"You said you went to school in Worcester?"
"That's right."
"How come you have a Liverpool accent, then?"
"Born there. Never lost it.
"All right. What was the name of the school again?"
"Hadlow Comprehensive."
"Address?"
"It's on Kidderminster Road."
"Does it have its own sports fields?"
"Yes."
"Where are they?"
"Right behind it."
"Swimming pool?"
"I dunno about now, but it didn't then."
"What dates did you say you were there?"
"Let's see." Johnny paused.
"I must have gone there in eighty three left in ninety-one."
"That's funny." The detective's voice remained level and polite.
"We've checked the records, and they don't mention anyone called Martin Turner attending between those dates."
"Really?" Johnny raised his eyebrows and looked coolly at the man opposite.
"You know they had a big fire the year after I left, in the spring? I think a lot of records got burnt."
"Well, we'd better check again…"
Good on yer, Johnny, I was thinking. Great stuff! I knew his cover story nearly as well as he did, and I could see that he was sticking to it. The home team was probably bluffing: Johnny certainly was, and he seemed sure they were. Since this was Saturday, and in the school holidays, how could they have checked the school records?
"Good!" said one of the supervisors in the control room.
"He's doing well. I like that."
Next door, things weren't going so well. Pete Pascoe, a Cornishman, was letting his temper get the better of him. His reddish hair and moustache hinted at his Celtic origins: he could be a fiery devil and needed to watch himself.
His interrogator seemed to have realised this.
"Your family," he said.
"Your brother's how old?"
"Twenty-four."
"And he's a mechanic?"
"That's right."
"What's his address?"
"Twenty-eight… twenty-eight Northcourt Avenue, Reading."
"That's where you said your sister lives."
"It is. She does. Simon lodges with her."
"He's not married, then?"
"No."
"But she is?"
"Of course. I told you."
"And her married name?"
"Jenkins." Suddenly Pete's patience ran out.
"For Christ's sake!" he snapped.
"We've been through all this before. Have you got nothing better to ask?"
"Just checking," said the detective smoothly. On the monitor I could see Pete's nostrils working in and out a sure sign that he was getting steamed up. Beside me, one of the supervisors made a grimace and wrote something on his notepad.
I watched for a while longer, but then I thought, To hell with this. It was amusing to see the guys getting grilled, but I decided the time could be better spent: we still had a long way to go in preparing for our Russian trip, and not many days in which to get everything done.
I looked at my watch: 9:35. The exercise had gone on long enough. That sort of thing's OK if there's no big deal in prospect, but we had a hell of a team job to tackle. What we should all have been doing was learning Russian, not pissing about with cover stories in pissy Ashford. It was time we went back to Hereford and got stuck into our final training.
A guy from Spetznaz, the Russian special forces unit, was due in on Monday, coming to have a look at our set-up and give us advice on kit. On Thursday our advance party would fly to Balashika, the base outside Moscow, to suss out the accommodation and facilities, with the main party following within two weeks.
I slipped out of the control room and found Jock Morrison.
"Listen," I said, 'do we have to go through with this?"
"What's the matter?"
"I want to stop it. For one thing, they've only caught three of our guys. I'm through, and I know Rick Ellis is too I saw him boarding a train. I bet the other three are clear as well. And anyway, we've got more important things to do than sit around here playing games."
"Well.. " Jock looked doubtful.
"It's not my decision."
"I know. It's down to me. Tell you what we'll give it another hour and see how things are going then. I'm going to call the Feathers and find out who's made it."
The Feathers Hotel, on the old London road, was the RV for anyone who'd passed through the screen. We'd got rooms booked, but it was a sure bet that the lads would be in the bar, so I had my call put through there.
"Have you got a Mr. Terry Johnson there?" I asked, using Rick's cover name.
"One minute," the guy replied. There was a pause, during which I could hear the buzz of conversation, then Rick came on the line.
"Mr. Johnson?" I said in a phoney, genteel voice.
"I saw you, you poncified twit."
"Who's that, for fuck's sake?"
"Geordie. I was behind you at the station."
"Never saw you.
"No, but I saw you. Who else is there?"
"Dusty, Mal and Pavarotti."
"Four of you! That's everyone accounted for, then."
"Where are you, Geordie?"
"In the torture chamber. They've got Whinger, Pete and Johnny. But listen I'm going to call it off in a minute. Are they still doing food over there?"
"Just about."
"Ask them to keep four dinners, then. We'll be across in an hour."
Back in the control room, Pete Pascoe was still on the second screen, but one glance told me he'd got hold of himself and settled down: he was now looking quite comfortable. As for the first screen there was Whinger, claiming to be an undertaker called Solomon Grice, and bombarding his detective with outrageous remarks. He'd always been a bit of an actor, had Whinger, and in situations like this he could crack an extra edge on to his native Cockney accent, making himself sound almost like a caricature of what he is anyway a true East Ender. Throw in the horrible rhyming slang, and no interviewer has a chance.
When a second interrogator took over and asked him to confirm his name, he instantly said, "Hell of a price." Only after a few seconds of blank silence did he come up with the second half: "Solomon Grice." In the next minute he said, "Give 'em a chance' for "South of France', then, when asked where his father lived, he replied, "Ask some boffin." Again he waited before completing the equation: "In his coffin."
"You mean he's dead?"
"Course he's fucking dead. Been dead for twenty years, ennie?"
I looked at the nearest controller, who was trying to suppress a laugh, and said, "You'll not get anywhere with him. Not a chance. He's done this too often."
"You could be right."
"Let's pack it in, then. The guys are all doing OK. The rest are at the RV. We might as well join them there."
So it was that we piled into the Feathers for big plates of lasagne and a few pints of Shepherd Neame's Spitfire ale, while we shot the shit about how we'd reached the Channel.
TWO
The moment we'd got wind of a team job in Moscow, word had spread through SAW like a charge of electricity. Russia! The very notion had put the wing on an immediate high. The Regiment had never worked there before. In the Communist era, of course, the idea would have been unthinkable. For as long as anyone could remember, Russia had been the archenemy, the big, ugly bear on the eastern horizon, threatening the rest of the world with nuclear destruction.
My only personal involvement in the Cold War had been during the early eighties, on stay-behind exercises in which members of the Regiment had literally gone to ground on the West German border, opposite the Soviet and East German troops on the other side of the line. We'd dug ourselves in, camouflaged the shelters, and spent three weeks at a stretch underground. Buried on top of each other, breathing the foul air, shitting into plastic bags… It had been a filthy experience which had almost driven several of the lads round the bend. The plan was that, if the Russians launched World War Three, their front units would roll over us, and we could come up behind them, to report troop movements, direct Western air strikes and suchlike.