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The target codenamed PinMan, Conlan had said, a member of the British royal family. The operation within the next twelve months. She should aim to wrap up her preliminary research as soon as possible, and communicate her decisions through the system of codes and dead letter drops already in use. The Army Council knew of the operation, but had not yet given its final approval. He had been forced to inform the Council of the existence of Sleeper, Conlan had also told her, but had given no details.

Walker’s flat, on the third floor of a Victorian terrace close to Primrose Hill in north London, was that of a successful and independent professional woman. It consisted of two bedrooms, a large split-level lounge with a marble fireplace and bay windows opening on to a balcony, a smaller room off it which she used as an office, plus a kitchen and bathroom. She had bought it when the property market was still rising and redesigned it herself. Except for the study the flat bordered on the luxurious without being ostentatious: the furniture, decorations and lighting were modern; yet the hard edges were softened by the small personal touches she had added – a wall-hanging from Turkey, an icon from Russia, an Impressionist-style painting she had commissioned from an art student after seeing his work on the boarded-up window of a shop unit standing empty in a new shopping precinct. The study, by contrast, was cold and clinical – a world of computers and computer logic, shelves of manuals and software, the black ash desk facing the window but the sunlight from outside cut off by a blind, and the lighting efficient and functional.

In many ways Philipa Walker’s two lives were similarly organized. Just as there was no indication of the austerity of the study in the rest of the flat, so there was no indication in her everyday life of the second into which she occasionally disappeared. Her day-to-day existence was also divided and equally organized: she had professional colleagues and personal friends, the two rarely coinciding. Her affairs were seldom casual ones, almost always lasting more than six months; the most recent had ended two months before. It was a life-style Conlan had encouraged. Build a cover, he had told her the day she had committed herself, establish yourself so that no one will ever suspect. Continue the life to which her own background automatically pointed and she would be so immune she would be untouchable. Establish a career that allowed her to take time off, so that no one would even notice when she slipped from what had become her cover into the sub-world to which he had introduced her.

In the strictest definition, Walker was not a sleeper. A sleeper is an agent recruited from or infiltrated into an organization and required to remain inoperative until activated. Walker’s role was neither of these, yet in a less traditional sense her background provided everything a sleeper could require: layer upon layer of cover built up over the years – in her case a background provided by the very establishment she now opposed.

She locked the flat and walked to the top of Primrose Hill. In the distance, glistening white, were the modern tower blocks of the City; in the middle ground Oxford Street; just below the hill, less than three hundred yards away, was London Zoo. Sometimes she would lie awake and pick up the faintest smells, reminders of those places her official passport said she had not visited. Sometimes – even at two or three in the morning – she would leave the flat and sit on the top of the hill, draw in the night air for a taste of those places. Occasionally, just occasionally, they would waft across the hill and drift through the window of the flat when she was making love. Then the images would come back to her: then she would slip into an almost subconscious memory of the places where she had executed the profession to which Conlan had led her. Not those where she had been trained. Rather, those where she put her craft into practice.

She returned to the flat, percolated coffee, poured herself a cup, and took it back into the study. It was 3.30 in the afternoon, the first children passing below the flat on their way home from school. The windows of the lounge were open and she could hear them laughing. It had been this time in the afternoon – the thought was not quite subconscious. Autumn going into winter, though, the smells of a new season and the first hint of cold ...

... she was fourteen, tall and thin yet becoming attractive, even in school uniform. She had forgotten a hockey boot – had thought she had packed both – and run home to pick it up. The day before she had brought home her school report, the evening before she had sat in the warmth of the sitting-room, the fire blazing in the grate, while her father read carefully through it in the manner she called his solicitor’s style, her mother opposite her dwelling on every nod of his head. Grade 1 in every subject, it was no more than she had expected, had worked hard for. An outstanding student, the head teacher had written; we confidently expect superb examination results and university entrance.

The house was quiet, the grandfather clock ticking in the hall. Her mother and her aunt were having tea together as they did every Wednesday. Quintessentially English, Walker would think in the years to come, when the hate was fired and burning in her. Quintessentially bloody bourgeoisie. She wouldn’t disturb them, she thought, if she did she would have to explain, then she might be late for the practice. She ran quietly up the stairs, found the boot, and began to come down again.

The sitting-room door was slightly open. Her mother was showing her aunt her school report – she could tell by the conversation.

‘She’s done very well.’

‘Very well indeed.’ There was something in her mother’s voice which took her by surprise. ‘Considering.’

She stopped unseen on the stairs and wondered what her mother meant.

Even though she thought the house was empty her mother crossed the room and closed the door.

Considering what, the girl thought that night. She had everything, her parents were well-off though perhaps slightly old-fashioned, neither she nor her brother had ever wanted for anything. They lived in a large house in the Home Counties, had been educated privately from the age of four, and always been encouraged to study. Considering what? she was still thinking when she woke the following morning . . .

. . . the coffee was cold and the study was quiet around her.

Each of the jobs she had done for Conlan, or for others through Conlan, had begun differently. Some – the longterm jobs – had started this way: the months of detailed and often fruitless research. Others had been more immediate: a dead letter drop where the weapon was waiting for her, the target details, a back-up supplying the way in and out. Always, however, Conlan had insisted on two fundamentals: that no one ever knew her identity, and that everyone assumed she was a man. As if he always had the spectacular in mind, she could not help thinking again, as if he always had her in mind for it. That was why he had not used her for two years, had allowed her to disappear into the shadows.

The afternoon drifted into evening. She left the flat and took the underground to the West End. It was eleven in the evening, the night still warm. The lights of Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus were flashing behind her, the taxis filled with theatre-leavers and the streets busy. She left Trafalgar Square and walked through Admiralty Arch and into the Mall. The night was suddenly darker and colder and the pavements empty, only an occasional cab passing her. Six hundred yards in front of her she saw the lights of Buckingham Palace.

She would need access to the royal schedule, and one way to that was through the Wednesday List – the diary of engagements for each member of the royal family circulated by Buckingham Palace to the Newspaper Publishers Association and through the NPA to interested publications. The list, containing the skeleton of engagements for up to a year ahead and updated on a monthly and weekly basis, was sent out every Wednesday, hence its name. The PinMan operation, however, would require not just the official timetable of formal appointments where the target would be high profile and carrying massive protection, but – and more importantly – the details of the more informal and therefore probably more personal events, even though PinMan would still be accompanied by a bodyguard.

