First published by Sphere Books Ltd 1977, reprinted 1977

Series concept copyright © by Wilfred Greatorex 1977

Novelization copyright © by Maureen Gregson and Wilfred Greatorex 1977

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Printed in Great Britain by
Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd,
Aylesbury, Bucks

CHAPTER ONE

Alan Vickers did not notice the three men watching him as he walked up the path of yet another drab council house. Visits to the estate always depressed him. He longed to see a crude line of graffiti carved into one of the doors, or some moth-eaten budgies hanging in the windows, or a tom-cat sitting on an old dustbin. But nothing ever disturbed the bleak, antiseptic uniformity of the place.

The grey, mid-winter afternoon had soaked into his jacket until the collar felt like a damp sponge against his neck. He was glad when the woman opened the door to let him in.

His patient, a sturdy-looking man with heavily calloused hands, was waiting in a small, spartan bedroom. The 'live' show from the House of Commons dragged on in the corner, the Home Secretary reduced to midget proportions by an inadequate screen.

'The new regulations to curb parasitism pose no threat to liberty...'

The woman angrily switched the machine off.

'I want to hear the bastard!' Her husband, lying face down on the bed, flinched slightly as Vickers began examining his back.

Outside, the three men had settled to wait. They looked purposeful and respectable. Their clothes were not fashionable but sensible, designed to protect them from the elements in case they had to leave the shelter of the parked car and finish the job on foot. In the 70s they would have been traffic wardens.

'How is it there?' Vickers pressed gently on the hollow of the back.

His patient winced again. 'It bloody hurts.'

'That's what comes of listening to the Home Secretary,' the doctor smiled, then looked over at the woman.

She was nervously tidying the objects on a badly scratched dressing table. Probably secondhand, he reflected absently. Few young working couples could afford much new furniture.

'You were telling me about these men who came last night, Mrs Grey,' he said.

Her husband turned over painfully and struggled to sit up. 'Three of 'em came to see if I was moonlighting,' he said.

'He'd just had his painkillers and was nearly asleep,' his wife put in, resentfully. 'I mean, what's it coming to?'

Vickers had heard it all before, but never without an unreasonable stab of alarm, as though he, personally, was being threatened. The problem this time was obvious. Chronic back trouble does not show and Jack Grey looked far too fit. He fixed a professionally bland expression and probed at the muscular shoulders.

'Anyway, you saw them off.'

'The bastards said they'd be back.' The man was bitter. 'They could see I wasn't moonlighting, so they changed their tune.'

'Said he was malingering. Or one of them did.' Mrs Grey's voice shook.

Such incidents seemed to be increasing. Patients sick for more than the acceptable ten days, men out of work, unemployed single parents, all being vaguely intimidated during late night visits from unknown men. Vickers wrote busily on his prescription pad.

'Didn't leave their names, I suppose.'

'No names. No faces,' snarled Grey. 'Bully boys from the Public Control Department.' He eased into his pyjama jacket, then examined the incomprehensible prescription deliberately as his wife hurriedly controlled herself.

Vickers felt familiar hopelessness. Medicine was his vocation. It had to be, as the job no longer carried status or significant financial reward. Nevertheless, he had entered general practice three years before with genuine enthusiasm. But gradually his vigour had been eroded by constant official interference. Now even his medical judgements were no longer considered valid against those of untrained bureaucrats. This, together with private domestic worries, had left him with a strained face and slightly drooping body, so that he looked oddly like one of his own patients.

He heard himself telling the Greys to telephone if the faceless men called again, but knew there was little he could do to help if Jack Grey's sickness benefit was cut.

'When can I get back to work?' the man was asking.

Vickers looked down at him with sudden firmness. 'Don't let the jackboot lads push you around. You'll go back when I say, not them.'

Jack Grey grinned back, trustingly. His wife had switched on the TV again and the Home Secretary was mouthing without sound. Vickers glared at the picture on his way out.

'Parasitism!' he fumed to himself.

The three men watched him start his car, then smoothly eased their own car in behind him in the traffic as he drove off.

Kyle's fingers explored the linings of his pockets as Dan Mellor's voice droned from the office television.

It was all infinitely shabbier than they had prophesied. No armed police, no torture chambers, no magnificent, worldwide control of power. 1984 had come and gone without the emergence of Big Brother. And yet the prophets had been right.

Kyle absently tried his top pocket and let his mind wander over the current scene, as the homely Yorkshire accent boomed out reassuringly.

An army of Little Brothers had materialised; hundreds of thousands of civil servants, earnest, hardworking, sincere men, beavering away at exposing all possible and imaginary threats to the country - suspected oddballs, nonconformists, malingerers, those who might disagree, or worse, anyone with skills who might want to emigrate. Immigration had been a historical problem. Now emigration was a crime - for some.

'...And I assure this House that, as long as I remain Home Secretary, nobody will be sent to prison for parasitism...'

Kyle sighed, his nails tracing the pocket seams, carefully.

God was in his heaven, the State controlled and 'necessity' was the in-word in 1990. After the twenty-five years during which the pound had sunk too low to be salvaged even by international blackmail, it had finally become 'necessary' to waive freedom.

Yet it happened so bloodlessly, apathetically, that the only signs were the occasional eyes of the Public Control Department; seedy men lurking on corners and in cars, watching. And the bugs, of course.

The searching fingers closed on the minute, hard sphere at last. Kyle did not know who had planted it, but he was satisfied. Not knowing its position was like living through the day with an itch he could not reach, so that his hands were condemned to flutter constantly over his clothes, wall surfaces, containers and the undersides of furniture until he found it.

'Who are these parasites? Who?' A backbencher's aggrieved voice called from the set.

'My friend knows we are discussing the work-shy.'

Cheers and boos hummed into the reply like an electronic chorus.

Kyle nodded at Marly's typewriter. 'He'll be calling us work-shy, if we don't get on with this piece.'

She glanced at the voice impetus machine in the corner, but he shook his head.

'That makes too many mistakes. I'd rather dictate.'

The grey-haired woman smiled, 'Newspaper men are supposed to keep up with the times.'

'It was mis-spelling like a teenage secretary yesterday. And all the mechanics who might have put it right have gone to the States.'

Home Affairs correspondent on one of the last two semi-independent newspapers, Kyle was no cliché newsman. He took himself too seriously. He also dressed with panache. Certain women found his basic indifference to them interesting, which is why he had been married twice and why his second marriage had cooled.

He rated his own office and it had an efficient look, one wall taken up with a large relief map of the U.K., Eire and the Channel ports of France, Belgium and Holland. All seaports and airfields were marked with different symbols, as were a number of rural spots in such diverse places as Norfolk, Devon, Yorkshire, central Wales, Cumberland and Scotland.

As Marly peeled the cover off her typewriter, he crossed to study them and began, 'Catchline ARCs.'

'Arcs?'

'A.R.C.S...' Kyle stopped suddenly, leaned over his secretary and pressed a switch on her desk.

Less than a mile away, an operator in the Surveillance Room of the Public Control Department pulled an agonised face and wrenched off his headset as a shrill screech invaded his ears.

Kyle winked at Marly, flicked off the desk switch and increased the TV volume.

The Home Secretary roared, '...I will not shirk from seeing that parasites of every kind will be encouraged...'

Hear, hears and laughter resounded round the room.

'...will be encouraged to see the error of their laziness and find useful places in society.'

'Full marks for the iron hand in a glove of steel,' shouted Kyle.

The surveillance operator turned to check his tape recorder, then gingerly re-established his earphones.

Kyle snapped on the screecher, left it on and resumed dictating. 'ARCs. Adult Rehabilitation Centres.'

Marly gave a slight shudder.

'Five large country houses - two of them once classed as ancestral homes - have been bought by the Government for conversion into special psychiatry hospitals for the treatment of social misfits. New paragraph. These quote hospitals unquote are referred to in secret Whitehall papers as Adult Rehabilitation Centres. They will come under the Home Office Public Control Department.'

The concise phrases came easily. Flair for a good story had made Kyle a top columnist in his early twenties. Later, a fascination had developed with the intrigues and political in-fighting taking place in the struggle to dominate the Left. Contacts made then were still paying off and formed the skeleton on which he had built up his present position as the most widely read journalist in the U.K.

For Kyle specialised in brinkmanship. The premature disclosure of secret government plans. The naming of names. The exposure of whitewashed scandals, with such ambivalence that his features could actually seem to be supporting the Establishment. He was not so much a thorn in the side of authority, as a human nettlebed.

It was a situation he relished with a certain vanity, subconsciously carrying a picture of himself as the Robin Hood of The Street.

It was also a situation which snowballed. The more confidential files he published, the more material poured into his office, as by-passed clerks, frustrated members of the public, innumerable anonymous 'phone calls and even anxious policemen vied to supply tip-offs.

His fan-mail was tidal, deluging the room twice daily. It was Marly's nightmare and she had settled, Canute-like, to control it once more as he read over the completed draft typescript of the ARC report. The telephone rang.

'...One moment, Miss Lomas...' she said, lifting her eyebrows at him, questioningly.

Kyle shook his head and resumed reading.

'...I'm afraid he's not here just now, Miss Lomas. Should I get him to call you?'

Delly Lomas completed a couple of memos and a short briefing to her department during the next fifteen minutes, while waiting for Kyle to return her call.

Fleet Street was clearly visible from her window in the Public Control Department skyscraper, which had blasted upwards on the site of the old Covent Garden market a decade ago and was already showing signs of extreme age.

Delly buzzed for the male secretary she shared with Tasker to remove some files. Then she leant back impatiently in her chair and lit a cigarette.

She was one of those tall, sleek brunettes whose movements are all legs. Her wide mouth and amused eyes hinted at an electric mixture of sensuality and wit, but her hard intelligence could be alarming. At 34 and well forward in her career, she was the classic product of the Sex Discrimination Act and the Whitehall merit promotion scheme. Her dad may have been an unskilled worker in Northampton, but Delly's world was metropolitan and she knew that it did not end at the Dover entrance to the Channel Tunnel. She headed a one-parent family from choice, with the fathers kept strictly anonymous.

The blue light over the door flashed. She stubbed out the cigarette and made for the corridor. Tasker was leaving his office at the same time. The two nodded from habit. Both were PCD Deputies and had as much love for each other as any other two executives in line for a single promotion.

Minutes later, they were in the Controller's office, facing him across a vast plastic desk.

'Did he call back?' Skardon looked up sharply at Delly.

'No.'

'Gone to earth again?' her boss asked.

'Surveillance shows him still at the office,' she answered easily.

'Surveillance!' Skardon snorted. 'They never know whether he's in his office, his bath, or Kingdom Come.'

'That's wishful thinking.'

'What?' Skardon was irritable.

'Kingdom Come. Joke,' she replied, heavily.

A sense of humour was totally wasted on Herbert Skardon, a self-righteous, hard-line bureaucrat. The only son of a power worker, he had picked up a Second in Law at a Redbrick university and behaved ever after as though he had gained a first at Cambridge.

Quick wit did not appeal to him and he often viewed Delly Lomas with disapproving suspicion, although he found it useful to play her off against Tasker. It kept them both in place.

Now, he simply frowned. 'It ill becomes you, Delly, to make smart alec remarks when Kyle is about to ditch us yet again.'

'We don't know for sure. We don't know...' she began.

'We know.' Skardon interrupted, tartly. 'We know Kyle has classified information about the Adult Rehabilitation Centres. We know he intends to publish it tomorrow, don't we, Henry?'

'We know,' echoed Tasker, smugly.

'You seem well plugged into Fleet Street, Henry,' said Delly, defensively, noting as always how smoothly he slid onto every bandwaggon.

Tasker was everything the progressive power-seeker ought to be; educated at Brixton Comprehensive and Essex University, happily married in Surbiton with the regulation two kids, a committed law and order man of the Left, passionately patriotic, snide - and black.

Originally, he had wanted to work on wildlife preservation in the Department of the Environment, but someone Up There had put him in the Home Office - at about the same time as they were recruiting coloured policemen. He carried out his imposed job with such inflexible dedication that some thought it was a pity he could not have worked it off on wildlife, instead of people.

The Controller glowered. 'This involves all of us, Delly. It's a matter of concern to this department that you were unaware Kyle had this story. I mean, he is your responsibility.'

'Perhaps you'd like to let Henry take him over.'

Skardon grinned, spitefully. 'Henry can't cook. Can you, Henry...?'

His male Deputy gave a bleak smile.

'...You can. And Kyle likes your cooking. It would require a long stretch of the imagination to see Kyle enjoying Henry's cooking.'

'Well, don't imply he's ever going to have an affair with me,' the woman replied with edge.

Skardon looked a shade disappointed. 'I'm sorry, but let's just admit that, from time to time, he has taken notice of you for reasons we'll not go into.'

'Why not? He fancies me. Or claims to.' Men like Skardon never changed, she thought with bored resignation. The old school never did. After ten years of sex equality, they still saw women as only being fit for bed and board. Delly knew it was not to her advantage that he disliked career women, but comforted herself with the thought that that included the entire contemporary female population, apart from children and OAPs.

A cunning look had come into her boss's eye. 'He might fancy you today and take your advice to withold the ARC story in the public interest.'

'He didn't call her back,' Tasker intruded with surly puritanism, offended by the whole discussion.

'No - and I do find that alarming.'

Delly, beginning to feel like a heifer at market, snapped again, 'Give him to Henry then!'

The Controller decided to deliver them a short lecture on the lines that both his Deputies had duties and responsibilities to match their status and, with regard to Kyle, Delly Lomas had natural qualifications not shared by Henry Tasker.

