their
bows away and began to motor.

As Talbot watched them go he crossed his fingers behind his back.

"God bless," he murmured.

The drum-tight tubes smacked gently against the waves.  There was a
light wind from the north-west.  Sam crouched on the floor of the
inflatable, gripping a webbing strap.  A holstered Browning pistol
pressed heavily against his thigh.  The sound from the silenced engine
was a burble, which Phipps had assured him would be inaudible from the
shore.  Above, breaks in the cloud were just beginning to appear,
leaking light from the new moon, just enough for him to make out the
vague shape of the other boat twenty metres to their left.  Arthur
Harris sat stiff-backed between two squat marines.

Willie Phipps lay in the bows of Sam's boat, a monocular thermal imager
on his head that gave him the look of a Cyclops.  They were making
straight for the harbour.  No alternative if they -were to get on and
off the island fast.  With the naked eye Sam could make out little of
the shore.  He realised they were getting near when the marines cut the
engines and began to paddle.

They rowed a few strokes, then drifted.  Rowed a few more, then paused
to listen.

Suddenly a shot rang out.  It chilled their blood and flattened them to
the neoprene.  Then two more.  Heavy bangs echoing briefly through the
pines that crowned the island.  Not the supersonic crack of bullets
aimed at them, they realised with relief, but some act of violence
being perpetrated in the middle of the island.

Safety catches clicked.  The soldiers scanned the shoreline through the
night sights of their MP5S.

Then came a sound which stopped their breath.  A scream, splitting the
night a wail more animal than human.  Three more shots followed,
silencing it.

"Fuck .. ."  A low expletive from somewhere in the Gemini.

They drifted, listening and watching, then Phipps ordered them to don
respirators and gave the signal to paddle again.  In close to the low
cliffs, they hugged the shore for the cover it gave them, inching
towards the inlet and the jetty.  As they closed with it, they saw a
wooden landing stage grafted on at the end of the stone pier where the
work boat was moored.

As the marines secured the painters to a ladder and scuttled ashore,
Willie Phipps reached back and put a hand on Sam's arm.

"You and Chief Harris wait in the boats.  I want people around me who
know what they're doing."

"Okay, but not for long," Sam cautioned.

"I've a job to do too."

"I know.  We'll check what the fuck's going on here and come back for
you."

With that, the lieutenant joined his men on the jetty.  The sky had
cleared further, giving enough light for Sam to see a couple of the
soldiers conceal themselves amongst the rocks.  The rest went with
Phipps, heading silently up the stone track that led inland.

A light swell rolled into the anchorage, causing the rubber boats to
nudge against one another.  Arthur Harris was just inches away from
him.

"What d'you think?"  the CT asked, his voice nasal with nerves beneath
the rubber of the respirator.  The scream they'd heard had been a
woman's voice.

"Sounds like they're killing people," Sam answered inadequately, trying
to stifle a worry that events might prevent Phipps from coming back for
him.

Harris's breath was coming in short, uneven bursts.

"I've not done this sort of thing before."

"Everybody's scared," Sam assured him.

"But these boys know their business.  Just do what they tell you."

"I realise that."  Harris fell silent again, but Sam could tell there
was more.

"I simply wanted to say that if you see me not reacting right, or doing
something stupid, then tell me.  Okay?"

"No problem."

As the minutes passed, they didn't speak again.  There was no more
shooting, but at one point they heard voices, too far away to make out
the words or the language.  Finally, after an age, Willie Phipps
reappeared, his rubber soles moving silently over the stones.

"Quick!"  he hissed, pulling them onto the jetty.

"Tell me," Sam growled, frustrated at having been out of the loop.

"This is plague island, by the look of it."  Phipps kept his voice low
as he led them up the hill.

"Whatever these witches were brewing, they seem to have screwed up.  At
the old monastery there's a guy in a respirator removing stuff from the
building and stacking it for a bonfire."

Sam cursed.

"We've got to stop him, Willie.  That's evidence he's destroying."

Phipps paused and put a hand on Sam's shoulder.  Then he pressed the
mouthpiece of his respirator close to his ear.

"We can't stop anybody doing anything, Sam.  Understand that.  My
orders are to stay covert.  If these jokers are shutting the place
down, that's fine by NATO.  It'll save the cost of a Tomahawk.
Intervention by us, in any way, means a change of rules."

"Well bloody call London on your satcoms and get them changed," Sam
snapped, despairing at the thought that proof of Harry Jackman's
connection with Palagra might go up in smoke at any moment.

"I've called already .. ."

"And?"

"I called because of what's going on at the farmhouse," Phipps
explained, reluctant to elaborate.

"Go on."

"They're sick bastards," he said eventually.

"Two arse holes with AKs and wearing respirators have shot dead the
couple who live there.  Two lads, teenagers could be the couple's sons
are being forced to dig a pit to bury them in.  Fucking animals!"

They both knew what would happen to the boys when the digging was
done.

"We asked Command if we could intervene and the answer was no," Phipps
added bitterly.

"Remaining undetected matters more than the lives of two Croatians."

"That's the implication."

Sam swore under his breath.

"Willie, we're supposed to be finding out what's been happening on this
rock."

' Observing what's happening.  That's the key word."

"But if we let them burn the evidence, we'll never know."

"I hear what you say.  But I'm paid to obey orders.  And for as long as
you're with me and my men so are you, Sam."

They began to move and Phipps warned that' they shouldn't talk any
more. The track narrowed into a natural gully between outcrops of rock.
They were getting close.

Sam decided the MoD's rule book was going to have to be bypassed.  He
hung back a little, then pulled Arthur Harris close to him.

"Whatever happens, stick to me like glue, Arthur.  I'll watch your
back."

The answering grunt from beneath the mask was noncommittal.

Soon they heard the rumble of a generator up ahead and saw the soft
glow of lights.  Two more shots rang out, off to their right.  They
dropped to a crouch, sickened at the thought of two young men slumping
forward into the hole they'd dug, their blood mingling with their
parents'.

Arthur Harris tasted vomit in his throat.  It was the closest he'd ever
come to the act of death.  Despite the supportive words from the SIS
man, he was far from sure he could handle what was happening here. He'd
thought of saying so, down by the boats, but knew that if he'd refused
to leave the safety of the harbour, he would never be able to look Navy
men in the eyes again.  Swallowing for all he was worth, he watched
Willie Phipps press a hand to his radio earpiece as a report came in
from one of his squad.

Sam edged forward to where Phipps was crouching.

"They've done it, the bastards," the marine muttered softly.

"Killed them.  Why?  That's what I want to know."

"The answer'll be at the monastery," Sam growled, his respirator
nudging the other's ear.

"On that bonfire."

Phipps half turned to him.

"You bloody stick to the rules, Sam."

Sam nodded.  He'd stick to them all right.  His own.  Only one thing
mattered to him learning the secrets of that building before they went
up in smoke.

They moved to the crest of a rise, using trees as cover.  The one-time
monastery stood fifty paces away, its white walls glowing eerily in the
moonlit blackness.  It had a pitched, tiled roof and shuttered windows.
The upper floor was in darkness, but at ground level, double doors
stood open and lights were on inside.  From behind the building they
heard the sound of breaking wood.

Phipps led them to some bushes from where they could see into the yard
at the back, a space protected from the northerly winds by a high wall.
Light spilled from the rear of the house.  A bonfire stack had been
built of old wooden bed frames.  Books, papers and bedding were strewn
beneath the timbers, ready to be ignited.  But whoever had done it was
inside the monastery again.

They flattened themselves to the ground.  Sam sensed other marines were
near, but couldn't see them.

A man in a respirator emerged from the house, his arms full of
cardboard boxes.  Tall and thin, he wore a grubby white coat.  He
tipped the boxes onto the stack, then pulled a cigarette lighter from
his pocket.

"Willie ..."  Sam mouthed, desperate to get the marine on his side.

"Your rules are fucking wrong."

The lieutenant didn't reply at first.  Sam could almost hear the clicks
of the calculations going on in his brain.

"We can go overt," Phipps whispered, as if talking to himself, 'if
something happens that puts our lives in danger..  ."

Sam swallowed.  He'd got the message.  It was down to him.  He turned
to Arthur Harris.

"Come on, chum.  We've got work to do."  He jerked the reluctant
translator to his feet.  Phipps made no effort to stop him.

Harris felt a protest rise in his throat, but it stuck somewhere behind
his teeth.  He stumbled after Sam like a lemming.

The man in the white coat looked up in horror at their sudden emergence
from the darkness.  He thrust his spare hand into a pocket as if going
for a gun.

Sam already had the Browning out of its holster and levelled it at his
chest.

"Stop!"

His yell was muffled by the rubber of his respirator.  The man saw the
pistol and froze.

"Put that flame out!  Tell him, Arthur.  Translate, for Pete's sake."

Harris tried, but his breathless Russian was inaudible beneath the
mask.

"Louder," Sam hissed.

"It's what you bloody came for, man."

Harris filled his lungs and released a stream of invective.  But
instead of stopping the lab man in his tracks it galvanised him into
action.  Ignoring the threat of being shot, he tossed the lighted Zippo
into the base of the stack then whipped out a VHP handset from his
pocket, shouting into it in Russian.

Seeing that things were about to get dangerously out of hand, Willie
Phipps sprang forward, his MP5 pointing like a bee sting.  The Russian
stared at them, eyes like whirlpools behind the lenses of his mask.
Then, suicidally, he began to move towards them, his arms spread wide
in an effort to block their advance for long enough for the flames to
take hold.

Phipps swung the gun against the side of the man's head and felled him.
Then Sam threw himself at the fire, pulling away the bed-frame timbers
before their ends had a chance to light.  He kicked at the papers
burning at the base, but it was too late.  The blaze had caught.

"Shit!"  He leapt back to prevent his dry suit catching fire.

Suddenly there was the sharp crack of a bullet by his ear and he
flinched.  He saw a puff of dust from the monastery wall behind him
where it had thwacked into the stucco.

"Down!"  Phipps yelled, swinging round to face the way they'd come. The
shot was from beyond where the marines lay hidden.  Sam flattened
himself next to Arthur Harris as more rounds smacked overhead.  Beyond
the scrub he could see muzzle flashes in the darkness as two men hurled
themselves towards the monastery, firing wildly.

Phipps opened up with the submachine-gun, prompting a fusillade from
the marines in the bushes.  The gunmen fell.  A couple of the soldiers
emerged from cover to check the men were disabled.  They stood over the
bodies and loosed off rounds to finish them off.  Sam sensed their
relief at doing what they'd wanted to do at the farmhouse ten minutes
before.

Behind him the bonfire crackled and spat as the flames spread across
its base.  He heard the ping of glass exploding.  Bottles and vials
from the lab, he guessed.  Vital evidence going up in smoke.  He
scrambled to his feet to attack it again, pulling whatever he could
from the flames.  The heat was intense, the blaze now fuelled by bed
sheets and blankets.  He grabbed a piece of bed frame as a probe,
trying to beat out the conflagration, but the heat defeated him.

"Water," he murmured, spinning round in the vain hope of seeing a
convenient hose.  There was nothing, and searching the place would
waste precious time.  He'd saved what he could from the flames.  What
mattered now was the information inside the Russian's head.

Harris still lay motionless on the ground, his hands over his ears. Sam
tapped him on the shoulder.

"It's okay.  The war's over."

Harris scrambled to his feet, relieved that he'd survived his baptism
of fire.

"Make this fuck wit talk to us, Arthur."

Eager to take charge again, Willie Phipps wrenched the Russian's hands
behind his back and secured them with nylon ties.

"Let's see what's inside this creep's head," he snarled, pulling the
prisoner to his knees and pressing the gun barrel into the back of his
neck.  A couple of his soldiers ran past, their belts heavy with
grenades.  They flattened themselves against the outside wall of the
monastery, one each side of the open door, then swung inside, searching
with their guns.

Harris began his questions.  The responses were muted.  Pretence of
ignorance, whines of complaint.  The Russian was playing for time.

"You're getting up my nose, sc rote snapped Phipps.  He grabbed the
man's respirator, as if to pull it off.

The Russian writhed and pleaded.

"He's begging you not to take that off," Harris translated.

"You don't say .. ."

"Says he'll co-operate."

"Then he'd better be quick."

Harris repeated his questions, listened to the responses, then probed
further.  For a couple of minutes the Russian talked, his words now
punctuated by gulps of shock.

"There's a biology lab inside the house," Harris confirmed
eventually.

"Set up over a year ago.  He says they've been experimenting with
viruses.  Several kinds.  Smallpox was the main one."

4Smallpox?"  Sam interjected.

"Not rabies?"

"Hasn't mentioned it," said Harris quickly, not wanting to lose the
thread of his translation.

"There were three of them running the lab.  All Russians, all
ex-VECTOR.  Igor Chursin was in charge.  His number two was Yuri Akimov
not a name known to me, but it's likely they'll have heard of him at
Cheltenham.  And this fellow's called Sasha Koslov.  He's the lab
assistant.  The two men you just shot are Croats.  Security guards. The
word he used to describe them was pretty contemptuous.  Translates
roughly as "pond life"."

"Okay, but what happened here?"  Sam pressed.

"Why the carnage at the farmhouse?"

Harris questioned some more.  Koslov seemed reluctant to answer.

"He's muttering something about an escape," Harris explained.

"Being evasive.  Doesn't want to talk about it."

"Tosser!"  growled Willie Phipps, wrapping a big, square hand round the
Russian's filter and wrenching it upwards.  The rubber mask separated
from the man's skin with a sweaty, sucking sound.  Koslov squirmed and
writhed, trying to push his face back into it.  His pinioned hands tore
uselessly at their ties.  He pressed his lips shut and flattened his
nostrils, his eyes swelling with the strain of holding his breath.

"Let's have a look at your miserable, evil little face," Sam murmured,
twisting the man's apoplectic visage towards the light of the fire.
Broad forehead, Slavic eyes popping from their sockets.  Muted squeals
from the throat.

"Whasthat you're saying?  Speak up."  Sam turned to Harris.

"Smallpox'll make a terrible mess of his looks before it kills him.
Tell him, Arthur.  Then ask him about the escape again."

When Harris repeated the question, the reddening face nodded
frantically, eyes pleading for the mask to be restored.

Phipps pushed it back down, easing the rubber over the man's chin and
checking the seal on his neck.  The Russian sucked in great gasps of
filtered air before speaking again.

As he talked, Willie Phipps met Sam's look.  They'd reached the same
conclusion.  For Koslov to be so terrified of exposure, the air around
them had to be a soup of infection.  They glanced at the bonfire and
nodded to one another.  The most lethal stuff could well be on it.
Putting distance between themselves and the flames made sense.  But as
they prepared to move, Harris held up a hand.

"Hang on.  He's describing the escape."

Sam listened hard.  His knowledge of Russian was rusty but he
understood Koslov to be talking about a 'boy'.

"My God."  Harris sounded shaken by what he was hearing.

"They used human guinea pigs to test their vaccines."  His voice was
flat.

"It was the Croats' job to keep the lab supplied."  He pointed to the
men on the ground a few feet away.

"Says that when Chursin and Akimov needed someone to experiment on, the
Croats took the boat to Split or Dubrovnik to look for people sleeping
rough.  Refugees Bosnians, Kosovans.  Or druggies.  They'd kidnap them,
bring them here and keep them chained up while trying out new viruses
on them the word he's using is "mutated" viruses.  I don't know what
that means exactly."

Sam knew precisely what it meant.  And he knew of an Austrian doctor
who was an expert on the subject.

"The main aim of the research was to develop antidotes," Harris
continued.

"Most of their vaccines didn't work, so the people died."