Buckingham Palace or the NPA? She was walking quickly, thinking quickly, weighing the options. If she accessed the computer system in the press office at the Palace she might also get inside the personal offices, get information not on the Wednesday List; if she made do with the NPA she might get less material but the risks were fewer. The computer security at the Palace would be more difficult to penetrate, yet in a way that did not concern her. What did, however, was the probability that at the Palace the system would, or should, pick it up immediately. And that might warn the security services.

A police car slid past her – the dark maroon of the Diplomatic Protection Group. She reached the Victoria Monument and stood looking up at the Palace, the standard fluttering from the flag pole. Queen’s in – she remembered the day she had stood here with her mother, the way her mother had pointed out the flag to her, she in her best school uniform and her brother in his school blazer.

The NPA, she decided, keep the Palace as a last resort.

She turned down Buckingham Gate and into Petty France, the Passport Office on the right and the Home Office on the left; then she cut through to the Houses of Parliament and took the underground back to Chalk Farm.

The following day she began the process of building up a computerized file on PinMan. In doing so she was governed by one simple fact of life: that despite the system of passwords and other security measures which an individual or a company might build into a system, there was no such thing as computer security.

If the police or security services ever suspected her, the first thing they would do would be to search the flat. And the first thing they would do when they saw the computer would be to call in a specialist. By using a tape streamer, DOS operating system boot disk and a programmer’s toolkit, an expert would first of all bypass the security and password system normally assigned to the C drive, access the hard disk and X-copy all information stored on it, even remnants of items which she had ordered to be deleted but which might not have been completely overwritten by the computer.

If she replaced the standard BIOS chips with chips carrying security passwords, they could replace those she had installed or circumvent them totally by taking the top off the computer, removing the hard disk, copying it, then replacing it. And if she had encrypted the material on the hard disk they would know she was hiding something and send it to the codebreakers at GCHQ.

For these reasons she would place no PinMan information on the hard disk. She would destroy all irrelevant material immediately, encrypt the material she wanted, using a standard software package, and place it on a floppy disk which she would in turn place in a bank deposit box hired under a false name.

The office was cool. She switched on the PC and checked the list of dial-up numbers she had acquired during her years in the City. Most were of banking, financial or related institutions, though four were of newspapers and the twenty-seventh was that of the Newspaper Publishers Association. She plugged the modem connection to the telephone socket, called up the communication software and keyed in the NPA number. The computer system at the NPA answered and she logged in. Eight minutes later she accessed the computer file based on the Wednesday List. On the pale amber of the screen were the outline schedules of every member of the royal family for the next twelve months, with the first six months of that period already highly detailed. She transferred the material from the NPA machine to her own and copied it on to a disk. Then she exited the NPA system, made herself a coffee, printed out the material and studied it.

The material was as she had suspected – useful but only as a starting point. Nowhere in it were the seemingly minor details, the unofficial functions or personal timetables, which she would need for the PinMan operation.

She burned the print-out and placed the floppy in the wall safe. The next morning she deposited it in a security box at a bank in the City, then returned to the flat, wrote out a list of publishers, and made the first telephone call. Two days later she entered the details of all books written about the royal family over the previous five years on the PinMan file, again placing the floppy in the bank deposit box.

Three of the books were out of print, two could be purchased over the counter, and five could be ordered, though the waiting time was up to five weeks. The following morning she went to the British Library, on the ground floor of the British Museum in Great Russell Street, and obtained a reader’s pass in the name of Sampson, her application authenticated by a letter on University College headed notepaper which she herself had printed and on which she had written details of a fictitious PhD thesis. For the next ten days, in the vast domed reading room of the British Library, she worked her way through the books she had listed from the publishers’ catalogues.

The following week she spent five days at the Press Association in Fleet Street, tucked into a corner in the newspaper cuttings library, again using the name Sampson and paying cash. On the first morning she asked for files on environmental pollution, with special reference to interest in the subject shown by the Prince of Wales; at the end of the morning she moved on to royal cuttings in general, taking the relevant folders from the filing cabinets herself and returning them once she had finished, so that there was no record of herself or which files she had consulted. The following week she spent four days in the British Newspaper Library at Colindale in north London.

The photograph was in the diary column of the Daily Mail.

Perhaps it was because she was concentrating on the content of the various reports, perhaps because the report in question was about a lunch party and therefore of little consequence, perhaps because the cutting at the Press Association library was slightly torn or the microfiche machine at Colindale was slightly out of focus, that she did not register it. It was only three evenings later that the feeling began to seep into her that sometime, somewhere, over the past days and weeks, she had missed something. Not something important, not something she could have used. And that was what annoyed her. Because not only could she not remember what she had seen or where she had seen it, but she did not even know why she should have noticed it or why it was surfacing from somewhere in her subconscious.

For the two weeks after that she concentrated on European and American magazines and newspapers specializing in scandal stories about the royal family. In each case the stories were more sensational, and less likely to be corroborated, than in the British newspapers, and the photographs were more intimate, or at least more intrusive.

September had slipped into October, and soon October would give way to November. Somewhere in the mass of information she had gathered together was the key to PinMan, she was aware; somewhere among what seemed like an industry in itself was the one person who could give her that key. Except that already she was running out of time.

Something she had seen in one of the photographs at the Press Association or at Colindale – perhaps she had been aware of the unease before, perhaps she had pushed it aside. Now it crept up on her again, only caught her because something deep in her psychology allowed it to. Not something about PinMan. Something about herself.

It was nine o’clock. She went into the lounge and switched on the television.

The Sun received the tip-off shortly before seven. Something important had happened in the life of the Princess of Wales, the source said; the previous evening she had toasted the news with close friends at one of her favourite restaurants.

‘What news?’ the deputy editor asked.

‘The source wasn’t sure.’

‘How reliable’s the source?’

On the fringe but reliable in the past, the reporter who had taken the call informed him. Offering the story on an exclusive basis but needing an answer fast. Or she would take it to another newspaper, the implication was clear.

