Provo. Gordon Stevens

at Brady. Only once had they talked about what she had had to do in the car in Beechwood Street, and that was to invent a story which would explain how she was able to reach his Browning. Then they had agreed never to mention it again. And Brady had told no one. Because at the end of the day there were a lot of things more important than a laugh between the boys, and at the top of that list was the fact that she had saved their lives.

      ‘Possibly.’ Brady had been with the RUC for nine years, the last three in E4A.

      ‘Someone said Special Branch.’

      Brady laughed.

      ‘When?’

      ‘Couple of months.’

      It was six in the evening, the end of the shift. If they were pulling her out perhaps they should have done so after Beechwood Street when she was on a high, she thought. Now she was leaving as if the Belfast tour hadn’t been part of her, or she part of it. There was no elation at what she had done, no relief that she was getting off the tightrope, just the immense and overwhelming feeling of anticlimax. Tomorrow she would slip away on leave. When she returned she would have her last talk with the CO, be told where she would be posted. And nobody would even notice.

      ‘Fancy a drink?’ It was Brady.

      They turned into the barracks at Lisburn.

      ‘Thanks.’

      They parked the car and went to the team room. The corridor was empty and the room deserted. Hell of a way to go, she thought as she signed off. They left the block and went to the mess, Brady slightly in front of her, knowing what she was feeling. There would be a couple of people at the bar, he knew she assumed, they’d spend half an hour sipping beer, then she’d slip away by herself, nowhere to go and no one to go with. He opened the door and allowed her to go first. The room was full, the teams waiting for her – the men and women who would remain on the edge, the men and women who’d provided the back-up for her and for whom she had provided back-up.

      ‘Bastard,’ she whispered to Brady, and began to laugh.

      The following morning Nolan collected the hire car and drove to the town where she had been born and where she had grown up. It was her first visit since the start of her Northern Ireland tour. That night she told her parents that she was on leave from Europe; the next day she drove to the west coast, on the other side of the border, where she had spent the occasional holiday as a girl.

      The beach curved in an arc round the bay, the water was cold and the sand a glistening white. The October sun was warm – an Indian summer, she remembered her parents had called it. She took off her shoes and walked along the edge of the water, thought about why they were pulling her out of Northern Ireland and what she would do now.

      It was obvious why they were pulling her, she told herself. Women were normally only allowed one tour, perhaps two. Yet the guys were allowed back – she felt the resentment rising. The guys were allowed back for tour after tour . . .

       She wouldn’t be able to do it, she knew. McKendrick was framed in the driver’s window and Rorke was standing in front. Brady’s hands were on the steering wheel so he couldn’t reach his gun, and if she went for hers they would see. The only chance was the MP5K by the driver’s door, but to get to it she would need a cover. She couldn’t, she knew again . . .

      . . . the strand was so deep in her subconscious that she was not fully aware of it, was only aware of the defence mechanism it threw at her. It was as if she was running a security check on the computer, keying in the request, the computer flashing back that the information she wanted was blocked . . .

       . . . a coffee after, she told herself. Large and Irish. Plenty of Black Bush . . .

      . . . the tide washed in front of her. Twenty yards away a boy and girl played on a log which had rolled across the Atlantic, the seaweed hanging from it and the shells crusted round it.

      So what now? Promotion probably. Germany again. Nice little desk job. And sheer absolute unadulterated bloody boredom. Perhaps she should resign, the thought came suddenly and unexpectedly. Cash in everything, get on a plane, and see where she ended up.

      The office was empty, the boys out on a job, Nolan supposed. It was five minutes before the meeting. She cleared the few items from her locker and walked along the corridor. The colonel was sitting behind his desk, the paperwork in front of him and the blow-ups of street maps covering the walls. He was in his early forties and big built, his civilian suit slightly crumpled, the jacket hanging behind the door.

      ‘Good leave?’ He waved his hand for her to sit down.

      ‘Fine.’

      ‘Your next posting.’ He spoke quickly, his voice matter-of-fact.

      Germany, she knew. Time to call it a day.

      ‘Two-week refresher at Hereford, then The Fort.’

      SAS at Hereford, MI5 at The Fort.

      Somebody up there loved her, she could not believe it, wondered who. The relief was spinning through her head. And after The Fort, who knew what or where? No desk job, though.

      But somebody up there also hated her, had it in for her. Because at Hereford the bastards would see. At Hereford they would find their way into her soul and chisel it open till it was a gaping chasm. At Hereford they would take her to the brink and make her walk over.

      ‘Thank you, sir.’

      The Hereford refresher began ten days later, eight men and two women from a range of backgrounds and regiments. On the third day of the second week the observation exercise began – five days in dug-outs on the Brecons, the exercise for real, as if it were Northern Ireland. Not just Northern Ireland. As if it were South Armagh.

      The rain was cold and biting, driven by the wind. The two of them – Nolan and a corporal from Signals – were crammed together in the OP, the observation post, living off sandwiches and self-heating cans of soup. The cold had set in half-way through the first night, and the rain had begun seeping through the roof on the second day. They had worked as a team, two hours on, two off; one of them keeping the arms cache under constant surveillance while the other tried to sleep, the floor of the OP running with water and churning into mud. No complaints, though – if this was Northern Ireland they wouldn’t complain, couldn’t complain. If this was Northern Ireland and they were staked out in a roof space in the Falls or a field in South Armagh they would keep going, look after each other and watch their backs. And if you were training to go back into Northern Ireland, to do the job they would do, there was only one way to train for it.

      It was two in the morning, the rain sheeting from the north, so that even with the image intensifier Nolan could barely see the target.

      ‘ENDEX.’ She heard the radio signal. Not just the end of the exercise, the end of the refresher. ‘RV zero two three zero.’ Thirty minutes to get to the rendezvous point, plenty of time if it was light and good weather. They were both moving quickly, the bergans packed. They left the OP and headed across country. 0215: half a mile to go and fifteen minutes to do it. Not so easy at night and in these conditions. They waded the stream, the rain driving down on them, and pulled themselves up the mud on the other side. 0220: ten minutes to the RV. Almost there. Hope to Christ they’d got the map reference right. 0225: they came to the road, checked they were in the correct position and sank back into the ditch which ran alongside it. 0229: they heard the three clicks on the radio, the pick-up on the way. The signaller clicked back, told the pick-up that they were in position. They checked left and right: nothing on the road, the rain still pouring down. They heard the next series of clicks and clicked back, knew the truck was closing on them, and scrambled out of the ditch. Everything about the exercise was still for real, even the drop and pick-up. Especially the drop and pick-up. In Northern Ireland the bastards would be listening for the noise of the engine, would be waiting to hear the change in noise if it stopped. That was why they had almost killed themselves five days ago, rolling out of the side doors with the car still on the move.

      The van came from the right, headlamps dimmed