"How many, for God's sake?"  Sam asked.

"He thinks around thirty over the past year.  He says the people
themselves were rubbish.  Refugees.  Nobody missed them."

"Except their mums," Phipps suggested.

"What about the escape?"  Sam prodded.

"It was a few days ago.  One of the prisoners had been infected with a
new smallpox variant.  He says it's a strain which the world's stock of
vaccine can't touch."

"And they lost him?"

"Yes."

"Jesus..  ."

The man was a walking timebomb.

"By the time they'd discovered he was missing the boy had got to the
farm and taken the farmer's daughter hostage.  The girl was mentally
backward, Koslbv says.  The boy took her off in the farmer's boat.  To
Lastovo, they think they assumed he was heading for the ferry to the
mainland.  Chursin, Akimov and a couple of the Croats went over to
Lastovo to look for him, but there was no sign.  Chursin panicked.  He
feared the boy would contact the police and the game would be up.  So
he sent the Croats back with this man, with orders for the lab to be
burned and the farmer and his family to be killed.  All trace of what
they'd been doing here to be removed or destroyed.  That's it.  That's
what he said."

"And a vaccine for this new smallpox?"  Sam demanded.

"They'd developed one?"

Harris checked.  The Russian shrugged again.

"That's what they were testing on the boy.  He says find him and we'll
know if it works."

"Christ," Sam whistled.

"If it doesn't, we've got a lunatic wandering around infecting people
with an un treatable plague."  He posed the most crucial question of
all.

"Who were they doing this for, Arthur?"

Harris asked the Russian, but the man just shrugged.  His own
confidence growing, Harris himself threatened to remove the man's mask
and throw it into the fire.  But the answer remained the same.

"He says he doesn't know," Harris translated.

"Chursin never told him."  Phipps grabbed at the mask again, but Harris
put out a hand to stop him.

"No.  I really think he's telling the truth."

"Course he bloody knows..  ."Phipps insisted.  He clamped his hands
round the Russian's neck and squeezed.

"See if a lack of air helps him remember."

There were two more key questions Sam still wanted answers to.  The
rabies-like virus used against the two EU officials in Brussels had it
been produced here?  And had a Mr.  Harry Jackman supplied the
scientists with their raw materials?

He decided to wait a moment before asking them.  To see if the onset of
suffocation would persuade the man to name his employers.

They watched for some sign of a readiness to co-operate, but all they
saw through the steaming up lenses of his mask was some unexplained
horror in his eyes.  Eyes which stared past them, looking at a point
high up on the wall of the old monastery.

Sam suddenly understood.  But too late.  As the warning yell took shape
in his lungs, the head that Willie Phipps was so forcefully gripping
burst apart like a rotten fruit.  He twisted his face away in horror,
catching a glimpse of smoke at the upstairs window from where the shot
had been fired.

Sam's stomach rebelled but he managed to swallow back the vomit before
it filled the mouthpiece of his mask.  Harris scrabbled frenetically
across the stony ground, desperate to get away from the appalling sight
of the Russian's brains spread across Willie Phipps's torso.  Ignoring
the gore, the lieutenant raised the MPf and loosed off rounds towards
the monastery window.

Sam flung himself sideways, rolling away from the line of fire, then
got to his knees to run for cover.  Arthur Harris was nowhere to be
seen.  He darted for the corner of the monastery, crouched, looked
again and saw the translator lying prostrate a few feet away, his hands
clamped to his head.

"Arthur!"  Sam shouted.

"Over here!  Quick!"

But Harris didn't move.  There was blood oozing through his fingers.

"Jesus .. ."

Sam peered out from the shelter of the wall.  From the upstairs window
came the thunder of a grenade.  As suddenly as the shooting had
started, it came to an end.  There was a gruff shout from inside the
building.

"Secure!"

Sam ran over to the translator and dropped to his knees.

"Arthur..  ."

Harris didn't move.

"Shit!"  In the firelight he could see two wounds.  The back of the
head and the shoulder.

"Willie!"

Phipps joined him, wiping off the Russian's brains with a fistful of
dry grass.  He bent to listen, to see if Harris was still breathing.
Mouth to mouth would be impossible with the masks on.

"Dressings," he breathed.

"Pouch on my belt."

As Sam tugged at the Velcro flap, Phipps lifted Harris's hands from his
head.

"Bad?"  Sam asked, peeling the wrapper from a dressing.

"Can't tell.  But anything to the head's bad."  He took the sterile wad
and pressed it on the wound.

"Rip his suit open at the shoulder while I tie this on.  Got a
knife?"

"No."

"There's one strapped to my ankle."

Sam found it and cut the blood-clogged, rubberised cloth away from
Harris's shoulder.

"Flesh wound," he announced.

"Then he may have been lucky.  Know how to do it?"

"Yes."  He opened another pack, and pressed the dressing on hard.

"Have to get him to the surgeon," Phipps mumbled.

They both looked up as one of the soldiers dropped down beside them.

"The building's clear, boss."

"Who was that fucker?"

"Some Croat with a name with no vowels in it.  Found a driving licence
in his pocket."

"How come you missed him?"

"Hadn't cleared that far, boss.  Simple as that.  We'd checked
downstairs first.  We were on the way upstairs when he opened up.
Sorry."

Phipps slipped fingers under Harris's respirator to feel for the
carotid pulse.

"Still there," he whispered.

Sam stared helplessly at the translator.  That head wound needed a
specialist.  And they were a long way from any.  He visualised a wife
and kids for Harris.  Elderly parents.  The whole damn agony of
grief.

Phipps stood up and detailed three of his men to get Harris to the
jetty.

"Take one of the boats back to the sub.  Tell 'em the rest of us'll be
out of here in twenty minutes."  Then he strode towards the house.

Sam followed a few paces behind, shaken that Harris had been hit he'd
told the man he'd watch his back.  But he told himself not to dwell on
it.  There was still work to do.

The former monastery was L-shaped, a main block with a long extension
at one side.  As Sam stepped through the door he found a high-ceilinged
hall running from front to back, its floor taken up by refectory tables
with benches for a couple of dozen people.  One of the tables was
stacked with supplies -drinking water in plastic bottles, boxes of
tinned food.  Another had been used for work.  A laptop computer sat
with its screen up and Sam recognised the bulky black box beside it as
a satellite phone.  He made a mental note to take the PC with him.

Willie Phipps was being briefed by one of his sergeants.  Sam listened
in.

"Upstairs in the wing, two rooms used as bedrooms, three others empty.
Downstairs two rooms are laboratories, three others are like cells.
Bare beds and fixings in the walls with chains attached."

"What's in the labs?"  Sam asked.

"Loads of equipment.  Test gear, incubators, cabinets.  The usual.
Haven't done a thorough check."

"Sounds a good place to start," Phipps decided.

Sam strode with him into the wing.  The two labs were very similar,
although in the second the fridge had been emptied, its contents on the
bonfire, he guessed.  One of the lieutenant's men produced a camera and
snapped off some flash shots.  Then they closed the doors.  This place
needed to be looked at by scientists.  He wished Julie were here. She'd
have an idea what monstrous diseases they'd been experimenting with.

They walked further down the corridor peering into the bleak cells the
sergeant had talked about.  Sam ran upstairs to check the first floor,
but there was nothing.  Nothing whatsoever to link this place with Max
Schenk, with Harry Jackman, or with the virus attacks in Brussels.
They'd come too late.  The Russians had covered their tracks.  As he
re-emerged into the hall, so did Willie Phipps.

"We're off," he announced.

"All that shooting, someone's bound to take an interest soon."

Sam zipped the computer into its case and tucked it under his arm,
hoping against hope that its contents would reveal something.  He
looked round the long hall, staring into corners, looking for some last
thing they might have overlooked.

"Five more minutes," he pleaded.

"No chance.  If we're not buttoned up inside the sub within half an
hour she'll leave without us.  And there's no way we're going to stay
the night here waiting for the Croat police to turn up."

They stepped out into the yard.  The bonfire had collapsed into a heap
of glowing ash.  That's where his proof had been, Sam told himself,
ruefully.

Phipps beckoned to Sam.

"Come on.  We're going back to the boat."

At the far side of the yard amongst the scrub, marines were checking
the ground with torches, picking up cartridge cases to eradicate
evidence of their having been here.

Sam had a long last look round.  Suddenly he spotted something.

"Hang on a minute."

"I said come on!"  Phipps was losing patience with this troublesome
civilian.  He grabbed for his arm.

But Sam began to run, down to the far end of the small courtyard where
an outhouse nestled against the windbreak of a wall.  The door hung
half open, its bottom hinge broken.  Black as pitch inside.  He dug in
his pocket for a torch.  The beam lit up an old wheelbarrow, spades and
a pickaxe.  He heard feet sprinting across the stony ground.  Phipps
was coming for him.  Then the flashlight beam lit on something shiny.
At the back, half covered by fragments of ply.  He reached for the wood
and pulled it clear.

"Ohboy..  ."

Containers.  Five of them.  Like small milk churns.  Metal-cased with
handles.  Necks with screw tops wide enough to suspend samples
inside.

"Harry Jackman," he breathed.

"You little devil.  You gave yourself away..  ."

Sam felt the lieutenant's hands on his arm.

"Come on, chum, for Pete's sake."

"Look!"  Sam pointed gleefully at the storage flasks.

"Like Ali Baba," he whispered.

"Like bloody Ali Baba .. ."

"What're you on about?"

"It's how they got the viruses here, Willie.  In liquid nitrogen."

"So?"

Sam bent down.  Something written on a piece of the plywood had caught
his eye.  He snatched it up.  Blocky, stencilled lettering sprayed on
when the wood had still been a packing case.

"Willie "Come on, for fuck's sake."

"But this is it, man.  It's what I came for."

Six simple words that told him everything he needed to know.

Property of the Government of Zambia.

TWENTY-ONE

HMS Truculent Saturday, 05.40 hrs Zulu

THE EASTERLY SKY was becoming uncomfortably bright as the hatches were
sealed and the submarine slunk back to its deep water habitat.  In the
sick bay Arthur Harris had already been examined by the
surgeon-lieutenant and pronounced not in immediate danger.  The wound
to his head was more superficial than it had looked to the amateur eyes
of the Royal Marines lieutenant.

Sam sat in the wardroom at one end of the dining table.  Next to him
was Willie Phipps.  The notebook computer salvaged from the old
monastery was open in front of them, plugged into the submarine's mains
supply.  Sam pressed the power button.  The drive purred into life and
"Windows loading' appeared on the screen.

Phipps had borrowed another PC from the First Lieutenant and while
waiting to see what emerged from the Russians' computer was preparing
his mission report.

"I'm going to have to tell it like it was, Sam," he announced,
apologetically.

"There's no other way I can explain getting into a fire fight when the
orders were to avoid one at all costs."

"Fine by me," Sam rumbled.

"If your general wants to file a complaint to Vauxhall Cross, then I
think we can handle that."  As far as he was concerned, the mission had
achieved its goal.

The notebook computer from Palagra had a standard keyboard.  He hadn't
noticed it back at the monastery and had been fearing having to cope
with a Cyrillic text.  He opened Windows Explorer and "My Documents',
then ran the cursor down the long list of files.  Most were identified
only by code letters.  He double-clicked on the first to see what it
contained.  It loaded into Word.  Three pages of scientific
gobbledegook that appeared to be an analysis of a virus trial,
something the brains at Porton Down would wet themselves over.  What he
needed, however, was something in plain language that showed a direct
link between the laboratory and the rabies-like virus used on the two
EU officials.  And something that pointed to Max Schenk.

Suddenly he saw it.  One complete word standing out from the acronyms
on the file list.

VIENNA.

He double-tapped.  The file loaded in Internet Explorer.  It was a
download of a timetable, the schedule of flights between the Croatian
coastal town of Split and the Austrian capital.

"Brilliant!  Bloody brilliant."

"What've you found?"  Willie Phipps leaned over.

"Something that could prove to be a crucial piece of the jigsaw," Sam
replied cryptically.

On the deck above, Commander Talbot was dog tired.  He'd been in the
control room for the best part of eight hours.  The special forces men
were their own masters, but he'd felt a responsibility for them.  On
board, they'd kept track of the operation by listening in to the
marines' secure communications and had been intensely relieved to get
them back on board without loss.  Now the submarine was thirty metres
down, heading south at fifteen knots for the channel between the rocks
that would lead them into safer depths and international waters. Talbot
crossed from his command seat to the chart table.

"Four-point-three miles to the one hundred metre contour, sir," the
navigator informed him.

"About seventeen minutes."

"Thanks, Vasco."

Beyond the hundred metre line the sea bed shelved away steeply.  Once
across the contour he would take the boat to sixty metres and, with the
trawl-net danger passed, would push up the speed to eighteen knots.  He
stepped past the conning tower into the sound room.  The waterfall
screens showed thin herringbone traces of boats nearby.

"There's two fishing vessels to port and one to starboard, sir," Chief
Smedley told him.

"Small time, working the rocks.  Nothing closer than fifteen cables."

"Any bio?"

"A school of porpoises followed us when we dived, but they've given up
and gone home."

"Let's hope they weren't working for the Croat Navy," Talbot quipped.

"They sang "Rule Britannia" when they left us, so I think we're in the
clear, sir."

Talbot smiled and returned to the control room.  As he rounded the
periscope housing he saw Lieutenant Commander Hayes appear at the top
of the companionway with the SIS man.  Hayes introduced him to Talbot
and they shook hands.  It was the first time they'd met.  Personal
contact with the special forces team on board had been left to the
First Lieutenant.

"Mr.  Packer has a request to make, sir."

Talbot took quick stock of this man whose formerly secret life had been
so thoroughly ventilated by the UK press.

"Better come into my cabin and tell me what's on your mind," he said.

"Officer of the watch, you have the submarine."

"I have the submarine, sir," Styles responded.

Talbot told Sam to sit on the small settee that doubled as his bunk.
Hayes left them to it.

"What's your problem, Mr.  Packer?"

"I've a very urgent need to speak to my controllers in London,
Commander," Sam explained.

"Well at this point that's quite impossible, I'm afraid.  We're still
well inside Croatian waters."

"They were experimenting with smallpox on that island," Sam stressed.

"A new variant, for which there's no vaccine.  Stocks may already have
been shipped to Europe to be used for mass murder.  If I delay passing
on the information, hundreds may die who might otherwise have lived."

Talbot gulped.

"I appreciate your concern, but you must also appreciate mine."  He
pulled a chart from the shelf above his desk and spread it out.

"We're here," he explained, jabbing a finger at it.

"There are fishing boats in the area and there's a Croatian naval
presence on Lastovo.  If I stick a mast up to transmit, there's a
serious risk of detection.  So far as we know we've got away with being
here.  When that blood bath on Palagra is discovered, there should be
nothing to say that NATO forces were involved and I won't do anything
to jeopardise that."  He said it with absolute firmness.

Sam nodded.  He understood perfectly.  No point in arguing.

"So when's the' soonest I can talk to London?"

"We have a scheduled rendezvous with HMS Suffolk in three hours from
now, in international waters close to the Italian coast.  If we crank
the speed up, then once we're beyond the Croatian territorial limit I
could come up to PD to transmit and still make the rendezvous on time.
Five minutes long enough for you?"

"It'll have to be.  When d'you expect that to happen?"

"In about an hour's time.  It's the best I can do for you."

Sam looked at his watch, which he'd left on Vienna time.  7.15 a.m.
London an hour earlier.

"Then let's just pray we're not too late, Commander."

"Amen to that."