'He seems to be doing all right without my natural qualifications,' she retorted, scathingly.

There was a long pause as they looked at each other, warily. The meeting had become decidedly barbed and she had the distinct impression that Skardon had planned it this way, as a lead-in to one of his schemes. The Controller was not easily browbeaten by his political bosses, but Kyle's reports had been a growing source of embarrassment.

'I don't see why your status prevents you from visiting Kyle in Fleet Street,' he said, suddenly.

So that was it. He must be worried.

'We're already accused of too much intrusion into the press and TV,' she pointed out.

'Is that the only reason? Or are we above visiting?'

He got up from his desk and began pacing the office past the collection of soulless geometric paintings.

'It's in no-one's interest that Kyle goes ahead with a story that's open to the most blatant misinterpretation...'

Her mind automatically began to seize up at the coming humbug.

'...and we all know what the enemies of the State will try to make of our Adult Rehabilitation Centres, unless we condition the public first.' He had stopped before a sculpture of three figures - a blast furnace operator, a North Sea oil rigger and miner with his drill. 'In half an hour I am going to have to disclose to the Home Secretary what Kyle intends to print tomorrow. I don't relish the thought of having his miner's boot up my backside.'

'He wears hand-made Swiss shoes now,' Delly murmured.

'I should like, by the end of the day, to be able to reassure him that that story will not come out in the morning.'

'He'll get nowhere with the proprietors. He never does,' Tasker remarked, gloomily.

Skardon smirked. 'And our worthy Permanent Secretary will get nowhere with the editor of that rag...' It would be an excellent piece of one-upmanship if his department could resolve the entire matter. '...The independent newspapers, and especially that one, seem bent on suicide.'

'We should lean on them,' Tasker put in, fiercely. 'After all, the government pays eighty per cent of their advertising revenue.'

The Controller leered at Delly. 'I'm sure it would be far more civilised for Ms Lomas to lean on Kyle...'

She returned his look, icily, stood up and strode out of the room.

Hunched hugely over his desk, Greaves, the news editor, read the ARC copy with unconcealed delight.

'I like it. I like it,' he gloated.

Two TV monitors flickered silently beside him, one showing the House of Commons and the other Reuters' news-flashes coming up like Ceefax. Apart from a couple of young reporters, the big newsroom was empty, most of the boys having adjourned to the Strand Leisure Centre for the lunchtime gargle.

'I thought you'd been going soft on 'em lately.' Greaves glanced sideways at Kyle, who was leaning against the window ledge nearby. 'Do they know you're on to it?'

The columnist nodded. 'Delly Lomas keeps trying to call me.'

Greaves read on with a pleased expression. '...Keep this up and the Home Secretary will be sending you to the coal mines.'

'He got out of them himself rather neatly,' grinned Kyle.

The two men worked well together and Kyle was conscious that it was the news editor's connivance which kept him in business. Greaves was a man whose acute and dangerous brain was belied by an enormous, slow-moving hulk of a body. He had been to Eton, before it went officially 'comprehensive' - with entry restricted to the offspring of politicians, civil servants and similar important citizens. Greaves was a snob with guts and subtlety, who detested the bourgeois and Authority equally. By instinct, temperament and upbringing, he was a resister.

As he finished reading, he buttoned his intercom and waved the manuscript happily. 'You might even be the first guinea pig at one of these ARCs.'

Kyle shrugged, amicably, 'I should think I'm way down the list, though I'm trying to lay hands on that, actually.'

Greaves looked interested.

A voice from the intercom said, 'Picture Editor.'

The news editor turned to it. 'Frank. Let's see what you've got on the ARCs.'

'Channel Two. O.K?' replied the intercom.

Greaves switched off the House of Commons show and, after a momentary blank, a photo-still of a country mansion came up on the screen. It was followed by another, white, elegant and tranquil - on an estate agent's brochure.

Kyle looked disappointed. 'Library stuff? I thought we had someone out shooting new pictures?'

A third, peaceful-looking country house came up on the screen. 'He should be showing that place through the barbed wire they've put round it.'

Greaves nodded. 'Kemp tried. But someone wearing Size Tens trod on his camera.'

The fourth house floated into place.

'That's the lot, Tiny,' said the intercom voice.

'You've sent Kemp a fresh camera?' queried Greaves.

'No point,' replied the voice. 'They have him inside for interrogation.'

'Get three more photographers out there. Snatch what they can!' ordered the news editor.

'That's more like it,' Kyle approved.

Marly put her head round the door to say, 'You're wanted.'

Kyle nodded, then noticed Wilkie staring at him. He held the reporter's eye deliberately, until the other looked away. Then he discreetly drew the bug froth his pocket and slipped it into Greaves' blotter.

'They seem lost without knowing where I am, so give them a false scent, Tiny,' he murmured, as he went out.

The news editor immediately called over Pearce, the second reporter and a man of similar build to the home affairs correspondent. Handing him a photostat of a Ceefax Reuters' newsflash and the radio bug, he said briskly, 'Take this for a ride round London, John.'

Back in his own office, Kyle was changing from a suit into a crew-necked jersey. Marly had opened a small wall-safe and brought out a stack of identity cards. Every one carried a photograph of her boss.

He looked down from his window to see John Pearce climbing into a taxi. The surrounding Inns and Law Courts had hardly changed, while Fleet Street itself had been transformed.

It was now merely an extension of the City, many of the original newspaper offices having been taken over by commercial firms. An insurance company occupied the former premises of a major national daily. Reuters and most other press agencies were government controlled and The Times had become the principal government organ. Long before that, the Associated Newspaper buildings had been sold to an asset stripper, sold again, demolished and replaced by Whitehall extensions.

Kyle felt a momentary depression at the memory of his excitement at just walking down the Street for the first time, searching for famous by-lines among the passing faces. The promise of the place had been tangible and even the shabbiest structures had seemed to throb with busy glamour.

Fresh from the provinces, he had imagined the wires of the world humming here, presses rolling, 'phones being snatched and hard-faced men snapping 'Copy' and 'City Desk', just like in the movies. Yet, even then, the blight had been present and spreading.

'What's the betting the Union will blame poor old Kemp for trying to get pictures of the ARCs and accuse him of bringing the profession into disrepute?' he said softly to himself, then looked across to the Dickensian relic opposite. Somehow, the Lord's Day Observance Society still survived. It would outlive them all, he thought, wryly.

Marly was flipping through the identity cards. 'Import/export agent. That the one?' she asked.

He nodded and struggled into a pair of heavy slacks. She rifled through his jacket pockets. 'Where are they?'

He indicated his discarded trousers and she took his wallet from the back pocket, extracted his real identity and press cards and placed them in the safe.

By now, Tom Pearce would be a fair distance across London, carrying Kyle's bug. Kyle could picture its green blip on the radio location monitor in the PCD Surveillance Room. Someone would be reporting to Delly Lomas that he was on the move, probably speeding towards Victoria.

He pulled on an anorak, slipped the fake identity card into his pocket and headed for the door.

CHAPTER TWO

Alan Vickers reached his small, detached house with relief. Darkness had fallen early and it had been a tiring day. He was glad that it was not his night for evening surgery.

As he opened the door, the car carrying his three ominous shadows pulled up, unnoticed, across the road.

The figure of a little girl hurtled into his arms. 'Daddy! You came home to tell me a story.'

He swung her round gently and smiled, 'It's not bed-time yet, not even yours.'

Mary clung to him tensely, breathing with noisy difficulty. 'I want you to read me Mary Brave,' she gasped.

'Mary Brave?' Full of the protective anxiety he always felt for her, he set her down in the living room.

'You know Mary Brave,' she insisted.

'Mary Brave is a British girl in the 1970s, who wanted to save the polar bears,' said Vickers' wife, kissing him. 'She tried to get the money from rich men but they wouldn't cough up. So the Government gave her the money. And she saved the polar bears. And lived happily ever after, having married and had the standard two kids.'

'Good God! Who published that rubbish?' Vickers exclaimed.

'Daddy!' objected his seven-year-old daughter.

'His Majesty's Stationery Office. It's in all the schools,' replied his wife.

The young doctor looked down rather worriedly at Mary, snuggling up to him on the sofa and still straining to breathe. Long black hair and pale skin accentuated her frailty, together with the over-large eyes and slightly hollowed cheeks so often seen in people suffering from respiratory disease. Breathing used up all her energy, leaving her spindly and weak.

Had it not been for her asthma, Vickers would have honoured his enforced contract with the State without protest. He had known when he began his training that he would have to remain and practise in Britain for ten years after its completion. This was the condition imposed by the government upon all skilled and professional students to stem the brain drain, and he had been quite content to accept it at the time.

But conditions had changed drastically during the past decade. Mary's birth had brought the unexpected problem of raising an ailing child in an unsuitably damp climate. His standard of living had continued to fall, as his work load and accompanying frustrations had increased. More recently, the effect of the total take-over of education by the regime, with the introduction of new government-controlled text books, had become alarmingly obvious and Vickers had felt unable to accept the situation any longer.

'You will read me Mary Brave?' Mary was pleading.

He hugged her tightly, then released her as the door bell rang.

'We'll see, darling.' He crossed to answer it.

Three men stood stolidly in the porch.

'Dr Vickers,' the first stated, confidently.

'Yes.'

'Public Control Department, Doctor.'

'Oh?' Vickers was puzzled, unaware that they had been following him all day.

'You applied for an exit visa, Doctor?' It was more of a formal statement, than a question.

'Yes.'

The PCD inspector referred to a notebook. 'It was turned down...?'

Vickers nodded.

'...You appealed...?'

He nodded again, eyes narrowing with slow suspicion.

'...And your appeal was turned down...'

The man took a step forward and Vickers shifted his balance to block the door.

'...We do have right of entry, Doctor.' The inspector produced an official-looking card.

'What on earth for?' Vickers demanded furiously.

'We have reason to believe you may be in touch with criminals who are getting people out of this country without exit permits...'

Vickers stared at him with disbelieving hostility.

'...I must insist, Doctor.'

As the three strode into the house, Vickers made another token stand. He was pushed aside, not violently, but certainly with firmness. His wife stood transfixed behind him.

'Don't be alarmed, Ma'am. We'll be careful,' the first inspector tried to sound reassuring. 'It won't take long.'

He jerked his head at one of the others. 'Take upstairs.' And directed the third to the living room.

Katherine Vickers moved swiftly to stand between them and their targets. She looked flushed and determined and they could all hear the child crying and striving for breath in the room beyond.

One PCD inspector hesitated, as the other tried to slip past her. She turned to stop him and the second man sprang through the gap and up the stairs. The third cut neatly into the room.

She rushed after him, throwing herself at his back. As he thrust her off, she fell. Vickers shouted and surged forward, but the leader of the team held him securely in a well-practised grip.

'It's no good, Doctor. We do have the right and we don't like violence.'

Vickers struggled fiercely as his wife picked herself up, but he was no match for an expert. The man kept control easily, while the other started his search, checking the bookcase quickly and beginning to turn over the papers on top of the hi-fi.

Suddenly, Mary flew at him, clawing and kicking, with rasping breath. Almost guiltily, he tried to fend her off, but the child was frenzied. Mrs Vickers joined in the fight, knocking off his cap and grabbing his hair, as the second inspector returned down the stairs. He ran across the room to drag her back and, as she scratched at him, he hit her hard across the face.

Vickers let out a howl of anguish and rage, twisted away from his captor and ran to his wife.

'Fender!' shouted the leading inspector, angrily. The second man froze at the order and the third looked desperately towards them over the still battling Mary. Triumphantly, she snatched a book from him, ran wheezing and gasping to her parents and thrust it into her father's hand. Its title was 'Mary Brave.'

One section of the vast yard was busy with freight-liners - road juggernauts - and the rest was full of scrap metal pulped into huge, sculptural shapes, looming black against the dusk. In these days of restrictions and shortage, nothing was wasted: Everything had to be recycled and the old heaps of rusting vehicles, which had once encrusted suburbia and beauty spots across the country, had disappeared. The age of built-in obsolescence was over.

The few consumer durables available were made to be durable, with all metal parts rust-proofed and the articles themselves well finished and reliable. Unfortunately, as Britain exported most of her products and could no longer afford to import raw materials, there was a great shortage of such goods on the home market.

The orderly yard looked like a strange city, with paths and muddy ways dividing the tall blocks of metal. Kyle was walking down one of these with a burly man who looked as though he knew how to handle himself very well. Both were wearing safety helmets and neither spoke.

Nolan had been waiting for them for over an hour, but did not mention it. Kyle stared at him without encouragement. The young West Indian had expected nothing else. He explained about his job and the PCD inspectors.

'What do you mean, you can't stand being tied down?' Kyle interrupted aggressively.

'There's a world out there, man,' Nolan responded with some passion.

Kyle looked unimpressed. 'You can read and write. You seem of sound mind. You knew what you were doing when you signed Form P Seventeen.'

The black man began to look sulky. 'You sound like one of them.'

'I might be...' Kyle pointed out, then flipped through the pages of the dossier in his hand. 'Computer engineers aren't two a penny. It took years to train you. And you duck out just when you're useful...'

Baffled, Nolan began to feel scared. He did not know this place, but it was unlikely that a crowd would materialise and run to his aid if these two men jumped him. He had heard bad things about the methods of the Public Control Department.

Kyle read his thoughts, but kept his face severe. '...You seem to have tried the lot - Application for Exit Visa, Appeal, Ombudsman's Court. Which Ombudsman's Court?'

'The one in Leeds.'

'Those ventriloquists! When they say "No", you can see the Home Secretary's lips move...'

