'Go on.'
'And then finally I figured it out. There had to be another British mole. An agent who had been in place not for years but for decades. A man I'd been set up to take the fall for.'
He fell silent for a moment.
'It was something Barry Fenn had said years earlier about there being suspicion in the senior ranks of PIRA that a British agent was defusing the bombs the organisation was making. At the time, all that I heard were the words that applied to me i.e. 'suspicion', 'PIRA' and 'British agent'. I didn't stop to ask myself the vital question: how the fuck did Barry Penn know what the senior ranks of PIRA were thinking? I didn't know, so how did he?
'They had someone all along. One of the very top men, is my guess. And in case such a man ever came under the faintest suspicion of providing information to the Crown forces, it would be necessary to have a decoy set up. Another agent who could be exposed, proved to be the real source and fed to the wolves.'
Alex shook his head and sank back against the granite.
'Enter the Watchman,' he murmured.
'Congratulations!' said Dawn Harding.
'I do believe you've got there at last.'
She was standing above and to one side of them, and her Walther PPK was levelled straight between Alex's eyes.
TWENTY-NINE.
She had brought back-up with her, a blank-faced man in a flying jacket carrying an MP5 Heckler and Koch sub-machine gun.
Had the two of them found Meehan dead, Alex knew, there would have been no problem. Anything that Meehan might have told Alex would have been cancelled out by the fact that Alex had killed him the SAS officer could hardly broadcast a story that culminated with a murder committed by himself.
But with Meehan alive and Alex in possession of the facts about Watchmen even just the basic facts the position was hopeless. A glance at Dawn and the icy flatness of those sea-grey eyes told him that she was prepared to watch him die rather than risk him telling the story. Their one-night stand, and that is all it had been, after all, counted for nothing less than nothing.
You stupid.
She and her back-up man would kill the pair of them, and place their disposal in the hands of a cleaner team. One thing was certain: neither body would ever be found.
Having said that, he was still holding the Glock. Still had Meehan's Browning in his pocket.
'Why isn't this animal dead?' Dawn asked, glancing scornfully at Meehan.
'I wouldn't worry yourself,' said Alex coldly.
'I don't think he's going to grow much older.'
She shook her head sorrowfully.
'You idiot,' she spat.
'You arrogant fucking idiot, Alex! Why didn't you do as you were asked? Can't you see what you're forcing me to .
She continued, but Alex was no longer listening. He was holding his Glock in his right hand; with his left, which was concealed beneath his smock, he was trying to inch Meehan's Browning from his waistband. His only chance of escaping what would effectively be an execution was to trust Meehan. The man was two parts insane to one part brilliant soldier, that much was obvious, but... The Browning was clear of the waistband, now, and heavy in his hand. With infinite slowness he lowered it to the ground beneath his smock.
'And this man,~ Alex asked Dawn, indicating the expressionless figure of Meehan.
'Can you begin to imagine what your people have forced him to do? To torture and kill British agents? To stand back and watch as bombs that he has designed cut women and children to pieces?'
Alex's question was designed to allow him to turn to the former agent.
Catching the other man's eyes, he glanced downwards once, saw from the swift flicker of response that Meehan had understood him, felt the first unmistakable rush of adrenalin.
Prepare. Breathe. Only the target exists. Hear nothing, feel nothing, see nothing. Only the target.
Without warning, Alex propelled himself forward. He rolled once, his wounded back smashing with agonising force into the granite rock face, then the air screamed and ruptured as rounds from the MP5 impacted around him. The back-up man's first shots had been fired from the hip and as Alex tightened on the trigger of the Glock - foresight, backsight, focus, exhale he saw the familiar movement as the weapon was pulled to the shoulder.
The back-up man had just closed his left eye in preparation for the aimed killing shot when both the Glock's 9mm rounds punched through his chin and thence his cerebellum, spraying the rocks behind him with red and ending his life in less than a third of a second.
Dawn's Walther was swinging towards Alex and the back-up man was still falling to the blood-shined granite when Meehan fired. The single round took Dawn in the centre of the chest,
dropping her to her knees as if praying. As her Walther fell from her fingers, Meehan instinctively lowered the Browning for the double tap to the head.
Alex signalled for him to hold his fire and scrambled back up the hillside towards her.
'Dawn?' he said quietly, making safe and pocketing the Walther.
'Can you hear me?'
But Dawn Harding was very close to death. Meehan's shot had taken her through the sternum, and oxygenated lung blood was frothing at her mouth.
'Dawn?' he repeated, feeling beneath her T-shirt for the sucking chest wound and sealing it with his thumb.
'Dawn!'
She raised her head and managed a painful smile, showing reddened teeth.
'Tell Angela .. .' she began.
'Tell her I ..
She fell silent, and tears ran down her cheeks. Then the blood came with a rush, pouring from her mouth on to her chest, and her head sank down and she died.
Switching off all feeling, Alex wiped his Glock on his shirt and placed it between Dawn's unresisting fingers. Taking the Browning from Meehan, who handed it over without hesitation, he cleaned it and placed it in the dead back-up man's right hand. The scenario wouldn't hold up for very long, but any investigation would lead the police straight back to MIS, at which point the case would disappear from the register anyway.
He turned to Meehan.
'Thank you,' he said.
'She was going to kill you,' said Meehan quietly.
'Don't go through the rest of your life wondering.'
'I won't,' promised Alex.
The ghost of a smile touched Meehan's pale features.
'We'd have made a good team, you and I,' he said.
Alex looked at the man who had shot Dawn Harding.
'We probably would,' he said emptily.
'How badly are you hurt?'
'Does that make any difference to anything?'
Alex didn't reply. Staring over the valley he watched as sunlight and shadow raced each other across the flank of Fan Fawr. Then, taking the MP5 from where it had fallen beside the dead MI-5 agent, he searched the corpse for spare magazines.
Finally he turned back to Meehan.
'Do you think you could ride a motorcycle?' he asked.
THIRTY
The members' writing rooms at the Carlton Club are reached by means of a corridor leading off the Small Library, and overlook St. James's Street. There are four of them, and each contains a desk surmounted by a blotter and a sheaf of the club's writing paper. The walls are lined with books, and in reading room number four the majority of these are blue-bound records of the club's minutes and proceedings from the Second World War to the