Vienna 08.30 hrs

Igor Chursin stared out of the window of the hotel.  It was in a mixed
residential and business area close to one of the main railway stations
in Vienna, a city he'd been to only once before.  On the street below,
the day's activities had begun.  A van was delivering confectionery to
a corner shop.  An elderly man was exercising a small dog which yapped
at a postman.  He relished the intricacy of the scene after twelve
months of isolation on Palagra.

Chursin had breakfasted in his room.  He was a jowly man of forty-five,
who'd had a tendency to put on weight before his appetite was blunted
by the diet served up by the Croatian they'd hired to cook and house
keep for the past twelve months.  His fair hair, once straggly, had
been cropped short by the same, multi-skilled young man.

The flight from Split had delivered him to the Austrian capital the
previous evening but he'd not yet had his instructions from "Peter'.
Last night, after a short tram ride from his hotel, he'd found an
Internet cafe that stayed open late and had sent him an e-mail to break
the news about the enforced closure of the laboratory in the Adriatic.
He'd remained on-line for an hour, hoping for instructions on where to
deliver the vials of lethal serum that he'd brought to Vienna, but the
cafe had closed before an answer came.  The bottles which he'd
transported so perilously in his hand luggage had spent the night in
the refrigerator in his hotel room, but if they weren't used or chilled
properly within a few days, the virus was going to die.

To some extent, that was what he wished to happen.  A year ago when
he'd accepted the invitation to work for a handsome salary instead of a
poverty-line wage which was seldom paid, he'd turned a blind eye to the
motives of his new employers.  Since then, he'd stifled his conscience
and partaken in acts of unimaginable inhumanity in the interests of
attaining the new life he dreamed of.  But now that he was delivering
the products of his labours, he was experiencing a guilt he was finding
hard to suppress.

It was the development of the vaccine that had taken them so much time.
Without it, the administration of the modified smallpox virus would be
potentially lethal to anyone bent on using it.  Although the project
had been prematurely terminated, Chursin was convinced he had a triumph
on his hands.  The youth who'd been injected with the vaccine had been
infected fourteen days before he absconded.  Normally by that time the
fevers and pains would have developed, but the youth had been clear.
All Chursin lacked was proof.

He looked at his watch.  The Internet cafe would open again in fifteen
minutes.  He took the plastic bucket from on top of the fridge and
filled it with ice from the machine at the end of the corridor, then
dumped it into the insulated cool bag he'd used for transporting the
vials from Split.  Finally, he extricated the bottles from amongst the
whisky miniatures in the minibar and put them in the bag.  The last
thing he wanted was for the maid to discover them while he was out.

A tram came after a five-minute wait at the stop.  He arrived at the
cafe just as the doors were being unlocked.  He logged on, but to his
dismay found no response to his e-mail to Peter.  He ordered another
coffee and sat down to wait.  There was nothing else he could do.

The Adriatic Sea 09.15 hrs Zulu

First to be winched into the Sea King was Arthur Harris, strapped to a
stretcher.  He'd regained consciousness and been able to make enough
sense to ask for morphine.

Two hours earlier the submarine had put up a mast to burst-transmit
Lieutenant Phipps's written report to London and for Sam to be patched
through to his controller.  Waddell had spent the night at Vauxhall
Cross, waiting for news.

In the interests of speed Sam had trimmed the detail of what had
happened on Palagra.

"The bottom line is that we have a clear link to Harry Jackman and to
Vienna," he'd concluded.

"The circle's been closed, Duncan.  It has to be Schenk."

"You'd have thought so.  Unfortunately the Austrians are having no luck
in making anything stick.  Schenk agreed to be interviewed by the
security police last night, but he changed his story.  Claims never to
have met Harry Jackman.  Says he made up what he said to Julie, to hurt
her."

"He's lying."

"We've no proof of that.  And finding a Vienna flight timetable on
Chursin's computer doesn't provide us with any."

"What about Schenk's Croatian wife?"  Sam had asked, exasperated at the
failure to nail the doctor.

"Any connection between her family and the island of Palagra?"

"Nothing recorded.  We're hamstrung here.  Can't make too many obvious
enquiries without attracting suspicion that we had something do with
the blood bath on Palagra.  So we're having to rely on the Austrian
security police for now.  There are several key links still missing,
Sam.  We need something with Schenk's name on it.  We also need
something that links Palagra to the rabies variant used against the EU
officials."

"I'm still hoping to find that on the computer," Sam had told him.

"Where's Schenk now?"

"Back in Vienna."

"Under surveillance?"

"The Austrians are tapping his phone and Collins has somebody watching
him.  Of course, after what you've come up with, we'll urge the
Austrians to interview him again.  By the way, the Met's caught the
London bomber."

"Brilliant!  And?"

"A loner, by the look of it.  Being run through e-mail by some racist
mastermind calling himself Peter.  And before you ask, there's nothing
we've uncovered that suggests that Peter is Schenk."

"Damn.  Any new racist attacks?"

"Yes.  A firebomb in Stockholm last night.  A Turkish family burned to
death.  An eyewitness saw one man throwing petrol into a take away  The
family lived above it."

"God, what a bunch of bastards.  So what've we got?"

"Looks like an international network of lone wolves, being directed by
a central puppetmaster.  If we can take him out, then the whole
structure'll  probably collapse.  And for my money, the place for you
to be is still Vienna, even if the evidence is circumstantial.  The
R.A.F are helicoptering you and the marines to Gioia del Colle that's
the Italian air base the PvAF use for Bosnia operations.  There's an
HSi25 waiting.  It can drop you off in Austria before taking the rest
of the party back to Lyneham."

"Excellent."

Sam was last to be winched up to the Sea King.  As he was dragged
backwards over the sill, he looked down and saw Commander Talbot wave
briefly from the top of the fin.  Sam gave a thumbs up.  His old
service had done them proud.

The helicopter banked away.  As he looked back, fine jets of spray
erupted from the bow and stern.  The submarine was losing no time in
returning to the invisibility that was her natural element.

London

The morning call from the Computer Crime Unit came at a quarter to ten,
shortly after Steph had arrived in the Special Branch offices on the
sixteenth floor at the Yard.  She'd heard about the Stockholm bomb on
the radio at 7 a.m.

"Your friend Peter's gone verbal again."  The voice belonged to the
analyst who'd been working on the hard disk the previous evening.
Didn't computer nerds need sleep, Stephanie wondered.

"I'll be right over."

She took the lift and was there in three minutes.

"What's he saying?"  she asked, dropping into a chair.  She saw a camp
bed in the corner of the room and understood how the technician had
survived the night.

"For a fascist he sounds eerily kind and thoughtful," the computer
specialist commented.

"Full of concern about our friend's personal problems.  Look."  He
pointed at the screen.

"Read for yourself."

Stephanie wheeled the chair in closer.

Anthony, I have seen on television what happened at Golders Green.  At
such difficult times we must find all the strength we have within
ourselves.  On the path to great achievements there are always
tragedies.  You must not blame yourself.  In war there are many
accidents.

Of course for now there must be a delay before your next mission.  A
few weeks perhaps.  And your next target must be chosen with such care
that a mistake is impossible.

You told me you were worried about Sandra.  Take some time to find out
what she knows.  If she cannot support what you and I believe in, then
it cannot be right for her to continue to share your life.  You must be
brave about this.  I also have must to make such a sacrifice.

Stephanie blinked.  The last sentence contained the first full error in
what had been almost flawless grammar.  A simple typo?  Or a clue to
the man's nationality?  She tried to hear a voice in the words.  An
accent.  Trying to find a match with the Austrian doctor Sam
suspected.

"No way of knowing where this man lives?"  she checked.

"It could be anywhere on the planet.  The mailbox is registered under
the name of Vino Blanco, with a fictitious address in Liechtenstein."
Stephanie looked at the screen again.  There was one more paragraph.

Courage, my friend.  Protect yourself in whatever way you must.  If it
is safe for Sandra to live, then make the separation quickly and be
kind to her.  If it is not safe and she must be silenced, then it is
possible I can help you with that.

"Blimey," Stephanie exclaimed, reading the last line again.

"Is he offering to kill her for him, or what?"

"Like I said," the technician smiled.

"He's thoughtful.  And the sign-off's a gem."

Stephanie gaped at it.

Chin up!  Peter.

"That's almost Woosterish," she mouthed.

"Eh?"

"Never mind."  The lad was too young to understand.

"Print it for me, would you?  I'm going to think of a reply.  Something
to entice Peter into the open.  That's if I can persuade Southall crime
squad to keep mum about Feme's arrest for a little longer."

"You'll have your work cut out," the analyst told her.

"You heard the nine o'clock news this morning?"

"No."  Steph's heart sank.  Tell me."

"There was a report from Stepney.  Neighbours talking.  How Rob Petrie
seemed a decent enough guy.  Kept himself to himself .. . All the usual
stuff."

"Bloody hell!  How did it get out?"

"No idea."

Steph snatched up the phone and dialled Southall, demanding to speak to
the DCI in charge of the investigation.  She had to hold on for a
couple of minutes.

"Who's been blabbing?"  she demanded when he came on the line.

"Not us," he assured her.

"But one of the other residents of Windsor Court works for the local

BBC."

Steph groaned.

"Has Petrie told you anything?"

"Not a word."

"Charges?"

"This afternoon, probably.  Tomorrow morning at the latest."

Steph grasped her forehead and rubbed it.

"Have you said anything to the media yet?"

"No, but the Yard press office has had to confirm that we're
questioning a man."

Steph sighed.

"Thanks."

She rang off.  The hard copy of Peter's e-mail which the computer
analyst handed her would be the last communication they got from the
man.  However little it told her about his identity, she was going to
have to make the most of it.  And so was Sam.  Wherever the hell he
was.

Vienna

It was after eleven before Igor Chursin got the e-mail response he'd
been waiting for.  By then his heart was palpitating from all the
caffeine he'd consumed.  He took careful note of the instructions, then
returned to the hotel to vacate his room before the midday checkout
time.  By the end of the day if all went to plan, he would be well away
from here, with his final payment filling his briefcase and his dream
of a new life coming closer to fruition.

He had no luggage with him.  The few personal items he'd possessed on
Palagra had been left there.  By now they would have been burned by
Sasha and the Croats.  He'd worn the same shirt for three days now and
it smelled of sweat.

The instructions from Peter told him to take a tram to the
Wahringerstrasse U-Bahn station then telephone a mobile phone number
and give the code word Prinz.  He would be told where to go for the
rendezvous.  The tone of the e-rna il had been cool but understanding,
ending with the philosophical words, on the path to great achievements
there are always setbacks.

The trams round the Ring were frequent and Chursin reached his
destination quickly.  He took the escalator down to the subway station
which doubled as a tram terminus for routes heading west towards the
Wienerwald.  The first phone box he tried was broken, but the second
worked.  The mobile phone number rang four times before it was
answered, in German.

"This is Prinz," he responded in English.

"Ja.  You must to take the Strassenbahn Nummer achtunddreissig, number
mmm .. . thirty-eight, you unnerstand?"

"Strassenbahn?"

"Streetcar."

"Number thirty-eight .. ."

"Ja.  To Grinzing.  It is end station.  You wait and we will come."

"How will I recognise you?"

But the line had already died.  He was unfazed by all this subterfuge.
It had been the same on his previous visit a few months ago and he well
understood the need for it.  They would be watching to make sure he
wasn't being followed for his protection as well as for theirs.  The
people he was working for had treated him fairly up to now and he had
faith they would do so until the end.  He replaced the receiver,
collected some change from the refund recess, then looked round at the
tram stops, reading the numbers.  A thirty-eight was waiting for the
off.

He'd bought himself a twenty-four-hour transport pass when he'd arrived
at the airport last night, so took his seat without recourse to the
ticket machine behind the driver's cab.  Within a couple of minutes the
tram was grinding up the slope to street level and humming its way
north through residential districts of the city.  There was a
comfortable orderliness to much of the Austrian capital that reminded
him of Russia in better days.

The journey to Grinzing took twenty-five minutes.  On the last stages
of the route, the tram climbed steadily.  Most passengers seemed to be
tourists with cameras round their necks and when they reached the
terminus Chursin saw why.  Grinzing was a pretty village of mellow
yellow houses, souvenir shops and taverns.  He stepped down from the
vehicle and stood to one side as the other passengers dispersed.  The
tram trundled round a loop line to head back into the city and he was
alone on the pavement, the cool bag full of smallpox dangling from one
hand and a plastic shopping bag from the other.

He waited for a good five minutes before an elderly Volkswagen Golf
pulled up and a dark-haired woman leaned out from the driver's
window.

"Herr Prinz?"

"Yes."

"Please."  The rear door of the car opened for him to get in.  Chursin
slid onto the back seat and the woman drove off.  The car wound through
the village, climbing steadily.  Next to the woman driver was a
brown-haired man who kept his eyes on the road as if not trusting her
ability to avoid the kerbs.  His head was like a small dog's, wiry and
pointed.  Neither of them spoke as the car left the built-up area and
headed into woodland interspersed with vineyards.  Their silence made
Chursin uneasy.

After about ten minutes, the woman swung the car into a lane which
quickly became a rutted track, ending at a small, darkly painted wooden
house with a barn behind it.  The large doors were open.  The woman
drove in and switched off.

Still without speaking, she got out and indicated he should do the
same.  Chursin was uncomfortable with this couple.  It had been more
straightforward with the professional-sounding man he'd dealt with last
time.  There was something sinister about this pair.  A cold efficiency
about their actions that was not entirely human.  And the garage had a
faint smell of chloroform about it.

"You will show us what you have brought," the man told him, walking
over to a workbench and indicating that Chursin should open his bag on
it.

"You have money for me?"  he checked, defensively.

"Ja, ja.  AUes in Ordnung," the man grunted, opening a drawer in the
workbench and pulling out a fat brown envelope.

Chursin's eyes widened at the thickness of it.  He unzipped the seal on
the cool bag and removed four bottles.

"These contain serum," he explained, holding up the two larger ones.

"Infected serum.  Other two bottles are vaccine."

"It is good?"  the terrier-faced man asked him.

"It will protect us?"

"One hundred per cent."  Mentally Chursin crossed his fingers as he
said it.

"We must use the vaccine how long before?"  the woman checked.

"Any time before infection."

"And for the virus you have .. ."  She didn't know the English word.

"Eine Spritze?"

Chursin picked up his plastic shopping bag and pulled out an
insecticide spray with a pump handle and a reservoir tank.

"You see, it is made special so the droplets are right size," he
explained.  From their frowns he wasn't certain they were following his
English properly.

"First you mix serum with water.  Fifty-fifty.  Understand?"

"Ja.  We understand."  The couple looked at one another and nodded.

"Alles in Ordnung."  The man handed him the envelope.  When he smiled
he revealed a wide gap between his front teeth.

"Your money.  You must to count it."

Chursin felt intensely relieved.  He slit open the envelope with his
thumbnail and pulled out a sheaf of $100 bills.  As he concentrated on
them, dividing them into tens, he failed to notice the man walk round
behind him.  The notes were crisp and new.  Like the life he envisaged
they would buy him.

Suddenly a bag was pulled over his head.  Dark, smelly plastic.  He
went rigid with shock, tightening his grip on the cash and swearing in
Russian.  Then his elbows were wrenched behind his back and pinioned.
He struggled but was pulled off balance.  His wiry assailant had the
strength of a bear.

He breathed in sharply, air that smelled of manure.  "He felt outraged
and foolish, but when he tried to protest again his voice failed, as if
some part of him realised there was no point in speaking.  He seemed to
be standing outside his own body, watching a process as relentless and
terminal as when a spider traps a fly.  He felt fingers unbutton his
shirt in the middle of his chest, then a probing to locate the base of
his sternum, followed by an excruciating pain in his heart.

