know that the Thompson Twins were in town.
But of the Watchman there had been no sign. A heron, broad-winged and graceful, had lowered itself from the sky a little after nine o'clock and taken up residence among the reeds close to where Alex expected the Watchman to exit the river. The perfect early warning system, thought Alex. Not even Joseph Meehan could shimmy past a heron without disturbing it.
He'd felt nothing at the Iraqi's death. And nothing afterwards, when they'd killed all of those still alive. In most cases the double taps that they had delivered had represented a merciful release from the terrible burns caused by the Tornado's incendiary missiles and the exploding Scud propellant.
They'd found a man who might or might not have been 'Marwan' in the trench, dead from shrapnel wounds to the head and blast injuries. He'd been unarmed and wearing khaki overalls of a different design from the others. In his pockets they had found a Tandy calculator, an ID card and a wallet containing pictures of his family. All these, along with a half melted Toshiba laptop computer found near the anti-aircraft emplacement, had been bagged and returned to base. The operation had been judged a one hundred per cent success.
Alex had felt nothing and thought he'd got away unscathed.
NINETEEN.
The Watchman did not come and with first light Alex swam silently downstream to the bridge, exited the water and redressed himself in the clothes that he had left hidden there. The cold of the river and the length and intensity of his eight-hour vigil had left him desperately tired, and for a long time he could not stop himself shaking. He couldn't even bring himself to think about further nights spent the same way.
In truth, it had always been unlikely that the Watchman would come on the first night of Widdowes' return. He would want to watch and wait, to weigh up the chances of the whole thing being a set-up. In Meehan's position Alex wouldn't have come on that first night.
But now, hopefully, Meehan would have had a chance to see that the arrangement was exactly what it seemed to be: a nervous public servant guarded by a pair of competent if rather dilatory policemen. Widdowes was getting the sort of protection that an important criminal witness might get, or the senior officer of a regiment that had served in Northern ireland.
Alex sat beneath the bridge for a further couple of hours. Slowly the darkness became wet grey dawn, and at 6 a.m. he heard a car come to a halt above him and a voice quietly call his name. Hurrying out with his kit, he dived into the boot of the customised BMW and lay there while Widdowes went through the motions of going for an early-morning drive.
Back in the garage the MI-5 man looked at him with concern.
'You look completely knackered,' he said.
'Are you OK?'
'I'll live,' replied Alex.
'How are you?'
'I did what you said: cooked myself supper, watched Newsn~iht, and hit the sack. Even managed to sleep.' Widdowes hesitated.
'I'm grateful for this, Alex,' he said quietly.
'Man to man and forgetting all the inter-service bullshit, I'm really grateful. You're putting yourself on the line and that means a lot. Is there anything I can do in return?'
'Yes,' said Alex wearily.
'Stay alive. And sort us out some breakfast.'
'Any preferences?'
'Everything,' said Alex.
'The full bollocks.'
'My pleasure. Would you like a bath?'
'When Meehan's dead,' said Alex.
Widdowes nodded. From the drive came the sound of a car on gravel and voices. The MI-5 'policemen' were handing over to a new pair.
In the cellar, meeting his exhaustion head-on, Alex pushed himself through a hard exercise routine followed by a series of stretches. The wet suit, the boots and the rest of the kit were laid out to dry a pointless exercise, really, but one which imposed a level of formality and routine on the situation.
When the breakfast came, preceded by the smell of fresh coffee, Alex ate fast and in silence.
'You're sure you want to stay here while I go to work?' Widdowes asked eventually.
'He won't try to kill you in the car,' said Alex with certainty.
'And I doubt he'll even bother to follow you. He knows where you're going, he'll know from the cops on the gate that you're coming back here. Just keep the windows up, the door locked and head straight for Thames House. You'll be fine the guy has to sleep some time.'
Widdowes nodded.
'I'd better make a move. Sure you'll be
OK?'
'I'll be fine.'
The two men shook hands and Widdowes departed. Placing the Glock 34 on the ground beside the camp bed, Alex climbed into his sleeping bag, closed his eyes and slept.
For the next two nights the Watchman did not come. Each evening Alex lowered himself into the river by the bridge, swam upstream and began his long vigil. He went to exactly the same position each time, hooked his arm round the underwater root, lodged his feet on the chalk shelf and waited.
Time passed with unreal slowness. As his eyes searched the gloom ahead for any sign of movement, his mind seemed to separate itself from his body, to undertake journeys of its own. Sometimes it seemed as if he were not in the river at all, but flying, or sleeping, or driving. He was visited by the familiar ranks of ghosts the Iraqis with their charred faces and smoking chest cavities, the bullet shattered IRA volunteers, the bloodslicked Colombians and RUF men, the frost-stiffened Serbs. All of them milled about him in an ever-changing tableau, gravely displaying their wounds, endlessly reprising the instant of their deaths. To kill a man, Alex had long understood, was to fix a moment in time, to have that moment with you for ever.
And now, with considerable formality, he was planning another death. A death that, in his mind's eye, he had seen many times. The Watchman, carried downstream by the current, would surface in the moonlit water three or four metres away and begin his silent ascent of the bank. With his right hand Alex would thumb on the infra-red sight, move the red dot to the centre of his target's chest, fire and keep firing. The coughs of the silenced Glock would be all but inaudible.
The body would fall back into the water, swing towards him on the warm stream.
That was how it would be.
But the Watchman didn't come. Alex waited, primed to kill, but the river remained just a river, a place of gnats and weed and flag iris. And with each grey morning he doubted his sanity more, wondered whether despite all his experience he had miscalculated. Would the BMW come and collect him once more? Or had his instincts finally deceived him? Was Widdowes even now lying mutilated and dead on the floor of Longwater Lodge?
Each morning, however, the car did come and the routine was the same. Breakfast, coffee and then sleep. A heatwave struck, and the windowless cellar became stifling and airless during the hours of daylight.
Daylight that Alex never saw. He woke each afternoon at around three, exercised, cleaned the Glock and prepared himself all without leaving the cellar. Dawn Harding usually rang at about five thirty, shortly after she had seen Widdowes leave Thames House. Their conversations were brief beyond discussing the ups and downs of Widdowes' state of mind there was little to say.
When Widdowes returned he would cook supper for the pair of them, take Alex's food down to the cellar as if the SAS officer were a medieval prisoner and then at Alex's insistence eat his own in front of the TV upstairs, as he had always done.
On the fourth day the furniture van arrived and the loading-up began. Alex managed to sleep through most of the bumping and swearing that was taking place on the floors above, but was still awake by 2 p.m.
Tonight, he thought, squinting through the 5.32-inch barrel of the Glock at the smooth curl of its rifling. Tonight the bastard has to come.
And if he doesn't?