Nolan released his breath, slowly. His interrogator obviously wasn't one of them. Perhaps it was going to be all right. The questioning continued.

'...How did you go on with the Public Control Inspectors?'

'I kept my cool.'

'Do you know any personally?'

'None by name. Just the two I told your blokes about.'

Kyle turned to his companion. 'Did we approach him?'

Nolan responded, instantly, 'I told my girl I'd like to get out. Next thing, this bloke came up to me in the pub.'

Dave Brett took the dossier and scanned it, briefly. 'Jimmy's satisfied. So's Col,' he said.

Kyle glanced at Nolan. 'Who's your girl?'

Brett produced a photograph of a long-legged, laughing woman from the file.

'...Pretty...'

'And dependable,' the West Indian declared, earnestly.

'She's O.K. She's clear,' Brett assured Kyle, who studied Nolan heavily and said nothing.

There was a very long pause. Nolan tried to hold Kyle's look steadily. Appearing restless might make these men suspicious. His mouth felt dry.

'We have to be sure you're not just bait with bells on,' Kyle remarked at last, then grinned. 'Right, Nolan. You're on your way.'

The man sighed with relief and grabbed Kyle's hand enthusiastically. 'Can I put a few quid in towards costs?'

'Hang on to your wallet,' said Kyle. 'Send us a donation from the States when you're rich.' Then he handed over a slip of paper. 'Be there within two hours, wearing the gear on the list.'

Brett had already started to walk away.

'We're running late,' he shouted and Kyle hurried after him.

Minutes later, they were speeding blandly through Camden Town in Brett's exotic, high-powered car, latest BMW model - for export only.

Dave Brett had a way of getting goodies like this. Brash, ingenious and ruthless, he did well out of the system he despised. At thirty-three, he had a big house, a big car and a big business. He was allowed to move in and out of the U.K. as he liked - an unusual liberty in 1990. Yet he was still his own man, abrasive and tough.

A natural wheeler-dealer, he had come up the hard way, starting beside his father as a docker, elbowing in on chances, corrupting and fixing where necessary, until he got himself to the top of the heap as an import/export agent.

Now, he carried on a potent underground feud against the bureaucratic oligarchy which ran the country - but he would have fought a Sandhurst coup just as energetically. Bullyboys annoyed him.

Despite the rush hour, they travelled smoothly up Cannon Street and past the Mansion House. Few people owned cars and, of those who did, only the very privileged could bring them into London, with its restrictions on entry and parking.

Out along Commercial Road East towards Poplar, unchanged in thirty years. It was just after 7.00 p.m. when they arrived at the Port of London and drew up beside a freighter being loaded under floodlights in heavy rain.

'They know the risks,' Brett was saying. 'It's all for love and nothing in the back pocket.'

He leant over to collect some documents from the back seat.

'You did give 'em something?' Kyle asked, quickly.

The agent nodded. 'Yeah. And they're paying it back. How do you tell three merchant seamen that, if they get caught at this game, they get sentences twice as heavy if they did it for love not money?'

The two men had left the car and were walking towards the freighter.

'Evening, Mr Brett,' the voice sounded behind them.

The agent looked round casually to see two Emigration Officers coming towards them from the shadows.

'Bob,' he said easily to the senior man. 'Out on such a night! I'd have thought you'd be watching telly under a sun-lamp!'

'I'm a spartan. Who's your friend?'

But Kyle had beaten him to it and was holding out his fake identity card.

'Not another!' exclaimed the official. 'You import/export agents must be minting it!'

'Well, the State didn't when they took us over,' remarked Brett. 'They couldn't trade a toffee apple and it was "Come back! All is forgiven".'

'They're not as keen on the ready as you boys,' the other commented tartly.

Brett looked suitably pained and shrugged towards Kyle. 'He gets a cut of my percentage. We're both on the breadline,' he protested.

The Emigration Officer waved towards the car, lying glossily under the floodlight. 'They give those away on Supplementary Benefit now, do they?'

It was an old wrangle the two resurrected sociably each time they met.

'See if they'll commute your pension,' advised Brett. 'Then you can buy one.'

'I'm too cautious,' the other replied, almost regretfully.

A half-drunk seaman staggered past them on his way to the ship. Kyle and Brett followed him up the gangplank, where he stumbled by the waiting duty seaman, who turned towards them.

'Mr Brett.'

'We're just checking freight against manifests, Steve. You on check-point a bit yet?'

Steve Harper, the young seaman, nodded.

'Half an hour, that's all,' Brett promised.

The two Emigration Officers were still watching from the quay as he and Kyle went below.

They made their way to the end of a short passage, where Brett knocked sharply four times and a door was opened into a spacious cabin. Its portholes were firmly shut and the interior was lit by a dim electric bulb. The four men were not surprised to see them. Two were playing a board game, another lay reading on a bunk and the fourth stood by the door. They looked bored yet tense, with the same mixture of excitement and fear generated by any group of imprisoned men planning an escape.

'Any complaints?' Brett asked.

'We're still O.K. for oxygen,' answered the man who had let them in.

'Hello, Kendall,' Kyle greeted him. 'I thought you'd be spokesman somehow. You could have sold me a second-hand car any day.'

The man laughed. 'All I've ever sold is ideas.'

'Lousy ones, if the Department of Science is to be believed,' responded Kyle.

The other grimaced. 'I'm no Einstein.'

'No - I'll take your word for that,' Kyle gagged.. 'I'm surprised they even tried to stop you getting out.'

The emigrant chuckled. A recent member of the government think-tank on energy and now on his way to the U.S.A., he could afford not to be offended.

Brett had tugged open a radiator panel by one of the bunks. Now he pressed a button and a section of wall panelling, some 18" wide, slid back. Kyle peered into the gap.

'We can get thirty in there, if pushed,' his partner said and tapped two nozzles set into the wall. '...Oxygen intake.'

'How about Customs rummage crews?' Kyle asked.

Brett pointed to the panelling. 'Tap it. If you get hollow sound, you'll be the first.'

Kyle rapped with his knuckles. The sound was heavy and solid.

'X-rays?' he queried.

'Nothing shows through,' Dave Brett insisted, proudly. 'It's a new metal from Germany.'

On deck, Harper, the duty seaman, was still watching the two Emigration Officers from the head of the gangplank. Another seaman wandered past them and came up towards him, producing a pass. He checked it, looked into the man's unknown face and shouted to a mate. Grabbing the seaman, he hurried him to the passage below.

Kendall opened the door when he heard the signal and Harper pushed Nolan, disguised as a seaman, into the cabin. Kendall held out his hand to the dazed West Indian. 'Welcome to the getaway set.'

'I think we'd best get back there,' Harper urged. 'Tarrant's on look-out, but the E.Os. are sniffing.'

Kyle and Brett quickly followed him and were soon on the quay again beside the two officials.

Brett pulled out a hip flask. 'I know,' he said accusingly to them. 'You're after a duty-free rum.'

He took a swig and offered it to the senior man. 'It's the next best thing - Napoleon brandy.'

The other shook his head, reluctantly.

'A tot of brandy's not corruption,' the agent persuaded.

'That's corrupt,' the official asserted. 'You didn't wipe it!'

Brett wiped the mouth of the flask and the first officer took a long swig, before passing it to his second, who refused, primly. Kyle also declined.

Every third Tuesday in the month was surgery day - constituency surgery day for Fred Bingham, M.P. He found the task dull, because his constituency was dull and his constituents were dull, and those who came to the morning surgery were the dullest of the lot.

He looked disagreeably over his desk at Alan Vickers and wondered how many times he would have to spell it out to him. Doctors were supposed to be intelligent, but this one seemed remarkably slow on the uptake and Fred Bingham had no time for fools or losers.

He was a bright, smug, little man, who had made his way up through the union, by being seen at all the best meetings, quoting every catch phrase and knowing those in the know. Still in his late forties, his ambitions were far from satisfied. The wall poster behind him shouted 'Vote Fred Bingham For a Just Society'. One day, he hoped powerful supporters would be whispering, 'Vote Fred Bingham for P.M.'

Meanwhile, he religiously went through the motions of listening to endless voters' gripes at the monthly surgery. At least the dreary duty had been made more comfortable after the political parties had begun to draw State subsidies and he had been able to leave that dingy back room downtown for a suite of modern offices in the centre. Nevertheless, he had had more than enough for today.

'I've just said I'll do what I can, Doctor Vickers,' he allowed a note of impatience to sharpen his voice. 'They were acting within the law and you admit they didn't use violence. Not real violence. Now don't get me wrong. We're not changing society to give bullies a field day.'

'But that's what's happening,' insisted Vickers.

'That's your point of view, doctor,' the M.P. replied, silkily.

'Have they searched your home?' Vickers challenged.

'If they had good reason I...' Bingham began.

'M.P.s are exempt from search and entry, and you know it,' retorted the doctor.

'That's an essential privilege to safeguard freedom.'

'Whose freedom?'

The M.P. sighed. 'I've said I'll look into both cases - your patient's and yours. What more can I do?'

His complacency was suddenly too much for Vickers, who leant over the desk, snatched Bingham by the lapels and began to shake him and shout.

'You'll do nothing! Nothing! And you'll do nothing because you're all right, Jack!'

The M.P. pulled away in fear. Breathing rapidly, Vickers tried to regain control of himself. The two men stared at each other for a long minute.

At last Bingham began, warily, 'Violence is the language of lunatics. I thought doctors were here to cure, not cripple...'

Vickers' fists were still clenched, but he began to look slightly ashamed. The M.P. pointed to a stack of files in his In-tray. 'I'm just one poor bloody M.P., doctor, don't you see that? I can't take on every damn complaint. Look...'

He picked up a letter and a wheedling note crept into his voice. 'This shopkeeper. He reckons the PCD Wealth Tax boys ripped up his floors looking for gold sovereigns and krugerrands and all they found was dry rot and not a word of apology. It'll take time to sort out the bureaucrats, doctor. Time and courage. And, on the part of people like you, patience.'

He had managed to end in quite rousing style, but Vickers was no longer listening. He was on his way out. The door slammed behind him. Bingham pressed an intercom button.

'You all right, Fred?' the local party manager's voice sounded worried.

'No disrespect to my flock, Bert. But I'm going for that one o'clock back to London. I've had a bellyful of whiners.'

Bingham stuffed a few papers into his briefcase, picked up his overnight bag, left his office briskly and made for the Station Hotel bar.

A couple of neat Scotches and he began to recover. Before long, he was settling into a warm, first class compartment on the Intercity. Glancing from the window, he was annoyed to catch the eye of Alan Vickers, who was walking along the platform, looking in for a seat.

Bingham quickly hid behind a copy of the state paper, the British Gazette. The banner headline screamed 'CONCENTRATION CAMPS? TOSH! - Home Secretary: New Centres Will Help Misfits.'

Vickers walked on to enter the train through a door marked Second Class.

In the London newsroom, Greaves and Kyle were also looking at the front page of the British Gazette and comparing its headline with their own, which splashed, '5 SECRET CENTRES FOR THE PCD. Home Secretary Denies "Sinister Motives" - by Jim Kyle.' The two newspapers lay side by side on the desk.

'Our comrade hacks sound shrill today,' observed the massive news editor.

'Their pensions are at stake,' said Kyle, with mock sympathy. 'But if they will work for a state-run rag...'

'They're teaching Pravda a thing or two.' Greaves looked highly satisfied. 'I like today. Some days I can't stand. But today I'm in love with. I don't suppose you have a good follow-up to make 'em twitch tomorrow?'

'I might have.' Kyle looked towards the other reporters and turned the subject back to the Gazette. 'I hear their editors were called in to have the riot act read to 'em by Skardon last night. The Home Secretary thought their front page banner was too tame.'

'They changed it..?'

Kyle nodded.

'...To this..?' Greaves was astounded.

He nodded again.

'...THEY could wind up as first patients in the ARCs.'

'Serve the bums right.' There was no sympathy in Kyle's voice.

Marly came up with a scribbled message. He read it and felt his stomach muscles tighten. Taking Greaves' lighter from the desk, he spun a flame, burnt the scrap of paper and crushed the ashes to dust.

'I'll be out for a bit, Tiny,' he murmured.

'Idea for Features,' the news editor said, heartily. 'How many non-smokers still use lighters?'

As Kyle left the office, Greaves beckoned Wilkie, who had been watching their exchange steadily. He gave him a taped news flash from the Reuters' monitor.

'The Minister for Family Affairs is once again attacking illegitimacy and one-parent families. See if the Archbishop will give you a quote,' he instructed.

The young reporter looked irritated. 'He never has done before.'

'Try him, laddie,' Greaves insisted. 'You never know, he might just find he's still got backbone.'

Kyle had left the building immediately, run to his car and was now careering towards the Aldwych, zig-zagging between taxis and buses. Sometimes he was quite glad he could only run a small car. Skidding left, he rattled across Waterloo Bridge and arrived on the eighth floor of a multistorey car park on the South Bank exactly ten minutes after receiving the message.

His phlegmatic style had deserted him, leaving him twitchy and awkward, as he drew in to park close to a car with smoked windows.

The driver's window of the other car was lowered just enough to reveal a forehead and eyebrows. Kyle gripped his steering wheel, sweatily. Meetings with Faceless were the worst part of the job.

'Good afternoon,' he muttered.

'I believe it is, Kyle,' a cool voice answered. 'Lunch at the PCD today was like the Last Supper. Everyone looking for Judas.'

The newsman gave a sick smile. 'He was there?'

'He found the steak not to his liking...' A gloved hand came through the window opening and Kyle collected a folder.