‘You’ve talked to the Palace?’

‘They’re making no comment.’

They wouldn’t, unless you asked something specific, the deputy editor understood, and even then they normally didn’t comment anyway. The story was weak – in a way it wasn’t a story. Except that it might be, and someone else might have it. The editor was in Australia and the paper’s royal-watcher was on holiday somewhere in the Far East. Buy the woman up and close the source, he thought, except that if she knew, then someone else probably did as well. And if another paper knew, they’d be running it that night.

‘How much is she asking?’

‘Five hundred.’

Go with it and she was right, and all he’d get was a pat on the back. Not go with it and somebody else had it, and his feet wouldn’t touch the ground.

‘Offer her one, the rest on results.’

‘She’ll take two-fifty.’

‘Done. Guaranteed exclusive. How’re you writing it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Write it as a question. Expectations of major changes, speculation amongst close friends, etc. Pull in an astrologer, get him to confirm it in her stars. Last night’s celebration in the third paragraph.’

That way he and the paper were covered. If there was a story. A bomb up every other paper’s backside if there wasn’t. And the classic spoiler if there was and someone else had it. And royal stories still moved copies, he could imagine the panic when the second edition came out, the rumours that would start in the other newsrooms even before that.

He rolled up his sleeves and telephoned the lawyer and picture editor in that order.

The story – or the first hint of it – broke at twenty minutes to nine. An hour earlier Patrick Saunders had returned to the flat which he used during the week. Saunders was 44 years old, fit for his age and occupation, married with two teenage girls, a country house in Wiltshire and a town flat in Barnsbury. He had joined the Daily Mirror seventeen years before, and was now what the newspaper liked to call the king of the royal-watchers.

The Cellnet, he noted as the telephone rang; the office getting hold of him in a hurry, not knowing where he was or having the time to find out.

‘Yes.’

‘Pat.’ Only the news editor was allowed to call him Pat, and then only when he was in a hurry and the pressure was on. ‘Big one breaking. A cab will collect you in two minutes.’

‘What is it?’

‘The Sun’s> carrying an exclusive on Di. We’ve just had the tip.’

Saunders’s first reaction was shock and his second was a combination of disbelief and anger. So what was it, why didn’t he know? Why hadn’t his source given him the story first? His third, which over-ruled the others, was of self-preservation.

‘You’re sure?’

‘We haven’t seen it yet, but they’re putting on extra copies.’

‘You don’t know what it is?’

‘No.’

‘On my way.’

He left the flat and ran down the stairs. The minicab was waiting. For Christ’s sake be there, he thought. He sat in the back seat, balanced his notebook on his lap and dialled the number on the Cellnet. The contact answered immediately.

‘Patrick here. Bit of a panic on.’ There was no time for pleasantries. ‘The Sun’s carrying a big story on Di.’

The contact began to laugh. ‘Red faces all round, eh?’

Bastard, thought Saunders.

‘Wrong Di, old man. One of the Princess’s buddies, sort of lady-in-waiting, if you like. Just announced she’s pregnant for the first time.’

‘What about the Princess of Wales?’

‘She’s agreed to be godmother.’

You’re sure? Saunders almost blurted. Head on the block time, he knew. Of course I’m sure, he knew the contact would reply. ‘Phone number?’

‘She’s ex-D.’

All of them were ex-directory, Saunders thought.

‘Doesn’t matter, though. She’s not there.’

Stop pissing me about, Saunders glanced up as the minicab passed the Angel.

‘She’s with her parents.’ The contact gave him the number. ‘Old man’s in Who’s Who, that’s where you got it, yah?’

‘Yah.’ Saunders clipped the cassette recorder on to the Cellnet and dialled the number the source had given him. The woman who answered sounded in her fifties, her voice pure Roedean.

‘Mrs Wickham. This is Patrick Saunders.’ He did not say he was from the Mirror. Some people would pay to get their names in the gossip columns of the Mail or Express; the same people, however, might consider the Mirror slightly the wrong colour and class. ‘I wrote a small piece about Diana’s marriage and wanted to congratulate her on the good news.’

Hope to Christ she is married, he thought.

‘How nice. Would you like to speak to her?’

‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

Saunders heard the scuffle as the daughter picked up the telephone.

‘Diana. Patrick Saunders from the Mirror. Sorry to trouble you, but you know what Fleet Street’s like when a pretty girl has a baby.’

She knew the score, he guessed. Especially if she was a member of Princess Di’s set. The woman laughed and he knew he’d won. For two minutes they talked about what she wanted, boy or girl, as well as details of her and her husband.

‘Just a word of warning.’ He slipped it in quietly, almost casually. ‘I know you’re a close friend of a certain other Di. Some people think it’s the Princess who’s got some big news coming.’

‘How silly.’ It was almost a laugh.

‘But she knows?’

‘Of course, we had a celebration last night.’

‘Champagne?’

‘Of course.’

‘Any chance of Di being godmother?’

The woman laughed again.

They talked until the minicab stopped outside the Mirror building. Saunders thanked her, made a note to send her a large bouquet of flowers in the morning, entered the telephone number into the computer notebook, ran inside and took the lift to the newsroom. Just in time for the second edition, he thought.

The editor, night editor, news editor and lawyer were looking at the television screen, the Nine O’Clock News just starting.

‘Photo of Diana Simpson, daughter of Brigadier and Mrs Wickham,’ he told the pictures editor. ‘Make it a happy one. Second picture of her with the Princess of Wales.’

He switched on the computer. The editor and news editor were behind him, the editor sweating slightly and the deputy fiddling with his braces. He ignored them and swore at the system to power up.

BBC running the story, the news editor shouted to him. The Palace are making no comment. Just what he wanted, he thought: everyone carrying the story and the silence from the Palace only fuelling the bonfire. His fingers were already on the keyboard.

The Princess of Wales is to become a godmother.

If it’s a boy he will be called Michael James. If it’s a girl she will be called Elizabeth Althea. And last night Kensington Palace was celebrating the good news.

Behind him Saunders felt the editor punch the air with a mixture of triumph and relief.

