Andy McNab - Dark winter

'So why are you here?'

'Because somewhere along the line I ran out of choices. But enough of my shit. Why are you?'

'Well…' She stopped loading her magazine and looked up. 'I want to do other things, another life, but deep down I know it just wouldn't work. You know what I mean, don't you?'

'What're you going to be when you grow up?'

Now she smiled. 'Yeah, that's right. Dunno. You?'

'Haven't really thought about it. They keep telling me I'll be kept on until I'm killed or they get somebody better.'

We both fell silent and the gentle click of rounds and the sound of her chewing took over.

'Suzy, I need a favour.'

She just carried on.

'I've got to do some stuff between about ten and twelve thirty. That's why I gave the source your number, because you'll be on it all the time.'

'The boss said sort the child business out by three o'clock, Nick – I was only in the kitchen, wasn't I? I wasn't listening – you know the difference, don't you? The child, is it yours?'

'Look, I got the call in the middle of my holiday, and I've got to sort just a little more of my shit out – and hers.'

She stopped loading again. 'Are you married? Can't her mother do it?'

'No, she can't. And the Yes Man doesn't need to know. Two and a half hours tomorrow morning, and it's done. I'll only be twenty minutes away.'

She looked at me with what I guessed was something close to pity, and went back to loading. 'Don't fuck this up, Nick. I'm doing it for her, whoever she is.'

'Thanks.'

It wasn't long before we were both finished and she announced she was going to take a shower. I checked traser: it was just after eleven p.m., which would make it sixish in Maryland. I got my own cell from my bumbag in the front room and took it into the kitchen. Cradling it beneath my ear, I filled the kettle.

The plumbing's reaction time was lightning fast. 'Bastard!'

It made me smile, anyway.

The phone kept on ringing, then a smily version of Josh came on the answer-machine. 'Hey there, you know what to do: just let God bless you.'

I put the phone down. Of course, he was away until Saturday on the happy-clappy thing with his kids. Kelly wouldn't be able to fly back until Sunday because Josh had to be there to pick her up. Shit.

The kettle boiled, and a few seconds later Suzy came out of the bathroom wrapped in a big fluffy green towel, followed by a cloud of steam. She pulled her hair back as she walked the few steps down the corridor to the bedroom, giving me the V sign all the way.

'Fancy a brew?'

'Yeah, arsehole.'

She only part closed the bedroom door behind her, and I didn't try too hard to look away as she dried herself and walked to and from the wardrobe; she still had her bikini line from Penang.

'Don't think I can't see what you're up to, you sad little man. Get on with the brews.'

I turned back to the kettle. 'You been spending some time at the electric beach?'

Her laughter bounced out into the hallway. 'In your dreams, mate. In your dreams.'

By the time she came to join me in the front room, I was munching a very cold sausage roll, watching the pastry crumble on to my jeans and gather in a pile on the carpet. Her hair was combed back and she was in the same jeans and trainers, but now with a blue sweatshirt and fleece. She bent down near me to take one of the mugs. The smell of her shower gel reminded me that I really did need to keep the gun oil off my boxers. I had no other clothes.

She sat down and I threw her a card of doxycycline. I'd taken two capsules out of my own. 'How many should we be taking?' I swallowed them both with small sips of tea.

She wasn't too sure. 'I'll take mine with some food. They give me a stomach ache on their own.'

'Want some?' I offered her half of the sausage roll, but she waved her blister pack at me with a look of utter disgust.

'Why did you rev up like that with the drug head? It looked pretty personal…'

'I just hate those fuckers.' I tried to conjure up a smile. 'I hate it that they're making more money than me.'

'Hey, Nick, I'm not the enemy. I won't tell anyone – I'm covering for you tomorrow, remember.'

I pushed a bit of pastry that was hanging on my lips into my mouth and pressed out another two capsules. 'Yeah, OK. The child's got problems, and I thought I was going to be able to sort everything out here, but then I got the call and-'

'It's OK, Nick, that's all I want to know. Personal stuff, remember.' She got up and disappeared into the hallway. Just before she closed the bedroom door she said, 'Good luck tomorrow, Nick. Just make sure you keep the fucking phone on.' Later that night I lay on the settee under a couple of blankets, but I couldn't sleep. I couldn't shake off thoughts of the nightmare that tomorrow morning was going to bring. She was going to be devastated to be sent home just when she was getting somewhere with Hughes – and just when she and I were establishing some kind of connection again. But, fuck it, at least she'd be alive. If this ASU really got going, the consequences didn't bear thinking about – for all of us.

Saturday 10 May, 08:55 hrs

I'd got as far as the door when she called from the kitchen, 'Remember what I said – keep the phone on, yeah?' I had it half open when she appeared in the hall with a bowl of bran, her jaws working overtime. 'Hope it all goes well – you know…'

I went down the stairs, checking my inside jacket pocket. My hand connected with the carrier-bag last night's dinner had come in; it now contained ten packs of doxycycline.

I was going to leave the Mondeo where it was. The UK is the largest user of CCTV in the world. There's so much coverage in London linked to numberplate-recognition technology that the Yes Man would know immediately where I was going and might even be waiting for me when I arrived. The addition of eight hundred congestion-charge cameras was the final nail in the coffin. Ken Livingstone kept saying that they'd wipe all information at the end of each day, and maybe they would – but not necessarily before they'd passed it on to the Firm, Special Branch and anyone else who wanted to know about our lives. Even on foot around here the fucking things could capture the average person on film at least once every five minutes. Many of the cameras were 'smart CCTV', combining video surveillance with facial-recognition technology, searching one million faceprints per second.

My own cell was turned off, but the moan-phone stayed on as promised. Because it was on secure, I knew it couldn't be tracked – but I knew that wouldn't stop them trying.

I took a taxi to Chelsea and spent the entire journey grappling with how best to break the news to Kelly. At the turn-off for the Moorings I realized I was most of an hour early, so got the driver to take me the few hundred yards back up the road to Sloane Square. I went into WH Smith and bought a Jiffy-bag, a Bic and a book of stamps. Sealing the antibiotics inside, I wandered down Kings Road to the post office. Addressed to myself care of Jimmy and Carmen, and with enough stamps on to get it to the South Pole, the Jiffy finally made its way through the appropriate hole in the wall.

There were still another forty-five minutes to kill, so I walked into Next and bought a pile of underwear, socks, sweatshirts and jeans. It must have been the quickest three hundred pounds they'd taken in a long time. My disposable life hadn't changed much. I still didn't own many things; I just used kit and then binned it, whether it was razor blades, toothbrushes or clothes. The apartment in Crystal City was bare, apart from three sets of sheets, towels and jeans: one clean, one on, and one in the wash. Well, that was the theory: it all depended on whether I'd get the machine repaired. The rest – a second pair of boots and some trainers, a couple of shirts, a few bits of crockery and a job lot of house stuff from a cable TV channel – I didn't really need. It wasn't as if I was entertaining every night. That was how I'd landed up buying it in the first place.