"You're going to have to drive me downstream to somewhere I can get into the river and work my way back here. Somewhere he won't see me get out of the car.
"That's no problem. I can take you up to the next road bridge and you can get back through the grounds of Longwater House. There's no one there at the moment, the place is closed up." Widdowes frowned.
"But how do you know Meehan won't be down there? How do you know you won't run into him?"
"Because he won't want to go in blind. He'll come from the direction he can watch the house and the guards from, which is upstream. You can't see anything at all from where I'm going, except trees."
Widdowes slowly nodded.
"Right. Got you.
"Is there a pub in the downstream direction? Some reason you might be going that way?"
"There's an off-licence in Martyr Worthy. If I come back ten minutes later with a Thresher's bag..
"Good enough. Now I'd suggest you get upstairs. Maybe take a cup of tea to the two cops give you an excuse to brief them about looking useless."
"What will you do?"
"I'll be OK, don't worry. See you at seven.
Widdowes nodded and smiled wryly.
"I'll tell you one thing," he said.
"If this guy Meehan succeeds in taking me out there are going to be some long faces at Thames House."
Alex looked at him.
"Angela Fenwick, for a start," continued Widdowes.
"She's in line for the directorship, that's why the deaths of Fenn and Gidley have pissed her off so royally. If she loses any more of her desk officers it's going to start looking very much like carelessness. Her star and that of her familiar could well start to decline."
"Her familiar?" asked Alex, surprised by the bitterness and vehemence of his tone.
"Dawn Bloody Harding. Zulu Dawn. Dawn of the Living Dead. From the moment she joined the service she hitched her wagon to Angela's that's why her progress has been so meteoric. For as long as Angela's riding high, Dawn's up there with her. But if Angela falls, then Dawn goes down too. Don't overlook the political side of all this, chum. You've been brought in to safeguard the upward mobility of a political cabal."
"I'm here to safeguard you, George. The rest doesn't interest me.
Widdowes nodded philosophically and shrugged.
"I'm sorry. You're right it's not your worry. Getting cynical in my old age, that's all."
When he had gone Alex unrolled his sleeping bag on the camp bed, lay down and stared at the cellar's plasterboard ceiling. Eventually he closed his eyes. It was going to be a long night and he would do well to get some rest. In his pocket, his mobile throbbed.
"Yeah?"
"It's Dawn Harding."
"Zulu Dawn!"
There was a silence.
"Where did you get that name?" she asked accusingly.
"Have you been ..
"It's one of my favourite films," said Alex breezily.
"How are you?"
"Fine," she said curtly.
"Is everything OK down there?"
"So far, yes.
"How's George holding up?"
"He's under a bit of stress but he's keeping it all together."
"You think Meehan will come tonight?"
"Might. Bird in the hand and so on."
There was a pause.
"Are you ... OK?" she enquired.
"Do I detect a note of concern?" asked Alex, unable to keep the smile from his voice.
"No, you don't!" she snapped.
"I simply need to know you're in good shape. I don't want any more corpses on the pathologist's slab."
"Don't worry," said Alex, the vision of Dawn suspended high above the ground in her scarlet underwear flashing past his eyes.
"I'll keep myself in good shape for you."
She disconnected. Alex returned his gaze to the ceiling and his smile faded. He had ninety minutes in which to rest up. He closed his eyes.
Shortly after seven Widdowes woke him. The MI-5 officer was carrying a plateful of cheese and ham sandwiches, a Granny Smith apple, a Mars bar and a two-litre bottle of still mineral water.
"Sorry," he said.
"It's not quite up to Gordon Ramsay standard. I assumed you'd want mustard on the ham?"
"Yeah. Great."
"I meant to ask. What do you want to do about washing?"
"I don't," said Alex.
"You can smell toothpaste and soap on the air. I won't be using either until Meehan's dead. And hopefully I won't be needing a crap till then, either. As far as pissing's concerned, well, from time to time you'll find this Evian bottle on the stairs."
"Got you," said Widdowes without enthusiasm.
Alex ate and drank for five minutes in silence, then loaded the Glock's magazine with nineteen rounds and slapped it into the butt. Pointing the handgun at the wall, he pressed the button activating the laser sight. A small red dot appeared on the wall, scribbling fine lines of light as Alex moved the weapon. Satisfied, he thumbed the system off again. Then he stripped, pulled on the wet suit and buckled the sheathed Recon knife round his calf. The Glock went into a plastic thigh holster on a lanyard. Blackening his face and hands with the cam-cream, he pulled up the neoprene hood of the wet suit. The clothes that he had just been wearing went into the waterproof stuff sack that had previously held the wet suit. The boots and fins went into a carrier bag.
"OK," said Alex.
"Let's do it. What's the light like outside?"
"Going fast," said Widdowes.
They made their way back to the garage, Alex climbed into the boot and Widdowes drove off, stopping briefly to converse with the uniformed men at the gate. The ensuing drive took no more than three minutes, but took them well out of the sight of anyone who had been observing the house. Quickly, watching out for other cars, Widdowes let Alex out of the boot, handed him the stuff sack and drove on. The whole operation had taken no more than ten seconds.
Crouching in the cow-parsley on the river bank, Alex peered around him in the fading evening light. Above him was the road, which was narrow and unlikely to see too much traffic between now and tomorrow morning. To his left was the road bridge. He could just make out a narrow walkway beneath this, but access to it was largely obscured by nettles, elder and other roadside vegetation. Sliding down the bank, Alex pushed through undergrowth into the darkness beneath the bridge and cached the stuff sack of clothing there. Attaching the weight belt round his waist, he undid the Farlow's boots and tied them to the belt by the laces, then pulled on the jet fins and lowered himself into the water.
The carrier stream was about six feet deep at the edge and deeper, he guessed, in the middle. Despite its smooth surface, the current was considerable. Cautiously, he began to move forward. The boots at his waist dragged a little, but this was more than compensated for by the powerful jet fins, just as the buoyancy of the wet suit was compensated for by the weight belt. With it he was able to move silently with only his head above the surface, without it he would have been wallowing about on the surface, leaving a wake like a speedboat.
Tucking in to the side of the river, trailing his arms at his side, he concentrated on moving with absolute silence and the minimum of water disturbance. After fifty yards he passed a high fence, which he guessed was the boundary of the Longwater estate. A few hundred yards, Widdowes had said. He swam silently on. At one point the river shallowed, running over a broken bottom no more than a couple of feet deep and Alex was forced to leopard-crawl six inches at a time against the weight of the tumbling water. With relief, however, he soon felt the river bed falling away beneath him.
After a hundred yards, he grabbed on to an overhanging root, swung himself into the bank and took stock. Soon he would be coming into the area that he had to assume was under night sight surveillance. Meehan might be several hundred yards away, scoping out the property from a concealed hide, or he might be much closer.