like the photo in the file he'd been studying.
'Ah ... Miss Gordon, isn't it?' he stammered as Wilson withdrew from
the office.
Swallow did not respond.
'I'm told you insisted on, seeing me personally,' he tried again.
'Mind telling me why?'
Still Swallow held her silence. She obviously felt the burden of
explanation lay on the man who had called for her services. Thoroughly
discomfited, Shay looked down at the file. The woman in the photo
looked like a grandmother, a blue-rinsed clubwoman who spent her Sundays
baking biscuits for the church. The woman who stood before him now
looked like ... well, Shaw had never quite seen the analogue that would
describe her. Swallow had iron gray hair cropped &lose against her
skull, perfect for wearing wigs. She carried none of the excess fat
that weighted most women her age and there Shaw paused. For looking at
Swallow now, he couldn't quite get his mind round the fact that she had
been in the war. She'd been practically a child, of course, but It was
downright eerie. The file put her at sixty-one, but she looked nearer
fifty. As he stared, the scent of perfume wafted to him; this single
acknowledgment of femininity surprised him. He couldn't name the
fragrance, but it smelled expensive and vaguely French. To be honest,
Shaw mused, he might have been attracted to Swallow if it wasn't for
what he knew about her. No, he decided, even if he'd imown nothing of
her fiendish work, her eyes would have put him off. They were like
stones. Dull, flat stones. Not that they communicated intellectual
dullness-quite the contrary.
They were rather like slate lids on a blast furnace, protecting those
outside from the fierce hatred that burned behind them. That hatred had
probably served Swallow well through the years, Shaw reflected, for by
trade she was an assassin.
'Yes, well,' he began again, 'did Wilson tell you this regards Jonas
Stern?'
Swallow nodded soberly.
'What I'd like is for you to follow him, see what he's up to. His last
known location was Berlin, but he's probably on the move. He's
traveling under his own name, which seems odd, so he must not feel he's
in any danger.'
Swallow smiled at that.
'As soon as we pick him up, we'll put you onto him. We think he's
trying to get hold of something ... something that we'd prefer the Jews
didn't get hold of. Understood?'
'Perfectly,' said Swallow. She had, after all, done her part against
the Zionist terrorists of Palestine.
Shaw cleared his throat. 'Yes, well, what kind of payment would you
want? Would twenty thousand pounds cover it?'
Swallow's eyes hooded over at this. It struck Shaw just then that, from
Swallow's perspective, they had come to the point of the meeting. 'What
I want,' she said in a toneless voice, 'is Jonas Stern.
When your little operation is over, I want a free hand with him.'
Shaw had no illusions as to what this meant. Swallow wanted official
permission to kill an Israeli citizen. He knew the answer to his next
question, but he asked it anyway.
'What was it, exactly, that Stern did to you?'
'Killed my brother,' she replied in a voice that could have come from a
corpse.
'That was quite some time ago, wasn't it?' Shaw commented.
'And every year since, my brother has lain in his grave.'
The furnace heat behind Swallow's eyes flashed at the edges.
'They scarcely found enough of him to bury. Bloody Jews.'
Shaw nodded with appropriate solemnity. 'Yes, well ...
your condition is accepted.' He drummed his fingers on his desk.
'Tell me, what's your feeling about Stern as an agent?'
'He's the best I ever saw. If he wasn't, he'd have been dead long ago.
He's got the instincts of a bloody clairvoyant.'
'Any ideas on his motive? Why he would leave Israel now?'
Swallow considered this. 'To protect it,' she said at length.
'Israel is his weakness. He must believe the country is in imminent
danger.'
'I see.'
'Is Israel in danger?'
'Not that I'm aware of,' Shaw replied thoughtfully. 'Not any more than
usual.'
As Swallow stood thinking, Shaw noticed that she stood with a vaguely
military bearing-not tensely, but with a relaxed kind of readiness,
rather like some Special Forces types he had known. They had all been
men, of course.
'Is there anything else, then?' she asked.
Shaw flipped through the files on his desk with exaggerated casualness.
'There is, as a matter of fact. Another job.
A small one. Domestic job, actually. I thought you might take care of
it for us. But it's a rush job. It must be done by tonight.'
Swallow's eyes narrowed in suspicion. 'Who is it?'
'Chap named Burton. Michael Burton. Retired. Lives in a cottage
outside Haslemere in Surrey. Raises orchids, I believe. I'm afraid he
knows too much for his own good.' Sir Neville cleared his throat again.
'There is one possible complication. He's only forty-eight.
Retired Special Air Service.'
At this Swallow seemed to withdraw into herself for consultation with
whatever demon sustained her startlingly youthful appearance. At
length, she asked, 'Does he have any family?'
'Divorced. There's a brother. Why do you ask?'
'Is he SAS also?'
Shaw shook his head. 'Regular army. But he's out of the country
permanently. He lost his citizenship papers some years ago for
mercenary work. He won't be a problem.'
'Would you want it to look like an accident?'
'Can you run up an accident in Haslemere by tonight?'
Swallow made a sound in her throat that Shaw heard as a dry chuckle. 'I
doubt it. SAS men don't have accidents like that, as a rule. They're
