'I guess that's what you think we Yanks are – just a bunch of natives,'
'I always respect other people's opinion of themselves,' Newman joked back.
Dillon must have woken up to be capable of a wisecrack. Probably the brief excursion into the cold night air, Newman decided. They drove on through the night, each smoking a cigarette. Dillon looked to his left. The moon had risen, illuminating a range of low hills which fanned away into the distance.
'Thought this part of the world was flat,' he remarked.
'It is. Wait till we get beyond Ashford. A very ordinary town but difficult to drive through if you don't know it. Have to get into the right lane – otherwise you're going miles out of your way.'
Newman had turned onto a wide highway which stretched south as far as the eye could see. No traffic now. Hardly a village. They passed through a deserted Ashford and continued along a highway. Dillon saw what Newman had meant. The world was flat as a billiard table. On both sides fields stretched away to nowhere. Newman slowed down as they approached a signpost. Ivychurch. He turned left off the highway, drove slowly along a twisting narrow lane. Ivychurch was an isolated church, a handful of cottages, then nothing.
'What is the Bunker?' Dillon asked.
'You'll see when we get there.'
'Where are we now?'
'A place where you'll be safe,' Newman said. 'Tells me everything.'
'Gunmen in Cadillacs will never track us here.' 'You don't know those boys.'
'Maybe I do,' Newman retorted. 'Let's stop for a minute. We could get out for a moment.'
Putting on Newman's gloves again, Dillon stepped out of the car. The wind had dropped, the night air was still. There was a heavy silence which seemed to press down on him. Bare hedges, networks of bleak twigs, lined the narrow road. Beyond them flat fields sprawled away for ever. Here and there was dotted the silhouette of a leafless tree, its extremities like skeletal hands clawing upwards towards the sky. No sign of any kind of habitation or life anywhere.
'Too damned quiet for my liking,' Dillon commented. 'Reminds me of certain parts of the Midwest back home. Where the hell are we?'
'We're inside Romney Marsh,' said Newman who had joined him. 'This side of that hedge is a wide gulley, a drainage ditch – they're all over the place.'
'Think I'd like to get back in the car. Where to next?' 'Deeper inside the marsh…'
Dillon lost track of the number of lonely forks and crossroads they came across. Newman seemed to know the way even with his headlights dimmed. They met no traffic, passed through two tiny villages with no lights in the huddled cottages. Dillon thought this was the most desolate area he'd ever encountered. Would they ever reach the mysterious Bunker?
'Will I be out here long?' he eventually asked without enthusiasm.
'You'll be safe. That's the object of the exercise.' 'Anyone to talk to?'
'Yes. We're close now.'
Ahead of them, just off the road, a strange shape loomed in the night. A large round windmill, its four huge sails motionless. Dillon stared at this first sign of civilization.
'What's that thing?'
'A windmill. The only one on Romney Marsh, so far as I know. It's five storeys high and they say the view from the top is awesome.'
'There was a light in the top window. It's gone out. Any idea who lives there?'
'A hermit, I gather. No one ever sees him. We're close to the Bunker – and not so far from the sea. At times a mist, even a fog, comes rolling in. The atmosphere is pretty ghostly when that happens.'
'Goddam ghostly now…'
Newman had slowed to a crawl. They turned yet another curving bend and what appeared to be an old farm gate closed off a track leading through a gap in the hedge. Stopping as the car faced the gate, Newman flashed his lights in an irregular series. The gate slowly swung inwards, Newman drove through on to the track, the gate closed behind them.
'While I remember,' Dillon remarked, 'Washington has also sent a team of top communication experts to the Embassy. No idea why.'
'Useful to know.'
A large old tumbledown farmhouse stood at the end of the track. Laid out on three sides it enclosed a cobbled yard Newman drove onto. They got out of the Merc as an old wooden door opened and a small plump woman in her fifties was framed in the light behind her. She wore a flowered print dress with an apron over it. Dillon's idea of a typical Brit's farmer's wife.
She had red apple cheeks and a warm smile. Her grey hair was tied back in a bun, reminding the American of Monica's hairstyle. She ushered her guests inside and Newman patted her affectionately on the rump.
`Meet your hostess, Cord. This is Mrs Carson. She runs the 'Bunker and we take orders from her. This is Cord Dillon – just arrived from the States,' he introduced. 'No sleep for days and hungry as a hunter, I'm sure.'
'That door has a solid steel plate on the inside,' observed Dillon as Mrs Carson closed and attended to three sophisticated locks.
'Behind the closed shutters of every window is armour-plated glass,' Newman told him.
'Place looks like a series of shacks and turns out to be a fortress. Who protects it if we come under attack?'
'I do,' said Mrs Carson. 'Not that anyone will find us.'
Dillon stared at her in disbelief. His expression became more pronounced as she slipped her hand inside a large canvas shopping bag perched on a shelf and took out a Heckler amp; Koch MP5 9mm sub machine-gun.
Effortlessly she inserted a magazine, then, still smiling, looked at Newman.
'Is he trustworthy?'
'Totally. And he may be staying here for a while. He's on the run from gunmen.'
'You'd better have this, then,' she said, handing the weapon to Dillon. 'You do know how to use it?' she asked.
'Cord is very familiar with it,' Newman assured her.
'I have another one ready hanging in a cupboard,' she assured her guest. 'And down in the cellars we have an armoury. Handguns, machine-guns, smoke bombs, grenades. I'll show you, then you can have supper. Tweed phoned me, said he thought you'd need a good hot home-cooked meal…'
They were standing in a large kitchen-breakfast room with a wooden table laid for three people to eat. The atmosphere was warm, cosy and Dillon detected a slight humming sound.
'You've even got air-conditioning, for Pete's sake.'
'We have, Newman told him. 'Powered by our own generator. We have a spare as back-up in case of a breakdown.'
'Are you a drinking man?' Mrs Carson enquired. 'I haven't Bourbon but I could supply a double Scotch. You look as though you could do with it.'
'I sure could. Thank you.'
'Nothing for me,' Newman chimed in. 'I may have to drive back tonight. I'll know when I've phoned Tweed.'
Their hostess had walked quickly to check what was happening on her Aga cooker, lifting lids of several pans, stirring one gently. She then opened a cupboard, brought out a bottle of very expensive whisky, poured a generous double Scotch, handed it to her guest.
'Get that inside you. Supper's not quite ready. I'll show you your sleeping quarters underground.'
'This is what I need.' Dillon took a large swallow. 'The weakness of this place is that a mob of gunmen could ignore that gate, scramble through the hedge. They'd be all round this farmhouse before you knew what was happening.'
'No, they couldn't,' Mrs Carson said sharply. 'Look at this.' She opened a large white metal panel on the wall. Behind it was a series of small porthole windows, each with a number above it. 'There's an electric tripwire all round all the hedges. If there are intruders a buzzer goes off. I only have to check this and whichever number is flashing tells me which sectors they're coming in through. Three teenage boys did try to break in. I knew where, saw them coming through my binoculars, went out to meet them with my miniature water cannon. The pressure on