'...Classified secret, Kyle. Burn the photocopies when you've done. They show the senior appointments for the new ARCs. On these papers they're no more than recommendations. You can take it from me that they're all confirmed...' He gave Kyle's eyes time to flicker over the first page in the file. 'You will see that certain notorious mind-benders are among them. Professor Ellis has control of Centre Three and Doctor Boswell Centre Five.'

'I know of them,' Kyle said, uncertainly.

'Some poor devils will presently know them at close quarters,' Faceless responded.

'Are they...?' Kyle began, but the window opposite had shot up and the car was already moving away.

Kyle was shaking.

Skardon was almost suffocated with rage, made all the more ferocious by an underlying sense of panic. Being a devout servant of the government and its creed of 'Necessity' was not enough in present circumstances, especially when one worked for a Home Secretary known to have a touch of the Himmlers. The Controller liked his security, his nine-to-five business day, his orthodox family life and his weekend roses, but now all were being threatened. So Skardon was worried and, because he was worried, he was angry. He glared at Delly Lomas with near-hatred.

'You can sit there and tell us Kyle's got the ARC appointments?' His voice had lost its customary calm.

'And got them right.' She sounded almost pleased.

He could hardly believe it. 'The Home Secretary only ratified them this morning.' His mind cowered at the possibilities. 'I suppose Kyle went off our tracking screens.'

'As usual,' Tasker confirmed.

What was the point of being Controller if he could not even control his own staff? Skardon felt stiff with depression. 'This department's top heavy. Judas could be any of forty men.'

'Or women,' Tasker put in, quickly.

'Or them.' Skardon glowered at Delly again. 'What did you say when he rang?'

'I said the story was completely untrue.'

'You said it off the record I trust?'

'I'm never on the record with Kyle.'

A nightmare of the snarling Home Secretary came into his mind and he shuddered. 'You don't have to put up with the Home Secretary's wrath, either of you. We needed another month or so before these appointments were made public,' he said, desperately. 'Both Professor Ellis and Doctor Boswell will need to be put over to the people first.'

'Or kept right out of the picture,' Delly suggested.

She could be quite stupid. 'And how do you think that would be possible?' he asked, sarcastically.

'By cancelling their appointments.'

'And you think the Home Secretary would do that?' he said, contemptuously.

'He'd do anything to save his skin. He's not known as Survivor for nothing.'

'I should be careful, Delly,' he said, automatically, while realising at once that she was right.

'He'd not like to hear that,' said Henry Tasker.

'Then don't tell him, Tasker,' she retorted. 'Survivors don't put freaks like Ellis and Boswell in charge of sensitive centres of correction. It's not so much like putting Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde in control, as Mr Hyde and Mr Hyde.'

Skardon was beginning to pull himself together. 'Don't quote that bourgeois pap at me, Delly.'

'We do have less unattractive men who know just as much about happiness and misery pills, and who don't actually look like monsters,' she reasoned. 'The Department musn't let idiots make fools of us. I'll talk to Kyle about killing the story.'

'You had a lot of success with him yesterday over the ARC stuff, I must say,' the Controller sneered, feeling quite himself again.

'I said I'd talk to him.'

'If he calls you back,' needled Tasker.

'You try, then. See if he calls you back.' She smiled sweetly at him.

Skardon decided this was the moment for a little softness. 'Delly, we are to some extent in your hands,' he began, persuasively. 'Although I don't quite see how you can persuade Kyle...'

'Perhaps we could try treatment at one of the new ARCs,' Tasker interrupted, eagerly.

His boss frowned at him and Delly ignored it.

'I'll try to persuade Kyle on condition you tell me the Home Secretary will rescind those two appointments,' she offered.

'You have my word,' Skardon promised with deep sincerity.

'And who'd believe that?' she thought to herself. But aloud challenged neatly, 'I can tell Kyle that?'

The Controller nodded.

'That's if you can locate him.' Tasker, unable to resist scoring another point, gave a sly look in Skardon's direction, but Skardon was looking at his internal TV monitor, which showed a man sitting in a chair against a blank wall. It was Doctor Vickers.

'Your visitor's here, I think,' the Controller said to Delly, who checked in the monitor.

'Yes, that's him. He looks younger than his print-out shows.'

'Who is he?' Skardon asked casually.

'Some doctor with a beef about our inspectors.'

'I'm surprised you waste your time on him.'

She had stood up and crossed towards the door. 'Oh, I don't know, we don't want to be known as a tyranny, do we?' With a special glance of reproof for Tasker and one of disdain for Skardon, she went out.

'What's wrong with her? Isn't she getting it any more?' Tasker gave what he hoped was a conspiratorial, manly grin at his boss.

'Keep an eye on her for me, Henry, will you?' Skardon said, smoothly.

The Deputy Controller felt quick triumph. It was going his way, after all.

'How can you know the Home Secretary will go back on those two appointments?' he asked, with the respectful alacrity of a student.

'He will. Never fear,' Skardon assured him, then explained. 'There are two hundred more just like Professor Ellis and Doctor Boswell queueing up. The work will go on, Henry. It will not be jeopardised.'

It was half past four and already dark by the time Alan Vickers left the PCD headquarters and took a taxi to Fleet Street. He felt drained, but still determined to keep trying.

The cab drew up outside the newspaper office and, minutes later, he was telling Kyle the history of his case, concluding with his abortive visits to his M.P. and the PCD.

'You can't have hoped to make much of a dent on that cast-iron lot,' Kyle commented.

'I thought I had a case. So did she,' the doctor replied.

'Delly Lomas?'

'Is that her name? She was only a room number to me,' confessed Vickers, wearily. 'But she admitted that having a child with severe asthma does give me some cause to take the job in Arizona.'

'And then she reminded you you'd be getting six times the salary over there and that you'd signed Form P Seventeen,' Kyle pointed out and, as the man agreed, added, 'It's the usual line. And what had the lady to say about their inspectors' searches?'

'She advised me to forget them. They were only officials doing their jobs under the law.' Vickers' voice began to rise. 'Three men going over a sick man's home at night! Three more searching mine! Even if my child were well, I'd not want to stay!'

Kyle said, calmly, 'This office could be bugged.'

Vickers shrugged, not caring, and Kyle smiled. 'All they're getting now is a screech that's ripping their eardrums apart.'

The doctor did not look at all surprised. Everyone knew this sort of thing went on; bugs, phone tapping, spying. They were all becoming almost commonplace.

'Did she have any final advice?' Kyle asked.

'An appeal to the Ombudsman's Court.'

'Where some tame time-servers will shake their heads and maybe recommend you for treatment at one of these new Rehabilitation Centres.'

'I'd leave illegally first,' Vickers blurted out. 'I don't wish to be an involuntary guinea pig for their experiments with M and H pills.'

'M and H?'

'Happiness and misery pills as rewards and punishments.'

Kyle's eyes were hard. 'The old stick and carrot routine up-dated?'

Vickers nodded. 'I would leave illegally. I mean it.'

'You didn't tell milady that?' Kyle asked, hastily.

'All I said was that I'd see you and the rest of the media.'

'I bet that made her laugh.'

'Well, she smiled.'

Kyle made a few notes on a pad and then looked up. 'Where can I get in touch...?'

Vickers presented his card.

'...In case I do a piece. I'm not hopeful. These cases aren't news any more, too familiar.' He stood up and shook hands. 'I'll get someone to show you out.'

Vickers tried to hide his disappointment. After all, he had not really expected results. 'I'll find my own way, thanks,' he replied, and left.

Kyle picked up the phone and dialled a number.

The voice at the other end answered, 'Home Office. Public Control Department.'

'Miss Lomas, please..?' Kyle asked. Then, 'Delly. I'm clear now. Come over when you like.' His voice was invitingly warm.

CHAPTER THREE

Shortly after seeing the lift carry Delly Lomas towards the ground floor, Henry Tasker hurried in the opposite direction to the Surveillance Room. He hesitated outside the door, tugged his jacket straight and tried to make a random-looking entry.

It was a huge and circular place, taking up the whole of the headquarters' top floor like an air traffic control room. Men and women, wearing headsets, listened bored at various posts. Some of these were unmanned, with their recording machines switching on automatically at the sound of voices.

Directly opposite the door was a bank of sonar based monitors. Checkers prowled along them and Peter Randall, one of the supervisors, was sitting at the central desk.

Deputy Controller Tasker strolled among the machines observantly for a few minutes before approaching Randall.

'I suppose Miss Lomas didn't arrange for her movements to be recorded?' He tried to appear offhand.

Randall checked his lists and replied, 'No, sir, did you expect her to?'

'I was only thinking of her own security,' Tasker said, lamely.

Randall knew he was lying. Everyone in the Department was aware of the professional clash between the two Deputies. But Tasker was gazing distantly at one of the V.I.P. monitors.

'Who's red today, Peter?' He indicated the red blip on the screen.

'It's that M.P., Frensham,' answered Randall. 'The one who's put down questions to the Home Secretary about the new ARCs.'

Tasker began to query the other colours. Blue? The civil rights protestor, Claydon. Green? A history lecturer who disliked the new history books for schools.

Tasker raised his eyebrows. 'Who wants him tabbed?'

Randall referred to his order book. 'The chit was signed by Mr Teviot.'

'Teviot?' queried the Deputy Controller, suspiciously.

'The new Chief Assistant Inspector of Culture.'

'Oh, him,' Tasker relaxed and then wondered, almost as an afterthought, whether Kyle's blip had done its customary vanishing trick.

Randall pointed, almost boasting, to a yellow blip. 'He seems to be in his office.'

'That proves nothing,' Tasker said, severely.

The supervisor checked a second register and verified that Kyle was also under personal surveillance for the day.

'Oh, really?' Tasker forgot to sound uninterested. 'Who authorised that?'

'Mr Skardon, sir. And Mr Kyle hasn't left his office.'

Tasker looked extremely sceptical.

There had been a lot of trouble about this Kyle business recently and it worried Randall. Because early prejudices had held him back, it had taken a long time to reach the position of supervisor. But, for several years now, he had felt safely established. Not sufficiently ambitious to be a threat to any superiors, he had also proved dependable. Lately, however, he had become less sure. The puritan backlash was beginning and he sometimes wondered how long it would be before homosexuals were once again on the outside.

Anxiously, he went over to consult one of the checkers and returned to Tasker looking relieved. 'Miss Lomas has just been seen arriving at Kyle's office, sir.'

Henry Tasker's features almost yielded to a smile.

She was looking round his office with a mixture of curiosity and disappointment, taking in the battered filing cabinets and threadbare rug, as well as the detailed wall map and the heavily framed, poor Impressionist reproduction, looking oddly out of place in the corner. Probably covering a wall safe, she guessed.

Kyle watched, reading Delly's reactions with amusement. 'You expected something more exotic?'

'No. More style,' she returned, which was true. She had never been in a newspaper office before, but she had seen a lot of movies.

'This isn't the civil service, Delly. You lot have it made these days. I'd not mind an original oil painting or two like yours.'

'Your envy's showing.' She folded herself elegantly into a badly sprung chair.

But Kyle was not so conveniently deflected. 'Who'd have thought the bureaucrats and snoopers would be the last of the big spenders? Shop for art in Bond Street with our Whitehall masters. I don't know where Sotheby's and Christie's would be without you,' he jibed, then added before she had time to argue. 'I'm surprised you've not slummed it in Fleet Street before.'

'You never asked me down,' she almost flirted.

'Down's the word.' He obviously wasn't going to let anything go. 'But don't assume these are permanent postures.'

Ignoring the implicit attack, Delly stood up and stepped towards the wall map. He noticed that, unlike most girls over 5' 7", she moved quite unselfconsciously, as though she enjoyed being tall.

Examining the marking flags and pins, she nodded, 'Not bad. Nearly up to date.'

'Make any additions you feel inclined to disclose,' Kyle urged, sardonically.

To his surprise, she took the last red magnetic disc from a container on his desk and planted it in the heart of Cumberland.

'Not another!' he exclaimed, taken aback.

'Six Adult Rehabilitation Centres, not five. See how wrong you can be, Kyle?' Delly goaded and went on to point out with mock regret that she could have added four more ARCs, due to be set up the following week, if only he had had more discs.

Enjoying his obvious bewilderment, she began to insinuate that his sources were unreliable until he observed, calmly, 'Five out of five right. I was one short, that's all. Now what is it you're after?'

He was not nearly as easy to provoke as Henry Tasker, she thought to herself, deciding on a more direct attack. 'I don't see why you have it in for our Department. We have a job to do.'

He snorted. 'And what a job! Anyway, I help you now and then.'

'When you're good, you're very very good,' she said. 'When you're bad, you're loud and nasty. And misinformed.'

'Thanks for the citation. I hope you'll see I'm in the next King's Birthday Honours list.'

'There might not be another.' She trailed it neatly before him.

'I could be taping this,' he claimed.

Delly produced a small device from her coat pocket and lazily waved it at him. 'And this will be wiping it...'

Kyle looked at it with interest. It must have been newly developed for the PCD. He made a mental note to obtain one for himself. It might be better than his own.

She continued, 'Let me repeat. There'll be no more King's Birthday Honours lists.'

'That's on the record?'

'That depends...' She paused, crossed her legs and lit a cigarette.

He waited for Catch 22, his mind not totally on business. 'Not in the way I want!' Then he continued, more seriously, 'Why should I sit up and beg when I have the run of the larder?'

'Because we're putting locks on the larder,' she retaliated. He knew she was bluffing. 'I could give you more inside stuff than Faceless.'

