Peter O'Donnell - Cobra Trap

Bird shook his head. "Only from Exeter. Got a sore arse at that, Paddy me boy."

Mountjoy said to the man with the trolley, "If you please, Silver." The man tipped the trolley forward and the crate fell with a crash. Paddy and Silver heaved it over so that the hinges of the lid rested on the floor. Mountjoy looked at Bird and gestured with a graceful movement towards the desk. Bird moved across, picked up the boltcutters and snipped through the three bands of securing wires.

The lid fell open and a huddled man rolled out. He was in shirtsleeves and without shoes, his wrists manacled and attached by a short chain to shackles round his ankles. He was a ruggedlooking man with a strong face, but now he was in agony with cramp, his face bruised and bloody, his hands swollen and blue. He lay on his side panting, staring up at the men about him, trying to hold down his fear.

Very carefully Bird cut through the short chain. The man extended his tortured legs painfully. Bird smiled and crooked a finger, telling the man to stand. It took thirty seconds for him to struggle to his knees, but he could move no further. He knelt there sweating, chest heaving from the effort, glaring up at his captors.

Mountjoy said in his rich, solemn voice, "Your real name is unknown to us, but we do know for whom you work, and we feel it necessary to make an example of you."

Sir Gerald Tarrant sat in his Whitehall office on a fine sunny morning and made himself look at the photographs once again. Sick at heart, he put them aside and leaned back in his chair, gazing wearily across the desk at his assistant, Fraser, who stood blinking owlishly at him through unfashionable glasses. After a little silence Fraser cleared his throat and said diffidently, "I feel this is a very serious development, Sir Gerald."

"For God's sake, Jack, you don't have to tell me that!" There was anger and frustration in Tarrant's voice, and the use of Fraser's forename was a signal telling him to drop the pose of anxious timidity that was second nature to him. It had served Fraser well during his active years as an agent, and had been the death of several highly competent enemies, but there were times when Tarrant found it nerveracking, and this was just such a moment.

"So what are we bloody well going to do?" said Fraser. "If those bastards murder Tor Hallenberg, Nobel Peace Prize winner no less, the press is going to demand the return of public hanging for the Home Secretary personally, which is fine by me except that it'll just about blow The Department to hell and gone."

"We'll have to get another man inside," said Tarrant. "I don't know how, and I dread how long it may take, but it's the only option."

Fraser nodded towards the photographs. "After what they did to Nash, you'll have to make it a volunteer job anyway, and we're not going to get knocked over in the rush."

Tarrant looked at him balefully. "So suggest something better."

Fraser hesitated, then said warily, "We need a different approach. A way of getting to these people fast. We don't see any way, but we know somebody outside The Department with a knack for that kind of thing. She thinks differently from the way we do—"

"Forget it!" Tarrant said sharply. "Just forget it, Jack. She's left blood and skin and God knows what else all over the place for me, and it's enough. I can't even begin to think about getting her into this bloody mess."

Fraser chewed his lip. "She has this knack," he said carefully. "And she wouldn't be on her own, would she? Both she and Willie Garvin are in the country just now. I'm having lunch with them at The Treadmill on Saturday. Honest to God, they're the only people I know, or even know of, who might get in fast and do the job. You wouldn't have to ask her. Just show her those pix you've been looking at."

"I've no right," Tarrant said quietly. "I've never had any right. We've sent people to their deaths over the years, God forgive us, but that was always on the cards in the job they were paid to do."

Fraser sighed. "The thing is, we have to operate The Department." He gestured towards the photographs. "I'm worried sick about the effect of this killing. We can keep it away from the press and public, but not from our own people. They already know what happened to Johnny Nash, and can you imagine what it will do to morale if we don't nail these buggers fast?"

"I can imagine," said Tarrant. "But there are some things even I can't bring myself to do, and what you suggest is one of them. Let me have a list of available volunteers on Monday and we'll take it from there. That's all for now."

Fraser got slowly to his feet and peered over the top of his spectacles with an air of nervous apprehension, a mouse of a man. "Very well, Sir Gerald," he said meekly.

The Treadmill stood a long stone's throw from the Thames and a few miles from Maidenhead. Between the pub and the river was a long low building without windows and with a single door at one end. This was Willie Garvin's combat room. It contained a miniature gymnasium, a dojo, and a range with targets for pistol, knife, and shortrange archery. There were racks of weapons, ancient and modern, two shower cubicles, a dressingroom, and a separate workroom lavishly equipped for almost any task from microengineering to wroughtiron work.

Willie was under one of the showers. For the past two hours he and Modesty had been workingout in several combat disciplines. He glanced at her now as he turned off the shower and began to towel himself. She had taken off her combat slacks and tunic, and was standing in front of the long mirror beside the open cubicles. Her body still gleamed with sweat from the workout, her feet were bare and she wore plain black pants and bra with a shoulder holster rig that held a Colt.32 just below and forward of her left armpit. She was drawing the gun and returning it to the holster again and again, sometimes slowly, sometimes at speed, her face a mask of concentration.

Willie finished drying himself, pulled on shirt and slacks, and moved across to watch closely. She sighed and turned to him with an apologetic air. "I'm sorry, Willie. I know you've put hours of work into designing this rig, but I can't make it work. I'm losing a fifth of a second."

Willie nodded and checked the position of the holster carefully. "Do it in slowmotion a few times so I can see, Princess."

She moved her hand to the butt slowly, and drew. After the third time Willie grimaced. "Your left knocker gets in the way," he said.

She laughed. "They're both part of the set, Willie love."

"So three cheers. I thought we might 'ave a problem there, but it was worth a try." He took the rig from her as she slipped it off. "Better stick to the old hipholster. You're only tooled up when we're on a caper, and the tunic hides it then."

"Yes. But thanks for trying." She moved to the other shower, took off bra and pants, put on a showercap and turned on the water. "We're respectable citizens now, so it's pretty well academic. Anyway, in all the years there were only three or four moments when I had to get a gun out fast." She began to soap herself, then paused and moved her head clear of the water to look at Willie. "But you never know, so let's take care not to forget first principles. If you do get into a gunfight there's no prize for coming second."

"Only a wooden overcoat," said Willie. He turned away and sat down to put on socks and shoes, grinning to himself. It never failed to amuse him that she genuinely regarded herself as being immensely cautious.

Five minutes later she was dressed and running a comb through her hair when the intercom on the wall buzzed and a woman's voice said, "Mr Fraser's here, Mr Garvin. Shall I tell him you'll be over soon?"