Zero Option

'Come on,' I told Farrell. 'We've got to get something down our necks.'

' At about 11.30 we had a peculiar brunch of fried cod steaks and baked spuds with plenty of butter in them, and tea to drink. It bugged me to have Farrell slurping and spluttering alongside the rest of us in the kitchen I would have liked to see the bastard starve — but I knew it was in my interest to keep him in reasonable health.

Again he surprised me, this time with the way he ate.

Considering that one hand was cuffed, his table manners were immaculate. We didn't give him a knife, but he held his fork properly, and when he'd finished he laid it down neatly on his plate. He didn't stuffhis mouth full of food and swill tea down through it; he ate first and drank afterwards. It was only his swollen tongue and lip that made him clumsy. At least, while he was eating, he didn't try to make conversation.

With food inside me, my mind came back to life. I urgendy needed to confer with the head-shed, but reckoned I'd do best to wait until we had the second RV lined up.

'This time,' I told Farrell, Tm talking to your man myself.'

'Please yourself. You've got the number.'

When I dialled, the phone was answered instantly, as if the guy had been waiting for the call.

'All right,' I began. 'Where's it to be?'

'No exchange,' went the voice.

'No exchange? Why not?'

'We're not satisfied with the identity of your hostage.'

'What the hell d'you mean? You know bloody well who he is.'

'We know who you say he is. But we've no proof that it's him.'

'Jesus!' I took a deep breath and put my hand over the mouthpiece. 'They don't believe it's you,' I told Farrell. He flipped his left hand up and back in a gesture of disgust, and I talked into the phone again. 'He's spoken to people he knows in Belfast. They must have recognised his voice.'

'That's the point, exactly. They said it didn't sound like him at all.'

'He's got a split tongue and lip, that's why. He hit his face when we rammed the prison van and got his teeth smacked together. He can't use his tongue properly.

That's why he sounds peculiar.'

'We need to get a proper look at him. We need to see it's himself.'

'Ah, bollocks! Like I said, you would have seen him if you'd been on time this morning.'

'We need to see him, or there's no del.'

The way the man kept repeating himself, like a zombie, really got to me. I put my hand over the mouth piece again and exclaimed. 'This is shite!' Opening up again, I said, 'Wait one.'

With my hand back in position I asked Farrell, 'D'you know this guy?'

'Not at all.'

'Well, speak to him anyway. He doesn't believe you're yoO.'

'Holy Fucking Jesus!' Farrell grabbed the phone and blasted off, bollocking the fellow to kingdom come. But for all his obscenities he made little progress; the man at the other end was like a brick wall. In the end Farrell yelled, 'All right, then! I'm going to call one or two of my friends in West Belfast and get them to put a fucking bomb under you.' He would have rung off if I hadn't signalled him urgently to give me back the phone.

'So wht are you proposing?' I asked.

'Come to the Great Western marshalling yard at Swindon 9t eleven tonight.'

'Wait one, I need to write this down.'

I looked round for a pen and paper, but it took a hell of a searcla before we dug out a pencil from a drawer.

The only thing we could find to write on was the opened-oat packet which had held the cod steaks. At last I was ceady. 'Carry on,' I said.

'Go down

Brunel Road to the bottom, past the station…'

'OK.'

Brunel, I repeated,

'At the bottom, don't turn left where the main road swings roond, but carry straight on through a gateway.

There's wire mesh gates across it. They may be closed, but even if they are they aren't locked, you can push them opera. Are you with me?'

'I am.'

'There's two brick pillars at the entrance, holding the gates. Pass between them and you're in the old yard.'

'Got it. Eleven o'clock, you said?'

'Eleven, so it is. Farrell and two. No more.'

I said. 'One to drive and two to look atier your man.

'All riglt. Three. In that case there'll be three of us as well.'

The line went dead.

Farrell's face was- dark with anger. 'What a shower of cunts!' he snapped. 'They've got some bloody cheek, demanding to see me. Wait now while I get the bastards sorted.' He started to dial Belfast numbers again, but things quickly went yet further downhill. One after another, his cronies gave him the brush-off. Either they refused to speak to him and let their side-kicks take the call, or they told him to get stuffed and stick to the plan already made. With every call I could see him growing more rattled; it was clear that he couldn't understand why the players in Belfast were behaving as they were.

It didn't make sense to him. Something had changed.

Gradually his bluster abated, and by the end of his calls he was looking really scared.

'What's the problem?' I asked. 'They don't sound very happy.'

'Fucked-ifI know.' He shook his head in a mixture of disbelief and alarm, muttering, 'They've all gone round the twist.'

I tried to draw him out, but he wouldn't say any more — and as I knew the telephone conversation had been recorded I didn't press very hard. We could check it out later.

As if to change the subject, Farrell suddenly said, 'I need a shower.'

Since he was smelling like the ferrets my Uncle Phil used to keep at the bottom of the garden. I said, 'Good idea,' and suggested that after he'd had a clean-up we should all get our heads down.

We'd taken the precaution of screwing the bathroom window shut, so that it presented no security risk, and I reckoned it was safe to unshackle Farrell while he washed, provided there were two of us present when he came out again.

'You can let him go,' I told Doughnut. 'But he's to get undressed in the passage and leave his clothes outside.'

The ablutions went according to plan. When Farrell stripped off, I saw that he was indeed well built, with powerful shoulders, but running to fat around the midriff. When he went into the shower I stepped outside and walked round the back of the cottage to keep an eye on the bathroom window, lust in case he tried anything funny. For a few minutes I stood there, enjoying the sunshine, listening to the birds, and fervently wishing that we could bring this horrible nightmare to an end, so that life could return to normal.

We'd bought Farrell shaving kit, toothbrush and so on before the intercept, and when he emerged ten minutes later, he was looking a lot more spruce. The wound dressings had got wet, so I peeled them off and put new ones on. The inflammation seemed to have gone down a bit, but as a precaution I made Farrell take a couple more of the white tablets. As soon as we had him shackled to the bed again, wrist and ankle, everyone felt more relaxed.

I was all for getting my head down as well, but first I had to take another walk into the wood. Halfway down the hill a grey squirrel ran across the track in front of me and raced up the beech tree I was proposing to stand under. For a moment it sat on a horizontal branch with its tail fluffed up behind it, but when it saw me coming in close to the trunk, it whipped up into the greenery above. Saucy little bastard, I thought. It's all right for you. You don't have much to worry about.

'We're OK so far,' I told Yorky over the mobile.

'Did you pick all that up — the details of our rendezvous for tonight?' I confirmed the arrangements, such as they were, and asked him to get surveillance on the site as soon as possible. 'The PItLA are bound to send in dickers,' I said. 'But probably they won't turn up until evening. It would be great if we could get eyes in there first.'

'No problem,' Yorky replied. 'There's two guys on their way already. I sent them off as soon as I heard the plan. The other thing we need to do is stick a tracking device on the PIRA car. This should give us a great chance. As soon as we've got an idea of the topography, we'll work something out — the optimum placing of your vehicle and all.'