Kyle felt his pulse jerk, and his eyelids drooped automatically to hide his alarm. 'Faceless?'

'Old Faceless, you call him,' Delly said.

'You've been reading too many fairy stories published by His Majesty's Stationery Office.' He remained carefully relaxed, aware that she had been specially trained to watch for nervous reactions or any sudden fidgeting.

'You'll clearly never disclose his identity,' she accepted.

'Not unless they force it out of me using some new technique in one of your Adult Rehabilitation Centres,' he said acidly.

'There's no risk of that, Kyle,' she sighed. 'You're exaggerating again. It's one of the habits of your trade.'

He turned on her, savagely reminding her of Professor Ellis and Doctor Boswell, and adding that they made the Beast of Belsen look like an amateur.

But it was the introduction she had been waiting for. 'Ellis and Boswell will not be in charge of Centres Three and Five,' she stated, flatly. Then, catching Kyle's look of derision, 'you don't trust me?'

'Oh, implicitly,' he replied with heavy sarcasm.

'Their appointments have not been confirmed, and that's going to make you look very egg-faced in the morning.'

It had to be a trick. 'I'll stand by my story.'

Delly shrugged. 'It's your reputation. Get it wrong too often and you'll find yourself a clerk in the civil service.'

'Think of the pension!' He was ruffled. She would never be clumsy enough to try to suppress a story with a direct lie which could be blown up into a major scandal later, quite apart from totally destroying any future co-operation between them.

'Ellis and Boswell are not the men,' she was saying in measured tones. 'Kill tomorrow's story and I'll give you the real facts within a week.'

'The facts!' He looked up to heaven in disbelief.

'The real appointments,' she confirmed, with a slight smile.

'No deal,' he said. 'I have tomorrow's lead.'

'I'll give you an alternative. After all, you have two anti-Public Control Department stories in hand for tomorrow. The Ellis-Boswell lie... And the poor doctor with the asthmatic child we won't allow out to Arizona to earn a ransom.'

Kyle's face stayed blank, as he waited for the double-cross.

'Drop the Ellis-Boswell lie and I'll tell you about the King's Birthday Honours list...' she haggled.

Kyle half committed himself with a nod.

'The next one will be scotched,' she went on. 'And it'll be the last...' She could see he was genuinely interested now. 'The Home Secretary's been pressing this in Cabinet. And he's got it through.'

She waited. They studied each other. Finally, he said, 'Fair swop. That's a lead...'

At least that would get Skardon off her back, she thought, instantly. And keep Henry Tasker in his place.

'...I hear you told that doctor to apply to the Ombudsman's Court?' Kyle said: 'D'you think they'll let him out?' Kyle was asking.

But the bargaining was over and she was not going to be drawn into this one. 'Do you?' she answered, coolly. 'This country needs every doctor it can hold on to.'

'What was it Pitt said? "Necessity is the creed of slaves"?' Kyle taunted.

'Somebody else said, "Liberty is the luxury of self-discipline",' she parried, rather stuffily.

He smiled. 'I'm writing no pleas for Doctor Vickers.'

Betrayals happened in a variety of ways, some through trusting the wrong people, others through reports by citizens with a strong sense of duty, some through anonymous tip-offs to the authorities, probably inspired by the age-old jealously of brawn for brains. And some were accidental like seaman Tyler's. Tyler was always talkative after a few Scotches and had been overheard by a stevedore who, not unaware of the government bounty for such information, told an Emigration Officer, who told Jack Nichols, the Chief Emigration Officer, who told Skardon.

Delly and Tasker were summoned and arrived jostling for position. Skardon repeated the information and concluded, 'Something good for a change, so let's have no cock-up.'

'Not even a rat could get off that ship now,' Jack Nichols claimed confidently.

'It was mice last time, Mr Nichols. I recall your saying not even a mouse could get aboard without being seen by your Emigrating Officers.' It was Delly Lomas. 'But that Concorde got out of Heathrow with four illegals for New York.'

The Chief Emigration Officer flushed. A middle-aged bachelor, he was shy with women and had never learnt how to cope with Delly Lomas' sharp tongue.

'You're in no position to have a go at Jack,' Skardon intervened. 'You spent a long time with Kyle getting not very far.'

Delly looked bewildered and rather cross.

Tasker observed, cattily, 'You were with him a long time.'

Then she began to understand and glared at the three men, indignantly. 'Somebody kept tabs on my movements?'

Tasker realised he should not have pushed the subject. 'Forget it.'

'Who?' she demanded.

'It was an error,' Skardon looked guilty.

'Some error! Who?'

Embarrassed, Skardon quickly asked Jack Nichols to leave the room.

The row which followed was short and sour.

Although Delly Lomas was accustomed to having other people tabbed, she found it preposterous that it should happen to her. But the Controller and Tasker played it as a team, giving nothing away, and she was left staring accusingly at Tasker, but unable to prove anything.

Frustrated, she declared, 'I'll raise this at the staff meeting.'

Skardon's voice was hard and final. 'You had better not.'

He crossed to the door to let in Jack Nichols. 'Can we take it that you have enough of your lads round that ship?'

'They're in it, on it, all over the quay and in two boats, should anyone make a dive for it,' Nichols said proudly.

'Dive! In this weather?' Skardon smirked. 'Where to?'

'How about the bottom?' Delly Lomas said, still angry. 'Maybe they'll think it the best place.'

Skardon threw her a disapproving look, then walked round his desk to Nichols.

'No slip ups,' he warned. 'I want this lot, every man-jack. Getaways. Helpers. The lot.'

He clapped Nichols firmly on the shoulder, checked his watch and strode from the room, leaving his three subordinates scowling at each other.

Despite his strategic harrying of Delly Lomas, he was relieved that Kyle's story had been killed. And the prospective arrest of a boatload of illegal emigrants would go a long way towards appeasing the Home Secretary. Besides, there had been an air of hostility and tension in the office, which was always good for the appetite. The Controller approached his lunch with a feeling of well-being.

The men had been in place since early morning: Emigration Officers ambled with apparent inattention along the quay, languidly leaned on bollards, tucked themselves away into poky side offices. A parked grey van housed a group of four, stiff-boned and aching. Two motor launches crouched behind a rusting tanker, their occupants huddled uncomfortably together.

Jack Nichols was there, too, entrenched behind a pile of crates with the practised ease developed from his days as an Immigration Officer. The one original thought in his life had been the realisation that priorities were changing. He had applied for transfer from Immigration to Emigration, where his natural discipline and a curiously successful 'nose' for fugitives had brought him regular promotion. Now he dug in doggedly to another familiar wait.

The trap was set and everyone in dockland knew it. Stevedores worked on sullenly, not speaking much, resenting the influx of the Law. Some would have passed the word to the seamen, but Nichols had been right. No-one could have reached within fifty yards of the ship without authority, and the neighbourhood was crawling with E.Os. - earwigging.

Drizzle had settled into the afternoon by the time Tasker climbed to the cabin of a crane overlooking the scene. The East End stretched beneath him, an untidy mess of 60s' tower blocks and century-old terraces, punctuated by one or two church squares of rare beauty and the occasional clump of prefabs, incredibly still inhabited. Up river, ancient, unused warehouses had crumbled into gaunt ruins on lots once pirated by developers as prime sites of London, but since taken over by the government and left to decay.

Tasker remained oblivious to it all, his powerful binoculars fixedly trained on the figure of Harper checking crew boarding the freighter below.

Had he scanned the city to the north, he could almost have focused on the freight and scrap yard where Alan Vickers was waiting, looking out of place and very unsure.

The doctor had found the instructions in his medical bag that morning. They were precise. Be at the town's largest department store by 11 a.m. Go in through the front entrance. Leave immediately by the second side exit on the left from where goods lorry number 38689XB would take him to the station in time to catch the 11.50 to London. The message concluded with the address of the yard.

He was now wondering whether he had been mad to come. What would happen? Who would appear? It could all be a Public Control Department trick...

Kyle materialised, looking business-like, and Vickers laughed aloud with relief.

'I thought you'd written me off. I thought you were on their side.'

Instantly sensing his insecurity, Kyle asked, 'You're sure you want to get out?'

'While there's a guarantee my family will follow,' he replied.

'Under this Government, Doctor Vickers, nothing's for sure,' Kyle warned.

'But the European Convention...'

'Your wife and child have the right to follow. Unless this Government back-tracks. How are they for money?'

'Enough to last them a year or so.'

'A month should see them through,' Kyle said, 'and we'll make sure they're all right.'

He was leading the way towards his car, tidily concealed in a blind alley among the metal blocks.

'Can I pay?' Vickers asked.

'No.'

'I mean, it must cost you lot something.'

Kyle gave a dismissive gesture. 'Never mind our funding, doctor.'

The engine growled roughly to life and the little vehicle slid out of hiding and buzzed into the road.

'What did your wife say?' Kyle asked.

Vickers hesitated for just too long. 'I didn't tell her.'

'Liar! You all do.'

'She's reliable,' Vickers said, hastily. 'Tears, if that's what you mean. No hysterics, though.'

'And your daughter?'

'She doesn't know. We never told her. She doesn't even suspect.'

Kyle shook his head. 'I wouldn't bank on that.'

Vickers stared out at the passing streets. They merged grey and damp into each other. This could be his last sight of England. He felt he should absorb every detail, but his mind captured nothing. Turning towards Kyle, he simulated interest. 'Don't you ever want to get away yourself?'

'Often. But where to?'

'The States.'

Kyle replied quietly, 'They don't have a Public Control Department like ours. They don't have a régime like ours. It wouldn't leave me much scope in my job, would it? I'd only lie around and grow fatter.'

Alan Vickers was genuinely intrigued now. 'Do you see much of your family?'

'Not much, no.' Kyle coldly shut him off.

Vickers shifted uncomfortably, thrown back on his own thoughts by the forced silence. The rain was quite heavy now. His wife would be alone, except for Mary, unable to confide in anyone, not even her own parents.

'My wife and child will follow inside a month?' he pressed, nervously, as though it was within Kyle's personal power to ensure it.

'Unless the Home Secretary decides to change the rules - which I'd not put past him - and fly in the face of the Human Rights Commission in Geneva.'

Vickers went white. He had not anticipated this at all. Everything had happened too quickly. There had been no time to think, to work it out. The idea that he might never see Katherine and Mary again had not sunk in. Now it sucked his thoughts into terrified confusion.

The car's radio telephone buzzed and Kyle reached for it. Marly's voice, calm and unperturbed, carried clearly. 'Turn back now... Understood?'

'Understood.' Kyle replaced the phone and looked for a point where he could turn the car. 'It's off.'

Megatons of pressure lifted, leaving Vickers feeling giddy and sick.

'Just like that?'

'Just like that.'

'But why?' Vickers stuttered, wondering if this was the luckiest or unluckiest day of his life.

'At times like this, doctor, you don't ask why, you just do a fast U-turn.'

Within minutes, Kyle had dropped his half-hearted passenger at Liverpool Street Station and accelerated away, looking grim. He called at the office and by the time he reached the car park, lines of strain were scoring his face. The car with the smoked glass windows was already there.

'Sorry I'm late,' Kyle apologised, softly. 'My secretary didn't realise just how far I had to come.'

'She told you about the freighter?' asked Faceless.

Kyle nodded, 'I'm grateful for the tip-off.'

'No business of mine, Kyle, but it did occur that you may have - er - acquaintances involved.' The voice was bland.

Kyle's expression did not change. 'No,' he said flatly.

'Good, good. Only those poor devils don't have a chance. The illegals will get the usual two years - or one on misery pills. The Department aims to be very hard in this case. Let's hope those seamen did it for gain. They'll get twelve months. If they did it for ideology, they'll be inside two years.'

Kyle flinched slightly. In order to reduce numbers in the overcrowded prisons, the government were playing with the option of a shorter sentence combined with a daily issue of a drug designed to induce extreme mental depression.

Kyle had personally taken these 'misery' pills for a week, in order to be able to write a first hand story when the scheme was originally introduced. He recalled it as the only period of real despair he had ever experienced, a time when he could easily have committed suicide and, after all that, his story had been 'spiked' by the Editor for reasons the Editor would not go into.

'Any idea who they are? The helpers?' Kyle asked quickly.

'One's a seaman named Harper and we believe two more are in it. It won't take Skardon's chaps very long to find out. They've brought a new dimension or two to interrogation.'

'When are they planning to spring the trap?'

'They're leaving it right up to sailing time. In case a few late hopefuls show up...'

Kyle's mind flashed to Dave Brett, who was due to deliver two more would-be emigrants within the next hour. Knowing it was useless to attempt any direct action, he could only hope Marly had managed to intercept them.

Faceless was still talking. '...and there's this...' The gloved hand emerged from the partly-open driver's window. '...You'll never believe it, but the Home Secretary's pressing a novel notion in Cabinet to change the King's Birthday Honours List.'

'Oh, really?' Kyle's voice sounded eagerly surprised.

'That's his paper to the Cabinet. In place of titles and seats in the Upper House, he wants to award happiness pills and rights to extra rations of meat and petrol and the purchase of luxury goods.' Old Faceless passed over a folder. 'Make sure you burn that after digesting, won't you?'

The illegals dozed in the cabin. Three days were too long to maintain a constant pitch of tension. Only Nolan, the last to arrive, remained restless, pacing about, his hands twisting together behind his back. Half an hour, and the ship would weigh anchor: an hour, and they would be safely outside British waters.

An imperious knock shook the door. The five stowaways froze. A voice ordered, 'Open up! Public Control Department.'

