Greed

She walked on through the woodland, still holding the phone to her ear, still talking. 'Oh, I'm just collecting some extra funds. Five can always use some extra cash, especially if it's untraceable.' She laughed into the phone. 'Well, yes,' she continued. 'Perhaps a couple of new frocks. After all, when a girl has just cracked the al-Qaeda network in Britain, found the man responsible for murdering a cabinet minister, and prevented a major terrorist incident, I think she's earned a new party dress or two.'

A smile was playing on her lips as she snapped the phone shut and put it back in her pocket. She was reaching a clearing in the woods now. The trees parted into a small semi-circle, with dense foliage covering it, blocking out most of the little sunlight that was managing to break through the clouds. Her pace was quickening, and her eyes were darting from side to side as she scanned the territory laid out in front of her. She looked at the map, then back at the compass, then down on to the ground.

Time to say hello, thought Matt, looking down at her from his vantage point in a tree fifteen yards away.

There aren't many consolations to being a dead man, but the ability to surprise people is one of them.

The mobile rang in Alison's pocket. She paused, put the spade to one side, then held the phone to her ear, pressing the green button as she did so. 'Yes,' she said, a trace of irritation in her voice. 'Who is it?'

'Stay perfectly still,' said Matt. 'You're standing right on top of two pounds of Semtex. If you move a single muscle, it's going to blow that pretty body of yours into a thousand pieces. People will be scraping bits of you off car windscreens all the way down in Brighton.'

Alison froze. It was as if every nerve in her body had been switched off. Her limbs were motionless, and even her eyelashes appeared to have stopped blinking. From her mouth, a few traces of breath could be seen in the cold air. 'Matt,' she said cautiously, straightening up as she spoke. 'Is that you?'

Matt swung down from the tree, hitting the ground gracefully. He had been up there for three hours, perched on a damp and sagging branch, and the cold and the wind had started cutting through his overcoat, biting into his skin. He rubbed his hands together to get the blood flowing through his veins again. Ivan landed at his side, his knees buckling beneath him as he hit the ground. He straightened himself up, glanced towards Matt and smiled. 'I think we've got her right where we want her,' he whispered.

Both men started walking the twenty yards towards where Alison was standing.

Matt looked into her sharp, blue eyes. He had been wondering how he might feel at this moment. He imagined he might be angry, furious, shouting at her and seeking explanations and revenge. But now that he was confronting her, all of those emotions had evaporated. As he looked at her, he felt only the indifference a soldier feels towards the enemy.

He stopped a few yards short of where she was standing. 'Your sources must have let you down.'

'I can see that,' answered Alison softly. She started to move forward.

'Don't move,' barked Matt.

'What the hell am I standing on?'

'Semtex, he already told you that,' said Ivan. 'Rigged up to a simple weight trigger. A set of electronic scales is attached to the bomb. When there is a weight of more than one hundred pounds on top of it, that sets off the Semtex.' He threw his hands wide open. 'Boom.'

'Will you turn if off then?'

Ivan shrugged.

'You're a professional,' she persisted. 'If you just wanted to kill me, you would have done it from up in the tree.'

Ivan glanced at Matt, then held up a small radio transmitter used for controlling a toy car. He had picked it up at a toy shop on the drive down, and adjusted it so that it switched the electronic scales on and off. 'One flick of this switch, that's all it takes,' he said. 'Until then don't move.'

'What happened to Sallum?'

'We killed him,' answered Matt, his tone completely calm. 'He made his attack on the house, just as we knew he would as soon as we told you where we were. He was a good soldier. He did what any of us would have done if those were the orders. He attacked. We lived, he died.'

'But two bodies were found in the house,' Alison persisted. 'Who were they?'

'Sallum was one, the other was a man called Keith Whitson, an IRA stooge in London,' said Ivan.

'Five have probably got a file on him somewhere. Nasty fellow, with bad breath and rotten teeth.'

'We burned the bodies up so no one would recognise them,' added Matt. 'The police will figure out who they are eventually, but it buys us a few hours.'

He noticed the diamond. It was set in a simple gold chain, and hung around her neck, but it was definitely the same rock he had given her a week ago. A beam of light breaking through the trees hit the jewel, set it sparkling.

'What do you want?' she asked.

'Three of our friends died,' said Matt. 'They were good men, and they deserved better. We want to know what happened to them and why.'

Ivan held up the trigger, cradling it in the palm of his hand. 'And it had better be the truth,' he said. 'We've been eating lies, deceit and deception for the past few weeks, and we don't like the taste.'

Alison looked first at Ivan, then across at Matt. She was scrutinising his expression. She is trying to find out what I am thinking, he decided. To see what buttons she can press and what levers she has to pull within me to make me change my mind. All men are just puppets to her: marionettes waiting to have their strings pulled by soft words and sweet perfumes. She's just searching around for the right string.

It's not going to work.

'But you already know what the mission was about,' she said. 'Otherwise you wouldn't be here.'

'We want it from your lips,' said Matt. 'We like the sound of your voice. It will be something to remember you by.'

'Let's go and sit down somewhere,' said Alison. 'Then we can talk through the whole thing.'

Ivan laughed. 'We like you where you are right now. An inch away from death, just like we have been for the past week.'

There was a pause. Matt found himself wondering how Alison would play the next few minutes. He had seen men pleading for their lives before: in Bosnia, he had seen Serbian solders captured by Kosovan partisans who wept and begged and cried for their skins even though they knew they were just humiliating themselves before enemies who would show them no mercy. In the Philippines he had seen communist guerrillas squat in dignified silence mouthing silent prayers moments before their throats were about to be cut; and in Namibia he had seen robbers drinking pure alcohol to calm themselves on the morning of their hanging. But they had all been men who had been certain they faced death within a few minutes. This was a woman, and a smart one, who believed she still had a chance of saving herself If only she could find the right string to tug on.

She looked towards Ivan and then Matt, her eyes suddenly angry. Her lips were curling into a sneer and her fists were clenched tightly together. 'You men are soldiers,' she snapped. 'What did you expect? I'll tell you what this mission was about, and if you don't like it, go ahead and blow me up. You're nothing but a pair of cowards. You don't mind taking the money, but you don't want to take any risks. Well, you should be smarter than that. Everything comes with a price, and the one demanded from you was completely fair.'

She paused, taking a gulp of air. 'I'll give it to you straight,' she said. 'We needed to strike back at al-Qaeda. The assassination of David Landau in Jeddah was one of the worst setbacks the intelligence services have suffered in years. Worse, we knew that al-Qaeda was gearing up for a spectacular in Britain. It's a tight, impenetrable network. We have moles all over the place, we have sleepers working their way up the organisation, we have men we've turned — all the old tactics we used to use against Ivan's old friends across the water. None of it was working. We were getting nowhere. That's when we came up with the plan.'