The person stopped searching and went still.
‘What’s your problem?’ an Irishman eventually asked. He sounded young.
‘I haven’t been to the toilet in a week. I’m bunged up sitting here on the cold floor. I’m in a lotta pain. I don’t know if you’re aware, but a person can die of something like this. I’m a medic. I know. If that’s what I’m supposed to do, die like this, then forget it. But do me a favour. Can’t you just shoot me? This ain’t a nice way to go.’
Hank was laying it on a bit thick but he couldn’t think of anything else. The young man seemed to be considering his request.
‘I’ll have to ask someone,’ he said.
‘Yeah, you do that,’ said Hank. ‘But don’t take all day.’
The man left the room. Hank took a deep breath and then began to tighten and release his buttock muscles, each time holding them in tension for a count of ten. His target was a hundred.
Kathryn climbed out of the taxi in the village of Burnham Market and looked at the front of the old building, which had several wooden picnic benches outside. The sign read ‘Hoste Arms Hotel’. As the taxi drove away she double-checked the name against her instructions.This was the place.
Before going to the front door she paused to look at the village. It was like a picture she had seen in a magazine, or was it a movie? This was her first idyllic English village. The roads the taxi had driven along the last few miles were so narrow that the driver had to pull up on to the verge and stop to let oncoming vehicles squeeze past. She had never seen a live pheasant up close before and by the end of the journey had seen so many she was almost tired of them. And what with the deer, hares and rabbits, and countless types of birds, the children would have loved it. The view in parts had been so beautiful it had almost distracted her from her bizarre mission - whatever it was - particularly the glimpse of the sea in the distance, a golden sliver of sand separating the grey blue water from the green fields. On entering the village the narrow road gave way to a broad centre surrounded by quaint little shops, two greens fat with trees and a brook running through it all. Idyllic it was, but all she wanted was to be back home in Norfolk, Virginia, and this was just a bad dream she would wake up from any second.
She faced the hotel and walked in.
Immediately inside the front door was a small entrance hall with another door directly ahead. Through the glass she could see the bar and people inside. She opened it and stepped in.
A log fire burned in a large brick fireplace the other side of the room. There was a dozen or so people; a couple were seated at the bar and the rest at some of the old wooden tables. No one gave her any more attention than a brief glance as she walked to the bar.There a short, stout bartender, almost as broad as he was tall, asked her for her order. She asked for a glass of white wine and after paying for it took it to a corner table near the fire, from where she could see everyone in the room and the front door.
She sat down with her back to a bookshelf stacked with old hardbacks, took a sip of wine and tried to compose herself. She was tense, her neck and shoulders were aching. She suddenly felt eyes on her and glanced at a couple sitting by the large bay window that looked out on to the front of the hotel. It was not the couple watching her, but someone outside looking in, a man, in his fifties, in a well-tailored coat. She stared back at him. He walked away and a moment later the door to the bar opened and he stepped inside. He was carrying a hatbox tied with a decorative twine and walked directly to the bar and ordered a drink. She watched as he placed the box on the bar, took a wallet from inside his coat pocket, paid for the drink, and replaced the change in the wallet and the wallet back inside his coat. He turned at the bar to face her, took a sip of what looked like a whisky, picked the box up off the bar, and walked over to the fireplace. He put the box down to warm his hands and glanced over at her.
‘What’s the weather like in Boston, Kathryn?’ he said.
She said nothing and just stared at him. He picked up the hatbox and sat opposite her, placing the box on the floor between them.
The man was known to the Northern Ireland detachments as O’Farroll, RIRA’s quartermaster. This was only the second time he had stepped outside of the Republic of Ireland in the past six months. The last time was to visit a church in County Tyrone to put on a little pantomime in order to draw the attention of a man hidden inside the boot of a car.
‘You must be tired,’ he said.
Kathryn was uneasy in his company. Something about him reminded her of Father Kinsella. He too looked like he had once been a street fighter. ‘I’m okay,’ she said.
‘Good. Well, it’ll all be over soon and you can go back home.’
‘What about my husband?’
‘He’s fine.’
‘When can I see him?’
‘Soon. By the time you get to London he’ll be starting his journey to you.You’ve just got one little thing to do for me, and that’ll be that.’
He glanced around casually to make sure no one was within earshot as he took a sip of his drink.
‘Under the table, between us, is a hatbox. You saw me carry it in. I’m going to get up and leave in a moment. When I’ve gone you’ll pick up the box, walk over to the bar and ask the barman to call you a taxi. You’ll take the taxi back to King’s Lynn train station and follow your instructions to London.’
She leaned back to take a look at the box.
‘Don’t worry. It’s not a bomb. It’s just a small inconsequential package.You’ll be met at King’s Cross station by a man who’ll ask you if the Hoste Arms was crowded. You’ll hand him the box and he’ll tell you where you can go and pick up your bag. Is that simple enough?’
She nodded.
‘Don’t talk to anyone else, and don’t let the box out of your sight. That’s all you have to do to get Hank back,’ he said with a thin smile. ‘You have a good life, Kathryn. Sure I wish I were taking a trip to America myself. I haven’t been there for ages . . . Good day to you,’ he said as he finished his drink, stood and walked out of the bar and the hotel.
She could not be more pleased with his comment that the sooner she got going the sooner it would be over. She took a long sip of her drink and got up. She reached under the table and picked up the box. It was surprisingly light for its size, as if all it did contain was a small hat. If it was a bomb it was a very small one.
She went to the bar and asked the bartender to call her a taxi.
No one paid her any attention as she left the hotel and stepped outside. There was no sign of the man she had met. She placed the box on one of the picnic tables and waited for the taxi. There were quite a few people in the village centre, passing in and out of the little stores and looking in the windows of estate agents and antique shops. Not even a trained surveillance operative would have noticed the car parked the other side of the village green with two men in it watching her. The one in the passenger seat was Brennan.
Stratton sat in the ops room with his feet up on a table, lost in thought. Sumners was studying the maps while sipping a mug of tea. Tanner was going over equipment lists and options with Captain Singen. The three Americans had left to take their kit to the mess and grab a meal. It was late in the afternoon and Sumners had mumbled more than once how they should’ve heard something by now. Coastguards along the entire west coast of Europe had been alerted, through circuitous means involving various foreign intelligence agencies, to be on the look-out for a boat possibly smuggling weapons into England. No one knew that the weapon was biological. That had to be kept secret. MI5 had issued a report that the occupants were highly dangerous and under no circumstances was any suspicious boat to be boarded and searched. It was to be left to run its course after its position had been reported. That suited the various European law enforcement agencies, who did not particularly want to get involved in a gun battle at sea with desperate terrorists. They would happily let the Brits deal with it.
The phone rang. Sumners snatched it up. ‘Sumners here.’
He listened for a second then put his cup down quickly and signalled the others. ‘That’s good enough for right now,’ Sumners said into the phone then hit the hold button. ‘Get in the air,’ he said to Tanner, then depressed the