Months of secret mutiny, weeks of a thousand hopes shattered. They had all known it was possible, but those final days, cocooned in the warm cabin, had lulled them. The first emigrant moved meekly towards the door.

'No!' shouted Nolan.

'Don't be daft, there's no way out!'

As the West Indian snatched at him, the door came crashing in. Nolan made a wild, futile leap into the throng of Emigration Officers. Fists and boots crashed into him. His body rang with sharp, bright pains and he slumped down, only to be hauled upright against the panelling for another beating. The E.Os. were wet and cold. Most of them should have been off-duty hours before. Their thoughts were full of missed dinners and angry wives. Nolan had provided just the chance they wanted.

Skardon had made sure that the media were informed in good time. As the dejected group of illegals came down the gangplank surrounded by its escort of Emigration Officers, The TV cameras started to turn.

A deep-voiced newscaster began reporting, 'All five illegal emigrants had had appeals for exit visas turned down by the Ombudsman's Courts and all had signed Form P Seventeen promising to work in Britain for ten years after graduation or qualifying...'

Kyle watched on the newsroom set, his face mellowed and indifferent. As the captured men moved towards a prison van on the quay, the news editor peered hard at the screen. 'Two of them have been duffed up.'

'The sea was rough in the Port of London,' Kyle said icily.

Greaves gave him a sharp glance, as the TV report continued, 'Two of the men suffered minor injuries -'

'Minor! Jesus!' interjected Greaves.

'- but these were caused in a fight among themselves.'

'Half of 'em thought it was wrong to emigrate...' said Greaves, sarcastically. His chair creaked loudly as he suddenly bent towards Kyle. 'You beat me sometimes, why weren't you down there? I mean, they've been duffed up by the PCD.'

Kyle contemplated him, reproachfully. 'You don't know that, Tiny. You don't know they didn't fall during a heavy swell.'

'In the Port of London?' Greaves thumped his desk and Wilkie, who was scribbling nearby, looked over inquisitively as he yelled, 'You pull out your story about those bloody monsters who'll run the ARCs. Then you can't be bothered to go down there...' he waved a furious arm at the TV picture. 'When little blokes are being trampled on..

'Little blokes?' Kyle said. 'Running out on us to pick up big money in the States!'

The news editor's eyes widened and he breathed out, heavily. 'I don't know you sometimes.'

'I don't know why you're grumbling. I've given you a good lead story.'

'This garbage about Fancy Dan with his miner's lamp leading his favoured workers into the Promised Land of special rations and happiness pills?' He flapped Kyle's copy, contemptuously. 'Leave off!'

'It's a good lead.'

Tiny Greaves jabbed a finger at the TV screen showing the five illegals disappearing into the black Maria.

'That's the lead. Or should be.'

'But it won't be,' Kyle insisted. 'You know that. Who cares about that lot of grabbers...?' Avoiding Greaves' baffled gaze, he turned away and caught Wilkie's eye. 'Isn't that so, Wilkie?'

The young reporter looked awkward and cornered, as Kyle advanced on him, sneering, 'You should have been down at the docks, Wilkie. Then you could have written how that bloke, who looks as if he's just had two rounds with the heavyweight champ, wasn't even pushed - but tripped over an anchor.'

Unable to control his bitterness any longer, he stormed out, leaving Wilkie smarting and Greaves completely bewildered. The cameras zoomed in on Harper and another seaman being led off the quay.

Delly Lomas and Tasker watched the TV newscast in the Controller's office at the PCD HQ. As Jack Nichols finally appeared on the screen looking like a commanding general, Skardon stretched out, complacently, and switched off.

'The media lot did well by us.' He lit a large cigar and relaxed in his chair, obviously thinking of the rosy compliments to come from above.

'They went in too close on Nolan,' observed Tasker. 'You could see the cuts and bruises.'

'I thought they were convincingly explained,' Skardon snapped.

'Otherwise full marks to Jack Nichols and his chaps.' Tasker discerned that this was no moment for criticism.

'Jack Nichols looked like a camp warder,' Delly's acid tones cut across the party. 'The image was bad.'

'He's done a great job...' Skardon tapped the red telephone on his desk. '...And I expect the Home Secretary through shortly to compliment us... him... the Department. Today was a coup. It was a lesson to unpatriotic elements.'

Delly stifled a yawn.

'- You're tired, Delly?'

'It was all so clumsy and it looked brutal,' she sounded bored.

'It had to be,' Skardon said.

'But did it have to be seen to be?'

The grey telephone rang. Skardon seized it, then thrust it at her, irritably, 'For you.'

Kyle's voice sounded in her ear. 'I'm not breaking up a champagne celebration?'

'No. Carry on,' she said, absently noticing how Skardon always began to clean his nails viciously with his paper knife when stung.

'It's just that a lot of people are asking how that bloke - what's he called? Nolan - how he came to look like the victim of a mugging?' Kyle asked.

She wrinkled her nose, but responded silkily, 'May I call you back?'

'Yes, darling. Don't leave it too late, though. We have earlier deadlines than the nationalised rag. Union punishment for independence.'

As she hung up, she surveyed her two male colleagues with some smugness. 'We're going to have to issue some kind of statement to explain how that man came out looking so bloody and bruised.'

'That shouldn't be difficult,' Skardon raised his eyebrows to Tasker. 'Should it?'

The red phone sounded and Skardon grabbed it before its first buzz had stopped. 'Skardon here... Yes, I'll hold...' He glanced with unconcealed excitement at his two Deputies 'It's him. The Home Secretary.'

'Then I should tell him that Kyle's on to his plan to substitute extra meat, petrol and luxuries for the King's Birthday Honours,' said Delly.

Skardon's jowls sagged and his mouth went tight.

CHAPTER FOUR

Dave Brett scorched across the tarmac of the heliport, screeching to a stop inches from two Emigration Officers. The younger jumped aside, annoyed, but the elder merely looked round with a grin.

Brett bounced from behind the wheel to slap the captain's back. He looked fit and prosperous in deep winter tan and Vicuna coat. No-one would have guessed that, less than twenty-four hours before, he had almost found himself on an official two-year misery trip.

The reflection of a TV Outside Broadcasting van had first appeared in his mirror as he was driving through Shepherd's Bush. It had remained quite close through Knightsbridge and St. James' Park, then disappeared somewhere between the run along the Embankment and the stop-go through the City. It was only when he noticed it again as they neared Stepney that he began to wonder what was happening to bring it to the East End.

Within yards of the docks, his skin went taut - the instincts of a street kid. As he drew near the entrance gates, he slowed down and cruised straight past them, checking in the mirror. The TV van approached, an Emigration Officer stepped out, waved it down and directed it to park out of sight in a side road. Brett had driven away, fast.

Later, he watched the rest on the TV news hour in the Leisure Centre. There, but for Scotland Road and Borstal....

Now he wisecracked with the helicopter captain and co-pilot, as a middle-aged loader ticked off a pile of light alloy containers against a list and the E.Os. chalked against the stencilled destinations in North France - Lille... Caen... Bayeux... Calais...

The first official was an old familiar. The other was obviously newly trained and hot for theatrical results. He paused over a large crate with perforations.

'Chemicals. They need ventilation,' Brett remarked, without even blinking.

'I know this stuff,' the senior man declared, marking the crate with a large red cross. 'It's O.K.'

The second officer gave it a last, lingering look before moving on. Brett winked at the older one and followed them away from the helicopter as the cargo hold slammed shut and the propeller began to spin.

'Trade seems to be looking up, Brett,' the first Emigration Officer chuckled, scanning him and the car, appreciatively.

'About bloody time...Did you hear Oxfam are raising funds in India for us?' Brett joked.

It was hard to curb his elation as the machine took off in the background. He'd done it again! Despite the bastards! This one would really get them jumping!

Sweeping luxuriously away, at last, he could imagine Scholes apprehensively climbing out of the crate and stretching his limbs. Before long, the helicopter would land in Northern France and Scholes would jump out and run across that woodland clearing to meet the waiting French man. There would be no waves, no goodbyes. That was the ritual.

Skardon received the news in his morning bath, to which he always retired with the national and international newspapers which arrived daily at 7 a.m. by special delivery.

He let out an exasperated wail and dropped the offending New York Times in the water. The 'phone rang before he had time to reach his towel. Dripping and shivering, he cringed as the Home Secretary bellowed down his ear. Seconds later, he was making sure that his two deputies did not sit down to a tranquil breakfast.

All the way to headquarters in the back of the official car, he pretended to concentrate on official documents from the official, wafer-thin briefcase, which carried the Royal cipher embossed in gold.

The mixture of temper and funk jarring his brain was becoming all too familiar. Forgetting the air of dignity and poise he usually favoured, he snarled twice at the driver during traffic bottlenecks. The man gave him a look which, in Skardon's present paranoiac state, might almost have been interpreted as contempt. He was grateful for the subservient nods from the two duty policemen at the entrance to the PCD block.

The lift was full of other civil servants. Not a word passed between them, although each knew perfectly who the others were.

'Seven,' Skardon said, his voice impact producing a light against the figure seven on the dial. Floor buttons were no longer necessary.

Within minutes, he was ensconced at the head of the conference table in his office, the security of deferential deputies and the Chief Emigration Officer around him.

'They're getting out! They're getting out regularly, steadily, in greater numbers! It's like a scheduled service!' he spat at them. 'The gutter press will be calling it the Great Exodus before long! And it has to stop. The Home Secretary's had a bellyfull.' He slapped the still damp copy of the New York Times on the table. 'Look at it! The American press is full of it.' Hitting the photograph with the back of his hand. 'You'd think he was the greatest scientist since Einstein the way they're playing him up. And he was only a third-rate nuclear engineer.'

'So why should we worry?' asked Delly Lomas, with feigned innocence.

'He signed Form P17,' Skardon growled. 'And he makes us look like incompetents.'

She remained deliberately pragmatic. 'So we tighten up our port controls.'

'I doubt if Scholes got out through one of my ports, sea or air,' Jack Nichols blustered. 'It would take a mouse to get out through the net we've got now.'

'We seem to have a lot of mouse-sized runaways,' the Controller barked at him.

Delly remarked, conversationally, 'When I was a girl they were all trying to get into this country.'

'Africans and Pakistanis!' Tasker retorted, with all the scorn of a West Indian who has married a white girl and moved a long way from Brixton. The other three stared at him, but he was quite oblivious.

Delly rattled on, 'And now even some of their kids are trying to get out. It's come to something when Jack, here, and his emigration officers are being made a target for the Race Relations Board.'

The Controller looked weary. 'All that matters is that we seal these bolt holes. Otherwise the Home Secretary's going to have my guts for garters.'

It was a recognisably accurate forecast. He waved a dismissive hand and the three trouped out leaving him gazing gloomily at the heap of newspapers on the table.

Perhaps they had all moved too far from the grass roots, Delly Lomas thought to herself. They were personally out of touch : inspectors and surveillance machines apart, their only direct contact with activity at ground level was through idiots like Nichols.

Although she enjoyed goading the Controller, she was also ambitious and conscious that trouble for him could affect all. A shift in power was not in her interest unless she was the one promoted.

Returning to her office, she asked the male secretary to check through recent records. One of the files he selected was in her briefcase as she boarded a train for the Midlands the following morning.

The court was intimate, informal and without any apparent panoply of authority. No bewigged lawyers, no dock, no witness box. Even the chairman was not robed, because he was not part of the judiciary, but a senior civil servant in the Ombudsman's department.

Alan Vickers, the appellant, sat in a chair in the body of the court and the hearing had started when Delly arrived and took a chair beside the State counsel.

The Chairman was speaking. 'So what it comes down to, Doctor Vickers, is an appeal on compassionate grounds?'

'Yes, sir.'

'What you are asking this court to accept is that, because your child is subject to this alleged chest condition...'

'She has bronchial asthma!' Vickers interrupted, trenchantly.

'Do please control yourself, Doctor Vickers. We are trying to be fair.' The Chairman was elderly and would have preferred the sanctuary of wig and gown to protect him from young upstarts like this. 'One expert witness has told us that your child's condition is not serious and can be treated just as well here as anywhere else.'

Alan Vickers sat rigid, trying impossibly to appear objective. 'The expert witness is a medical officer in the Public Control Department,' he pointed out. 'He has a vested interest. My child would be better off in California.'

'And so would you. You'd be at least five times better off in salary,' the chairman stressed, obviously finding the other's demeanour personally offensive.

Vickers glanced at his counsel, who rustled some papers, but said nothing.

He turned back to the chairman, desperately, 'I thought this was an Ombudsman's Court. I thought it was to protect personal freedom.'

'Within the law, Doctor Vickers,' came the pompous reply. 'Don't forget that this country saw you through your education as a doctor. And you signed an agreement to work for at least ten years here after qualifying.'

'But Mary wasn't even born when I signed that!' he blurted out.

Delly Lomas had heard it all before. The trouble with grass roots work was that it was all so monotonously repetitive. She idly scanned the room. A small section of the court was reserved for the public, a few chosen from the social security list. There were also twelve places for the media. All were filled and, among them, she was cheered to see Kyle.

He caught her eye and returned her wink. At least that could mean an amusing lunch.

The chairman had gone into a ceremonial whispered huddle with the man and woman on either side of him. All three were mature and tamed by years in the civil service. Their verdict was a foregone conclusion.

'We have immense sympathy with you, Doctor Vickers. We believe, however, that your child's ill-health does not constitute grounds for the issue of an exit visa to you. We are prepared to grant your child a visa, so that she may be treated in a more congenial climate...'

'And break up my family?' the doctor shouted.