The evening was dark and cold, threatening rain. Walker told the cab driver to drop her by Chancery Lane, then walked briskly along Holborn. She was wearing what some might call her City clothes and carried a briefcase. The building which housed the Mirror Group of Newspapers was on the corner of Holborn Circus, the concrete and glass dominating the area, the main reception in front and the garage and works entrance in New Fetter Lane behind. In the daytime the lorries bringing the rolls of paper crowded the street, in the evenings the delivery vans lined the pavement waiting for the first edition.

There were two other features of New Fetter Lane which concerned Philipa Walker that evening. The first was the faded brick building, five hundred yards from the Mirror, which housed the headquarters of Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise. The second was the White Hart public house opposite the rear entrance to the Mirror and known to its journalists as the Stab (short for The Stab in the Back).

The White Hart was quiet, the slack period after the City stockbrokers and money men left and before the journalists arrived. She ordered a gin and tonic, settled in a corner with a copy of The Times, and waited. It was the third time she had been there; on the previous two occasions the intermediary she had chosen had not come in. A first group of reporters arrived, then a second, the woman among them. She was smartly dressed though older than her photograph. After fifteen minutes the woman rose, asked the men she was with what they wanted to drink, and went to the bar. Walker finished her gin and tonic and followed her.

‘Anything in tomorrow?’ She stood next to the woman. Anything in tomorrow’s paper, she meant.

The journalist turned.

‘Helen Kennedy, aren’t you?’ It was both an explanation and the beginning of an introduction. ‘Recognized you from your photograph.’

The woman laughed. ‘Who are you with?’

‘Which paper, you mean? I’m not.’ She asked the second barman for a gin and tonic. ‘Systems analyst consultant. Doing a job at Customs and Excise. Funny bunch, the Investigations lot.’

The journalist picked up the possibility of a contact. ‘You by yourself ?’

Walker nodded.

‘Why don’t you join us?’

An hour later Walker accepted Kennedy’s invitation to join her for dinner at Joe Allen’s, off Covent Garden. A table had already been booked, Kennedy explained, some other colleagues were already there. When they arrived the restaurant was crowded and the target was standing by the bar.

There were twenty-three names of journalists, magazine writers and authors on the list she had compiled, each of them a possible way in to PinMan. Four nights before, however, only one of them had got it right.

‘Patrick Saunders, Philipa Walker.’

Access Saunders and she might access Saunders’s sources. Access Saunders’s sources and she might access the private worlds of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Access those worlds and she accessed PinMan.

‘Should I bow or curtsey?’ Walker’s question was tongue-in-cheek and slightly challenging.

Saunders smiled as she knew he would. ‘Bucks Fizz?’

‘Why not?’

* * *

Belfast was quiet.

Nolan turned the unmarked car along Springfield Avenue – RPG Avenue as the locals nicknamed it. The Browning was in her waist holster and the MP5K was on the floor to the right of the driver’s seat.

Work since the operation at Beechwood Street had been routine and on a downward spiral. Partly because after Beechwood Street everything seemed an anticlimax; mainly because she was winding down to the end of her Belfast tour. Not just her Belfast tour. Her last tour. She had already bent the rules, or persuaded others to bend them for her, so that she could stay on. Now London had decreed otherwise, had said that today was her last undercover day in Northern Ireland. Two weeks’ leave, then they would pull her out.

There was something about the operation on Beechwood Street – occasionally the unease seeped through the block she had put on it, occasionally she found herself back there with McKendrick by the driver’s door and Rorke in front. Mostly at night, when she was alone and trying to sleep, but occasionally even when she was working, when she was in the undercover car, particularly when they were ordered into the Ballymurphy area. Now it crept up on her again, black and cold, like a fog on the moors on a summer’s day. One moment the sky was blue and warm, then the faintest strand of mist and the almost imperceptible finger of cold. Then it was upon you, engulfing and entrapping you.

She turned the car south and fought off the feeling.

‘There’s a rumour you’re leaving as well.’ She glanced across at Brady. Only once had they talked about what she had had to do in the car in Beechwood Street, and that was to invent a story which would explain how she was able to reach his Browning. Then they had agreed never to mention it again. And Brady had told no one. Because at the end of the day there were a lot of things more important than a laugh between the boys, and at the top of that list was the fact that she had saved their lives.

‘Possibly.’ Brady had been with the RUC for nine years, the last three in E4A.

‘Someone said Special Branch.’

Brady laughed.

‘When?’

‘Couple of months.’

It was six in the evening, the end of the shift. If they were pulling her out perhaps they should have done so after Beechwood Street when she was on a high, she thought. Now she was leaving as if the Belfast tour hadn’t been part of her, or she part of it. There was no elation at what she had done, no relief that she was getting off the tightrope, just the immense and overwhelming feeling of anticlimax. Tomorrow she would slip away on leave. When she returned she would have her last talk with the CO, be told where she would be posted. And nobody would even notice.

‘Fancy a drink?’ It was Brady.

They turned into the barracks at Lisburn.

‘Thanks.’

They parked the car and went to the team room. The corridor was empty and the room deserted. Hell of a way to go, she thought as she signed off. They left the block and went to the mess, Brady slightly in front of her, knowing what she was feeling. There would be a couple of people at the bar, he knew she assumed, they’d spend half an hour sipping beer, then she’d slip away by herself, nowhere to go and no one to go with. He opened the door and allowed her to go first. The room was full, the teams waiting for her – the men and women who would remain on the edge, the men and women who’d provided the back-up for her and for whom she had provided back-up.

‘Bastard,’ she whispered to Brady, and began to laugh.

The following morning Nolan collected the hire car and drove to the town where she had been born and where she had grown up. It was her first visit since the start of her Northern Ireland tour. That night she told her parents that she was on leave from Europe; the next day she drove to the west coast, on the other side of the border, where she had spent the occasional holiday as a girl.

The beach curved in an arc round the bay, the water was cold and the sand a glistening white. The October sun was warm – an Indian summer, she remembered her parents had called it. She took off her shoes and walked along the edge of the water, thought about why they were pulling her out of Northern Ireland and what she would do now.

It was obvious why they were pulling her, she told herself. Women were normally only allowed one tour, perhaps two. Yet the guys were allowed back – she felt the resentment rising. The guys were allowed back for tour after tour . . .