"Aaagh .. ."  He felt he'd been impaled.  His pulse faltered like some
seized engine.  The stench from the sack was choking him.  His head
began to spin and his legs gave way.  He sank backwards into the
steadying arms of his attacker.  Then his mind went black.

The woman finished emptying the horse syringe into Igor Chursin's heart
and withdrew the needle, leaving a tiny hole in his white skin from
which a thin rivulet of blood trickled.  After a few seconds it stopped
of its own accord.  The man lowered Igor Chursin to the ground.  The
two of them stood side by side, observing the end of another life,
watching the onset of death in the quietly satisfied way that they'd
done many times before in the last twenty years.  Ending people's lives
was an art they took pride in, using skills their Stasi trainers had
inherited from the Gestapo and refined under the tutelage of the KGB.

In the corner of the barn was a stone sink with a brass tap.  The woman
took the veterinary syringe over to it, washed it out and replaced it
in its container in the workbench drawer.  Then from a box on a shelf
behind it she retrieved two disposable syringes in sealed plastic
packs, opened them and filled them from one of the vaccine bottles. The
man bared his upper arm and she plunged in the needle.  When she'd
done, she rolled up her own shirt sleeve for him to do the same to her.
Finally they transferred the bottles of infected serum to a
thermoelectric camping cool box which they placed on the floor at the
back of the car, connecting its power cable to the cigar lighter
socket.

The man knelt beside Chursin to check that his pulse was flat.  Then
the two of them lifted him into the boot of the car, folding down half
of the rear seat to make it easier for his legs.  They covered the body
with a blanket, and dumped two suitcases on top of it.

The pair nodded at one another.  The job was done.  Their next mission
awaited.  They got into the car and reversed from the barn, locking the
doors behind them.

They had a long journey ahead.

On board an R.A.F HSI25 en route to Vienna

Unlike the exhausted marines, Sam had forced himself to stay awake
during the flight, checking and rechecking the computer files.  He'd
done a word search on every document, but Schenk's name hadn't
registered.  Nor had rabies.  If Schenk was to be nailed, then somehow
they were going to have to get him to admit his involvement.

He kept thinking of what Julie had gone through with Schenk thirty-six
hours ago.  He felt a strong wish to see her again.  Almost as strong
as a longing.

Thirty minutes later the small jet touched down at Vienna's Schwechat
Airport and taxied to the business terminal.  Willie Phipps stirred
from his slumbers to bid Sam goodbye.  He shook his hand warmly and
wished him luck.  After a brief passport check, Sam was taken to the
city by the same cautious British embassy driver who'd been so
meticulous about speed limits on the day of Kovalenko's murder.

Once beyond the airport perimeter, the driver handed him a phone.

"Mr.  Collins thought you might want to get up to date with what's been
happening in London," he suggested.

Sam rang WaddelTs number first, but finding him unavailable, dialled
Stephanie's line at the Yard.  She sounded unusually harassed.

"Where the hell are you?"

"Vienna."

"He calls himself Peter.  The mastermind."

"I know.  Waddell told me."

"Is it Schenk?"

"Everything points that way.  There was a biological weapons lab on
Palagra and we have found links to Vienna.  But I can't prove it's
Schenk.  Tell me about the bloke you've arrested."

"Aged thirty-two.  Former securities trader with no previous
convictions.  Shacked up with a nurse.  No known associations with
racist organisations, but his computer hard disk was stuffed with
downloads from white power websites and he'd failed to erase a whole
bunch of e-mails from his leader."

"Waddell said they gave no clue to his identity."

"Not so sure about that.  There's been a new missive this morning. Tell
me something.  How good is Schenk's English?"

"Pretty fluent.  Makes the odd error."

"Would you recognise one?"

"Try me."

"The e-mail's full of sympathy about the mistake Petrie made in Golders
Green blowing up a crocodile of schoolkids rather than a restaurant
full of Jews.  All written in near perfect English until the' end when
he says I also have must to make such a sacrifice.  Ring any bells?"

Sam pondered for a moment.

"No.  But it does sound sort of German.  What was the precise
context?"

"He seems to be talking about having to sacrifice partners who don't
support the Lucifer Network's views on life "Lucifer Network?"

"Seems to be the name of the organisation.  There was reference to it
in one of the other e-mails we found.  Want me to read the whole
text?"

"No.  Fax it to the Embassy in Vienna.  For the attention of Pat
Collins.  I'm on my way there now."

"Okay.  I'll tell you one other thing, though.  It ends with the words
chin up.  Is Schenk a fan of P.G. Wodehouse?"

"God knows."  Chin up.  He'd heard someone else use the words recently,
but couldn't remember where.

"Ask Julie."

"I will.  Oh, I saw her last night.  She's keen to talk to you.  In
fact I get the impression she's rather keen altogether."

He ignored her innuendo.

"Where is she?"

"In the virology lab at St.  Michael's Hospital.  She told me she'd be
working there all weekend."

The car turned into Jauresgasse and stopped outside the British
Embassy.

"D'you happen to have the phone number?"

"You mean you don't?

"Leave it out, Steph."  She gave it to him.

"Thanks.  And we'll do that curry soon.  Right?"

"Right.  If Miss Jackman can spare you .. ."

He handed the phone back to the driver.

Chin up.

He walked into the Embassy still dressed in the crumpled trousers and
sweatshirt that he'd worn under his dry suit.  And judging by the way
the secretary who escorted him upstairs wrinkled her nose, he wasn't
smelling too fresh any more.

Inside the SIS offices Collins was on the phone and waved him to a
seat.  The station chief's ruddy forehead bore a perplexed frown.

"Vielen Dank."  He rang off, puffing out his cheeks with surprise.

"Well .. . there's a turn-up," he exhaled.

"I think you may have had a wasted journey."

"Why?  What's happened now?"

"Austrian security pulled Schenk in for questioning again just before
lunchtime today, to confront him with your evidence of the link between
the germ warfare lab and Vienna," Collins gabbled, spluttering.

"And, wait for it Schenk confessed."

' What?"  Elation swelled inside him like a balloon.

"But not to what we wanted him to confess to."

The balloon burst.  Sam clasped his scalp with both hands.

"Explain."

"He's admitted doing a deal with Harry Jackman."

"Fantastic."

"But not the deal you have in mind.  He categorically denies being
involved in biological terrorism.  And to prove it he's shown Austrian
security what it was he did buy from Jackman."

"Which was ... ?"

"Medical equipment.  Some quite flash stuff.  Gear donated to a
hospital in Africa by a European aid programme.  It had been sitting in
some flyblown storeroom for a year and a half because the locals didn't
have anybody who could operate it.  Then money changed hands and the
equipment quietly disappeared, turning up in Schenk's clinic at half
the price he'd have paid if he'd bought it through the usual
channels."

"The little shit."  Sam sank back in the chair in disbelief.

"And this was no fantasy on his part.  The serial numbers on the gear
in his clinic match with those of the equipment sent to Africa."

Sam rested his head on the back of the chair and stared at the ceiling.
It was too pat.  Too well-prepared an excuse for someone who only a few
hours earlier had denied ever meeting Harry Jackman.

"What makes you think this is the only deal Schenk did with Jackman?"

"Because we have no evidence of any other.  Nothing connecting him with
Palagra."

Sam stared at the ceiling again.  Every fibre of his body told him
Schenk was guilty of something far more sinister than receiving stolen
property.

"If Schenk is unscrupulous enough to deprive Africans of life-saving
equipment, he could easily have been involved in racist murder too."

"Of course he could," Collins concurred.

"Trouble is, his denials have been very convincing."

There was a tap at the door and a secretary handed Collins a sheet of
paper.

"What's all this?"

"A fax."

Sam looked over his shoulder.

"If it's from Scotland Yard and the text of an e-mail, then it's for
me."  Collins gave it to him.

Sam sat down again, rubbing his forehead as he read.  The caring tone
of "Peter's' message intrigued him.  He was reminded of Hoffmann's
homily about a good general caring for his troops.  He lingered over
the penultimate paragraph.

If she cannot support what you and I believe in, then it 'cannot be
right for her to continue to share your life.  You must be brave about
this.  I also have must to make such a sacrifice.

What sacrifice?  Had the maniac killed his own wife?

Then Chin up.  It annoyed him that he couldn't remember where he'd
heard it.

"Mind if I use your phone?"

"Help yourself.  Nine for an outside line."

He rang the London number Stephanie had given him.  It was a male voice
that answered.  He asked to speak to Julie.

"May I say who's calling?"

"Sam Packer."

There was a teeth-sucking sound at the other end.

"I'm not sure that "Just tell her I'm on the line and that it's
important."

He heard a clunk of the handset being laid down and the squish of
rubber soles on polished floors.  A couple of minutes later Julie's
voice came on.

"Sam?  Are you all right?"

"Fine.  Look I've got some questions about Max."

"Okay."

"How did you two communicate?  Was it ever by e-mail?"

"Oh no.  Max is a Luddite when it comes to new technology.  He can't
even use a keyboard."

Sam's heart sank.

"You sure about that?"

"Totally.  I've seen the way his eyes glaze over when confronted by a
computer."

"Never mentioned something called "the Lucifer Network" to you?"

"Nope."

"One other question."  It was his last hope.

"Did he ever say chin upT There was hesitation at the other end.  For a
moment Sam thought he'd struck gold.

"Absolutely not," she told him.

"His English was terribly Germanic.  Utterly devoid of phrases like
that."

"Damn .. ."

"You sound so disappointed."

"I am."

She made sympathetic noises.

"What's happened?"

"I've a nasty feeling I've done my maths wrong, that's what.  Two and
two may not make five after all."

"Sam, I .. ."

"Look, I've got to go.  I'll ring you again when I'm back in London."

"Sam!"

"What?"

"There was something I wanted to tell you."

He felt uncomfortable under Collins's penetrating glare.

"Yes, but perhaps now isn't the best .. ."

"I've seen him before, Sam."

He felt an icy finger down his back.

"Who?"

"The man in your folder."

Sam screwed up his eyes, trying to latch onto what she was talking
about.

"What folder, Julie?"

"In your room at the pension," Julie explained.

"There was a folder with a photograph in it."

Sam swallowed, not trusting himself to speak.  He remembered emerging
from the bathroom and seeing her poking around in his suitcase.

"Somebody Hoffmann," she went on, breathlessly.

"Hoffmann," he croaked.  The world was turning upside down.

"The face seemed familiar, but I couldn't think where I'd seen it. I've
been puzzling over it ever since and come to the conclusion there's
only one place it could have been."

"Where, Julie?  Where've you seen him before?"

"The Intercon bar.  I'm 99 per cent certain he was one of the men my
father was chatting to when I joined him for a drink that evening a
year ago."

Yes, thought Sam.  Harry Jackman had been right.

Julie knows.

TWENTY-TWO

THE CLUES HAD been there and he'd missed them.  Peter's paternalistic
concern for the problems of his foot-soldiers -it bore Hoffmann's
signature.  Kovalenko's murder, done KGB style Stasi style.  The
supposed heart attack that had left Hoffmann hale and hearty the next
day a carefully created alibi.  And chin up.  Sam remembered where he'd
heard it now.  At Jo Macdonald's bedside.  It had been "Johann' who'd
told the Scotswoman to keep her chin up when his father was dying.

The embassy car hurtled round the Ring, the driver threatened with an
unpleasant personal injury if he didn't push the speed over the limit
this time.

Sam sat alone in the back, reliving his meeting with Gunther Hoffmann
three days earlier.  His brain kept singling out other indicators he'd
missed the man's envy of the Austrians' freedom to be anti-Semitic his
blatant homophobia his dislike of Arabs because of their music his
sympathy with those who wanted to keep Europe free of dusky foreigners.
Taken separately, each had been a small thing, the mutterings of an
elderly grump.  But together they spelled out a man with the mindset of
a Nazi.

And there were other clues.  Fischer's comment that Hoffmann had been
more involved with Russian businessmen in Vienna than they'd first
thought.  And his view that if Hoffmann was making money from Russians,
he would have been doing it to fund some cause he believed in.

And what a cause.

Sam groaned.  Hindsight was a wonderful thing.

It was another of Fischer's snippets that was driving him now.  The tip
that Hoffmann spent most Saturday afternoons 'researching German
history' in the National Library.

The car swung through the neo-classical gateway of the Hofburg, the
palace of the Habsburgs.  To each side of the broad, gravel led road
lay Heldenplatz, the square to the heroes of the Austro-Hungarian
empire.

Horse-drawn fiacres lined one side of the highway, their bowler-hatted
coachmen holding the beasts' bucking heads while tourists clambered on
board.  Sam's embassy driver turned right and stopped beneath a statue
of a prince on a prancing horse that was streaked with green.  He
nodded towards the curved, grey, colonnaded block facing them.

"That's your Staatsbibliothek.  Want me to wait?"

"You bet."  Sam pushed open the door and slammed it behind him.

"By rights I'd need permission to park here .. ."  The driver's
plaintive moan was lost to the breeze as Sam climbed the steps to the
library.

One half of the barred bronze portal stood open.  Beyond it a
cavernous, stone-floored hall.  At the far end were glazed doors made
of carved oak, topped by a coat of arms.  He hurried through into the
library itself, a light and airy space, with a black-and-white tiled
floor, stately marble columns and ficus trees in tubs.  He felt the
hair twitch on the back of his neck.  He was getting close.

There was a security office on the left.  A red-faced, potato-shaped
guard leaned on his desk, eyeing all new arrivals with suspicion.  Next
to his window a display board listed departments.  Halfway down was the
name of the one Sam had guessed would be here.  On the lower ground
floor.

There was a warm, leathery smell about the building.  A sign pointed to
a spiral staircase.  At the bottom was the book collection centre.
Readers who'd placed orders were waiting on benches for their tomes to
be retrieved from the vaults.  Several glanced up, disturbed by Sam's
hasty and breathless arrival.  He stopped, looking for some sign
pointing to where he wanted to be.  Finding none, he asked at the
collections counter.  The middle-aged woman behind it indicated a
corridor to the left.  He hurried through a pair of swing doors and
found the library's communications centre.  Faxes and photocopy
machines lined one wall.  There was a desk manned by a grey-suited
official, whose fingers clicked at a keyboard.  Beyond the desk was the
place Sam had guessed would be here, the Internet room from where
"Peter' had controlled his small network of activists.

He stopped in his tracks.  About a dozen PCs sat on tables, only one of
them in use.

The old Stasi man sat hunched over the keyboard, his deeply lined,
deceptively noble face sombre with concentration.  For a split second
Sam felt sorry for the man.  He'd had a dream and it was about to end.
Sam crept past and came round behind him.  Over his shoulder he could
see the Hotmail screen.  Hoffmann was typing a message.  Sam hovered,
trying to see the words, but the text was too small.

Suddenly, sensing danger, Gunther Hoffmann lifted his eyes above the
screen and saw that the official behind the payment desk was looking
intently in his direction.  Not at him, he realised quickly, but at
someone standing behind him.  He swung the chair half round, completing
the turn with his head.

Hoffmann took in a sharp breath.  The steeliness was gone from the
slate-grey eyes.  Sam saw a look of defeat.  Then the old man swung
back to the monitor and grabbed the mouse to block off the text on the
screen.

"No way," Sam growled, springing forward to prevent him erasing what
he'd written.  He yanked at the chair, swinging it round again, jerking
the mouse from Hoffmann's hand.

"How's the heart, Herr Hoffmann?  Or should I say Lucifer?"  Their
faces were inches apart.