'We remind you that you signed form P17 and we must reject your appeal....This court will resume at two-thirty.'

Kyle saw Alan Vickers' face crumple momentarily, before the man wheeled round and left the room. People began to scrape back their chairs and move out, and Delly Lomas found her way to his side.

She looked glossy and alive against the drab background. He had intended to follow Vickers, but now he stopped.

'What brings you here? Seeing the balls and chains are properly put on?' he teased her.

'Come off it, Kyle. You don't like it any more than we do when anti-social people try to dodge paying their debt to this country.'

'He did have a bit of a case,' Kyle responded, easily.

'An excuse, no more. You're surely not going to splash this all over page one tomorrow?'

'Inside page,' he reassured her, without rancour. 'Twelve lines. That's all they're worth these days.'

'If that.'

'And I don't want your heavy mob after me.'

'Don't. You'll have me in tears,' she mocked. 'Nobody orders you what to print.'

'No, they just bend our fingers back as we try to type.'

She laughed, showing strong, even teeth. Everything about her was somehow seductively challenging. Her small-breasted, long body, her clever, sophisticated face. Dangerous, he thought to himself.

'Anyway, you're on our side most of the time,' she was saying.

'Till you get above yourselves,' he commented.

They had moved out of the court and, almost guiltily, he saw Alan Vickers standing in the corridor with his wife and small daughter. The family looked tired and beaten. The two men regarded each other, betraying nothing except a mysterious interest, which did not escape Delly Lomas.

'Don't tell me you swallowed his yarn?'

Kyle shrugged. 'None of us did. We're all so conditioned now.' He steered her towards the door. 'I hear you're going to need more of these Ombudsman's Courts.' It was a deceptively casual remark.

'What?'

'I hear you're getting around five hundred exit visa appeals every week?'

He felt her elbow stiffen slightly in his hand. 'You do hear some funny things.'

'We have some funny things going on.' Her loss of composure tickled him.

She seemed quite shaken. 'You can't run a rumour like that!'

'Five hundred people a week is twenty-six thousand a year,' Kyle pointed out. 'And that's just the front runners who go all the way to the Ombudsman's Courts - wanting to get the hell out!'

'To line their pockets,' she put in, as a matter of course.

'That's right, love,' he agreed, coolly. 'Greedy, ungrateful sods, all of 'em.'

She moved closer to him, pressing slightly against his side and turning her face so that he found himself looking directly into a pair of wide, bold eyes.

A flock of lawyers wheeled past them, like starlings. Delly had switched to full voltage charm, hinting that he could help her - her department. She mentioned Scholes, the escaped nuclear engineer.

'I was in court when his appeial was turned down...' Kyle gave her a mischievous glance. 'Feeble-looking bloke. I'm surprised he swam all that way.'

She looked uncertain, then said persuasively, 'You were the one who got on to the Devon racket.'

'Those Devon yachtsmen?'

'You exposed them,' she emphasized: 'Our inspectors didn't blow their game. You did.'

'The bastards were making a fortune out of human misery,' he pointed out, carefully.

'They were spiriting out illegal emigrants. Under our noses.'

He reminded her that her boss had maintained the PCD was on to the racket anyway.

'Were we?' she gave him a wide-eyed look. 'Skardon's made a Whitehall career out of claiming other people's successes as his own.'

He studied her, agreeably. 'I reckon you hate your boss more than I hate my editor. Toss you for who hates the mostest.'

Diverted, she giggled and they walked on into the circular central hall, from which ten doors led, each to a different Ombudsman's Court. The lawyers scurried between them carrying important-looking files, bound in red tape. Very Kafkaesque, Kyle thought.

Delly had directed the conversation towards his disappearances from the PCD's surveillance screens.

'We know why you go underground, Kyle,' she claimed, with an understanding smile. 'We know you have to pick up so many official secrets, from civil servants. Especially from one in my own department.'

He gazed at her with exaggerated lustfulness. 'Faceless? A figment of your department's neurosis,' he said absently, while issuing an unspoken but unmistakable invitation.

'We didn't make up the name.' The tip of her tongue was showing against her lips.

'You've only to nod and it's on,' he said it straight, and not simply to entice her from the subject. 'I could vanish for a month with you and still want more.'

'Don't you be so sure.' Long, black lashes lowered over the warm eyes.

In the main entrance to the building, the Vickers family was being pushed indifferently into position by a few press photographers. They looked helpless and the child was audibly gasping for breath.

'Even a year ago, there'd have been at least fifty press men around them,' Kyle said irritably.

Delly replied coldly, 'The Press was overmanned.'

'So now we're down to three national papers, one State-run, and a couple of Sundays,' he said with some edge. 'The rest of that lot over there are working for foreign news agencies. All doing stories about poor old Britain with its identity cards and rationing and bully boy bureaucrats.'

She gave a deliberately exaggerated sigh. 'You're back in your reactionary mood. I go off you when you revert...'

By now he was fuming, watching the Vickers family being jostled and used. 'And your State-run rag will come out showing that poor sod looking like some rapist with toothache.'

'You are in a mood.'

'It's that bloody court,' he confessed. 'It gives me a desperate longing for fresh air.' He hurried her down the steps to the pavement.

'You will help us, though?' she urged, sensing the slight softening in him.

Looking down at her, he suppressed his anger. 'I'll help you,' he promised.

The State-controlled British Gazette decided to promote Alan Vickers as an example of all that was rotten and ruining the government's brave new society. So the following morning saw photographs of the doctor and his family splashed across their front page. As Tiny Greaves pointed out, they had made Vickers look like a train robber and touched up Mary Vickers' picture to make her look as fit as a Russian gymnast. Having muttered and cursed over the report, he shoved it into the paper shredder near his desk.

'Poisonous liars! They should be prosecuted as con-men!'

Kyle laid his latest story on the desk and the news editor's mood began to improve as he read it. Soon he was chuckling, 'If the Home Secretary sees this, he'll bring back the death penalty just for you!'

'But he's always stood out against capital punishment,' Kyle pronounced, solemnly, then added with suspicion, 'What do you mean, if he reads it?'

'Tomorrow's edition,' Greaves confirmed, reading on. 'I can see the government cutting our State advertising yet.'

'Or our newsprint ration,' Kyle suggested.

'Not just yet, Kyle,' the big man assured him, eyeing the copy with delight. 'Twenty six thousand! I can see it coming! I can see the day when they'll have to requisition every one of London's hotel bedrooms as courtrooms.'

'They'll find an easier way, by just announcing a blanket refusal to all exit visa appeals.'

The news editor leaned back in his long-suffering chair and examined Kyle with a frown. 'I still can't make you out. Half the time you push the Public Control Department's lousy hand-outs and then...'

'That's the half of me that's the good citizen,' Kyle said.

'And the other half puts bombs under 'em.' He almost caressed the manuscript in front of him, and asserted, 'It's the bomber I like!'

Kyle smiled broadly. 'You know something, Tiny? You've got violent tendencies.'

He had crossed to collect his jacket from the line of hooks behind the door and was carefully examining his pockets. It was there, stuck under one of the flaps this time. He glanced round the busy newsroom, but no-one was watching him with special interest. All the reporters seemed to be occupied with their own affairs.

Kyle returned to his news editor's desk and discreetly laid the radio bug on it. 'Whoever it is who keeps doing this to me, I wish he'd stop,' he said, very quietly.

'I'll keep it,' Greaves offered.

'No...Who's covering the Home Secretary's press conference?'

'I thought you would be.'

Kyle shook his head. 'It's only a whitewash speech. He's out to play up the new Inspectors of Culture as high-minded blokes who aren't really out to screw writers and artists and broadcasters. He's already said it all once in the House of Commons.

There was a pause, before he added 'I have other things to do.'

Greaves checked his big desk diary. 'I'll send Norton.'

Kyle eyed the stocky, cheeky, young reporter bashing at a typewriter with two fingers, and nodded at Tiny Greaves. Then, moving towards the door, he brushed against the row of coats and neatly slipped the bug into a pocket of Norton's jacket.

The two news cameras rolled in towards Dan Mellor, the Home Secretary, as he stood on the conference platform surrounded by his aides, notably the Controller and Deputy Controllers of the Public Control Department. Before them, a crowd of press men and women sat attentively, armed with notebooks and tape recorders.

A powerfully built man, with thick, iron-grey hair, Dan Mellor knew he looked good on the screen. Half a dozen sessions at the government TV school, together with a natural aptitude, had equipped him well. He knew exactly how to get the best out of the medium.

Barrel-chested and with head flung back, he had been standing carefully positioned to the cameras. Now he suddenly hunched forward, composing his coarsely handsome features into an expression of paternal rebuke.

'What I'm saying is that some papers have been putting out lies about a responsible body of men and women, who are now a vital part of the public service. I refer to the Inspectors of Culture...'

Behind him, Skardon's professional eyes swivelled over the group of listeners. Then the Controller turned sharply to Tasker, 'Where's Kyle?'

Both Deputies began scrutinising the crowd.

'...They pose no threat to the liberal arts...none to writers...none to artists...none to the drama...' the Home Secretary was insisting, with apparent sincerity. 'They are here to help, to see that the State does its duty as a patron of the arts.'

Skardon whispered hoarsely at Tasker from the side of his mouth, 'He's certainly not here. Find out where the hell he is.'

And, as Tasker crept towards the platform exit, Norton's voice was heard asking, 'What exactly are their duties, Home Secretary?'

Dan Mellor looked at the young journalist with the hurt air of a man who feels let down that someone should doubt his integrity.

Tasker made his way quickly to the Surveillance Room. The atmosphere, when he arrived there, was hardly buzzing with efficiency. A group of checkers was gossiping in one corner. One of the operators had a transistor blaring and, at the central desk, Randall was engrossed in a paperback. It was obvious that none of them had expected any interruption during the Minister's visit to the building.

Tasker stole up silently behind the supervisor, and said, with loud authority, 'Kyle, please.'

Randall jumped visibly, blundered to his feet and hurried to a monitor showing a green blip in the centre of its screen.

'Here, I'd say. On the premises,' he declared, blinking nervously. 'Here among us, in the conference room very likely.'

'Oh no, he's not,' Tasker bullied. 'That's the one place I know he isn't in.'

But the supervisor had regained his balance and stated, firmly, 'These sets don't lie, Mr Tasker.'

Tasker slipped back into the conference hall, while the Home Secretary was still preaching.

'We really are at the end of the road when you blokes suspect the State, even when it brings in the most progressive measures to improve the quality of life...'

'Improve or control, Home Secretary?' Norton challenged, rashly. 'Couldn't this new inspectorate, these new Inspectors of Culture, be no more than censors?'

'I can tell which paper you're from,' Dan Mellor retaliated with false jollity.

The other journalists and TV men tittered and Tasker took the opportunity to murmur to his boss, 'Kyle's here. He's in this room.'

'Oh no, he's bloody not!' was the angry reply.

Suspecting what had happened, Skardon's stare settled, balefully, on Norton. The Home Secretary was replying, 'I'm sure some of you who are so sensitive about liberty now, would not be quite so free to ask questions if the Army had taken over four years ago, As they tried to.'

'Home Secretary, you can hardly call two generals and one dotty Air Marshal a junta!' Norton needled, impertinently. 'All they did was meet secretly in a club for geriatric generals. Some putsch!'

Dan Mellor's eyes blazed, his benign act publicly forgotten. It was obvious he would have had the independent reporter transported to the Tower, had that been possible. As it was, he threw a very menacing look at his supporting PCD cast. In turn, Skardon, Delly Lomas and Tasker eyed Norton vindictively, mentally marking him down for some black list.

Before long, he would hardly need to carry Kyle's bug around. He would be a blip in his own right.

Spring had made improvements to the prosaic council estate, introducing buds to bare branches and massed flowers to the geometric beds cut into the grass and children to the concrete play-spaces. But none of these were details of interest to the men in the car.

There were three of them, as before. They even looked like their predecessors, the same neat, unimaginative clothes and features, unobtrusive faces for merging with crowds and wallpaper. Certainly none of them was likely to feel a twinge of heady seasonal vigour.

Their car was parked near a single storey building, marked by the large sign, 'Maxton Community Health Centre.' A small boy hurtled yodelling past it and the first PCD inspector sighed impatiently, turning up the radio volume to drown the noise.

A voice broadcast clearly, 'Right now, Wendy, deep breath please...' It paused, then continued, 'Good...Again now...Good...And again...That's splendid.'

In his cramped surgery, Alan Vickers was applying his stethoscope in chess-like moves to the back of a child about the same age as his own daughter. The room faced north and was heated only by a single-bar electric fire. The child shivered and sniffed, as her anxious mother watched.

'Don't look so worried, Wendy,' the young doctor said, reassuringly. 'One more deep breath. We'll soon have you right. You can get dressed now.'

He began to fill in a prescription form and a small chit, directing the mother, without looking up, 'Two every night and morning and see that she...'

'She's so run down, Doctor,' the woman said, fretfully. 'Could she have extra rations of meat extract and fruit juice? Only we can't afford the black market.'

Handing over the chit, he smiled. 'Done already. That entitles her to more sugar and cheese as well.'

He stood up and patted the child's head. 'No swimming for a week or two. Then you can try the Channel.'

As she left with her mother, Wendy turned and waved, but the doctor had already flopped back into his chair and was passing a trembling hand across his forehead. He looked utterly exhausted.

Another patient entered almost immediately and Vickers sat up, with an effort, to check his list. 'Ah Mr Grant, I've not treated you before, have I?'

'I'm never normally ill,' the man replied.

'But you think you are now?'