She wouldn’t be able to do it, she knew. McKendrick was framed in the driver’s window and Rorke was standing in front. Brady’s hands were on the steering wheel so he couldn’t reach his gun, and if she went for hers they would see. The only chance was the MP5K by the driver’s door, but to get to it she would need a cover. She couldn’t, she knew again . . .

. . . the strand was so deep in her subconscious that she was not fully aware of it, was only aware of the defence mechanism it threw at her. It was as if she was running a security check on the computer, keying in the request, the computer flashing back that the information she wanted was blocked . . .

. . . a coffee after, she told herself. Large and Irish. Plenty of Black Bush . . .

. . . the tide washed in front of her. Twenty yards away a boy and girl played on a log which had rolled across the Atlantic, the seaweed hanging from it and the shells crusted round it.

So what now? Promotion probably. Germany again. Nice little desk job. And sheer absolute unadulterated bloody boredom. Perhaps she should resign, the thought came suddenly and unexpectedly. Cash in everything, get on a plane, and see where she ended up.

The office was empty, the boys out on a job, Nolan supposed. It was five minutes before the meeting. She cleared the few items from her locker and walked along the corridor. The colonel was sitting behind his desk, the paperwork in front of him and the blow-ups of street maps covering the walls. He was in his early forties and big built, his civilian suit slightly crumpled, the jacket hanging behind the door.

‘Good leave?’ He waved his hand for her to sit down.

‘Fine.’

‘Your next posting.’ He spoke quickly, his voice matter-of-fact.

Germany, she knew. Time to call it a day.

‘Two-week refresher at Hereford, then The Fort.’

SAS at Hereford, MI5 at The Fort.

Somebody up there loved her, she could not believe it, wondered who. The relief was spinning through her head. And after The Fort, who knew what or where? No desk job, though.

But somebody up there also hated her, had it in for her. Because at Hereford the bastards would see. At Hereford they would find their way into her soul and chisel it open till it was a gaping chasm. At Hereford they would take her to the brink and make her walk over.

‘Thank you, sir.’

The Hereford refresher began ten days later, eight men and two women from a range of backgrounds and regiments. On the third day of the second week the observation exercise began – five days in dug-outs on the Brecons, the exercise for real, as if it were Northern Ireland. Not just Northern Ireland. As if it were South Armagh.

The rain was cold and biting, driven by the wind. The two of them – Nolan and a corporal from Signals – were crammed together in the OP, the observation post, living off sandwiches and self-heating cans of soup. The cold had set in half-way through the first night, and the rain had begun seeping through the roof on the second day. They had worked as a team, two hours on, two off; one of them keeping the arms cache under constant surveillance while the other tried to sleep, the floor of the OP running with water and churning into mud. No complaints, though – if this was Northern Ireland they wouldn’t complain, couldn’t complain. If this was Northern Ireland and they were staked out in a roof space in the Falls or a field in South Armagh they would keep going, look after each other and watch their backs. And if you were training to go back into Northern Ireland, to do the job they would do, there was only one way to train for it.

It was two in the morning, the rain sheeting from the north, so that even with the image intensifier Nolan could barely see the target.

‘ENDEX.’ She heard the radio signal. Not just the end of the exercise, the end of the refresher. ‘RV zero two three zero.’ Thirty minutes to get to the rendezvous point, plenty of time if it was light and good weather. They were both moving quickly, the bergans packed. They left the OP and headed across country. 0215: half a mile to go and fifteen minutes to do it. Not so easy at night and in these conditions. They waded the stream, the rain driving down on them, and pulled themselves up the mud on the other side. 0220: ten minutes to the RV. Almost there. Hope to Christ they’d got the map reference right. 0225: they came to the road, checked they were in the correct position and sank back into the ditch which ran alongside it. 0229: they heard the three clicks on the radio, the pick-up on the way. The signaller clicked back, told the pick-up that they were in position. They checked left and right: nothing on the road, the rain still pouring down. They heard the next series of clicks and clicked back, knew the truck was closing on them, and scrambled out of the ditch. Everything about the exercise was still for real, even the drop and pick-up. Especially the drop and pick-up. In Northern Ireland the bastards would be listening for the noise of the engine, would be waiting to hear the change in noise if it stopped. That was why they had almost killed themselves five days ago, rolling out of the side doors with the car still on the move.

The van came from the right, headlamps dimmed and moving slowly, not stopping, the sound of the engine constant, the back doors held open by bungees and the bulbs of the brake lights removed. The van passed them and they began to run, the van not slowing. Bags in back, scramble in after them, Nolan pulling the signaller in or the signaller pulling Nolan, neither of them was sure. They were in, jerking the doors shut and settling down. There were two sleeping bags on the floor; they crawled into them and tried to warm themselves. Hereford in forty minutes, she thought, a hot shower and a mug of tea. Four hours’ kip then the finish of the course and the train to The Fort. She snuggled deeper into the sleeping bag. Bloody well made it, the realization drifted through her head as sleep came on her, her mind and body relaxing. The van was swaying slightly. She ignored the movement, put her arm under her head and fell asleep.

The van crashed to a halt. Nolan was thrown forward with the impact, body and mind trying to tear themselves from sleep. She was still tucked deep in the sleeping bag, enjoying the warmth. She heard the shots and the clang as the back doors opened, heard the voices. Kalashnikov, she suddenly realized. Out, the men were yelling, dragging her and the signaller from the sleeping bags. Her mind was still spinning, still trying to wake. Irish accents: she jerked awake and saw them. Four, five. Black balaclavas with eyeholes cut in them. She was pulled outside and saw the cars, the lorry pulled across the road in front of the pick-up truck, the rain still streaming down and the night still dark. She glanced to the left and saw the driver, half-kneeling, half-crouching on the ground, trying to fight back. Heard the shots and saw the moment his body jerked then crumpled to a heap. She and the signaller were being separated, one to each car, the men holding them, others frisking them, roughly rather than efficiently. The engines of the cars were running; she was pushed in the boot of one of them and it pulled away.

