"I want to be in the position to choose to, if that's what you mean.
"Very well. I give you my word that you will be left alone. No complaint will be made about your conduct. All that I require is that you never speak of the events surrounding Meehan and the Watchman operation. Not to your colleagues, not to Bill Leonard, not to anyone.
"And meanwhile you work out how to get rid of me," said Alex with an ironic smile.
"What's it going to be, an accident on the firing range? A climbing fall?
Some mystery virus?"
"Captain Temple, I ..
"Because let me tell you, if anything happens to me -anything fatal, that is a package will be delivered to the offices of a certain national newspaper. That package will contain an MP5 machine-gun together with various expended cartridge cases all bearing fingerprints, an affidavit sworn before a solicitor by me and a recording of a conversation I had with Dawn Harding on the drive down to Black Down House, in which she discusses in some detail the trapping and killing of Joseph Meehan. It's not watertight, but it's enough to sink you."
Fenwick pursed her lips but otherwise remained expressionless.
"I've got a copy of the tape here," continued Alex, taking a Sony Walkman cassette player from his pocket. He pressed the play button.
"Negative thought leads to negative action .. . came Dawn s distinctive voice.
"Just promise me that ~f there's any chance of taking Meehan out..
$
To Alex's amazement he saw Fenwick's eyes sharpen with tears. She turned away from him instantly and pretended to examine her notes. When she looked up again, steely as ever, it was as if the moment had never been.
"Very well, captain. I take your point and I acknowledge that you have the wherewithal to do us serious damage. Let me respond by saying that if you ever discuss or disclose details of this matter preemptively without provocation from my Service then we will move to defend ourselves in the most.. . vigorous way. Certain accusations will surface deeply damaging accusations, both of a criminal and sexual nature. You will lose your pension, your credit rating and your reputation. Serious doubts will be cast upon your state of mind. We will do, in short, whatever is necessary to discredit and ultimately ruin you.
Alex nodded. He believed her.
"Mutually assured destruction," he murmured.
"Quite so, Captain Temple. A highly effective deterrent in my experience. Do we have a deal?"
Alex met her unwavering gaze, saw in it an iron determination the equal of his own.
"We have a deal."
They shook hands and there was a long silence. Fenwick stared down at the traffic.
"Are you in contact with Meehan?" she asked eventually. Alex shook his head.
"No."
"Rest assured we will pursue him."
"I'm sure."
"And we will find him."
The ghost of a smile touched Alex's features.
"If you say so.
Fenwick hesitated.
"Captain, would you like to know the real purpose of the Watchman operation?"
"Meehan worked that one out. He was a fall guy there to take the drop for some longer-established mole. If the shit ever hit the fan and your senior man was threatened, there had to be someone else who could be revealed as a British agent.
Meehan was that man.
Fenwick nodded.
"That's correct. And the longer he stayed in place, the more believable it would be that he was the only mole if he had to be exposed."
Alex stood up, closed his eyes in frustrated disbelief and shook his head.
"But you sent.." how many is it now, must be at least a dozen soldiers and civilians to their deaths? To terrible deaths, mostly. And all for the sake of a single intelligence source? Do you honestly think that's a price worth paying?"
"Look, captain, given what we know about each other I think I can trust you with this. The point is that the man the Watchman was dummying for was not just a mole, he was the mole. The ultimate intelligence source. Have you heard of an agent code-named Steak Knife?"
Alex's eyes widened.
"I've heard about Steak Knife and read about him in the papers all that stuff about Brian Nelson and the FRU handing over PIRA players' addresses to the UVF -but I didn't know that he actually existed. I assumed that was all black propaganda."
"Well, of course it is, in part," said Fenwick with a pale smile.
"But Steak Knife exists all right. And when the history of espionage finally comes to be written, our running of him as an agent will be seen as the greatest coup of them all. He's the very top man, Temple an international household name and he's working for British Intelligence."
"You mean .. ." Into Alex's mind swam the now statesmanlike image of the figure he'd seen a thousand times on magazine covers and on television.
"I do mean," said Fenwick.
"I'm not prepared to sit here and actually name him to you, but yes. He's ours.
She looked over at Alex who, still standing, was staring bleakly out of the window over St. James's.
"Do you begin to understand the scale of the field of battle now, Temple?
Forget the casualties you always get those. At the end of the day, as you well know, there's always the equivalent of the boy left tied to the tree in the Sierra Leone bush. You have to see the big picture."
Alex closed his eyes. Felt his fingernails cutting into the flesh of his palms.
"The point to grasp," continued Fenwick, 'is that having a direct handle on IRA policy has saved hundreds, perhaps thousands ..
"I can't," said Alex flatly.
"Can't what?"
"I can't forget the casualties. I can't forget the Wheens and the Bledsoes, and the women and kids blown to smithereens in the supermarkets. I can't forget the boy tied to the tree. The human level the level on which that stuff happens is the only real level as far as I'm concerned. The rest is bollocks."
"Well, that's hardly a very adult attitude. Your Service career's unlikely to prosper if that's how you think."
"I'm sure you're right," said Alex. He pulled a book from the bookcase at random, opened it, stared sightlessly at the page for a moment and returned it.
"You were lovers, weren't you? You and Dawn?"
Fenwick said nothing.
"I always used to tease her. Who's the lucky bloke you wake up next to, I used to say, missing the obvious by a mile."
Fenwick sat unmoving, as if carved from stone.
"And now she's dead," Alex continued.
"I watched her drown in her own blood on the side of Pen-y-Fan, and the last thing that she said before she died was your name. And you still you still think that this whole thing was worth it ..
He moved towards the door, glanced back at the motionless figure.
"Have a good life, Fenwick. I'd tell you to go to hell, but I reckon that you're probably already there."
Marching through the dining room and down the main staircase with an alacrity rarely seen in that august institution, Alex departed the Carlton Club. It was midday and after an unpromising start the sun was making a go of it.
Pausing for a moment at the club portals, Alex took out his phone and scrolled through the numbers stored in its memory. After a moment's hesitation he selected one.
"Yep?"
"It's Alex.
There was a long silence. In the background he could hear the sound of female voices, shrieks, laughter. In the foreground, her breathing.
"Sophie?"
"Yes," she said quietly.
"I'm still here."
POSTSCRIPT.
London.
By 4 p.m. it was already dark and the rain-slicked pavements of Mayfair gleamed beneath the streetlights. As the driver nosed the big Jaguar into the electric glare of Piccadilly, Angela Fenwick turned to the HarperCollins publicity girl for a final confirmation that she was looking presentable, that everything was in place. Swivelling her head so that both sides of her face could be assessed, she received the publicity girl's smiling confirmation. Presentation, Angela knew, was everything at these affairs. Photographers would do anything to catch celebrities off guard even a new-born celebrity like herself, who had only emerged blinking into the flashlight of public regard a week earlier.