Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

Blagg had guts, if not much sense of self-preservation, walking single-handed into a set-up like that, without any of the real spook-craft 'Mrs Howard' would have been taught. Usually in such a job you had four well-armed mates never more than a hundred yards away.

Maxim asked Caswell: "Did you ever meet this Mrs Howard?"

"No. Never heard of her until just now. We just got the word from Command that Captain Fairbrother wanted Ron for a week or so and off he went. He didn't tell us anything when he came back." That last was a small but perhaps helpful compliment.

"And thejob went off as planned?"

"The Mick didn't turn up the first time. She said she'd have it set up again and we went back three mghts later and it was all right. That was all."

So Blagg had actually gone intwice When the first time could easily have been a rehearsal, for the other side to see how many men came along, and then three days to rig an ambush.

Blagg must have guessed what Maxim was thinking. "She said it was important, sir. And Captain Fairbrother. "

Caswell glanced at Maxim with a lift of his eyebrows and a small humourless smile, then went back to the rifles.

'I see. And d'you mean she turned up again -m Germany?"

"That's right. At Soltau."

It began quite simply a message delivered to the barracks asking if he could ring Mrs Howard for a chat about old times. For a moment the name meant nothing – far more memorable things had happened during his time in Armagh – but then he remembered and was puzzled. There had been nothing personal in their brief meetings, she had been a trained professional, saying almost nothing during the drives down towards the border but chatting and smiling happily while they waited ina café. Mostly they had talked about films, he recalled, she looked at very little television and he hadn't read any of the books she mentioned Well, it was only a phone call. He got a German woman answering and asked distinctly for "Frau Howard, bitte There was a pause, and the voice said "Ja, Mrs Howard," which convinced him that 'Mrs Howard' was just a code-name, not even a fake identity She came on a few seconds later "Mr Blagg7How are you' Very good of you to call so soon Can we meet, perhaps' Are you free now7"

A little dazed, he found himself committed to meeting her in an hour's time ata cafénear the station. He could just visualise it a family place where British soldiers hardly ever went -which was probably why she had chosen it. He was still puzzled, but not yet apprehensive/ He wasn't even sure he'd recognise her, but of course he did. Even so, she looked different from the timem Armagh. There she'd been almost middle-aged and stolid, red-cheeked and fluffy fair hair. Now her hair was scraped back in a sort of bun, giving her a leaner look, her clothes were more expensive, though she still had a full and somehow loose figure inside them.

She could easily be German, she certainly sounded like it when ordering him a beer. For five minutes they talked about films and how was he fittingmwith the Battalion again, then she said simply "We would like you to do another job, just like last time "

By then, he'd been half expecting that, but still didn't know what to say.

She went on "We are sorry there is so little time now. But we did not know how this job would go, when I came to Germany "

"When is it, then?"

"Friday – tomorrow – if you can. If not, perhaps we can make it for Saturday "

That was no problem The training programme was on schedule – the Battalion hadn't been turned inside out by a Northern Ireland tour for the past two years – and he could be free from about five o'clock But – "Good," Mrs Howard said "Can you bring a bag, a suitcase, some clothes' And some identification, not the Army. Do you have a passport7"

Most soldiers didn't bother to get passports until they married and thought of family holidaysm Spain. But the SAShad insisted on Blagg having one – occupation given as 'Government official' – in case it needed to shoot him off incognito to somewhere to hell and gone, just as it insisted on keeping him immunised against so many unlikely diseases that his left arm was usually as rigid as Jim Caswell's.

"I'm all right," he said, "but -"

"We may have to stay at a hotel, a motel. That will be no problem. Good. Now – would you like to call Captain Fairbrother? Just to check that I am telling the truth? I will understand – I want you to be sure, quite sure I can give you a London number, but can you please do it on a secure line? You understand that, I know "

He thought of the usual queue of soldiers outside the single telephone box inside the barrack gate, jingling 5 DM coins and looking at their watches every few seconds. Asecure line? Hecould ask the company commander, but he could also imagine the answer. He chuckled Being SAStrained gave you a glimpse behind secret doors that some officers didn't even know existed. And those two evenings out along the border had convinced him of her background.

"It's okay," he reassured her. "No problem. But I don't have a gun."

"I will bring one. A pistol or a revolver?"

"A revolver, if it's not too big. "

"Of course." She smiled. Her teeth were large and rather wide-spaced, but very white. How old was she? Growing up without a mother or aunts, he was bad at guessing older women's ages. She could be forty or fifty, almost anything. She was just a different generation.

"I will be here, outside the station, at six tomorrow. In a blue Volkswagen Polo. Okay?"

When she'd gone, he stayed sipping his beer and wondering. He wished he could check with somebody. Captain Fairbrother, even Jim Caswell But if it was no more a problem than the last time, he'd have forgotten all about it in a month. And this wasn't Provocountry.

They drove south-west, roughly paralleling the East-West border, not getting significantly close to it. They were heading, she said, for Bad Schwarzendorn, a little spa town just into the hills beyond Paderborn. A strange little place; it had one of these great walls of blackthorn twigs fitted onto a wooden framework at least ten metres high. Pumps pushed the spa water up so that it trickled down the twigs and partly evaporated, making the water even thickermminerals, before it was fed into the town baths. The twigs turned to rigid fossils, and you could sit in the downwind side of the great wall and breathe the cool damp air blowing out of it. That was supposed to do you good, too. The Germans were still great believers in spa cures. Half, more than half, the patients were paid for by health insurance schemes, and most of the local guest houses had contracts with one company or another. You bathed, you walked the neatly laid out paths in the pine woods, you breathed the salty air – then sat down to a huge Fleischschnitte mit Bratkartoffeln. She grinned, rocking her head from side to side. There was nothing the Germans would rather spend money on than alternately wrecking and repairing their health.

Just before it got dark, he had her stop the car on a lonely stretch of road and fired the gun out of the window at a tall flower sticking up in a field about ten yards away. The third shot exploded the head in a flutter of purple petals. The revolver was about what he'd expected: A Spanish near-copy of a.38 Colt, with a heavy trigger pull. He reloaded and they drove on.

"I could not get a holster," she said. "Did you want one?"

"No. They're like clothes: no use if you don't choose them yourself. Pocket's best, otherwise… How're we going to play this?"

She lit a cigarette and thought for a moment. "We will be apart. He does not expect you, but he is suspicious. He is about sixty years, small, fat, with chins A big nose, the gold half-glasses, not much hair and he will dress like a businessman. Also he will have with him a newspaper."