Suddenly the German butted forward.  Sam felt his nose crack.  His
vision exploded in stars.  He reached blindly for Hoffmann's shoulders
but the chair was already empty.  He felt warm liquid trickle down his
upper lip and pressed a sleeve against his nostrils.  As his eyes
cleared, he set off after Hoffmann, yelling at the official behind the
counter not to touch the computer.  The man grabbed a phone and began
dialling.

Hoffmann was only seconds ahead of him.  Back in the book collection
room Sam saw the door to the staircase swing shut.  There were gasps
from the waiting readers at the blood spattering his front.

Once on the staircase, he heard Hoffmann's wheezy breath above him and
caught a glimpse of his back in the curve.  The old spy was showing a
surprising turn of speed for a man of his age.

"Stop!"

In his confusion and anger the German words weren't coming to him.  Sam
was furious with himself for letting the rogue get the better of him.

Up on the ground floor level, Hoffmann ran full pelt for the exit.  He
shouted something to the security guard in his hutch by the door and
pointed back towards Sam.

"Fuck .. ."

The blob of officialdom emerged from his cubby-hole, arms outstretched.
Sam swerved to avoid the man but his bulk blocked the doorway.

Sam's tongue seemed to swell in his mouth as he sought the words which
would make the man understand.  But before he could form them, huge
arms folded round him like a clam shell, enveloping him in an odour of
armpits and stale smoke.

"Na, ja .. ."  the guard grunted, turning him round like a pot on a
wheel and pinning his arms behind him.  He gabbled on in a Viennese
accent that Sam found incomprehensible.

"Sic verstehen night," Sam croaked.

"Er ist Morder!  Sic muss en ihn .. ."

"Ja, ja ja .. ."  the guard clattered.  Sam made out the word
"Polizei'.

He was manhandled into the security office.  The man's strength was
phenomenal.  Other staff had gathered, alerted by the sound of the
commotion.  The blood and the fact that he was a foreigner fuelled
their hostility.

He was slammed onto a chair and held there by the guard while a woman
in glasses dialled a number.  He heard the word "Polizei' again.

Then suddenly they were there.  Not in response to the call, but
because Patrick de Vere Collins had promised to tip off Austrian
security about Sam going after Hoffmann.  Two uniformed officers came
running in through the entrance doors, closely followed by the
Inspektor who'd been in charge of the Kovalenko murder case.

"Herr Packer .. . You seem to be in some difficulties."

"Inspektor Pfeiffer, that's an epic understatement," Sam coughed as the
library guard reluctantly released his grip.

"Did you get Hoffmann?"

"I do not know how he looks," the Inspektor answered, frowning.

"Explain to me please."

"I will.  Outside.  Follow me quickly."  He pushed through the doors
into Heldenplatz, the police close behind him.

There was no sign of Hoffmann.  Sam checked with his embassy driver.

"See anybody come running from the library?"

The man shook his head.

"Wasn't looking," he mumbled.  Illegally parked, his anxiety at the
arrival of the police was tangible.

Sam clicked his tongue with annoyance.  The nosebleed was stopping.  He
quickly filled Pfeiffer in.

"The computer, it still have the Internet connection?"  the Austrian
asked, grasping the situation immediately.

"It did a few minutes ago."

They ran back inside and down to the communications centre.  The
grey-suited official was hovering by the PC that Hoffmann had been
using.

The Inspektor ordered him not to touch it.  The official protested that
the time paid for had run out.  Sam pulled a 50-schilling note from his
wallet and thrust it into the bureaucrat's hand.

They sat at the screen.  The message Hoffmann had been writing was
still blocked off but hadn't been erased.  The words were in English to
someone with the moniker "Gustaf Adolf.  Praise for a firebomb attack
last night.  Sam assumed it was Stockholm.  Then a warning.  The
Lucifer Network cell in England had been closed down by ZOG activity.
It was time to lie low for a while.

"It is better we don't touch this," the Inspektor breathed.

"I will send for computer specialists to examine everything."

"We must find out where Hoffmann's gone," Sam insisted.

"The answer may be here."

He clicked the mouse on the mail 'folders' and opened up 'sent
messages'.

One e-mail there.  In German this time.  Sam and the Inspektor read it
together.

It warned the recipients that the opposition was making progress
against them and it begged them not to fail.  It talked of the twelve
months of preparation they'd already put in.  And it described the next
attack as the most important of their whole campaign.

You must succeed.  None of us can know how long we have in this life
and I want to die in peace knowing that my homeland will be safe.

The Inspektor pointed at the screen.

"He use the word Heimat."

"Homeland.  So the smallpox attack is to be in Germany," Sam deduced.

"But Heimat can mean a place more particular.  His own home.  His own
part of the country.  You know where that is?"

"He lived in Berlin for most of his life," Sam told him.

"But..  ."  Suddenly he stood up.

"I've just thought of something."

He strode to the service counter and asked the official if he had
international phone directories.  The man handed him a CD and pointed
to a PC next to the photocopiers.  Sam loaded the disc into the machine
and looked up the number of Sky News in London.  He rang it from a
booth and a couple of minutes later emerged grim-faced.

"Greifswald," he announced.

"That's where the attack will be."

Pfeiffer looked quizzical.

"Sky News has been following an Albanian refugee family," Sam
explained.

"The broadcasts have been shown all over Europe.  Yesterday morning
they filmed them settling into a hostel in northern Germany, a place
already full of Balkan refugees.  And the town was Greifswald that's
where Hoffmann was born, Herr Inspektor.  No wonder this target's so
important to him."

The policeman got to his feet.  More of his men were arriving.  He
ordered them to seal off the communications area and to keep the
Internet connection open until specialists arrived from his
headquarters.  Then he turned back to Sam.

"I will quickly contact my colleagues in Germany," he told him.

"And we will put out Hoffmann's description."

"How would he get to Greifswald?"  Sam asked.

"Why?  You think Hoffmann goes there himself?"

"In that e-mail he talks about dying.  He told me once he wanted to end
his days in Greifswald."

The Inspektor stared at him.

"Then I must warn the airport.  He would first fly to Berlin."

"No."  Sam put out a hand to stop him.

"He hates planes.  Told me he never flies these days if he can help
it."

"The train, then.  Come.  We will go to the Westbahnhof."

Outside, Sam told his driver to return to the Embassy, then piled into
one of the police cars with the Inspektor.  With the blue light and
siren going, they powered their way through the traffic, reaching the
station in less than five minutes.

Sam and the policeman ran inside, checking the indicator board for
trains to Niirnberg where, according to the phone conversation with
rail enquiries which the Inspektor had had in the car, Hoffmann would
pick up a connection to Berlin and Greifswald.  There was one leaving
in twenty minutes.

"Number seven," the Inspektor grunted.

They hurried onto the platform.  Several of the train doors were open
and a few passengers were already boarding.  Sam stepped into the first
carriage with the Inspektor right behind him.  He looked the length of
it, checking faces, then passed swiftly through to the next.

It was in the fourth carriage he spotted him.  Sitting alone at a table
at the far end of an otherwise empty compartment.  Gunther Hoffmann
began to rise when he saw Sam, but flopped back into the seat when the
Inspektor thrust a hand under his jacket and pulled out a Clock pistol.
Hoffmann's grooved cheeks seemed to hang loosely from his skull.  As
they closed in, he placed his hands flat on the table.

"Aufstehen!"  the Inspektor ordered, the gun sight levelled on the
centre of Hoffmann's forehead.

The old spy rose, head held high, back straight, his eyes looking past
them as if at some distant goal that he still intended to reach.  The
Inspektor told him to put his hands on his head then frisked him. There
was nothing in his inside pockets other than a wallet and a pen.

"Where is it, Gunther?"  Sam hissed.

"Where's the smallpox?"

Hoffmann glared contemptuously at him.

"You know me for too long time, Herr Packer, to expect me to answer
your questions."

"You're an evil bastard," Sam blazed.

"Lucifer.  The name suits you."

"It does.  But not in the way you mean.  You misunderstand, Herr
Packer.  To the Romans, Lucifer was the morning star.  The bringer of
light to the world."

Sam saw a touch of insanity in his eyes.

"And you planned to emulate Lucifer by murdering people and creating a
climate of fear .. ."

"You cannot have morning light without first having the darkness of
night," Hoffmann rejoined, sitting down again stiffly.

"The Sikhs and the Jews in London.  The Turks in Sweden.  Albanians in
Germany."  Sam counted off the targets.

"Vladimir Kovalenko .. ."

"He had, as you say in English, passed his sell-by date," Hoffmann
interrupted, allowing himself a little smirk.

"After providing you with the wherewithal to let loose a plague."

Hoffmann pressed his lips together.

"There'll be children dead in Greifswald," Sam stressed.

"Like in Golders Green.  Only this time it'll be hundreds.  Is that
what you want?"

He saw a flicker in the eyes.  A reminder that despite Hoffmann's
insane ambition his compassion might still be stirred by its
consequences.

"Little bodies aflame with blisters.  Raging fever.  No treatment
possible that could stop their screams.  You want that?

Hoffmann wet his lips and sniffed.  But his jaw was still defiant.

Sam remembered Peter's e-mail which Steph had faxed from London the
suggestion that he too had had to sacrifice a loved one.

"Use .. ."  Sam murmured, not quite believing what he was thinking.

The leathery head turned to look at him, eyes as lifeless as lead.

"She found out about you.  Was that it?"

There was no response.  Sam realised he was looking at a monster.

"You feared she would betray you ... So you killed her.  For the sake
of your dream."

The old German's eyelids drooped.  He took in a breath deep enough to
have been his last, then let it out again.  He looked broken.

"Well your dream is over Herr Hoffmann."  Sam placed his hands on the
table and leaned forward.

"But you can still stop it turning into a nightmare.  The smallpox.
Tell us where it is.  Tell us who's got it."

Slowly Hoffmann pulled himself up straight.  It was clear he'd made a
decision.

"Give me some paper," he croaked.

"I will draw you a map."  He reached into his jacket.

Seeing the movement, the Inspektor raised the pistol again, then
lowered it when the hand emerged with the pen.  He produced a notebook
from his pocket and passed it across.

"I am like a painter or a poet," Hoffmann declared wearily.

"My only weapon is my pen."

He held it in both hands then, staring into the middle distance, slowly
unscrewed the lid.  He shuddered involuntarily, like someone about to
have his teeth pulled.  Sam saw the eyes tighten.  Then the pen stabbed
downwards.  Hoffmann plunged its tip into his thigh and pressed hard on
its end.  They heard the click of a spring being released and watched
the lined face contort with pain as the needle fired its lethal charge
into his leg muscle.  Sam lunged forward, but the syringe had already
emptied itself.

"Shit!"

The Inspektor got on his mobile to call for an ambulance.

Hoffmann shook his head.

"There is no point," he breathed.

"Three minutes and I shall be -with my wife again."  He panted for
breath, as if drained of all energy.  Then he turned to Sam.

"So .. ."  he whispered.

"Because of you, I shall be like Caspar David Friedrich.  I will not
smell the sea again before I die."

Sam seethed at his own powerlessness.

"Damn you, Gunther."  He grabbed the German by the shoulders.

"Who's got the smallpox?  Max Schenk?"

Hoffmann reacted as if he hadn't heard.

"Tell me and save your sodding soul."

It was pointless.  Sam let go of him.  Three minutes, he'd said.  One
gone already.  He sat down in the chair opposite.

"Was Schenk in this with you?  His clinic you went to with your fake
heart attack?"

Hoffmann frowned as if puzzled.

"I don't know any Schenk," he declared.

Sam read the man's eyes and drew a blank.  Hoffmann's ability to claim
black was white had been perfected over a lifetime.  Impossible to tell
if this was the truth.

"Tell me about Harry Jackman, then.  How much did he know?"

"Harry.  Poor Harry," Hoffmann mocked.

"Did he know what was in the flasks?"

"Of course.  He had to make special arrangements for the flights."

"And calling it red mercury .. ."

'..  . was his idea."

Sam saw a wince of pain as the poison began to bite.

"Why did you have him killed?"

Hoffmann's face contorted and he clutched at his chest.  Sam leaned
forward.

"Why did you kill Harry Jackman, Gunther?"

Hoffmann shook his head, his wide eyes nicking from side to side as if
no longer able to see.  Indignation wrinkled his brow.

"But I didn't kill him," he protested hoarsely.

Then the eyes closed and his body sagged into the corner of the seat.

Three minutes.  It had been less than two.

Other passengers were entering the far end of the carriage.  The
Inspektor shouted at them to leave.  Suddenly the platform was full of
uniforms.  The assistance the policeman had called for on the way to
the station had finally arrived.  From somewhere not far away they
heard a siren approaching.

Sam stood up straight, arms hanging limply by his sides, shaken to see
the second of the instigators of this heinous plot die before his
eyes.

There was a difference between the two men.  Hoffmann had been proud of
what he'd done to the end, whereas Harry Jackman had sought to distance
himself from the crime.  The claim of ignorance about the cargo's
destination, the clinging to the myth of it being red mercury the old
gun-runner had lied even with his final breath.  Had Hoffmann's last
words also been a lie that Harry Jackman's murder had been nothing to
do with him?  Instinctively Sam felt that at that last moment of his
life the German had been speaking the truth.  Why deny the charge after
accepting responsibility for so many other killings?

Sam backed away as paramedics came pounding pointlessly along the
aisle.  Someone had hired Harry Jackman's killers.  And he still wanted
to know who they were.

He left the carriage and stepped onto the platform.  The machinery of
law and order had taken over now.  Finding those planning to use the
smallpox in Greifswald would be up to the police.  Officially, his role
was over.  He'd delivered.

He stood back from the train watching the men in uniform doing their
work and waiting for Inspektor Pfeiffer to tell him whether he could be
of further service to him.

He knew that by rights he should be experiencing a sense of
satisfaction at this particular moment, but he wasn't.  Yes, they'd
found their puppetmaster but not all the puppets.  Dr.  Max Schenk,
virologist, had been doing business with Harry Jackman at a time when
plans were being laid to create a biological weapons laboratory on
Palagra.  If it was a coincidence, then for Sam it was a coincidence
too far.

Proving it, however, would be another matter.

TWENTY-THREE

London Sunday oN HIS RETURN to London the next morning Sam was driven
from Heathrow airport to a block of mansion flats on the south side of
Hyde Park.  Duncan Waddell met him in the entrance lobby and took him
through a security door into the corridor where the lifts were.

"Belongs to the Ministry of Defence," Waddell explained.

"Top brass live on the sixth floor, lesser mortals lower down.  You're
on the first.  The flat happens to be empty for the next month, which
conveniently gives you time to sort yourself out.  Don't worry about
security here.  It's quite enough to deter your Ukrainian friends. Your
stuff's been moved, by the way.  There's nothing left at Brentford or
at that flea-pit in Ealing.  Your clothes and personal effects are
here.  Anything larger has been stored for you."

"How thoughtful."

Waddell's glance said 'don't take the piss'.  Keeping him hidden was
for their own sake as much as for his.

The MoD flat was furnished in the damask style that officer families
felt at home with.  Sam took a quick look round.  One bedroom with twin
beds, a living room, a bathroom and a kitchen.  He searched a cupboard
above the sink and found that even his tea and coffee supplies had been
installed.

"Fancy a cup pa

"Now you're talking," Waddell rumbled.

"Coffee, please.  Milk, no sugar."

They took their cups to the living room and sat in armchairs.  The
windows overlooked a well-maintained private garden.  The flat had an
impersonal lavender-waxed smell to it.  The walls were hung with
Constable prints and the floor was carpeted in an indefinable green.
Sam resolved to move from the place as soon as the opportunity arose.