SAS, part of the bloody exercise? Or IRA? The fear pounded through her. A Provo kidnap squad. The car was being driven fast, sliding round corners in the wet and the mud of the Brecons, Nolan being thrown from side to side. How would the Provos know? They were going downhill, the road surface suddenly changing. She tried to brace herself and look at her watch. The road surface changed again and she knew they were on a larger road, knew they were trying to clear the area before Hereford realized what had happened. Calm it, she told herself, work it out. There was no way the Provos could know, no way anyone could know other than the course instructors. Part of the course, she told herself, let you think you’d finished, let you relax, and then they hit you, put you through the wringer. The car lurched right, across some broken ground, and slammed to a halt. The boot was opened and a hood was pulled over her head. Out, she was told, heard the accents again. South Armagh. All part of the exercise, she struggled to tell herself. She was bundled across the ground, tripping once, and into the boot of another car. The boot slammed shut and the car pulled away. What the hell was happening? She made herself calm down, told herself to get her hands in front of her body, pull the hood off her head. But keep the hood handy so she could put it on when the car stops again, try to see their faces but don’t let them know. Don’t let them see that you’re thinking. The car slowed and stopped. Not a sudden halt. Traffic lights. She pulled the hood back and checked the time: 0430, two hours after the pick-up; the rendezvous point was only forty minutes from Hereford, so she had been in one boot or the other for at least an hour and thirty minutes. The road was changing again, motorway or dual carriageway. Was rougher again. She checked her watch, her head thumping and her body aching. 0700: she’d been in the car another two and a half hours. The car slowed, turned right, and bumped across what she thought was a field. Then it stopped for thirty seconds, the engine ticking over, and pulled forward. She barely had time to drag the hood down before the boot opened and she was manhandled out. The hands were holding her and the hood was pulled off.

She was in a barn, bales around the walls. The men round her wore balaclavas, eyes looking at her through the holes. Still part of the exercise, she tried to tell herself, still part of the Hereford refresher. Kalashnikovs. Anybody could have AKs, but two of the men were wearing Spanish Star and Czech CZ. SAS would carry Browning Hi-Powers.

The interrogation began.

You were in the front car at Beechwood Street. Who were you with? RUC or Army? How did they know about Beechwood Street? How did they know about McKendrick and Rorke? She was against the wall. The gunman asking the questions was short, not much more than five feet, thick Irish accent that even she could barely understand. How did they know about Tommy Reardon and the attack on the Crum?

The SAS know this, she told herself. This could all be part of the course. These men don’t have to be Provos, they could be SAS.

The gunman moved quickly, as if he understood what she was thinking, hitting her across the face, all the power of his body behind it. She reeled over. One of the others pushed her back up and the interrogator hit her again, her head jerking back with the force. He hit her again, in the stomach, doubled her up, the air pushed violently out of her lungs. She was pulled across the floor, someone grabbing her hair. She was pushed down, almost kneeling, her head thrust forward and her face into the water. Her lungs were already screaming for air and her head was spinning. She tried not to breathe, knew she was going to. Her head was wrenched up and she opened her mouth, was pulling in the air when her head was pushed forward again, mouth and nose below the water and the rim of the bucket or the trough – whatever it was – cutting across her windpipe. She was struggling, trying to fight back. Her head was pulled up again, pushed down again.

Who told you about Beechwood Street? How’d you know about Reardon? Who told you what site he was working on? Who’s the source in the Provos? How high up is he? What’s his name? If you don’t know then who would?

She was against the wall, had no idea how long she had been questioned. Abruptly the interrogator nodded and she was thrown into a corner, bales on three sides and straw on the floor. The interrogator and three others left, leaving two guards. She half-turned, tried to look at her watch. Part of the exercise, she still tried to tell herself, these men aren’t Provos, these men are really SAS. It was 1700 hours, five in the afternoon. She should have left Hereford at twelve, was due at The Fort at eight the following morning. Her face was bruised and bleeding and there was a pain down her right side as if her ribs were broken.

The interrogator came back in, balaclava still on, and the questions began again.

Who was she with? Army or RUC? Military Intelligence or Special Branch? If she was sitting in a stake-out car then she would be E4A. Which meant she was RUC. Or on secondment to E4A from Military Intelligence. So who was the leak in the Provos? Where was the leak in the Provos? Where did the order come from to stake out Reardon’s house in Beechwood Street? What time did it come? Who told her what about it?

He hit her again; face, body. Especially her body. Especially where they’d already broken her ribs.

It was night, morning again. She’d had two hours’ sleep, nothing to eat or drink. At least she was dry, she told herself. The men pulled her up and led her outside. Make a break for it, she told herself, try to run. It was dark, therefore still night, felt as if the dawn was about to break. No way she would make it, the men all round her. The gunmen pushed her against a concrete wall and turned the hose on her, the water cold and the jet strong. She’d been against the wall five minutes, probably ten, was wet through and shivering. The gunmen took her back inside and the interrogation continued.

Who was she working with at Lisburn? Who else was on the squad? Who was the driver in the surveillance car?

It was midday. Past the time she was due to start at The Fort. It was as if the interrogator knew. Not knew the details as much as sensed that she had suddenly weakened. These men can’t be SAS, she tried to fight back the thought, these men really are Provos. They threw her into the corner, left two men to guard her, and went outside.

She curled up and tried to sleep, tried to escape from the fear in her mind and the suffering in her body. Her hands were still tied behind her back. She bent her knees and pulled her hands forward. Two of them, she knew, no way she would get away with it. She curled up again and felt the piece of wood under her body. Not quite under her body, in the straw to the side. She moved slightly, ignored it. Tried to sleep. Felt for it beneath the straw. Not a piece of wood, the realization crept upon her, more like a handle. She turned slightly, made sure the guards weren’t looking at her, and felt along it. Eighteen inches, then she came to the end, felt the ragged wood as if the handle had been broken. One of the guards turned and looked at her, did not notice that she had moved her hands in front of her body, looked away again. She felt the other way, felt the metal. The two prongs of the pitchfork. Her hands closed round it and she knew what she had to do. She began to turn, to check the guards. The interrogator came back in and the beating began again.

Who was handling the informant? Was the handler Special Branch or MI5? Who was the informant who told them about Beechwood Street? Was he being run from Lisburn? What about the FRU, was he working for them? Where did the orders come from? Someone must have said something, someone from SB or MI5 or the FRU must have let a name slip.

