The Greek Key

'Let the bloody thing find us in here.' He switched off the engine. 'At least we've found four possible places to site the vans tomorrow.'

'The chopper's coming,' warned Seton-Charles.

'You must have imagined it,' Newman commented. 'I didn't see a car.'

'Please keep flying along the country road below us,' Tweed instructed the pilot. He raised his glasses again as he replied to Newman. 'I tell you, I saw an Austin Metro. It matched the outline. And it was darkish – could have been blue.'

'We'll find it…'

'Which is exactly what we're trying to do.'

They were flying at eight hundred feet – the minimum altitude permitted because they were close to the forbidden flying zone round Brize Norton. The pilot followed the winding course of the empty road below. Tweed had the glasses screwed tightly against his eyes. He scanned every likely hiding-place.

A dense copse of evergreens came up in his lenses, a copse which straddled the road where it turned a bend. He ordered the pilot to circle it so he could study it from every angle. Where the devil had the Metro gone to? The pilot completed one circuit, commenced another.

Tweed saw an isolated barn standing in the fields a short distance from the road. From that height he looked down on the sagging roof. Nothing. Anywhere.

'Fly a mile or two, behind that ridge we came over. Then turn and come back,' he ordered.

Inside the Metro the chopper sounded like a giant bee circling. Saunders was sweating. He mopped his forehead. Foster sat patiently, gloved hand tapping the wheel. Saunders stiffened, lowered his window. A blast of icy air came inside.

'We might as well keep warm,' Foster told him.

'That chopper's going away. I can hear the engine sound receding. We've done the job. We might as well get back.'

'Not yet. It could be a trick. Go away and then come back – find us in the open.'

'You're assuming it's looking for us.'

'I always assume the worst. We wait…'

Five minutes later they heard the helicopter returning. Foster stared ahead in silence. It wasn't his way to say, 'I told you.' He waited half an hour until the machine had flown off a second time, then started the motor, backed on to the road, drove back the way they had come.

The Wessex cruised round the approaches to the perimeter of Brize Norton air base for another three hours. They frequently crossed the Vale of White Horse, maintaining the permitted altitude of eight hundred feet. Tweed's eyes were aching from staring through his field glasses. As they returned to Fairoaks, coming in to land, Newman made his comment.

'Well, you were wrong about the Metro. And we've found damn-all. Marler reports the same result from his machine.'

Tweed had a map of the Brize Norton area spread out on his lap. He had marked with a cross the place where he was sure he had spotted the Metro. Using a ruler, he measured three miles in each direction from the cross, then drew a circle with a diameter of six miles. He handed the map over the seat to Newman.

'That's the area we concentrate on tomorrow.'

'Why? We never found your Metro.'

'For that very reason. I couid have been wrong- the car could have belonged to anyone. But it did a vanishing trick. And we scoured the ground without finding it. I think it went into hiding. That's highly suspicious. I scanned every road after it disappeared. No sign of it.'

'If you say so.'

'And,' Tweed added as they were landing, 'I'm changing the dispositions of Force Z tomorrow. We need more men on the ground.'

They drove back to London to spend the night at Park Crescent, to see if any further information had come through. Butler left his motorcycle at Fairoaks. 'Didn't see a thing,' he reported as they drove back. 'But I have a few more roads to check – to the east of the air base.'

'Which I'd guess is where Winterton's men would place their missile launchers,' Tweed remarked. ' East. Because that's the direction Gorbachev's plane will fly in from. And I have to call the PM when I get back. She was insistent on that for some reason I can't fathom…'

They had just arrived back at Park Crescent when Paula called from Somerset. 'I'm speaking from Minehead again,' she opened. Tve had quite a day. The police brought back a woman's body found in the Somerset Levels – that sinister area we crossed on our first trip here.'

'I remember. Sounds a bit grisly.'

'A peat digger found a hand sticking out of the place where he was digging. When Inspector Farthing told me I had an idea. I asked to visit the mortuary. It was the cleaning woman from the bungalow estate. I showed Farthing the photo I'd taken. She'd been shot once in the back of the neck.'

They were cleaning up before they left. No macabre pun intended.'

'And Farthing has been very helpful. He's put two men in plain clothes to help me watch the commando trio. They're all still here. That's it.'

Take care. I have an important call to make.'

The four men sitting in his office and Monica watched him as he called the PM on scrambler. He listened, said he understood and put down the phone. He looked around at Newman, Marler, Butler and Nield.

'She's just heard from Moscow Gorbachev will be flying here in four Ilyushin 62s.'

'Four?' Newman enquired. 'I know he's unusual but how can he do that?'

'It's a clever Soviet precaution – security. No one will know which of the four machines Gorbachev and his wife will be aboard. Maybe the PM gave him a hint of possible trouble. I don't know. Now, we've eaten, so everyone get some sleep. Tomorrow is the day.'

53

Monday, 7 December. 7 a.m. Sully lay in the road covered with blood near the entrance to Cherry Farm. It was real blood: Foster, against Anton's protests, had used a knife to cut his forearm lightly. He had then smeared blood all over Sully's face and neck. Inside the farmhouse Seton-Charles was using sticking plaster to cover the flesh wound.

Nearby Sully the Austin Metro had its bonnet pushed against a tree trunk, positioned at an angle across the road. The driver's door was wide open. George Hobart, driving his Post Office van, slowed, then stopped as he saw the body sprawled in the road. He jumped out. Only twenty-two years old, he wore his Post Office cap, unlike the more veteran postmen who went bareheaded.

'Nasty accident,' said Foster, appearing from behind a tree. 'It just happened. Could you take him to hospital? We've no transport.'

'Of course I'll help.' Hobart approached the 'body' and swallowed. 'He looks in a bad way.'

'Something for your help…'

Foster reached into his breast pocket, hauled out his wallet, dropped it on the road at Hobart's feet. He was slow retrieving it and Hobart bent forward to pick up the wallet. Foster pressed the muzzle of his Luger against the back of Hobart's neck, pulled the trigger. The old method of execution used in the motherland when he'd been young. Hobart slumped to the ground.

Saunders appeared with a large wheelbarrow. Foster picked up the dead youngster and his cap, askew, dropped off. When he'd dumped the body inside the wheelbarrow and Saunders was taking it towards the farmhouse Foster picked up the cap. Climbing into the cab of the large van, he drove it off the road along a track into the woods opposite the farm entrance.

Then he checked his watch. They'd all better give Anton a hand to fill in the grave. He got behind the wheel of the Metro, closed the door, backed it on to the road and drove it back to the shed. They'd be on their way in fifteen minutes.

Tweed wore a thick woollen pullover, a heavy sports jacket, a woollen scarf round his neck, and corduroy trousers tucked inside knee-length boots with rubber-grip soles.

The Wessex chopper was again flying at eight hundred feet and Tweed sat in the same seat, map in his lap, binoculars looped round his neck. In front of him Newman sat holding the handle of the swivel-mounted machine-gun by the closed door. On the starboard side the airborne soldier, beret slanted at exactly the same angle, sat peering out of the window through his field glasses.