His controller -was in bustling mode, eager to tie up loose ends and
lay plans for the future.

"You'll be glad to know the German police caught Hoffmann's death squad
just outside Greifswald this morning," Waddell said, 'complete with a
pump spray full of smallpox."

"Excellent.  How did that come about?"

"All thanks to some farmhand who'd been working the vines outside
Vienna.  Seems he'd become curious about a couple renting a little
house on the outskirts of his village.  Had the impression they were
using it as a hideaway.  Early on Saturday afternoon he saw their car
drive up with a third person in it.  A man.  They went into the garage,
closed the doors and a short while later he heard a yell.  Like the
chap was having his balls cut off, was the way he described it to the
police.  Then after another ten minutes, he saw the couple drive the
car out again, without any visible sign of their passenger.  He thought
about it for a while, then rang the constabulary and gave them the car
registration number."

"Brilliant- Hope he's up for a medal.  And did they find the
passenger?"

"Not yet.  They're working on the theory the couple dumped him in a
forest somewhere on the route north.  Examination of Hoffmann's e-mail
suggests the man could well have been Igor Chursin, delivering the
smallpox."

Sam's mind flashed back to Palagra and the terror on the Russian lab
assistant's face when Willie Phipps had pulled his mask off.  That man
knew the lethality of the brew they'd developed.

"How were they going to administer the stuff?"  Sam asked.

"They'd got some forged papers identifying them as being from the local
health authority.  A permit to spray the refugee hostel in Greifswald
for insect infestation."

Sam shook his head.

"Hoffmann was certainly thorough."

"The Stasi always were."

"Do we know the full extent of the Lucifer Network yet?"

"Not that large, we think, based on his e-mail contacts.  The couple
arrested outside Greifswald were former underlings of Hoffmann in the
Stasi.  And they've been identified by Mrs.  Klason as the pair who
hooked the infected glass splinter into her husband's towel.  They seem
to have been Hoffmann's hit squad.  The rest of his network consisted
of people like Rob Petrie in London and the as yet unidentified Swede
who bombed the Turkish kebab bar.  They're the only ones known to have
killed.  Other correspondents in France, Spain, Italy and Germany may
have been involved in lesser anti-immigrant protests of one sort or
another.  Hoffmann was the idealist and the money man.  Kovalenko
supplied him with the scientists and the raw material, and introduced
him to our friend in Zambia to arrange the shipping.  Kovalenko knew
Jackman because he'd sold him guns."

Waddell was looking smug, which Sam interpreted as meaning that he
thought the pieces of the jigsaw were all in place.  In his own mind
one was still missing, however.

"No e-mails to someone who could have been Max Schenk?"

"No.  But he was computer illiterate, remember."

So he was.  Convenient, thought Sam.

"Klason died last night, unfortunately," Waddell continued.

"The woman victim's hanging on, but unlikely to survive.  And you'll be
interested to know that a Croat police boat called in at Palagra
yesterday.  They've asked for outside help to make the place safe and
to investigate what was going on there.  We're offering a team."

"Going in with flags flying this time, I suppose.  And the human guinea
pig who escaped?"

"No sign of him or the girl he took hostage.  So we don't yet know if
the vaccine worked."

Sam hooked his hands together and cracked his joints.  Waddell could
see he was dissatisfied with his round-up of the case.

"You're troubled by something.  What've we missed?"

"The fact that Hoffmann in the later stages of his career became more
of a manager than a doer.  I learned that about him during those long
months of trying to make him identify the spy in BAOR."

Waddell narrowed his eyes.

"Go on."

"He was a man who, whenever possible, liked to control things at a
distance.  He was doing it with the Lucifer Network, running everything
from the anonymity of an e-mail address."

"So?"

"So I believe he would have had a medical expert on his team to
supervise the handling of the virus samples.  The pair who were picked
up in Greifswald were either of them medics?"

"Not that I'm aware of Waddell blinked.

"You mean Schenk, don't you?"

"Yes."

Waddell pursed his lips.

"You're not alone in clinging to the belief that he must've been
involved.  The Austrians tried to pull him in for further questioning
this morning, but he's done a bunk.  Not at his home or the clinic. And
no one's seen hide nor hair of him since the news of Hoffmann's suicide
hit the news bulletins last night."

"Christ!"  How much more proof did they need?

"I thought Collins had someone watching him."

"He did, but the man was taken off the case after Hoffmann was
identified as Peter."

"So, what's being done?"

"Schenk's description has been circulated to police forces across
Europe with a request for an immediate arrest if he turns up
anywhere."

Sam set his jaw, trying to second-guess where Schenk would have gone.
Well away from Europe if he had any sense.

"They'd do better trying South America," he grunted.

"Whatever, it's down to the Austrians now.  If he committed a crime,
that's where it was carried out.  Your part in the Jackman affair is
finished."  He said it with a firm finality.

Sam let his eyes wander around the room.  They were cutting him out
again before the job was finished.  He didn't like that.  And this
place had the feel of an institution.  A padded cell.  He was in limbo
here, as was his whole life now that this case was closing for him.

"What's the verdict, Duncan?"

"About you?"

Sam nodded.  Theatrically, his controller picked up a Times Atlas which
just happened to be on the coffee table.  He passed it across to him.

"Exile," Sam murmured.

"I wouldn't call it that.  The firm is keen to retain your services,
Sam, but in some place where your face isn't known.  Up to a point you
can choose your continent."

Sam put the atlas back on the table, stood up and walked to the window
which was coated with a plastic film to prevent splintering in a bomb
attack.  Death.  He'd seen too much of it in the past two weeks.

"As to your father's involvement with the Russians," Waddell continued,
adopting a more formal tone, "I've been authorised to inform you that
it's not an impediment to your continued employment."

"I should bloody well hope not," Sam grated.

Beyond the glass a gardener was mowing the lawns.  It was an English
scene.  Something he would miss if he accepted the firm's posting
abroad.  He was going to have to think about it.

The other matter he needed to give thought to was Julie.  The
attraction that had begun as raw chemistry and then been soured by her
betrayal of him, had returned with a vengeance in Vienna.  He'd
understood by now that she was there for him if he wanted, but a
relationship with her would be a complication at a time when he was
about to be shunted overseas.  And hovering over it, both in his mind
and hers, would be the unresolved issue of her father's death.

Sam turned back into the room, his hands deep in his trouser pockets.
Resentment bubbled inside him.  Convinced that Hoffmann wasn't lying
when he'd denied liability for Jackman's death, he'd churned the
alternatives around in his mind until settling on the most disturbing
one of all.

"Hoffmann said he didn't kill Harry Jackman."  He watched for Waddell's
reaction.

A ripple of discomfort disturbed his controller's expression.  Dapper
in his crisp blue shirt, he unhooked one grey-trousered leg from the
other, then reversed them.

"Did he say that?"  The Ulsterman sounded weary.

"And you believed him?"

"He had no reason to lie about it that I could see.  He'd already
admitted responsibility for Kovalenko's death."

Waddell pulled a long face.

"In that case, I suppose the motive with Jackman must have been robbery
after all."  He sucked in his cheeks.

"Balls, Duncan," Sam snapped.

"It was us.  We did it.  The firm."

Waddell pursed his lips and arched his eyebrows.

"To be honest, I don't see that it matters who did it.  The world's a
far, far better place ..."

"Oddly enough it matters to me," Sam growled.

"You sent me to Africa to negotiate a deal supposedly.  But you weren't
interested in one, were you?  The real reason I was shipped to Zambia
was to set Jackman up for assassination.  And to provide the firm with
an alibi.  We were negotiating with the man, m'lud.  Couldn't possibly
have been us that killed him.  You used me, Duncan."

Waddell contemplated him stonily for a few moments.

"Using people is what the firm does, Sam."  His eyes were devoid of
sympathy.

"And look, if you're going to be holier than thou about this, I really
can't help you."  He snapped the Times Atlas shut, got up and returned
it to the bookcase.

Sam glared at his back, reluctantly admitting to himself that Waddell
was right.  The trade they were engaged in was deception.  The only
rules were those they wrote themselves.  He had no right to complain.
He turned and paced back to the window.

"Take a few days off, Sam," Waddell counselled, walking over to pat him
on the shoulder.

"Forget about Harry Jackman.  Settle yourself in here and put your feet
up for a bit.  You've had a hard run.  There's a car for you to use out
the front.  Keys are on a hook in the kitchen.  Give me a ring later in
the week and we'll do lunch."

Sam grunted.  A few seconds later he heard the front door open and then
click shut.

He clasped his hands to the back of his head and flexed his shoulders.
Easy for Waddell to say forget about Jackman he wasn't involved with
the man's daughter.  Sam had told Julie that SIS wasn't responsible for
her father's death.  Now he knew different.  The issue of the
gun-runner's murder had become like a pothole on an unlit road, one it
would be sensible to avoid by not going down that road at all.

And yet, what the hell .. . He would see her again.  He had a craving
for her which he needed to satisfy.

He went in search of his mobile phone.  It was Sunday, but Steph had
said Julie expected to be working all weekend, so he dialled the
laboratory.  When the number answered, a man's voice told him she'd
been given the day off.

"You know where I can contact her?"

"She's got a mobile with her.  We loaned her one in case of the need to
summon her back in.  Who is it?"

"Sam."

"Ah yes.  She said you might ring."

He gave him the number and Sam called it straight away.  When Julie
answered, he heard what sounded like geese honking in the background.

"It's Sam," he told her.

"You're back?"  She sounded overjoyed.

"Yes.  This morning."

"That's absolutely wonderful!  Um .. ."  There was a sudden hesitancy
in her voice, like someone who'd plunged into a box of chocolates then
remembered it was Lent.

"So, what are you doing .. . ?"  she asked timidly.

"Is there a chance we could meet?"

"Every chance.  Where are you?"

"I'm in a boat," she told him, perking up again.

"Where?"

"Guess."

"The Solent?"  he suggested, instantly thinking of the sea and longing
for it.  He heard her laugh.

"The Serpentine, actually.  I'm showing Liam the sights of London.
Where are you?"

"Your turn to guess."

"No.  Don't tease."

"Well .. . I'm about ten minutes' walk away, as it happens."

"Oh .. ."  She waited for him to suggest something.

But the mention of Liam had unnerved him.  A getting-to-know-you-better
session would be impossible with the boy around.

"We return the boat in twenty-five minutes," Julie prompted.

"Right."  He told himself to go for it.  It would be a damned sight
better than spending the day alone.

"I'll be there when you come ashore."

"Great!"

As he put the phone down, he realised it had done him good to hear her
voice.  He strode into the bedroom to see what Waddell's staff had done
with his clothes.  The built-in wardrobe had been neatly filled.
Bennett's girl again, he assumed.  He chose a fresh pair of casual
trousers and a polo shirt, then ran a comb through his hair before
making his way to the hall and the front door of the block.  It was a
warm September afternoon outside.

Traffic crawled through the Alexandra Gate into Hyde Park, much of it
looking for non-existent parking spaces.  Sam eased his way through the
throng of tourists until he reached the bridge over the Serpentine,
then stopped and leaned on the parapet, trying to make out the boat
that had Julie in it.  There were too many of them, clustered together
like amoebae.

He began to move again, turning off the road and walking beneath the
plane trees towards the lake.  There was quite a crowd around the
boathouse, some waiting their turn, others rediscovering dry land.  He
stopped by a tree and held back, leaning against its rough bark to
wait.

Out on the lake Julie rowed towards the pier.  Several boats were
clustered there as their allotted time expired simultaneously.  In the
bows of the craft, her mother tossed the line to the attendant then
scrambled stiffly ashore, turning round to give Liam a hand so he
didn't fall in the water.  The boy rejected her offer of help,
determined to do it on his own.  Julie could see he was getting tired
and fractious.  Her mother had brought him to London on a train early
that morning and they'd done the Science Museum before lunch.  Julie
shipped the oars, then stepped onto dry land, the young male attendant
grabbing her arm, more for his own benefit than for hers.

She felt absurdly nervous about meeting Sam.  When she'd parted from
him at Vienna airport she'd said stupid things about hoping he could
arrange for Max to be killed.  And she was worried how he'd taken it.
The reports on the news that morning about Gunther Hoffmann's demise
had also been troubling, reminding her how little she knew about Sam.
Wherever he went, death seemed to follow.  The life he led was so
removed from her own she found it impossible to believe anything could
come of their relationship.  Yet the night in Vienna had confirmed
beyond any shadow of doubt that she was in love with him.

She took her son's hand and they pushed through the exit.  She didn't
have her glasses on and screwed up her eyes, trying to make out Sam's
face amongst the blurs around her.

Sam saw her emerge with her boy and felt a quickening of his pulse.
When he noticed Julie's mother, his heart sank.  Being sucked into an
afternoon with the whole family was not what he was after.  The women
were fussing over the boy, who seemed on the verge of tears.  Realising
Julie was finding it hard to see him, he stepped forward, waving to
catch her attention.  When she spotted him she gave her mother a nudge.
The older woman looked up quickly, smiled briefly, then led the boy
away towards an ice-cream stand.

Julie crossed the grass towards him.  She was wearing the same blue
shorts and sleeveless slip that he'd seen her in at Woodbridge.  He was
in love again.

"Hi!"

She smiled self-consciously at him, a lopsided, we've-had-sex-together
grin.  He was glad to see that the swelling to her lip '"had gone
down.

"Hello."

They embraced a little awkwardly and he asked how she was.

"All the better for seeing you."

She glanced back towards the ice-cream vendor.  Maeve and Liam were
already in the queue.  The boy waved.  Julie waved back.  Sam imagined
an elastic thread linking mother and son, stretched drum tight, ready
to reel her in whenever she wanted it to.

"Liam's very clingy at the moment," she volunteered.

"He's aware there've been things going on."

"If I had you as a mum I'd never let go of you," Sam grinned.

Julie pulled a face.

"Are you saying I make him insecure?"

"God, no!  I meant .. . oh, you know what I meant."  He hooked an arm
round her shoulders.

"Are we allowed to walk a bit, or do we have to stay where Liam can see
us?"

"Of course we can walk."  She clicked her tongue at his suggestion.

"Liam's fine with his gran for a while."

They turned away from the lake, treading the turf without speaking. Sam
sensed that Julie was expecting him to say something immediately to
clarify the nature of their relationship.  Some verbal confirmation
that his interest in her was no longer to do with what her father had
got up to.  But he wasn't ready for such definitions.  Beyond his
immediate desires he was far from sure what he wanted from her.

Julie too was finding it difficult to know where to begin.  Their
connection with one another had been a series of dramas.  Small talk
had never featured.  There was so much she still wanted to know about
him, most of which she suspected he would never reveal.  She decided to
begin with the immediate past.

"I heard on the news that that man Hoffmann killed himself," she
ventured.

"Were you .. . were you there?"

"Yes, I was.  Thanks to your identification of him I caught him in the
act of sending e-mails to his killers.  Unfortunately he got away from
me.  But together with the Austrian police, I tracked him down at a
train station."

"Was it really suicide?"  The question had popped out before she'd had
time to consider its consequences.

"He had a syringe concealed in a pen," Sam responded firmly.  He didn't
blame her for asking, after all that had happened in the past few
days.

"And if you want to check up on me, there was an Austrian policeman
present too."

She reddened slightly, then apologised.

"I wasn't really suggesting .. ."

He shrugged to show it didn't matter.  They walked on but without
touching, as if an invisible screen separated them.

Julie still needed to be clear about things.  Ts crossed and Is
dotted.

"So the red mercury that my dad wrote about .. ."

