Having climbed a barbed-wire fence, we scrambled up some steep, sheep-mown turf alongside a stand of box and emerged on to a rounded summit, to find that the relay station was dug well into the ground. A flight of concrete steps led down to a steel door in a brick surround, and the short mast was anchored by guy- wires.
'This must be part of the security set-up,' I said. 'It'll be a booster station, giving radios a wider coverage.'
Closer to the house, maybe a hundred yards away, was another small summit on which young trees had been planted within a ring offence.
We'd just come up to it, and found that the view of the terrace was blocked from that angle, when Tony snapped, 'Keep down!'
I ducked instinctively. 'What is it?'
'A Land R.over Discovery heading this way on that track outside the wood, where we've just come from.
Looks like the cops. Let's get out of here.'
We quickly backed off the skyline and slithered down the steep turf. We were half-way down the edge of the box thicket when the Land Rover came back into sight, heading straight for us. Without a word we both plunged backwards into the tightly-packed stems.
Luckily for us, box has no thorns, but the intense dark- green smell of the leaves made me think of churchyards and tombstones. A couple of yards inside the thicket we were completely hidden, and we heard the vehicle come grinding uphill in low gear. Assuming the guys on board had seen us from a distance and had come out to chase us off, we lay low where we were for ten minutes or so. Then, from above us, came noises of men at work: hammering, and an electric drill screaming, as if some kind of maintenance was in progress.
We wriggled our way back into the open and slipped downhill to rejoin the footpath. 'Better stop messing about,' I said. 'There's nothing for us round this side.
Point D's the place.'.
Our next task was to recce the drop-off point that we'd already selected on the map, and to walk the route in that we'd use in the morning. That meant back tracking round our circuit and returning to the car. On the way, we could see the Discovery still at the rebro station, and the figures of a couple of workmen on the skyline.
As we passed Point D, we lingered once again to get the feel of the position. I brought out my compass and took a quick bearing on the centre of the house: 11 mils.
'What if the worst occurs and there's pea-soup fog?'
I said.
'Might not be the worst,' Tony replied. 'Might be the best. You'd have a cast-iron excuse for not carrying out the shoot, and your own guys would have that much more time to find the PIRA hide-out and hit it.'
'Yes, but the bastards might go ahead with their threat.'
Tony looked steadily at me, as if to say, 'They won't.' Then he studied the map again and said, 'Know what? Right now-, we'd do better to hike from here to the drop-offpoint and then walk back in, rather than go round by car.'
'All right. We'd better keep inside the wood, though. We don't want to walk up the field and get spotted by any more damned gamekeepers.'
Instead of heading back eastwards across the park and the main drive, we cut away to the west, along the southern edge of Maple Wood. Outside the trees, on our left, a long, narrow field ran up between the blocks of forest, and towards the far side of it stood Brockwell Farm.
'That's where our QI<F wants to be, or part of it,' I said as we passed the huddle of buildings. 'We'll confirm that when we get back.'
At the head of the field we came across a well-used bridleway running through the wood across our front, and we turned left along it, heading gently down a shoulder. Just after we'd joined the path two fair-haired teenage girls came cantering uphill on glossy ponies, and the leader shouted 'Thanks!' as we stood out of the way to let them pass. How happy they looked, I thought, how healthy, how normal, fhow carefree. What a difference between them — an ordinary, harmless part of the country scene — and ourselves, creeping furtively about with our minds full of death and deception.
The sight of them nearly choked me again, and I knew my mental reserves were runnin.g down. When Tony said, 'Nice piece of ass, that first one,' all I could do was give him a sickly grin.
Fifteen minutes' steady tab brought us to the point where the track ran out on to a metalled lane, and there we found a muddy lay-by, big enough for a car to pull off the road, the spot conveniently marked by a sign of a rider on horseback.
'This is it, then,' I said. 'We drive in to here. Quick drop off, Doughnut carries on northwards. We walk in.
No problem.'
Our return journey took almost exactly the same time: fifteen and a half minutes to Point D. Given that in the morning one of us would be carrying the Haskins and the other would have Farrell hitched to him, I reckoned we should allow twenty minutes to get ourselves into position.
Back on the corner of Maple Wood, we took one more scan with the binos across the park to the house.
Now there were a couple of men working in the terrace garden. Although the top of the retaining wall obscured their legs from the knees down, the upper parts of their bodies were in full view. With the brilliant green of the young corn, the trees in full leaf and the mellow brickwork of the old building, the scene looked as peaceful as could be.
'It just shows how much tourists miss,' I said with a touch of bitterness. 'Thousands of them must walk along this path every year. They come and gawp at the place and think how beautiful it all is. But they only see the surface, and they haven't the first fucking clue about what's going on underneath.'
At 1700 I walked out of the shit-house and round the back of the farm to call Fraser on the mobile.
His first words were, 'We've taken possession of number fifty-eight Cumberland House.'
'Oh — great! Any luck?'
'Yes. We've got echo-phones on the walls, and we can hear next door fairly well. They've got the telly on a lot of the time, probably to mask voices, but we're listening. SO19 will be there any minute now with a drill. We're going to bore through the party wall and see if we can get a fibre-optic probe in place.'
He paused, then said, 'That's the good news. The bad is that the PII: kA have put in another death threat.
The final one, they call it.'
I said nothing, waiting in dread for him to go on.
'If the shoot on the Prime Minister doesn't go through, or if the Prime Minister escapes, they say they'll kill the hostages at nine tomorrow morning.'
'Oh, Jesus! Can't you hit them before that?'
'We're trying to, of course. But as things stand we're not hopeful of going in before ten, at the earliest.'
'In that case, it's just as well we've got this mock shoot lined up. Can you put me on to Yorky, please?'
'With pleasure.'
A moment later Yorky came on, and I said, 'Listen, this is what I've fixed with Farrell.'
'Fire away.'
'Our sniper party will be dropped off at 0530. The drop-offpoint's at 838045, where the bridleway leaves the lane. We'll proceed on foot to the PIPe's Point D, 839052. I estimate the walk in will take twenty minutes.
So we'll be in position before 0600. We'll conceal ourselves in the wood and wait for the PM to appear, presumably any time after six-thirty.'
'Roger,' said Yorky. He was obviously looking at the 1:25,000 map, because he said, 'Which side of that narrow field will you go down?'
'North side,' I told him.
'OK. Part of our QRF will be in that farm — Brockwell Farm. They'll probably see you go by. Just so they know what to expect, how many 6fyou will there be?'
'Four. Myself with the rifle, Tony with Farrell, and Whinger for back-up.
Doughnut's going to drive the
Granada, and Stew will bring the Rekord in later.'
'OK. And what about after the shoot?'