Peter O'Donnell - Cobra Trap

"A few years ago the Ministry of Defence were going to use it for one of their research laboratories. They built an outer wall round it and set up a radar alarm system. Then the idea fell through and the place became a white elephant," Tarrant looked up from the report, "until it was rented two months ago by a Mr Mountjoy. He has some ten men in residence there with him."

"Plus Hallenberg, that's for sure now. What's their cover, Sir G.?"

"Holy Orders. Mountjoy purports to have set the place up as a retreat for overworked clerics."

"Blimey. A whole team of the ungodly playing at vicars?"

Tarrant shrugged. "Bizarre, I agree. But clever. And I've been saving the bad news, Willie. Poldeacon was built over the ruins of a medieval castle with the usual primitive sanitary facilities. In this case a vertical shaft drops down to a good way below sealevel, where there's an influx of sea through the workings of a tin mine that was abandoned in the last century. The effect is that anything dropped down the shaft is carried out to sea by an undertow." He put the piece of paper aside. "The shaft is capacious enough to accept a body, and is believed to have done so more than once in the past, so Hallenberg could be gone within a minute of their alarm system warning them of a raid. In these circumstances I don't see how we can get him out alive."

"You reckon they'll 'ave put all the radar circuits in working order?"

"Yes. Why else choose that place? They're very efficient people."

"And that's it? The lot?"

"It's all I can tell you."

"Ah, well." Willie got up and moved to stand gazing out of the great picture window. After a while Modesty sighed, held her embroidery out at arm's length to study it, and said, "I try. I really do try, but it looks awful. I don't know what I'm doing wrong."

Willie moved from the window, took the embroidery she held out for him, and examined it carefully. "It's the stitches," he announced at last. "You do the stitches wrong."

"Oh well, if that's all…"

She got up and moved to the window where Willie had been standing, holding her elbows as she looked absently out across the park. Tarrant drew breath to speak, caught Willie's warning shake of the head, and let the breath out quietly. A full minute passed before she turned from the window, and now there was a sparkle in her eye. "Willie, can you get hold of the weird girl you were rubbing chests with at that gathering last night? The girl with the urgent glands?"

Tarrant saw sudden contentment in Willie as he put down the embroidery he had been wryly studying. "Sure, Princess. I've got 'er number."

Modesty said, "I think maybe she spoke to the vicars after we'd left, and blew us accidentally. But if she's got a black balloon she could be just what we want."

An hour before noon Willie was sitting with Lucy Fuller-Jones on a park bench and she was saying, "You do understand why I couldn't ask you to the flat, Willie?" She gazed sadly across the Thames. "I'm sure you're a very nice man, but it's with nice men that I don't quite trust myself."

Suppressing a powerful urge to take her by the ears and turn her head to face him, Willie said, "Sure. Fine. I love it 'ere in the park, Lucy. Love it. Okay? Now, did you listen to what I've just been telling you?"

Now she turned her head to regard him with large, doelike eyes. "Yes, of course I did, and it's a dreadful story, honestly, absolutely dreadful. How can people go around just killing other people like that? I mean, that poor Swedish man. I don't like to think about him."

Willie started to say, "Norwegian," then decided it didn't matter. Instead he said gently, "They 'aven't killed 'im yet, Lucy, and you don't have to think about 'im. Just help us get 'im out."

A touch of curiosity entered her gaze. "Are you a sort of policeman?"

"I'm sort of on their side."

She bit her lip, frowning in concentration. "Well… I know Daddy's frightfully keen on law and order, that's why he told me to go to that abolition thing to see what they were up to. I mean, he feels there are all sorts of people who ought to be hanged, and he's certainly been awfully sweet about buying me a new balloon, so I think I ought to."

"Ought to help?"

"Well yes, silly. It might be rather difficult but I'm sure we'll manage if you really can arrange transport and a launching team."

Willie offered up a silent prayer of thanks. "Anything you want, Lucy, including a military 'elicopter if need be. Anything."

She eyed him with anxiety. "But I won't be alone with you in the basket? Being up in a balloon is frightfully erotic, you know."

"We'll 'ave a chaperon. A girl. Honest."

She smiled brightly and stood up. "Well that's all right, then. I suppose we'd better hurry, hadn't we?"

He took her arm and began to walk briskly towards the park gate. "Yes. I expect Mr Hallenberg would like us to get a move on. He's due for the chop at dawn tomorrow."

She winced. "I'd rather not talk about him, Willie."

"All right. What do you do when you're not ballooning or meditating?"

"I go swimming a lot. Long distance swimming. It's much more lasting than cold showers."

Willie shook his head. "One day, Lucy," he said kindly, "I must 'ave a serious talk with you."

Two hours after sundown Tarrant stood in the narrow road that led through woods to Poldeacon. He was watching a jeep move slowly in reverse. A man holding a hand radio walked beside it with Fraser at his elbow. From a winch bolted to the floor behind the driver a thin wire cable ran out sideways from the jeep, rising at an angle of fortyfive degrees, vanishing into the moonlight above the woods.

The radio squawked. The man holding it spoke to the driver and the jeep stopped. The radio man spoke quietly into the instrument and a brief exchange with a female voice took place. When it was over, the radio man spoke to Fraser, who moved to join Tarrant by the car in which they had both travelled from the heliport at Plymouth. A great deal had been achieved in the last ten hours, and Tarrant was thankful that the government minister he answered to had used his authority forcefully during that time.

Fraser said, "Okay so far. They went up a thousand feet and the wind took them across the top of Poldeacon. They were winched back, but ended up a bit east of the place, so the jeep's just towed them west." He sniffed grudgingly. "I had that Fuller-Jones girl tabbed as a cardcarrying idiot, but she's been manoeuvring in three dimensions, fore and aft, laterally, up and down, and she's done a bloody good job. They're in position now and the wind's holding steady. Full moon, clear sky, and you can see a hell of a way. I don't know whether that's good or bad."

A hundred feet above the roof of Poldeacon Modesty and watched with mingled surprise and respect as Lucy Fuller-Jones juggled with the burner and the hot air release valve. They were both in black combat rig: calflength boots, slacks, Willie with his shirt unbuttoned for quick access to the twin knives sheathed in echelon on his chest, two small weighted wooden clubs clipped to his belt; Modesty with a tunic that fell to her thighs and covered the bolstered Colt.32, the kongo in a pocket, her hair tied back in a short club, a small haversack on one shoulder.

Lucy said, "Even if the wind doesn't veer, there's bound to be drift. I'll try to hold still, but you mustn't count on it, Willie."

"We know that, Lucy. No sweat."

Modesty said, "It would be nice if we could get Hallenberg out this way, Lucy, but if not we'll call in the cavalry."

"Oh, jolly good. What cavalry?"

"There's a squad of armed policemen standing by. Once we're in, and find Hallenberg, we should be able to keep him intact for ten minutes or so while they get here."