'..  . was actually a load of virus samples from a Russian research
lab.  He shipped them to a remote island where a bunch of cash-hungry
Russian scientists turned them into terrorist weapons.  Hoffmann's
underlings were about to unleash a new strain of smallpox amongst
refugee communities in Germany."

Julie hugged her arms to her chest.

"It's so shaming," she whispered.

"All so appallingly shaming."

Sam put his arm round her again.

"We're not responsible for what our fathers do," he told her
pointedly.

"No!  We certainly are not."  She bit her lip.  There were still
details missing.  Things he was holding back.

"What about Max?  He was involved, or not?"

"We're not sure."  Sam told her about the cut-price medical equipment
stolen from African hospitals.

"He claimed that was the only deal he had going with your father, but
he went into hiding as soon as Hoffmann's death hit the news media,
which suggests he probably was involved in the Lucifer Network."

Julie detached herself from him and clasped both hands to her head. Her
brain felt as if it was about to leap from her skull.

"I can't believe I spent all that time with Max and never realised what
sort of a man he was."  Then she kicked herself.

"But then, why not?  It's been the story of my life as far as men are
concerned."  Which was why she was desperate to know what made Sam tick
before getting more deeply involved with him.

They walked on.  Julie took Sam's hand.  She wanted to move them
forward.  To separate their relationship from the horrors they'd been
involved in.  But there was one last hangover from the past that she
had to clear up.

"What I said to you the other day .. . about wanting Max dead.  And
sort of suggesting that you might .. ."

"Yes."

"I didn't mean it.  You do realise that, don't you?  I was just in a
state."

Sam too wanted to move on.  To steer well clear of the subject of death
and to engineer a way to part Julie from her mother and son so they
could go back to the flat and make love.

"And now?"  he asked, caringly.

"You feel okay?  Not in a state any more?"

She pulled a tight smile.

"Sort of.  I'm pretty well back on the rails."  But she hadn't finished
what she needed to say.

"It's just that when I said what I said, I may have given the
impression I still thought you were involved in my father's murder Sam
swallowed and looked away.

"I want to assure you I don't think that," she persisted.

"I fully accept you had nothing to do with his death."

There it was, the pothole in the middle of the road.

"Closed subject from now on," he suggested.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

She beamed at him.  He kissed her tenderly on the end of her nose.  Her
shiny hair smelled of roses, a scent he wanted to imprint all over that
MoD flat.

They reached a footpath and turned right, walking slowly past a
Japanese couple bending over a screaming baby in a push chair

"And how are you after all this, Sam?"  she asked, solemnly.

"In need of a bed," he told her.

"With you in it."

"Sam .. . I'm serious."  She tugged at his arm.

"I mean, what's going to happen to you?"

"Well .. ."  He hugged her to his side.

"I just told you what I'd like to happen."  The need to make love to
her had become like a dam, preventing the flow of normal thought and
conversation.

Julie resisted him, but gently.  She too wanted more of what they'd
shared in Vienna.

"I meant what happens about your job, Sam.  I blew your cover.  You
said you faced the sack."

"Yes, well .. . It's not quite as bad as that."

She stopped, sensing he was concealing something significant from
her.

"You're not saying life goes on as normal?"

"Effectively .. . Yes."

Sam saw the emotions of hope and expectation pass across her face and
realised he was handling this outrageously badly.  She was a beautiful
woman whose experience of men was of being messed around mercilessly.
And here he was stringing her along like the worst of them.  The
reality was that there was nothing in this for her.  Nothing long term,
anyway.  They inhabited different worlds.  Neither could cross to the
other's and there was no middle ground.  He took in a deep breath.

"I'll be going away."

Julie let her arms fall to her sides.  It was what she'd feared all
along.  Almost expected.  The logical outcome of all that had happened.
But it still hurt to hear it.  She wasn't ready to lose him, but she
didn't know how not to.  She looked down, then back towards where she'd
last seen her son.

"You'll have to, of course," she whispered.  She shook her head at the
irony of it.  Because of her stupid loyalty to her father she was going
to lose the man who'd exposed his manipulative ness to her.  She would
never get it right with men.  Close by, a solitary old woman scattered
chunks of stale white bread to swooping pigeons.  Julie imagined
herself ending up like that one day.  She stuck out her chin, turned
back towards the lake and began to walk.

Sam hooked his arm round her shoulders again, slowing her down.  He
felt great warmth for this damaged woman.  He knew what his immediate
interest in her was, but the future was another country for him.  He
could make no commitment to her.

"It's a funny thing, human nature, isn't it?"  Julie said, pulling
herself together and nestling against him.

"We're attracted most to the things that are bad for us."

"Should I be reacting to that?"

"Oh, if you like.  It was a compliment."  They walked on a few more
paces.  For some reason she couldn't fathom, Julie decided she had
nothing to lose by baring her soul.

"I mean I think you'll have got the message by now that I'm strongly
attracted to you."  She tried to make it sound matter-of-fact, but
failed.

"However, I suppose that if you weren't going away and we ended up in
some sort of relationship it'd probably be a disaster."

Sam stopped walking, bruised by the fact that she should have concluded
that.

"Why d'you think that?"  he challenged.

"You have too many secrets," Julie continued, looking up at him.

"Too many closed rooms where the light never shines."

Sam arched his eyebrows, riled at having been written off so easily.
Then he looked away and saw Maeve and the boy walking towards them
clutching ice-cream cones.  Julie followed his gaze.  Sam felt the
elastic pulling.

"Of course it all depends on what you mean by a relationship," he
mumbled defensively.

She swung round to face him again.  Of course it damn well did.

"What do you mean by it, Sam?"

He looked at her.  Saw her need to believe in him and knew there was
only one way to achieve that.  To give her the blunt, unvarnished
truth.

"At this particular point in my life I'm in no position to think much
beyond the present, Julie.  Therefore a relationship to me is all to do
with the here and the now.  I'm dead certain of one thing.  That I want
to make love to you.  Now.  This very minute."

Julie knew she would never be able to win -with a man, because she
wasn't really in control of her own body.  It was the pheromones that
had the upper hand.

"Well .. . That's nothing if not honest," she whispered.  She turned to
look at her approaching child.

"Wait here, will you?"

Sam nodded.

As she began to move towards her son, she turned her head back.

"Don't go away .. ."

He watched as she ran across the grass, then crouched in front of Liam.
Half a minute later she was back with him.

"Mum'll take Liam back to Woodbridge," Julie announced, hooking her arm
through his and walking him quickly away before Liam could throw a
tantrum.

"It was nearly time anyway."

They marched through the crowds, brushing elbows with strangers in
their haste to get somewhere where they could be alone.  It wasn't
until they reached the Alexandra gate that Julie thought of asking
where he was taking her.  Sam pointed to the mansion flats opposite.

"Hey, mister .. . They're pretty grand.  I'm impressed."

"It's just for a few weeks."

They stopped by the kerb to wait for a break in the traffic, glancing
wordlessly at one another, their eyes burning with frustration that
something so important to both of them could be delayed by mere
machines.  Eventually the lights changed and they crossed the road.

At the entrance to the apartments Sam tapped in a security code. Inside
the lobby a civilian-suited man with the build of a Royal Marine
scrutinised them knowingly, then clicked a button to unlock the inner
door.  As they passed through and waited by the lift Julie asked what
sort of residents merited such security measures.

"Official secret," Sam mumbled, touching her lips with a finger.  The
lift doors opened.

"You and your secrets.  I said you had too many of them."

As the doors closed behind them, she was all over him.  They kissed
like teenagers, their mouths locked.  A few seconds later the lift
stopped with a jolt.

"Not the penthouse, then," she grumbled, annoyed the ride had been so
short.

Sam led her along the corridor.  As they entered the flat she wrinkled
her nose at the smell of furniture polish.  He clicked the door shut
with his heel.  She was standing with her back to him, peering into the
flat.  He slipped an arm round her waist, then with the other hand
lifted the hair from the back of her neck, exposing the cirrus cloud
wisps at the nape.  When he kissed them, she shivered from the pleasure
of it.

They shed their clothes on the way into the bedroom.  Her breasts were
small and round, the nipples already hard.  When he kissed them she
gave little sniffs of pleasure.

"I want you inside me."  Her voice was as dry as a husk as she sank
onto one of the beds.

"Now, Sam."

He pulled the covers back and they lay down.

"Cos I don't know how much time we've got," she whispered, as he moved
on top of her.

"And I don't want to waste any of it."

TWENTY-FOUR

THEY SLEPT FOR a couple of hours after making love.  It was dusk
outside when they awoke, a purple sky visible through the open window.
The temperature had dropped quite noticeably.  Julie shivered and Sam
pulled the covers over them.

"I need your bathroom," she croaked.

"Next door along."

He watched her shivering body as she walked from the room.  Her skinny
stomach and tight little rear gave her a rangy look.  By the time she
returned from the bathroom he wanted her again.

Julie straddled him and made love to him slowly, trying to prolong the
time she had power over him.  When he finally reached his shuddering
end, she let her upper body fall forward, resting her head in the dip
of his shoulder.  As his fingers caressed the back of her head, she
closed her eyes.  Whether this affair lasted a week or a month,
feelings this strong came rarely and they were to be savoured.

They lay quietly together, listening to the rumble of London's traffic
and the occasional passing jet.  Then the noise was echoed by sounds
from Julie's stomach.  She lifted herself off him and rolled onto her
side.

"Any food in this little palace of yours?"  she asked.

"We gave Liam a McDonald's for lunch, but all I had was a diet-cola."

"No idea.  I didn't look."

"Shall I go see?"

"Excellent idea."

She wrapped one of the bedspreads round herself for warmth and padded
into the kitchen.  She found the fridge astonishingly well stocked.
Eggs, cheese, milk, sausages and a large pepperoni pizza, plus a fresh
Romaine lettuce and some tomatoes.  On the opposite side of the small
space was a built-in oven.  She turned it up to 200 degrees.

"Supper in about twenty minutes.  Okay?"  she shouted.

"Wonderful."

Thirty minutes later they'd showered and dressed and were seated at the
repro dining table, eating.  Sam had found a bottle of wine and a CD
labelled Music for Candlelight which he'd inserted into the hi-fi in
the corner.

"Whoever's looking after you must think pretty highly of you," Julie
commented, getting stuck into the food.

"This place is pretty swish for a temporary home."

Sam shrugged.

"They happened to have it available.  If not, they'd have put me in a
shoebox at some army camp."

Julie tried to imagine life for a man always looking over his shoulder,
forever on the move.  And if he'd had to give up being an intelligence
agent, what then?  She couldn't imagine him in a normal job.

Imagining was pointless anyway.  In a few weeks' time this would be
history.

"D'you ... do you know when you'll be going away?"  she asked, breaking
her resolve not to raise the subject.

"No."

They ate on in silence.  Her question had made him withdraw into
himself and she kicked herself for asking it.

"Coffee?"

Sam shook his head.  He was back in Vienna, annoyed with himself for
letting Max Schenk slip through his fingers in Stammersdorf three
nights ago.  Now the man was on the run.  Determined to survive.  And
that made him dangerous.

Julie saw that she'd lost him and decided to bring the day to an end
while she was still on a high.

"I'm going to have to go home to Acton," she told him.

"I've got an early start in the morning.  We still have to find an
antidote to that rabies variant.  The virus exists now, so it'll turn
up again.  They always do."

"Mmm."  Sam resolved to ring Waddell shortly to see if the Porton
people had found any reference to the mutation on the Russians'
laptop.

"I'll drive you home," he told her.

"That's okay," she murmured, a little disappointed he'd made no effort
to persuade her to stay.

"I can get the Piccadilly Line."

"I'll drive you," he insisted.

"Well, okay.  Thanks.  I'll just clear up a bit."

"Leave it.  You made the supper.  I'll clear it up later."

She shrugged.  It was becoming obvious he wanted to be rid of her.  She
stood up, telling herself not to be upset.

Five minutes later they -were in the car driving west.  When he stopped
at traffic lights Sam gripped her hand.

"It's been great today," he said gently.

"And I hope Liam doesn't take it out on you -when you see him next."

"He will, but don't worry about it," Julie answered.

"I give him plenty of attention and he knows I've got a life of my own
to lead."  Even if she didn't know where it was heading.

"He's a nice kid," Sam commented.

"He's lovely most of the time."  The one part" of her life that was
constant.  The one person whose needs she was certain she could
satisfy.

At the Chiswick roundabout, Sam turned north, heading towards
Gunnersbury.

"I'll give you a ring tomorrow," he told her.

"D'you like theatre?"

"I don't often go.  Christmas pan to was the last time."

"I'll look in the papers and see what's on."

"That'd be nice."

Three minutes later they turned into Julie's street.  Sam looked out
for the house with the washing machine but couldn't see it.

"Here," Julie shouted as they drove past her home.  Sam stepped on the
brake.

"Where's the ... ?"

"The landlord's moved it," she answered.

"Having the press snapping pictures of the place shamed him into it. He
saw my face in the paper and decided I must be important."

"You are," Sam said, kissing her mouth.

"I wonder," she whispered, hooking her fingers into his shirt.  How
important, was what she wanted to know.

"See you soon, then."

"Yes please."

They got out.  He draped his arm round her as they walked to the front
door.  When she turned the key and opened up, the hall of the house
smelled of cooking spices and stale cigar smoke.

"Thanks for having me," she purred, stroking his face.

"Don't suppose you fancy another quick one ..."  he rumbled, nuzzling
her ear.

"Get outta here."

They kissed again and he promised to ring tomorrow.  Then he walked
back to the car.

Julie smiled to herself as she crossed the hall to the door of her
flat.  The day had been very special.  Whatever happened, it'd be
something to hold onto.  She inserted her key, opened up and stepped
inside her bed sitter closing the door behind her without turning on
the light.

She leaned against the door for a moment, as if unwilling to step
further into the emptiness that awaited her here.  Preferring `>551' darkness
to light so she wouldn't see the squalor of the place where she slept.
She didn't want to live like a student any more, she realised.  She
wanted to share some proper, decent living space.  To make a home with
someone.  With Sam.

She filled her lungs with air and let out a long sigh, trying not to
let her imagination run away with her.  Telling herself it wasn't going
to last with him and she simply had to accept it.

Suddenly she froze.  She'd heard a noise.  The sound of someone
swallowing.

Fear gripped her.  An icy shiver ran up her spine.  The sinister,
guttural sound had been very close.  Petrified, she reached behind her
back for the door handle, knowing that if she didn't get out of this
room immediately she was going to die.  Because she knew who it was who
was in there with her.  Knew it from the smell of cigar smoke that
clung to him like some vile ectoplasm.

Before she could turn the door handle, a hand clamped over her mouth
and another cupped the back of her neck and jerked her forward into the
room.

She wanted to scream, but no sound came.

Sam guided the car through the back streets of Acton, heading for the
main A4 into central London.  By rights he should have been wallowing
in the contentment Julie had left him with, but he couldn't get it out
of his head that there was a missing link in the puzzle.

Halfway along the Chiswick High Road he pulled into the kerb.  Porton
had had all day with the laptop which he'd liberated from Palagra. They
should know by now whether it contained rabies files.

He rang Waddell's number and was diverted to the duty officer at
Vauxhall Cross who patched the call through to his controller's home.

"It's Sam."

"Heavens.  Made up your mind already?  About where you want to go?"

"That's not why I'm ringing.  I wanted to know what Porton have come up
with."

"Still a mystery.  There was no reference to rabies on any of the
computer files.  There's one simple explanation, of course whether it's
right or not is another matter."

"What is it?"

