"I'm beginning to enjoy our little trips away together," said Dawn.
Alex squeezed her thigh.
"This might not be quite the honeymoon that Spain was," he warned her.
"Worst-case scena no we could run into a contact. Have you had any time on the range recently?"
"Just the odd twenty-five rounds at lunchtime," she answered.
"And then mostly for fun. I did my time on a watcher team, though, and I can't imagine surveillance has changed much since then."
"So what weapon did you draw this morning?"
"A Walther PPK. Call me old-fashioned but..
Alex was surprised. The PPK was a highly serviceable weapon but famously unforgiving in the hands of a beginner. As a straight blow-back pistol it had a very stiff recoil spring and a pretty snappy perceived recoil as well.
"You don't have any trouble racking the slide?" he asked her.
"Or working the double action trigger?"
"I've got nice strong fingers," she replied, flexing them on the steering wheel. She glanced at him sideways and he smiled.
Turning, he cast an eye over the rear of the vehicle. He had tried to think of everything and if in doubt he had over specified. There were sleeping bags, a stuff sack of spare clothing, dry boots, maps, compasses, binoculars and ajumble of other articles that a couple on a hiking holiday might carry with them. Mounted on a steel frame on the back of the Range Rover was a trail bike. It hadn't occurred to Alex to drive a motorcycle down to Dartmoor, but the moment he saw it in the MI-5 vehicle pool he realised just how useful it might prove in that terrain. For that reason two sets of motocross goggles and helmets lay among the hiking gear.
There were also a handful of rather less common items: two pairs of night-vision goggles for a start, and a box each of 9mm and .38 hollow-point rounds. Had the car been stopped and searched by the police there would certainly have been a raised eyebrow or two.
"When we get there," said Alex, "I want you to promise to do what I say. If I say pull back to the vehicle, for example, I want you to do just that, OK? No arguments, no bullshit."
"Fine by me. Just run through the schedule."
"We'll do a single pass past the place, see what we can see. Then push on for a couple of miles and park up I've chosen somewhere on the 1:15,000 map a car park by a transport cafe. Then we'll cut back across country there's a streamside path that should take us to the boundary of the estate work our way round, and see what there is to be seen."
"You think we'll find him?"
"Who knows what we'll find. Or how long we'll have to wait."
"This is just a recce, right? You're cool with that?"
"Just a recce," Alex confirmed.
"On the other hand, if you get him bang to rights..
"You don't get men like Meehan "bang to rights"," said Alex flatly.
"Negative thought leads to negative action," said Dawn.
"Spare me the fucking zen, Harding." He intertwined and cracked his knuckles. The slow drip of adrenalin into his system had begun.
"Don't worry, you'll get a corpse, one way or another."
Two and a half hours later they were driving north from Tavistock across the western plain of Dartmoor Forest. The roads were narrower now, and Dawn edged the Range Rover carefully between high banks edged with fern, hawthorn and bracken as a solitary kestrel pinwheeled above them. At intervals, as the banks fell away, a vast and baleful reach of heather revealed itself.
"Follow the sign for North Brent Tor," said Alex, 'and then for either Chilford or Hamble."
To their left a series of rocky outcrops stood like iron teeth against the sky. This was the Watchman's terrain, Alex was sure of it.
"We should pass Black Down House on our right any minute now," said Alex.
"Take it as slowly as you can without looking suspicious."
They drove for ten minutes down a side lane which was little more than a farm track. Not many people came down here, Alex reflected, noting the lane's poorly maintained surface and overgrown verges.
And there the house finally was, set well back from the road, its windows boarded and its decades-old paintwork weather-streaked and flaking. Beyond it the ground fell away sharply towards the river. There was no sign of any other buildings. Nor, apart from a temporary steel baffler which had been erected in front of the former gateway, was there any indication that the property had been developed in any way since its sale. No structural supports had been erected, and the overgrown trees and bushes surrounding the building had clearly been untouched for years. The air of neglect surrounding the place was palpable.
"Not the most inviting place in the world," said Dawn as the property slid from view.
"I think that's rather the point," Alex observed.
"Like the fact that you can't see much of it from the road. There's a church and several outbuildings down there somewhere, plus twenty-odd acres of woodland."
"No vehicle anywhere near it."
"No. Which makes me think he might not be around. After all, he'd have no particular reason to to hide it."
"But it does beg the question as to where the hell he is," said Dawn worriedly.
"First things first," said Alex.
"If we're going to recce the place I'd much rather he wasn't around.
As long as your boss goes straight from Thames House to the Chelsea flat she should be safe enough assuming the security's everything you say it is."
Five minutes later they parked the Range Rover on the cinder forecourt of the Cabin Cafe. For appearance's sake they went in for a cup of tea and a slice of sponge cake. There were several other people in there, the majority of them wearing brightly coloured anoraks and carrying map cases.
Alex's and Dawn's appearance, by contrast, was decidedly sombre. Alex was wearing grey wind-proof trousers and an old combat smock; Dawn had on black jeans and a lightweight forest green jacket, and her hair was concealed beneath an army surplus jungle hat. Both were wearing nondescript hiking boots.
When they had paid, Alex and Dawn began to walk back up the road in the direction from which they had come. Both were carrying rucksacks and Alex now had a pair of high-powered binoculars round his neck. Once out of sight of the cafe, the pair cut left-handed into a field and descended the few hundred brambled yards to the river.
Or to the stream, for the Hamble was hardly a river. Not at this time of year, anyway. Such water as it contained tumbled quietly from pool to shallow pool, brimmed darkly for a moment and hurried on. A sheep path ran above it, disappearing at intervals but soon reprising its dry erratic track. Hanks of wool hung from a barbed-wire fence.
They slid down the nettled bank to the water and for twenty minutes Alex set a fast pace up the stream bed. The day was a warm one, despite the fact that afternoon was swiftly becoming evening, and soon they were both sweating.
Alex's thigh swiftly began to throb where the stitches pulled at the wound, but he consigned the discomfort to a distant part of his mind.
They covered the ground fast. The banks of the stream were eight or nine feet high and the foliage had clearly not been cut back for years, allowing them to stay well-concealed from any watching eyes. Despite the absence of any vehicle, Alex was not convinced that the Black Down estate was unoccupied and a careful study of a large-scale map had convinced him that this was the safest approach. Meehan could not watch the entire half-mile perimeter, he could only patrol it, and Alex suspected that he slept through the day.
The estate, they soon discovered, was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. This was not new long streaks of rust discoloured the galvanised metal but at ten feet high it was still effective enough. The banks flattened at the point the stream met the perimeter, so that the lowest chain-linked strands went to within inches of the stream bed. The fence continued in both directions and there was every reason to suppose that it surrounded the estate entirely. It was clearly not proof against determined assault, but it would undoubtedly have deterred the curious over the years.