"Oh yes Nice lad "

"I think so."

The small talk petered out and Maxim braced himself for whatever the afternoon was really to be about.

"Did you know a Corporal Blagg, Ron Blagg7" Caswell asked carefully "He did a tour in Sass. I had him in Armagh. He was good with machinery, and pistols. Bit of a boxer, too, or had been."

Maxim and Caswell themselves had met on toursmthe Special Air Service. But Blagg?… You didn't forget people you'd worked with in the SAS, butit was scattered all over the world in handfuls. "Didn't know him."

"He's got a bit of a problem. "

"Yes?"

"He came to me because he couldn't think of anybody else he could really trust."

"Yes?" Maxim said again, feeling a chill in the warm day.

"I thought you might… like being where you are, you could give him some sort of advice.

"Jim, where I am these days is Number 10 Downing Street. It isn't the carefree life of Britain's Modern Army any more: I can't take a piss now without worrying if it'll cause Questionsinthe House "

Caswell nodded sympathetically. "Like, I don't know what you do there…" then waited for Maxim to tell him while Maxim waited for him to realise he wasn't going to be told anything more Eventually, Caswell went on. "I just think you ought to know what this lad says, or somebody up there should know…"

"Jim, is this chap of yours in trouble' – Army trouble?"

Caswell clutched his cigarette by his forefinger over his clenched hand, the way he always did, and let a smoke clouddrift towards the babbling tea-tents. "That sort of thing."

"He's on the trot," Maxim guessed. "Oh Christ, Jim, you can get a district court for that, aiding a deserter… no, I suppose not you, not now."

"It's a criminal offence for civilians, too."

"Good. I wouldn't like to think it was only me going to suffer. Has he been gone twenty-one days?"

"No Not yet."

There was an unofficial unadmitted rule that if you came back inside three weeks you weren'tjumped on so hard. After that time, the prosecution might argue that you'd crossed the great divide between being absent without leave, orjust a little late, and true desertion, planning to stay away for good.

Even so, the Special Investigation Branch of the Military Police would have been told, and local coppers asked to snoop into your favourite pubs and knock on your mum's door at odd hours… It was a slow, sad business, a crime without a victim, but marguably it had to remain a crime. And it could leave an indelible stain on a soldier's career.

"Why hasn't he gone back?"

"He doesn't really know his own officers. He'd only been back with the battalion a couple of months, after three years with Sass. You know how things can change."

"Where is his battalion7"

"Soltau "

"Germany'

'He came back from Rhine Army7He'll have a rough time explaining how hejust lost his way back from the Bterkeller."

Caswell smiled wearily, as if he'd heard that many times already, or even said it himself. "Yes. He wants to go back."

"Has he got woman trouble?" That was usually the reason.

"No. Not exactly that… he'll tell you."

"Jim, all I can do is try and persuade him to go back, then tell the MPs where he is if he doesn't."

"I'd like you to hear what he says. "

"You aren't doing this just because he was a good man in Armagh, are you?"

"He didn't save my life or any bullshit like that No – he's just career. A real committed soldier."

"He sounds like it, " Maxim said sourly. But even now, you still got a few, the odd ones who came into the Army on an unwritten contract that would turn the devil cool with envy They usually had no homes to go back to, they wrote no wills and made no allotments of pay, they rarely married and always made a horrible complicated cock-up of it if they did They simply did everything the Army asked of them, and expected it to be everything in return: a job, home, family, friends, and maybe six feet of regimental ground at the end of the day They had one other clause in the contract- they never deserted. They had nowhere else to go.

In Downing Street you counted the corners and priced self-interest down to six decimal places You forgot about people like Ron Blagg "All right," Maxim said "Lead me to him." It was odd how bright the day had seemed a few minutes ago "Tell me something about yourself," Maxim suggested, trying to start in low gear But Blagg immediately looked even more suspicious "You camem as aboy soldier, didn't you7" prompted Caswell.

"Yees," Blagg said reluctantly. "I joined when I was just sixteen, like."

They were standing, not sitting since there was only one chair, around the work-bench in the armoury of the village drill hall, watching Caswell sort out the afternoon's weapons It was a tiny cell-like room with a high barred window on the back wall, and it smelled of eighty years of gun oil, dust and old leather. The only light was a shaded lamp on the bench that made Blagg's face look hollow and spooky with its upward reflections.

When it wasn't looking spooky, his face was all stickmg-out bits: big ears, a jutting jaw and lower lip, heavy brows. His pale hair was cut shorter than it needed to be and he wore a uniform of faded jeans, a denim shirt and training shoes. He was only twenty-five but had spent the last nine years in the Army, which had done something to wear down a jerky South London accent "What made you choose the Army?" Maxim asked.

Blagg started an 'I dunno' shrug, then smiled quickly and slyly. "Well, you know I'm a bit of a bastard, sir. Fact is, I'm exactly one hundred per cent of a bastard. The real thing My mother, bless her whoever she is, she dumped me on the Council when I was eighteen months. They unloaded me the moment I was sixteen. "

"Did you want to stay?" Caswell asked dryly, his stubby fingers working with the precision of a pianist's as he stripped the bolt out of a rifle.

"Did I buggery," Blagg muttered.

"And you've worn the same cap badge right through?" Maxim asked.

"Yes," Blagg said aggressively, knowing the question behind the question. "Yes, all the way, except for my time with Sass."

So he hadn't been a troublemaker, shunted from regiment to regiment by commanders who didn't want to be caught holding him when the music stopped.

"Ilike the buggering Army," he added gloomily.

"But it's there and you're here," Maxim said.

After a pause, Blagg said. "Yes," then again. "Yes."

"Major Maxim can't do anything for you without you telling him the whole story," Caswell said. "And I don't think he'll be making any promises then. But he'll listen. "

Blagg chewed a speck of dirt out from underneath a fingernail. "Yes. Well… I'm with the Battalion at Soltau, I've been back with them just over two months; I had some leave and there was this course I went on… Then I met this woman, Mrs Howard. I'd met her first in Armagh, that was over a year ago. I don't think it was her real name, you know7She didn't have a wedding ring. Captain Fairbrother, he brought her along. You'd know him, sir."

Maxim nodded, vaguely recalling a thin, elegant Guards officer who had been at SAS's London end.

"Well, he took me to meet her. He said she was from Intelligence, I mean The Firm, not Int Corps. I wouldn't say she was English, she ha4 a sort of accent. Could have been German, like. She was going to meet this bloke from acrossthe border, a Mick, and she was going to have some money for him. Quite a bit. She wanted somebody to go along and make sure everything was really kosher. "

"Why you particularly?"

"Captain Fairbrother said it was because I could use a pistol. It's on my records."

"You went in plain clothes?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you have any back-up?"

"No." Blagg's face was blank and calm. "The Captain thought it would be best withjust a man and a woman. It was real Provocountry, that. Three or four strange men, they'd have stuck out like a spare prick at a wedding."