It was late afternoon, going into evening. They tossed her in the corner again, left her with one guard. The pangs racked her body and she wanted to die. Do it, she told herself, now while there’s just one of them. But they could still be SAS, the thought held her back, it could still be part of the Hereford refresher. The bastards seeing how far they could push her before she cracked.

The interrogator returned and the questioning continued. Why were you in Beechwood Street? Who told you? What time did the orders come in? Who was the leak? Next time they pushed her in the corner, she told herself. But suppose they weren’t Provos, suppose they had fixed it for her to arrive late at The Fort. Suppose they were SAS. She couldn’t kill one if he was SAS, if he really was a Brit. The interrogator hit her again, the questions spinning through her head and confusing her. Kill them or don’t kill them, the other question was like a vortex in her mind. Who the hell are they, what are they? Up to her, she told herself, whether she could do it or not. If she got the chance again. Should have done it before. The interrogation ended and she was pushed into the corner, two guards remaining. No chance to do it now, she told herself.

So what is it? she asked herself. What was she afraid of, why had she delayed before?

She was back in the stake-out car, McKendrick at the driver’s window and Rorke in front, Brady’s trouser zip undone and the Browning in his waist holster. She couldn’t do it, she was thinking, was slowing down, telling herself she was stalling to give the SAS boys in Tommy Reardon’s house a chance. She was in the car after, on patrol in the days and weeks that followed, was lying awake at night or walking along the beach on the west coast. The knowledge was deep in her subconscious, unavailable to her; the security block she had imposed upon it protecting her.

Beechwood Street, she made herself admit; she shouldn’t have hesitated. Even now, even with the Provo guards ten yards from her, it was impossible to come to terms with. She had told herself she was delaying to give the men in the house a chance, but all the time she didn’t want to do it.

Didn’t want to do what, she asked herself.

She had to go down on Brady to get to the back-up gun, she knew the answer she had been giving herself. And ever since she had told herself that that was the thing she had been afraid to do.

But . . . she took herself on, pushed herself to the brink. But that had not been what she was afraid of. The sex wasn’t relevant, wasn’t even sex. It wasn’t even a penis. It was just a way of getting to the gun. All the time it wasn’t the sex that she had been afraid of, that she had known she couldn’t do. All the time what she had been afraid of was actually killing someone.

One of the guards had left, the other sitting eating the supper they had brought for him, sitting with his back to her. The rope round her wrists had worked loose and she slid her hands from it. Do it, she told herself, do it now. These men aren’t SAS, these men are Provisional IRA. If you don’t talk soon they’ll kill you. So kill them first.

There was no point. Even if she dealt with one gunman there were four, perhaps five more. Even if she got outside they would hunt her down. What you’re saying is an excuse, she told herself. Nobody likes killing, but sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes it’s you or them. The gunman’s back was still towards her, the man seated on a bale and crouched over the plate. She picked up the pitchfork and rose, stepped towards him. No noise, not even a rustling of the straw. She was four feet from him. Three feet. Two. His back was still towards her. Him or her. Him not her. She began to bring the pitchfork down.

‘ENDEX.’

She heard the voice and froze. English. End exercise, the words pounded through her brain. The Provo gunmen stepped forward from the shadows; no balaclavas over their faces. Phillips turned round and looked at her.

Put her through it, Haslam had told him. String her out and see what happens. Take her down to hell and see if she comes back. Go down with her if you have to. Not for himself, not because it was Haslam who’d run the course in Germany where the talent-spotters had first picked her up, who’d drunk and talked with her and the others in the evenings, who’d taken her aside at the end and suggested that she might like to volunteer for Special Duties. But for her. Because at the end of the day she was worth it. And he couldn’t do it because she would recognize him; then she would realize and throw up her defences; then she wouldn’t admit what she needed to admit to herself. Then she would be lost for ever.

Unofficial of course, nothing to go on the record.

You . . . Nolan almost said to the man she had been about to kill . . . You were one of the men in the house on Beechwood Street.

Philipa Walker left the flat and took the Northern Line to the Newspaper Library at Colindale. Something about a photograph, she had been aware. At least one photograph, possibly two. Not something about PinMan, something about herself.

There were those who might have preferred to shrug off such a feeling, to let it slip away as if it had never existed. She herself did not subscribe to such a philosophy. If an item or detail existed she should face up to it even though she might not wish to. Control it, control herself, rather than allow things or events to control her.

The first photograph was in the diary column of the Mail – she remembered the type around it and the position on the page. The second, following the same logic, was in the Sunday Times.

She ordered the Mail for the years 1988 to 1990 – it was only possible to order three volumes at any one time – and settled down to wait in the microfiche section at the rear. The boxes of film were delivered to her ten minutes later. She inserted the ’88 cassette in the viewer and began her search. An hour and a half later she handed the boxes back and ordered the Mail for the three years beginning 1991. The photograph was in the Mail of April 1992. She recognized the page immediately – the headline and the layout triggering the subconscious layers of her memory. The picture spanned the middle two columns – the group at the restaurant table, the woman in the centre and the vague faces behind. When Walker had first seen it, it had been at the Press Association library and all the faces had been clearly defined. On microfiche, however, she could barely make out the faces of the two men behind the women. She noted the date of the newspaper, handed the cassettes back, and booked the Sunday Times beginning 1991.

The woman seemed asleep, the reading-room porter thought. He gave her the boxes of microfiche and was startled by the way she suddenly appeared to wake. Almost like an animal.

The story had been written before the separation of the Prince and Princess of Wales. It was trailed on the front page of the main section of the newspaper and dealt with in full in the News Review. Its theme was the distinct sets of friends enjoyed by the couple and the way in which this represented a crossroads in their life together. Again, however, the faces in the photographs which accompanied the article were indistinct. She read through the piece once, then went to the pay phone on the landing outside the reading room, telephoned the Daily Mail and Sunday Times, and confirmed that back copies of the relevant dates of each were available. Then she collected her coat and bag, walked to the tube station, and caught the Northern Line to Chalk Farm.

