Looking behind him, Miles saw the faint outline of one fire exit. There was a bar halfway up the door that had to be pushed, and the door would open easily. It was a godsend, really, for the quickness with which it could be opened would, with a little luck, surprise those waiting outside.
Wild-eyed looked at Miles. ‘There’s no time for questions now,’ he spat, ‘but there’ll be plenty for you to answer afterward. You come with us, or you stay behind. Suit yourself. I couldn’t give a monkey’s.’
And with that he leaped to his feet and threw himself at the door, beginning to fire off shots as he went.
‘Keep low when you run,’ called handsome, running after his friend, and Miles, still crouching, followed like a circus monkey out into the cool fresh air.
Where no RUC men awaited him. A shot came from their left, and wild-eyed and handsome returned the fire, still running. The RUC men were covering the wrong exits. They had gone to the adjoining unit!
There is a God, Miles screamed to himself as he ran through the long grass, there is a sweet Jesus Christ and he loves me, he loves me, he loves me!
But another shot, whinnying past him from the factory, brought wild-eyed down onto his face.
Leave him, thought Miles, watching handsome run on, never glancing back. Then he stopped thinking altogether and concentrated on running for his life.
They crossed a landscaped border of soil and small trees, and then a road. And after that a field, the soil heavy underfoot, trying to suck his weary feet down. Hide here, it said, hide under me. But Miles kept on running. There was an explosion behind him: the factory. Flames lit the sky.
Over the fence, trousers snagged and torn, then a pasture, and finally a clump of trees with a glade, a lovely spot for a picnic. He had gone past the collapsed figure of his fellow runner before he noticed him. He brought his legs to a juddering halt and fell to his knees. His lungs felt like the stoked boiler of a steam train, and his mouth was full of a sticky saliva which, when he attempted to spit it out, clung to his lips and his tongue, so that in the end he had to wipe it away with his sleeve. He rubbed his hands over the wet grass and licked the palms, feeling the moisture refresh him.
And seemed to pass out for a time, lying on his back, while the trees and the sky whirled above him, restless, never stopping, like some automated children’s kaleidoscope...
Twenty
The gun was pointing at his pineal eye, and perhaps this was what had brought him awake, his back chilled with damp, his lungs still fiery and raw. Above the gun, Miles could just about focus on the milky face of Collins. That was what they had called him, Collins.
‘There are some questions need answering.’
Miles nodded slowly, aware of the barrel of the gun, its explosive potential. Fire away, he almost said, but swallowed instead.
‘Why did they want you dead?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Miles, his mouth thick.
‘Who are you anyway?’
‘My name is Miles Flint. I live and work in London. I work for Military Intelligence.’ Collins seemed unimpressed. ‘I am a surveillance officer,’ Miles continued slowly, aware that his answers meant a great deal. ‘I was supposed to be witnessing the arrest of two suspected terrorists. That’s all.’
Collins smiled wryly. His hair stuck to his forehead like great leeches at feeding time. There was a considerable intelligence behind the large, deep eyes, but also an amount of fear. Miles knew that his life was still in danger. He very much did not want to die, not yet, not without knowing why.
‘You thought you were going to see us arrested, eh?’
‘That’s right.’
Collins laughed quietly. ‘There aren’t any arrests these days, not here. This is no-man’s-land. Shoot to kill. They’d crossed the border. It’s easier to kill than to take us alive. Don’t you know that?’
‘I know it now. What was that explosion?’
‘Just a little something I left for your friends. Which brings us back to you. You could be a plant. You could be anything or anyone. This whole thing could be a setup. So why don’t you persuade me otherwise, eh?’
The gun was as steady as the trees around them. Miles swallowed, feeling hunger and thirst and a whole welter of emotions within him.
‘I’ll need to take off my trousers,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I’ll need to take off my trousers,’ he repeated, ‘because back there, I was so scared that I wet myself.’
They were running again, together, through the fine drizzle blowing across the fields. It had grown light, and so they moved with caution, though the only sounds around them were those of the waking birds. Miles felt more tired than he had ever been, and yet he moved easily enough, as though in a dream. He did not even feel the constant chafing of his damp trousers against his legs.
Collins moved ahead of him, the pistol out of sight beneath his shirt. He had discarded his tie altogether, burying it in loam, and he moved now like some wild species, quite at home in both terrain and situation. I’m on the run with a terrorist, thought Miles. In a strange land, not knowing quite what I should be doing. He replayed the events of the previous hours, trying to answer his own questions. Had there been a mistake? No, there had been no mistake. The notion of Six making that sort of error was unthinkable. The truth was that someone somewhere, someone in authority, wanted him dead and buried as privately as possible. He had been sent into this nightmare without a weapon and without any means of identification. He carried only his money and a handkerchief.
He was the invisible man now all right, because that was the way they had wanted him to die.
From behind, Miles thought he caught the faint drone of a motor vehicle. He called to Collins, who crouched. Miles fell onto his knees in the long grass and shuffled toward him. Collins had drawn his gun.
‘What is it?’ he whispered.
‘Some kind of vehicle,’ said Miles, bending lower as the sound moved more obviously toward them, traveling slowly.
Both men watched through the filmy rain as the van juddered past, both driver and passenger staring out of the side windows. Miles gazed at the words MURPHY’S MEAT & POULTRY written on the side of the van.
‘That’s them,’ he said. ‘There was that van and a Cortina.’
Collins leveled the pistol and followed the slow progress of the van. He did not shoot, and Miles started breathing again when the vehicle had disappeared from view and the pistol was lowered again and replaced inside the shirt.
‘We’d better wait here a few minutes,’ said Collins. He lay back and studied Miles. ‘You’re genuine enough,’ he said at last. ‘I knew it when I watched you sleeping back there. I thought to myself, no plant would ever be able to sleep at a time like that.’
‘Your friend...’ Miles began, trying to apologize or explain.
‘We all know the risks,’ said Collins. ‘He knew them better than some.’ He pulled at a piece of grass and began to chew on it.
‘Do I just call you Collins?’ asked Miles eventually.
‘My name’s Will, but yes, you just call me Collins.’
Miles wondered at that; Will, short for William presumably. It did not seem a likely name for a Catholic, not from what little Miles knew of the Boyne and King William of Orange.
‘I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,’ said Collins, spitting out the grass. ‘We’re going to make for a farm I know, where we’ll be relatively safe. We’ll stay there for a while until these bastards have to call off the search. Then’ — he patted his shirt — ‘I’ll decide what to do about you. Meantime you can tell me about yourself as we go. Maybe that’ll help me to make up my mind.’