"The laptop had only been in use for four months, yet Jackman shipped
the virus material to Palagra a year ago.  So it's possible the rabies
work was done in the first part of the year, with notes written by
quill pen for all I know.  The records could have gone up in the
bonfire."

It made sense but didn't satisfy Sam's need for certainty.  He thanked
Waddell and rang off, putting the mobile into the dashboard locker.

He tapped at the steering wheel, then turned on the ignition.  He
stared at the red light, but didn't start the engine.  Unease was
fluttering away inside him like a sixth sense.  He switched off again
and folded his arms.  His anxiety was to do with Julie.  He should've
been more positive.  Should have made it clear he was interested in
her, not just in' what she could do for him in bed.

He took the phone from the locker again, not sure what he was going to
say, but knowing he had to say something.  He felt in his pockets for
the piece of paper on which he'd written her number.

Not there.  He'd left it in the flat.  Too bad.  He'd ring when he got
back to Prince's Gate.

He started the engine and engaged first gear.

"Damn!"

It was no good.  The niggle was getting stronger.

He switched off the ignition once more and snatched up the phone,
prodding away at the menu button until he found the call register.

Julie's number was in the memory.

He pressed the redial button and listened to it ringing.

"Come on," he muttered.  No answer.  He looked at the display to check
he'd got it right.  He scratched his head.  If she'd turned her phone
off, there'd have been a message saying so.  Eventually he ended the
call.

In his mind he re-ran the parting at her flat a few minutes ago.  The
'goodnight' that hadn't said enough.  The driving up to the house, the
kiss in the car.

He dialled again and let it ring ten times.  Still no answer.

"Shit!"

He switched the phone off.  But his mind wouldn't let it alone.  The
walk from the car to the house .. . The front door opening and the
smell in the hall .. . Old cigars.

The same damned smell as in that wine tavern bedroom in Stammersdorf..
.

"Fuck!"

He scrambled the ignition, jammed the car into gear and did a U-turn,
narrowly missing a bus and a taxi.

Max Schenk snatched the troublesome phone from Julie's handbag and
switched it off.  She lay on the floor watching his every move.  It
hadn't been hard for him to overpower her.  After dragging her into the
room and switching on the light he'd pressed a kitchen knife into her
neck so hard it had drawn blood.  Then he'd ordered her to kneel on the
floor with her hands behind her back while he bound them with tape.
Shocked, she'd complied like a lamb.  Now there was more tape across
her mouth and round her ankles.  And he'd switched on a loud CD to
confound any ideas she had of trying to make a noise.

She'd thought his intention was rape, initially.  The sheets on her bed
were half turned down.  Then she'd had a vision of him having already
done something foul on them, gratifying himself with her pillow or her
underwear.  Soon, however, she'd realised it was her silence he'd come
here for, not her body.

He'd demanded to know why she was here.

"It is the weekend.  You should be in Woodbridge.  You told me you are
always there with your boy on Sunday, until late at night.  Later than
this."  He'd said it angrily as if she'd cheated on him.

"You came like a spy in Vienna," he'd hissed, kneeling on her back and
twisting a hank of her hair until it hurt.

"With microphones.  That was not right."  He'd spoken in gulps, like a
child fighting with its emotions.

"You said you saw me with your father last year .. ."

If she could have spoken, Julie would have told him that she'd made
that up.

"Then I think that you will start to remember more things, Julie.
Things I said to you in restaurants.  About politics.  About mutated
viruses.  All of this we have talked about, even if I think you were
not always listening.  I fear it will come back to you.  Julie knows, I
tell myself.  Julie knows too much."

She'd wanted to scream out that she didn't know anything and that he
should bloody well leave her alone.

"What you know can put me in prison, Julie.  You are the only person
who can."

He'd put his hands round her neck, squeezing enough to frighten her.
He'd kept sniffing, like a man overcome with emotion.  Then he'd goaded
her with a description of the death he'd planned for her.  Somewhere in
that turned-down bed he'd been about to hook a couple of little barbs,
coated with a nutrient gel containing the genetically engineered rabies
virus.  When she'd climbed between the sheets later that night they
would have cut her skin and infected her with the very disease she was
working to find an antidote to.

Proudly he'd shown her the inside of his briefcase with its vials and
syringes and the sealed plastic box containing slivers of razor-sharp
glass carved under a microscope in his own laboratory with deep grooves
to provide a reservoir for the killer plasma.

And now he was kneeling over her again, fingering her neck once more.
Hard, probing movements, as if unsure whether to strangle or caress it.
A quivering breath that stank of tobacco.  She smelled his sweat, his
desire and his readiness to kill.  He ran a hand down her back and over
her rump, squeezing her cheeks as if testing the tenderness of a steak.
He was going to rape her, she decided, clenching her teeth.  Rape her,
then kill her.

Suddenly he stood up.  Julie listened for the unzipping of his
trousers.  Instead she heard him fiddling with the briefcase. Terrified
as to what was coming next, she rolled onto her side and watched as he
prepared the syringe that would end her life.  She knew she had to do
something.  There was no one else to help her.  If only she'd let Sam
come into the flat with her.  She screamed his name, but from behind
the tape it came out as a whimper.  And the rock music drowned it.

Schenk knelt over her with the syringe, touching lightly on the plunger
so that a small quantity of liquid spurted from the needle.  Julie
caught the whiff of chloroform.

"It will be quick, Julie," he mouthed above the blast from the
loudspeakers.  His razor nose was poised over her like a guillotine.

Julie lashed out, kicking against his shins with all her might.  She
rolled away from him.  Schenk yelped and lunged forward trying to
plunge the needle between her breasts, but she rolled again.  Over and
over, crossing from one side of the room to the other, squealing and
coughing, desperate to be heard above the CD's beat.

"Verdammt .. ."

Schenk cornered her by the door.  He aimed a kick at her head, which
she tried to absorb by curling into a ball.  Then he put a foot on her
neck to hold her down, ripped open her blouse and felt for her
sternum.

Suddenly there was a shattering crash.  Schenk whipped his head round
to see a metal dustbin come hurtling through the curtains into the
room, followed half a second later by a man.

"Scheisse!"

Sam.  had cut his head on the broken window pane.  Blood trickled into
his eyes, but he could see Julie on the floor and Schenk crouched over
her.

"Get away from her!"  he yelled.

Only when he hurled himself forward to grapple with Schenk did Sam see
the syringe.  As he lunged at the Austrian's arm, the doctor stabbed
forward with the lethal needle.  Sam swerved, feeling its spray wet his
wrist.  Then he kicked, his foot sinking into Schenk's groin.  The
doctor buckled and Sam cuffed him on the back of the neck with locked
hands.  As the man stumbled, Sam knocked the syringe from his grip and
kicked it away.

He grabbed Schenk by the hair, pulling it sharply backwards so he lost
his balance and fell.  He jumped hard on his stomach to knock the wind
from him, then threw himself across the room to Julie, ripping the tape
from her mouth.

She screamed in pain.

"Sorry.  There's no easy way to do that," he apologised.

Schenk was struggling to get up.  Sam kicked his face with the side of
his foot, then while the man was disorientated, rolled him onto his
stomach.

"Where'd that tape come from?"  he yelled to Julie above the din.

"On the table!"  she screamed.

"God, your head," she added, panicking.

"You're bleeding."

"I'll live."  He grabbed hold of the roll and blew the blood trickle
from his eye.  Quickly he bound Schenk's hands behind his back, then
put another strip round his ankles.  Once certain that he wasn't going
anywhere, he looked around for something with which to cut Julie free.
There was a kitchen knife on the small table.

"For God's sake turn that racket off," he ordered when she had her arms
and legs in use again.

The curtain flapped in the wind.  When Julie cut the music they heard
voices outside, the neighbours taking an interest.

"You okay?"  he asked, touching her on the arm.  He noticed a spot of
blood on her neck.

"No," she whimpered, slumping against him.  He squeezed her gently and
stroked her head, withdrawing his hand when she winced from the pain
where Schenk had kicked her.

"I need to know what happened here," Sam told her, keeping an eye on
Schenk.

Slowly Julie pulled herself together, found a clean cloth to press
against the cut on Sam's forehead and, between gulps of shock and
anger, told him about the poisoned barbs in her bed.  Then she showed
him Schenk's briefcase with its lethal collection of glass fragments.

"Jesus!"  He was looking at the tool kit of a serial killer.

"How the hell did he get in here, Julie?"

"He must have had my keys.  When I got back from Vienna I found I'd
lost them.  Assumed they'd fallen out of my bag when he hit me with it
in Stamrnersdorf.  I had a spare set at the lab.  Had to go there first
before I could get in here."

Sam kneeled beside Schenk.

"Talk to me, Max.  Talk to me fast."

Schenk remained tight-lipped.

"Were you working for Hoffmann or was Hoffmann working for you?"

When there was no response Sam jerked the doctor's arms up behind his
back until the joints cracked.  Schenk yelled in pain, his face
twisting, but he still wouldn't talk.

There was a hammering at the door and an Asian voice demanding to know
what was going on.

"I'm all right, Mr.  Patel," Julie called back.

"Open the door."

Sam shook his head.

"I said I'm all right.  There was some trouble but it's over now."

"They break the window," the voice protested.

"Yes.  I'll get it fixed."

"The police coming.  Someone called 999."

"Okay, Mr.  Patel.  You needn't worry."

Sam grimaced.  When the men in blue arrived, all this would be out of
his hands.  And Schenk would never spill the beans if handled by the
rule book.  He had a few minutes at the most.  He reached into the
briefcase and removed the plastic box of glass splinters, making sure
Schenk could see him holding it.  The doctor's eyes widened.

Inside the briefcase Sam found tweezers and sealed packets of surgical
gloves.  He put on a pair, opened the box of splinters and selected
one.  The glass chip glistened with the gel it had been coated with.

"Now, my friend .. ."  He sat astride the doctor to pin him to the
floor.

"They tell me just a little nick is enough .. ."  He touched the
splinter against Schenk's neck.

The man began to cough and splutter.

"Feel it, can you?  Wet, is it?"

"Don't do this .. ."  Schenk whined.

"I beg you, don't do this."

"He doesn't have a vaccine," Julie whispered.

"Look at him.  He's scared out of his wits."

"You'd better talk, Max.  It's a nasty way to die," Sam snapped.

"Tell me about you and Harry Jackman and Hoffmann.  Who was running
things?"

"Hoffmann," Schenk whimpered.

"And what was your role?"

"To advise him how the material should be used."

"Advise?  Is that all?"

"Yes.  I was not important .. ."

"I don't believe you."  Sam picked the glass splinter up with the
tweezers.  A tiny blob of gel remained on Schenk's skin.

"Do it, Sam.  "Julie was close by his shoulder, her voice a rasp.

"Give him a dose of his own."

Schenk's eyes swung in their sockets, trying to irradiate Julie with
his hate.

"Last chance, Max," Sam snarled.

"I want the truth this time."  He touched the razor-sharp glass
fragment against Schenk's neck again.

"Quick.  I haven't got all day."  The man flinched.  His eyelids
flickered and his lips began to tremble.

"Kill him, Sam," Julie howled.

"He doesn't deserve to live."

"All right, all right.  I tell you," Schenk panicked.

"We were partners, Hoffmann and I. We didn't trust the VECTOR
scientists.  Because they just want money..  Like Jackman.  They have
no principles.  I make visits to Palagra to check what they are doing.
At my first visit they have already made the rhabdovirus mutation but
don't want to give it to me because there is no protection against it
yet.  But I insist they bring it to Vienna and I make tests with it. On
dogs.  When I see how fast it works, I make my own experiments.  The
glass splinters were my idea," he added with a touch of pride.

"And I try to make a vaccine."

"But you failed to develop one," Julie goaded.

"There was no way to do it."

"We'll find one," she hissed, fired up by hate.

"But it'll be too damn late for you."

"And Palagra island?  Your wife .. . ?"

Schenk nodded.

"She did not know what was being done there .. ."  His voice tailed
away with the realisation of how much he had lost.

Sam stood up.  The last piece of the Harry Jackman puzzle was now in
place.  He replaced the glass splinter in the box and closed the lid.

Julie's anger had become all-consuming.  She couldn't believe Sam was
going to let Max live.

"What are you doing?"  she gaped.

Sam used a surgical wipe from a pack inside the briefcase to clean off
the droplet of lethal gel from the doctor's neck.

"You can't just leave it like that, Sam!  He has to die.  Max has to
die!"  She stared at him wide-eyed, as if he'd lost his mind.

From outside came the sound of a siren, rising to a crescendo as the
police car screamed to a halt in front of the house.  Sam closed up
Schenk's briefcase and kept hold of it.  Then he grabbed Julie's mobile
phone from her bag on the floor and dialled Waddell.  He spoke briefly
and concisely and was told to hold the fort until Special Branch
arrived.

There was a hammering at the door.

"Police!  Open up!"

Sam saw that Julie had gone as white as a sheet.  The shock was getting
to her.

"You can open the door now," he suggested.

Julie's head was spinning.  She'd just urged Sam to commit murder, and
now the police were here.  The authorities.  She looked at him in
bewilderment.  Sam was authority too, she realised, her spastic mind
suddenly overtaken by the thought that he might betray her to the
police.  That she'd be charged with attempted murder.  Sam's revenge
for her exposing him to the media.  The establishment's revenge for her
father having revealed what happened in Bodanga.

Sam saw the distress on Julie's face, the panic in her eyes.  The look
of a woman who'd had one shock too many and was falling apart.

He wrapped his arms round her.

"You'd better brace yourself, Julie."

"What?  What d'you mean?"

"I'm afraid you'll be in the papers again.  The lone woman who
overpowered Max Schenk and handed him over to the police.  They'll make
you a hero."

It was after midnight by the time all the statements had been taken and
some minor first aid had been applied to Sam's cut head.  Stephanie had
arrived twenty minutes after the local force and had worked wonders in
twisting arms to ensure Sam's role in the action wouldn't appear in any
of the press reports the next day.  He and Julie had slipped away
without being photographed, the media being kept well clear of the
street by a police cordon.

Back at the MoD flat at Prince's Gate, a thorough exploration of the
cupboards uncovered a half-full bottle of whisky overlooked by the
cleaners.  Sam and Julie sat facing each other across the repro table,
drinking it.

Julie was still numb with shock.

"You saved my life," she murmured.

"If you'd come through that window a second later, I'd be dead now."

"I wouldn't have liked that," Sam said solemnly.

"Nor would I."  She gripped his hand.  Then her brow knitted.

"You know, I really did want you to kill Max, Sam.  If it had been me
holding that chip of glass to his neck I'd have done it myself."  She
shook her head.

"What does that make me?"

"Human, Julie.  Human."

The understanding she saw in his eyes was that of someone who'd been
there himself.  Many a time.

"What happens next, Sam?"  She looked down at her glass.

"He'll be charged in the morning.  Attempted murder.  The trial will be
months away.  You'll be a star witness."

"That's not what I meant," she rejoined.

"I know it isn't."

Sam took a deep breath.  Nothing had changed, in that he still had no
sensible answer for her.  But the situation was different now.  The
trial of Max Schenk would probably mean him appearing as a witness in
camera.  So he would be staying in England for longer than he'd
envisaged.

They looked at each other across the table with a softness that neither
dared to define.

"I think we should sleep on it," he answered.

Geoffrey Archer's gripping thrillers are inspired by a deep knowledge
of international intrigue gathered during more than 25 years of
reporting for ITV's News at Ten.

The Lucifer Network is the second novel featuring MI6 agent Sam Packer,
who first appeared in Fire Hawk.  It follows his other international
bestsellers: Java Spider, Scorpion Trail, Eagle Trap, Shadow Hunter and
Sky Dancer.