Andy McNab - Zero hour

Anna sparked up another of the boss's cigarettes and put the lighter back on the table. The smoke curled from her mouth and nose before she spoke. The only words I recognized now sounded like names of countries. He was still calm. He lit himself another cigarette too and took such a mega-drag I could see the paper burn down like a fuse.

Anna sat and waited while he thought about what she'd said. But she didn't wait for long. She stood up before he'd delivered his answer: she'd had enough of this bullshit.

I turned towards the North Face guys. I wanted them to know that we intended to leave in one piece. Fuck the mobiles and the other stuff. I moved into the corridor just in time to see Mr Big give his mates a very satisfied grin and put his coat back on.

The small guy started talking. Anna stopped, turned back, went to the table and sat down. She helped herself to another cigarette from his pack.

He gave an order to one of the North Faces. I heard the front door open and close.

We waited in silence. The two of them smoked. The boss checked his mobile now and again for messages as Anna sat back, picking tobacco from her lips. The sobbing above us gradually subsided.

After three or four minutes the sound of clubland laughter echoed down the hallway and a new body appeared. Dressed in a brown overcoat over a black polo neck, he was so slim his head looked as if it really belonged on someone else's shoulders. Everything about him was immaculate. His nails were manicured, possibly even polished. Not one dark brown hair from what was left on his head was out of place. He didn't give Anna or me as much as a glance as he headed for the small guy's side of the table.

He jerked his head. 'She speak English?'

He was no Russian: his accent was Scouse, deep, strong and quick.

The small guy shrugged.

The Scouser took a seat next to his mate.

Anna stubbed out what was left of her cigarette on the plate and frowned impatiently, wanting to get on with business. 'Who are you?'

'I'm Santa fucking Claus. What the fuck's it to you? Why have you come to us?'

He wasn't exactly cross-eyed, but they looked ever so slightly inwards. He reminded me of someone I'd known back in my battalion days. Robot was permanently AWOL. He'd always either gone to a Millwall match, or got arrested after one. His big pleasure in life was smashing up shop fronts or battering other teams' fans with a hammer. Being in the army had messed up his social life.

I always kept clear of Robot. He was as crazy and unpredictable as he looked. One day he walked into someone in the cookhouse by mistake. Instead of 'Why don't you look where you're going?' the guy said, 'Why don't you go where you're looking?' It cracked us up, but Robot didn't see the funny side. The squaddie he'd collided with was in hospital for weeks with a fractured jaw.

Anna relaxed back into her chair. 'I want girls. I'm expanding into Italy, France, Germany. I want to pick them up from here, and do my own distribution.'

The Scouser leant over and examined the last cigarette in the pack. With a curl of the lip he extracted a silver case from an inside pocket. He flipped it open, selected an untipped cancer stick of his own and bounced it up and down in his lips as he spoke. 'What's your name?' He reached for the lighter.

'Anna.' Her tone was assured. She was going for it.

The Scouser dipped into his coat and pulled out Lilian's pictures, along with our mobiles. 'What the fuck's this shite about?'

Anna didn't miss a beat. 'She is one of mine, from Moldova.'

He smiled. 'Not any more.'

Anna sat back and accepted the news with a slow nod. 'Is she upstairs?'

'Not now. Those two are just perks for the lads.' He waved an arm towards the doorway. 'Can't be all work, no play. Know what I mean?'

She didn't bother answering. 'The hard part is getting the girls into Europe. If you can do that, why don't I just come to you? It will make my life easier.' She retrieved the pictures from the table and screwed them up. 'Do you have girls for sale, or am I wasting my time?'

'That depends.'

She pointed a finger at him. 'I want young ones. No crack whores or ugly pigs the Turks have already finished with. I want the ones you get fresh from here. No scars, no skin ink.' She draped an arm coolly over the back of her chair.

He put cigarette and lighter to one side. 'Who wants them? Who sent you?'

She laughed. 'Why? Are you with Animal Welfare? You want to make sure they go to good homes? Now, do you have some for me to see, or what? I want a good price. If I get that, we can do business. A lot more business. But young. No more than twenty-one, twenty-two.'

The Scouser flicked a speck of ash off his coat, then studied her through the cloud of smoke that still hung over the table. He finally shrugged and put his hands in the air. 'Tell you what, give me a number. Maybe I'll call you.'

'No. Fuck you.' She stood up, grabbed our mobiles and turned, ready to leave.

He waved an arm. 'For fuck's sake, calm down. Sit down a minute.' He pulled out a pen and wrote on the cigarette packet.

She came and stood beside me. She wasn't going to do fuck-all of what he said.

He threw the empty packet at her. 'Be at that address tomorrow. I'll see what I can do. Wear one layer of clothes. That coat. And have a fucking bath, will you? You smell and look like shite.' He pointed at me. 'And no fucking ape.'

She had what she wanted. She turned towards the door, confidently expecting the North Faces to part like the Red Sea.

Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam Wednesday, 17 March 09.25 hrs The flight from Copenhagen only took ninety minutes and landed on time. We'd followed our new mate Robot's advice and bought new gear and day sacks to carry it in, then gone back to the hotel for a shower. Of course Anna had kept her coat.

I reached into my brown-leather charity-shop bomber jacket and pulled out my passport. I'd put it into the right-hand inside pocket so I had to use my left to take it out. The action was awkward enough to remind me I was doing something unusual: that I was Nicholas Smith, not Nick Stone. Julian's guys hadn't exactly pushed the creative envelope there, but it fitted my alias business cover. Nick Smith was an unemployed satellite-dish engineer. He'd only ever worked for small outfits. You never used a well-known company like Sky or BT as cover. If you did and got caught, they'd go ballistic. Apart from anything else, you'd be putting their genuine personnel at risk. They could become a target for reprisals.

In my well-worn jeans, bomber and Timberlands I was just one of the thousands of Brit workers moving in and out of Schiphol and other EU airports every day. They spilt out of the no-frills flights from Gatwick and East Midlands, day sacks and wheelies in hand so they could bypass the luggage carousels and get to work. With a couple of days' growth, I really looked the part. Nick Smith was in good company as he approached the Immigration desks.

Being unemployed is always good cover. You don't have to go into detail about who you work for and risk having it checked. Chances are, you won't be questioned going from one EU country to another, but you never know. All I needed was enough to get me through the first layer of security.

Anna was four or five places behind me in the queue. My cover didn't sit well with her in tow, and that was one of the reasons why we weren't together. The other was that the meeting Robot had lined up for this morning was our best and maybe only chance of getting hold of Lilian. If for any reason we got lifted together, that chance would evaporate.

My passport was now in my right hand. I flicked the picture page open with my thumb, ready for the scanner. The flat screens beyond the desk by the luggage carousel showed newsreels of yesterday's suicide bombings and Taliban attacks in Kabul. The caption said the death toll had reached double figures.