Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

He was digesting this unpleasant thought when he heard a faint noise coming from the front of the house – a house that was supposed to be empty. It sounded like a door opening and closing. The sound was not repeated.

He was tempted to stay where he was, to ignore what he almost doubted he had heard. He checked the perimeter alarm board – there were monitors in every room – but all seemed secure.

He took the Remington and chambered a round. Moving as silently as he could, he left the kitchen and edged along the corridor to the front hall. He had two doors to choose from. As he deliberated, the door of the living room opened. Fitzduane dropped into a crouch.

Etan stood there.

"Holy shit!" exclaimed Fitzduane.

Etan smiled. "Shane's idea," she said. "The colonel as matchmaker." She looked at the gun. "He's told me quite a bit. Things make more sense now."

Fitzduane realized he was still pointing the gun. He lowered it, replaced the safety catch, and laid it down gently. He felt weak and happy and scared stiff and more than a little stupid. His heart was pounding. He couldn't believe how glad he was to see her. He sat on the floor.

"Hugo, are you all right?" she said anxiously. "For God's sake, say something. You're white as a sheet."

Fitzduane looked up at her, and his pleasure was plain to see. He shook his head. "Cuckoo," he said.

Etan was wearing jeans tucked into half boots and an Aran sweater. He could smell her perfume. She pushed the gun away with her boot and then knelt beside him. "Staying long?" she said. She peeled off her sweater and blouse. She wasn't wearing a bra. Her breasts were firm and full, the nipples pronounced. Her voice had gone husky. She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed. He didn't argue. He lay back.

"Soldier from the war returning. Where have you been? How has he been?" She undid his belt and unzipped him and encircled his organ with her hand. She squeezed hard. "I have a proprietary interest," she said. "My mother told me never to put anything in my mouth if I didn't know where it had been." She teased him with her tongue. "Where has this little man been?" She released her hand and looked. "On second thoughts," she said, "he's not so little." She shucked her boots and wriggled out of her jeans, then lay on her stomach on the carpet. "Do it this way," she said, "nice and slow and deep." She raised her buttocks suggestively and parted her legs. Fitzduane put his hand between them and stroked her where she liked. He ran his lips and tongue along her back and slowly moved down. It was only after she had been moaning and quivering for quite some time that he took her doggie fashion on the floor. Halfway through he turned her and entered her from above. She reached up and sucked his nipples, and he gasped. He drove into her again and again, and their loins became slick.

When it was over, he took her in his arms and just held her. Then he kissed her gently on the forehead. "You know," he said, and there was laughter in his voice, "this has been a year of tough women."

Etan bit his ear and then lay beside him, her head resting on one arm. Her free hand caressed his loins. "Tell me," she said, smiling sweetly, "about Erika."

Kilmara sat in his office examining yet again the plans of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin and the security arrangements. Every fresh examination made him feel unhappier.

The embassy had been built in the days when a violent protest consisted of a rotten egg or two thrown at the ambassador's car. It seemed to have been designed to facilitate terrorist attacks.

The three-story circular building – plus basements – had a facade consisting mainly of glass hung in a prestressed concrete frame. Offices were positioned around the perimeter of each floor. The core of the building was a floor-to-ceiling rotunda overlooked by the circular corridors. The embassy was located at the apex of a V-shaped junction of two roads, each lined with houses that overlooked the embassy building. Car access to the basement level was by way of a short driveway guarded by a striped pole.

A terrorist was faced with a downright excess of viable choices. The place was so easy to attack that if you didn't know better – and Kilmara unfortunately did – you might think that there must be a snag, or else be put off the idea for reasons of sportsmanship because the target hadn't a chance. Even the sewers – thought why any terrorist would choose the sewers when he had such a range of more hygienic options was beyond Kilmara – were not secure.

Kilmara closed the file in disgust. Short of blocking off the access roads – impossible because one was vital for south Dublin traffic – and surrounding the place with a battalion of troops – too expensive considering the state of the nation's finances – full or even adequate security for the embassy was impossible to achieve against a small well-armed terrorist unit. Against a force of seventy, his efforts would be derisory.

Unless, of course, he got lucky. With a sigh he opened the file again. The saying was true. The harder he worked, the luckier he seemed to get. He wondered if the same principle applied to the other side, and he was not pleased with his conclusion.

The bottom line in this situation meant: one, he had to obey orders; two, out of his full complement of sixty Rangers, roughly a third were assigned to full-time embassy duty, and given that there were three shifts per day, that meant that almost the full command was committed; three, they were operating in exactly the wrong way for a force of this type – tied down and waiting to be attacked rather than staying flexible and keeping the initiative; four, training time was being seriously eroded (to keep to their unusually high standard of marksmanship, Rangers shot for several hours a day at least three days a week and often more); five, his own time was being used up running this screw-up of an operation; six, God knows what else was happening while this was going on.

It was a crock.

Fitzduane stayed another night in Kilmara's house and left for home the following afternoon, his body satiated from a night of lovemaking and the long, deep sleep that had followed.

Kilmara had called to say he wouldn't be back and the couple could have the house to themselves. "Couple?" Fitzduane had queried, stroking Etan's nipples with the tips of his fingers.

"Lucky guess," said Kilmara dryly.

Fitzduane laughed. "We're getting married."

"About time," said Kilmara. "I've got to go." He phoned back about two minutes later. "Don't forget what I said," he added. "People in love are dangerous; they forget things."

"I don't feel dangerous," said Fitzduane.

"I'd feel a little better if you did. Check in by radio when you get home. The signal is automatically scrambled. You'll be able to talk freely."

Fitzduane was thoughtful as he replaced the phone. Etan ran her tongue over his penis. "Pay attention," she said. He did.

The Pillars of Hercules – better known in more recent times as the Strait of Gibraltar – are a classic naval choke point dominated by the Rock of Gibraltar.

Gibraltar, if one forgets for a moment the slightly paranoid local population of some twenty-eight thousand crammed into a land area the size of a parking lot, consists of surveillance equipment, weaponry, hollowed-out rock, military personnel, and apes in roughly that order.

Despite all this concentration of spies, people, apes, and materiel, it was nonetheless scarcely surprising that the passing through the Strait of Gibraltar of an Italian cattle boat, the Sabine , en route from Libya to Ireland to pick up a fresh cargo of live meat for ritual slaughter on return to Tripoli, should be logged but attract no further attention.