It was midnight by the time I got home. I found Tony asleep on the settee in the sitting room with the TV burbling some crap about fitted wardrobes. Going in quietly I switched it off, got down behind the armchair and let out a loud yell — whereupon he leapt eight feet in the air and came down facing the door in an exaggerated crouch, as if to take on all corners.
'Great sentry you'd make,' I told him, rising into view.
'Boy!' he gasped. 'Did you give me a fright!'
'Have a drink. How about a Scotch?'
'You having one?'
'Sure. I need something after that.' While I poured two drinks I told him about the telephone contact. He brought out the remains of the bean stew he'd cooked with such care, and I ate it at the kitchen table gratefully enough, though gasping a bit at the chillies while I filled him in between mouthfuls on what had happened.
'This is driving me crazy,' I told him. 'There's no way we can get at them.'
'What are Special Branch doing?'
'Looking around and listening. Checking the movements of known players, going through their own records on the central computer. That's about all they can do. Tony — d'you think I'm crazy to go on this operation?'
'Not at all. You wouldn't achieve anything if you didn't go — except making yourself feel real bad.'
'That's true. But what if I get written off?'
'Might be the best way of getting the hostages released.'
I stared at him. 'You're joking.'
'Nope. I mean it. If you disappeared from the scene the terrorists' emotional blackmail would be at an end.
They couldn't exert anywhere near the same pressure through anyone else. They'd probably just turn Tracy and Tim loose somewhere and call it a day.'
'You think so? Do the IliA ever release hostages?'
'Sure, if they've nothing to gain by holding them any longer. I was talking to Fraser about it this morning.'
'But Tracy's seen their people. She knows several faces by now.'
'Nobody important.'
'In that case,' I said, 'next time they come through, maybe the word should be that I'm dead and they've missed the boat. Anyway… sod that. Let's talk about the operation.'
I opened out a large-scale map of north-east Africa and spread it on the table. The area for which we were heading was an extension of Egypt's Western Desert, birthplace of the Regiment during the Second World War. It was there that David Stifling had formed his Long-Range Desert Group, from which the SAS had emerged, and created havoc by blowing up aircraft far behind enemy lines. It was there also that Jack Sillito had made the most famous escape in SAS history, tabbing more than a hundred miles through the desert after he had been cut off behind the German forces.
'What the hell did he do for water?' Tony asked.
'Good question. Some people reckon he drank his own piss. Others say he managed on condensation that formed at night in old jerricans. Either way, it was some feat.'
Talk of this and other exploits carried us into the small hours. We also pored over the map to discuss our route to the target. From the Egyptian airfield at Siwa, a Chinook was due to lift us over the border and then due west across 300 kilometres of empty desert. The map showed the single MSP, running from Ajdabiya in the north-west to a place called AI Jawf, 800 kilometres out in the Sahara to the south-east. Once we crossed over that we'd be within striking distance of our drop- off point, and the chopper would land us only sixty kilometres short of our objective.
'Funny, having another A1 Jawfjust there,' I said.
'That was the name of the place where we had our FMB in Saudi.'
'It means “interior”,' said Tony. 'It can also mean a hole or depression, but down there I guess it's the interior. I expect there's dozens oral Jawt, if you look around. Hell of a place we're going.' He jabbed a forefinger at the map, indicating the vast empty spaces, unmarked by roads, towns or any other sign of civilisation. 'Nothing for hundreds of miles.'
'I know. But you know as well as I do: the biggest hazard's going to be wandering goatherds. If Iraq's anything to go by, the Libyan desert'll be full of the bastards too. They arrive out of nowhere, just when you least want them. And then, if they see you, you're faced with a bad decision. If you let them go they tell someone else there are nasties about; if you top them their friends come looking.'
In the incident room next morning the idea of my disappearing from the scene went down like a lead balloon. Fraser reckoned that if I vanished, the PIRA's response tnight easily be to knock the hostages off and make the bodies disappear.
'Forget that,' he said. 'What we need is a controlled release of information to keep them in play. Next time they come on the line, tell them a little bit about Farrell.
Tell them you've found out that they're right: he is in gaol, and you're trying to discover where.
'I see the point,' I agreed. 'But look, as I told you, I'm off abroad on Sunday for a week. What happens while I'm away?'
'I've been thinking about that. I'd like to find someone with a similar accent, and haee him stand in for you. We can brief him up on what to say.'
I didn't like the sound of that. Again, it would increase the chances of a cock-up. But I couldn't really hold out against it. 'Well,' I said, 'there's no shortage of Geordies in the Regiment. I can think of two others straight away.'
Then I had an inspiration. 'Listen — I know the man you want: Billy Bracewell, a staff sergeant on G Squadron. He was in command of the QRF that got us out of the jungle in Colombia. He saw Farrell when we captured him — flew back with him to the forward base, in fact. He can talk about him better than anyone.'
So Billy was roped in to impersonate me if the occasion arose.
But for the whole of Thursday and Friday my mind was in turmoil with a new idea. In the Wing, on the range, in the laundry, in the gym, in town, at the cottage… no matter where I was or what I was doing, I could think of nothing else. The first time I'd run up against Farrell, in Ulster, it had proved impossible to top him in legitimate operations, and in the end I had reached the conclusion that the only way to get him was to go after him on my own — which was what I did.
Now I'd begun to think that my only hope of recovering Tim and Tracy might lie in another extramural effort. I knew Farrell was in Winson Green. If I could discover the routine there — or, better still, find out when the prisoner was going to be moved somewhere, possibly for a court hearing — I and a few of the lads might be able to ambush the police convoy, spring him, and hand him back to the PIRA. We could buy an old banger for a couple of hundred quid cash, or even steal one, and ram the police van with it, then use one of our own cars with phoney licence plates for the getaway. The activity would be criminal, I realised but when you're growing desperate, as I was, you think up desperate measures.
I didn't want to involve Tony in such a wild scheme, because if anything went wrong it would bring his service with the SAS to an abrupt end. Pat Newman, though, was a different matter. He was eighteen months older than me, and already talking of leaving the Regiment when he'd completed ten years (in a few months' time), so he had less to lose.
That Wednesday evening I waylaid him and suggested we went for a pint at the Crooked Billet, a pub out in the country not much frequented by our lads. There we got stuck into a corner of the public bar, which contained nobody else but one typical old Herefordshire cider-head, with a face as purple as a beetroot and greasy hair half-way down his back.
I started by talking about details of our imminent operation. I noticed Pat giving me the eyeball in a peculiar way, and after a while I stopped. 'What's the matter?' I asked. 'Don't you want to hear all this?'
'Yeah, yeah,' he went. 'It's lust that Yorky asked me to keep a close eye on you, make sure you didn't try to run out.'