That evening she dined with Patrick Saunders at the White Tower restaurant in Percy Street. The relationship was developing as she had anticipated, indeed planned. In the almost twisted manner of the hunt, she even enjoyed it, enjoyed his company but also enjoyed the razor edge which came with the knowledge of why she was seeing him. As long as he was the key, as long as his source into the royal family was the one she needed. As long as she herself could access that source without Saunders or the source knowing.

At eleven next morning she collected the back copy of the Mail, then went to a café two hundred yards away, ordered a cappuccino, and turned to the photograph on the diary page, ignoring the faces of the women at the table and concentrating on the taller of the two men standing behind them.

An hour later she collected the copy of the Sunday Times, returned to St Katharine’s Dock, and ordered a Bloody Mary in the Thames Bar of the Tower Hotel. In the main, the article said, the Di and Charles camps were not compatible; the Prince thought his wife’s friends too frivolous, and the Princess considered her husband’s circle too serious, even boring. Only one person was welcomed in both camps. Major R.E.F. Fairfax of the Grenadier Guards, known to the royal couple as Roddy. Originally it had been the Princess of Wales who had welcomed Fairfax into her inner circle, the newspaper said. Charles, however, also thought highly of him, partly because he was a military man and had seen service in Northern Ireland, and had personally invited him to the royal home at Highgrove.

Of course Fairfax was a military man. Walker looked again at the photographs in the two papers and the name in the Sunday Times, felt the ice spreading. Of course the bastard had seen service in Northern Ireland.

Haslam had left Belfast ten days before, spending two days at Hereford and a further two checking airport security at Heathrow. He spent the night in London, left at 5.30 and liaised with the other men who would take part in the exercise at seven. At eight the three took the ferry to the island, enjoyed an hour-long breakfast, then caught the 10.30 return ferry as instructed.

The watchers from Five were waiting. Men and women. Fat ones, thin ones. Some looking fit as hell and others as if they could barely make it to the bar to get another drink. Double-sided coats, different colours each side to confuse the targets, wigs, bags, all the works. Spot them a mile off if you were expecting them and knew what you were looking for. Never see them in a month of Sundays if you didn’t.

The latest graduates from the Firm’s school at The Fort, SAS men playing the suspects they would tail in the end-of-course close-surveillance exercise.

He stepped off the ferry and turned up Lime Street.

‘Charlie One Five. Green One.’ The first tail picked him up, the streets already coded. Dead letter drops and pickups, contact with another suspect – it was all in the day’s exercise.

Haslam reached the top of the street and turned left.

‘Charlie One Five. Green Four.’ The first tail dropped back.

‘Charlie One Six. Green Five.’ The second picked Haslam up from the other side of the road. Surveillance teams in front and behind. Vehicles on stand-by.

‘One Six. Green Three.’ The bus stop was seventy yards ahead and the tail thirty yards behind. Haslam glanced back and saw the bus; as it passed him he slowed and allowed it to stop at the stop, then sprinted for it as it pulled away.

‘Charlie One Two. Blue Two.’ The woman who had been waiting at the stop took the third seat in, downstairs, and watched as he went up the stairs to the top deck. ‘Blue Three.’ . . . Silver Street. ‘Blue Four.’ . . . Rodney Street. ‘Blue Five.’ She called the stops as the bus passed them. One car staying behind, the others moving ahead, dropping tails where the target might leave the bus.

This was their patch, Nolan thought; they’d practised on it and knew the streets backwards. Christ help them if the target decided to go AWOL, took the train to Bournemouth and got off at Southampton, left them spread like confetti over the south of England. She slid from the car and looked in the window of the tobacconist next to the bus stop.

‘Charlie One Three. Green Ten to Green Eleven.’ . . . The suspect on foot in Vesta Road going towards Queens Road.

‘Charlie Two One.’ The next tail in position. ‘Affirmative.’ The tail slid in behind Haslam.

Bramshaw Road then Pembury Street, the railway line across the top and the footbridge to Marshall Place – the area map was imprinted on her mind. Cul de sacs at Bolsover Street and Duncan Road.

Haslam turned into the newsagents and waited for the tail to follow him in. ‘Box of matches.’ He paid, then browsed along the magazine shelves as the tail asked for a packet of cigarettes. It was time to start playing games, time to give them a run for their money. He left the shop and turned first right. The street was seventy yards long, turnings to the right and left at the top.

‘Charlie Two Three. Green Eight.’

The tail was thirty yards behind and afraid to go too close. Haslam slowed and made the tail drop even further back, so that when he reached the corner the man was almost forty yards behind him. He turned the corner and ran. Thirty yards, left; another forty, right. Left again and over the railway footbridge. The tail rounded the corner. ‘Green Eight.’ He looked right, left. Didn’t know what to do or say.

Nolan heard, knew what the bastard had done. The pavement was lined with stalls. She pushed through them and slid into the back-up car. ‘Marshall Place, quick, he’s gone over the footbridge.’

The car accelerated, went through the lights on amber, and skidded across the level crossing at Fore Street as the barrier came down.

‘One Three. Blue Two towards Black Four.’ Haslam was fifty yards in front, walking away from them. The car pulled into a side street; she left it and followed him. ‘One Three. Black Ten.’ She turned right after him and realized. Bolsover Street, a cul-de-sac. He’s going to sideline me, the thought screamed through her head, the bastard’s going to eyeball me. Standard anti-surveillance if a target thought he was being shadowed – one of several. Turn, walk back past the shadow, stare him in the face. Let him know that you know. Put him out of the game.

Haslam turned and she saw his face for the first time. Understood.

Long time since Germany – he didn’t need to say it. Long time since the adventure training course and the talk about Special Duties.

You – she was still walking towards him. You were the second man in the house on Beechwood Street. You were the one who pulled the strings and got me off the desk assignment and into the Firm. You were the bastard who arranged the little session at Hereford. You waited till it was me behind you before you turned in here.

Haslam was twenty yards from her, on the outside of the pavement, eyes straight ahead. They were ten yards apart, five. Both staring straight ahead. Good girl, the instructor whispered to himself, don’t let him phase you. Just keep walking. Haslam was three yards from her, face set, Nolan still staring straight ahead.

As she passed him she winked.