'I think I've got a rupture...' About 28 years old, fit and very muscular, he looked more like a suitable entrant for a weight-lifting competition than a man with a rupture.

Unexpectedly, he handed Vickers a piece of paper and continued, loudly, 'In fact, I know I've got a rupture,' as the startled Vickers read it.

The doctor looked a little dazed, but said, automatically, 'Let's have a look, Mr Grant.'

However, far from removing his trousers, Ian Cursley was already wandering round the surgery checking ledges, surfaces and corners.

Alan Vickers sat at his desk watching, wide-eyed, as the other pushed his fingers into a narrow air vent and withdrew a small radio bug, then carefuly replaced it. He gestured to the doctor to continue speaking.

'Yes, you do have a slight rupture. Very slight.'

Outside, in the car, the three listeners heard Cursley's distinctly peeved voice answer, 'I wouldn't call it slight, doctor. It's giving me hell. And I'm also getting these pains round the heart.'

'Take your shirt off,' the doctor instructed, then stepped back instinctively, as the stranger reached over and began patting down his jacket and reaching into his pockets. With silent urgency, Cursley prompted him to keep talking.

'Your heart rate seems normal, Mr Grant.'

'Not when I'm working, it isn't.' Finding nothing on Vickers, he had started to hunt through the GP's bag.

As the reason for the search slowly dawned, and Alan Vickers began to appreciate that his every word was actually being overheard, his performance improved. 'I'm not here just to dole out sickness benefits, Mr Grant,' he asserted, severely.

'I'm no scrounger,' whined Cursley, still rummaging. 'I'm not scared of hard work.' He brought out a small, metal object from the bag and held it up, mouthing, 'Radio location bug.'

The doctor looked puzzled, so Cursley wrote on the prescription pad, 'It tells them where you are.'

Vickers nodded and, carrying on writing, Cursley said, 'I'd just like to feel fit enough to get back on the job...I'd go back to work today.'

The message read, 'Stand by for a few days. Burn this.' Alan Vickers folded the note and put it to the electric fire. They watched it char and crumple as he said, 'You can stay off for the rest of this week, Mr Grant. Then it's back to work.'

'So there's nothing seriously wrong with my heart?' the other protested with belligerent disbelief.

'There's a murmur. Nothing to worry yourself about.' Cursley winked encouragingly at him and Vickers, added, enthusiastically, 'I won't be a party to parasitism, Mr Grant.'

The leading inspector nodded his approval, as the doctor's voice continued through the radio. 'I will not give my support to the work-shy.'

'I can put my shirt back on now?' His patient sounded sullen.

'Yes, you can dress now, Mr Grant.'

The stranger left Vickers looking round the shabby room in stunned excitement, no longer really seeing its row of worn text books and slightly dated equipment. He walked briskly through the health centre gate to a bicycle leaning against the fence.

The three inspectors watched him with puritanical, zealous disapproval from their car, where the doctor's voice was sounding again, 'Do sit down, Mrs Grace. How are the children?'

Cursley seemed to have some trouble with his bicycle chain and dismounted to deal with it, at the same time carefully registering the PCD car and its three occupants.

'They're all fine, doctor, but it's harder to make ends meet,' a woman's voice was saying.

Vickers studied her with concern, about thirty, but prematurely ageing, with the stoop of a much older woman and slack stomach muscles from child-bearing. She also looked alarmingly underfed.

'I wish we could have stopped at two. It's our own fault,' she was saying. 'The tax they take just because we've had two more than we should.'

The doctor glanced worriedly at the air vent. 'They had to do something about the birth rate, Mrs Grace,' he murmured.

'And they did it to us...' She suddenly began to disintegrate in front of him, the lines on her face growing more intense, eyes filling with tears. '...only now...'

Knowing what was coming, he pictured the spies listening in and wished he could stop her, but dared not remove the radio bug. There was no other way to warn her. His own enforced treachery made him feel sick.

'...I think I'm in the club again...' her thin face flushed in panic. 'Nobody's going to sterilise me! Nobody!'

In the car, the leading man made a quick note in a pocket book. 'Bonus,' he said to his companions, with a grin.

'You don't know for sure that you are pregnant,' the doctor's voice was remarking.

'I'm pretty sure. I'm certain.' The sound of the woman crying filled the car.

'One for the Family Affairs blokes,' the inspector commented, completely unmoved.

On the other side of the road, Cursley had re-chained his bike and was cycling off.

'You might not be, Mrs Grace,' Alan Vickers was saying, comfortingly. 'Now, if you'd like to get ready.' He indicated a curtained cubicle.

'I couldn't stand being sterilised. I couldn't,' she sobbed, then rounded on him, almost as though he were responsible for the State law. 'And I'll not have an abortion either!'

She crossed to the cubicle. 'Why five? Why did they have to make it five?'

Bitterly, Alan Vickers stared at the air vent again, but still could not resist exclaiming, 'Perhaps because nobody in the Government had more than four, Mrs Grace.'

'Cheeky! He's getting above himself!' sneered the first PCD man, making another note. 'All because we won't give the bum an exit visa.'

CHAPTER FIVE

Kyle's information on the growing number of applicants for exit visas was accurate and the Surveillance Room staff had already increased along with the work load. Activity was intense, with all listening posts manned and extra checkers moving busily between the monitors. Obviously no-one had time to gossip or read now.

Tasker joined Randall and surveyed the scene with approval. 'Ombudsman's Court emigration rejects,' he demanded, and the supervisor reached for one of his ledgers. 'Name - Doctor Alan Vickers.'

'We have just over six hundred of those on the list today,' Randall remarked, then pointed to the bank of monitors. 'No 9.'

'Are they still taking him out?'

'No. Electronic surveillance only. There's been a rush and they were called to other things last night. We thought that, after four days...' He had led the Deputy to the monitor and buttoned channel fourteen. 'These exit visa cases are our second busiest classification nowadays, though they're still a long way behind the dissidents, who just want to stay and make a nuisance of themselves.'

The screen came alive with different coloured moving blips. Alan Vickers' was amber and shone slightly off centre. Randall pressed another button and the amber blip now appeared alone on a tighter presentation altogether. The supervisor studied it, then plotted the position against a reference sheet.

'Coventry south west,' he said to Tasker. 'He's on the Castle Housing estate.'

The Deputy Controller nodded. 'Where he should be. That's where his patients are.' The amber blip began moving across the screen. 'He'll be doing his visiting.'

Randall gave him a sidelong look and hinted, cattily, 'I thought he was on Miss Lomas' list?'

'And on mine,' the other snapped. 'I have the authority.'

'Yes indeed, Mr Tasker,' the supervisor gave a Mona Lisa smile and turned back to the monitor. 'Do you want a more precise fix on him?' But the Deputy Controller was already on his way out.

Another influx of cases flooded the department that afternoon, so that quite a number of earlier subjects had to be removed from the schedule, in order to avoid building up a backlog. Luck included Alan Vickery' name among them and allocated his amber blip to another reject.

Within an hour Cursley chose to turn up again. The doctor was beginning his second round when he heard his name being called and saw the contact waiting nearby in an elderly car. The man instructed him to leave his medical bag locked in his own car and to search his pockets thoroughly. Bugs were so smooth and small that it was easy to miss one tucked down in a corner. They were specially designed to adhere to material and were almost indestructible. Under jacket collars and lapels, or in vent overlaps were favourite planting grounds. But Vickers found nothing and climbed in beside Cursley, who took his wrist and checked his watch, before finally pulling away.

The car appeared old, but housed a souped-up engine, judging by the way it streaked down the motorway. Ian Cursley grilled his passenger for the first half hour, tersely probing his finance, job, friends, family and especially his opinions and feelings. After that the two men hardly spoke.

Since the hearing, Vickers had been too busy and too depressed to make any decisions. The journey gave him the opportunity he needed, although he wondered if the decision might have been made already. Perhaps he really had seen his wife and child for the last time. He had felt the same fear before, but knew that there could be no more wavering. The U.K. still lived under the rule of law, even if some of the laws were lousy, and he believed the best chance of ensuring his family's freedom lay in appealing to the Human Rights Commission in Geneva once he was overseas, himself. But it was the biggest gamble of his life.

A huge crusher was compressing a mountain of old cookers and fridges when they arrived at the freight and scrap yard, where the manager and Kyle, both in safety helmets, were apparently checking scrap. The manager moved discreetly away as the old car drew up.

Cursley took the newspaper man to one side and said, in a low voice, 'He's fine. I've questioned him thoroughly.'

The journalist turned to Alan Vickers. 'I wanted to see you again to make sure you want away.'

'Yes, I do,' the doctor affirmed with conviction.

'You weren't too sure last time,' Kyle pointed out.

'I am now,' the other insisted. 'I've seen more. I know more. I've got to get away as soon as you can fix it.'

'We'll give it a few days then, till they get used to the idea that you've accepted your lot. Don't change your routine,' Kyle directed, then smiled. 'Try to look resigned and sad.'

'I feel resigned and sad,' Vickers observed, truthfully, yet with some relief. He had been given time to prepare and time to say last words.

Skardon had another disturbed bathtime when Kyle's latest story on the rush for exit visas appeared screaming all over the front page of the independent.

Chain-chewing one cigarette after another on the way to the office, he felt he would happily have presented the journalist with a gold-plated exit visa just to get rid of him. But, for some reason, the bastard had shown no wish to leave.

The Controller reached a decision and his office at about the same time. A person to person talk was needed. One or two attractive rewards offered in exchange for future co-operation. As he phoned through his friendly invitation, he was unaware that his deputy, Delly Lomas, had already covered much the same ground, with infinitely more chance of success, owing to her unfair sexual advantage.

Surveillance reported Kyle in the building, even before Reception rang through with the information. The columnist had walked the deeply carpeted corridors many times before, but never without the same fastidious shudder at the original paintings which lined the walls. He wondered if it were obligatory for all collectors of art for the State to be natural Philistines, as well as colour blind. So much money spent on such excruciating taste.

Henry Skardon came round his vast desk, arms outstretched in welcome. For a few minutes he fussed over his visitor, settling him comfortably, ordering coffee, offering him a cigarette from his desk casket. Kyle shook his head.

'Still off them?' asked Skardon. 'They are cancer proof.'

'Who put that one out? The State-run Tobacco Corporation, or the Treasury?' The journalist aimed the first blow. 'I know your Treasury lads got in a sweat over the fall in tobacco tax.'

The Controller ruefully shook his head. 'You're a cynic, Kyle. You won't believe the facts we give you, so you make up your own and go shouting them from the rooftops.'

'I didn't make up that figure of 26,000 exit visa appeals.' Kyle decided to cut through the phoney pleasantries and get to the point.

Henry Skardon's act collapsed immediately as, rattling a copy of the newspaper in his hand, he growled something about scurrilous rot like this not helping his department to carry out laws crucial to the country's survival.

'What's scurrilous about it?' the journalist asked, coolly.

'You can't go telling millions of people that all our best professional talent is queueing to appeal for exit visas!' the other protested.

'I didn't say all. You've managed to tame quite a few - by whip and carrot.'

'Twenty six thousand a year! Trumped up figures!'

'What do you want me to do? Show you a copy of one of your own Public Control Department memos?'

'Please,' the Controller urged, sardonically.

'Then jail me under the Official Secrets Act?' The newsman jibed.

'Do you think I'd do that to you, Kyle?' In another attempt to exude benevolence, the Controller only succeeded in resembling a smiling crocodile.

'If you dared, you bloody would!' retorted Kyle.

The smile on the crocodile's face vanished. 'Don't try us too far!' The advice sounded harsh. There was an instant of naked hostility between them, then Skardon veered away. 'I still don't get you. Half the time you'll help us put over the things people should know. I mean, you did more than any media person to explain what we're trying to do about curbing the birth rate and policing the Wealth Tax, neither of them easy - er -'

'I don't like the sterilisation thing,' the columnist stressed at once. 'Any more than I like the way your zealous lads are ripping up people's floor boards, looking for gold sovereigns.'

The Controller blew a cloud of smoke through pursed lips. 'Mustn't be too squeamish, Kyle,' he said, airily. 'After all, we don't like your unofficial contacts with this Department. We don't like whatsname... Faceless, you call him... But we do believe there's hope for you yet.'

'Steady on.' His visitor indulged in a little cosy spite. 'You'll soon be having me in the King's Birthday Honours for a ration of happiness pills.'

'That's not been approved yet,' Skardon sounded cross.

'This year, next year..?'

Kyle's knowledge of what went on in Whitehall was the only serious threat to his own ultimate inclusion in the Birthday Honours hand-outs. The PCD boss mentally lined up his staff - Lomas, Tasker, Nichols and the rest - and wondered which was the traitor. He looked at the journalist resentfully as the man blabbed on.

'...It's the bloody misery pills that would bother me. I mean, jail's bad enough without dishing out trash like that to the prisoners.'

'You make it sound vicious, when it's no more than a way of cutting prison sentences,' he felt obliged to reply. 'Which would you prefer? Six months? Or one with misery pills?'

'It'll not be long before I have to make the decision, no doubt...' There was no doubting the venom in Kyle's eyes either. '...when you get me inside for contempt of Parliament, or some Court, or some breach of the Official Secrets Act.'

'I hope you will see the light before any such extremes are called for,' Skardon's warning was undisguised. 'Think of the exclusives we give you.'

'You cannot hope to bribe or twist, Thank God, the British journalist!' the bumptious Kyle recited. '...Except with a scoop or two.'

'You do all right,' his opponent commented, grudgingly.

'I'm greedy.'

The Controller realised he was getting absolutely nowhere. He looked as though he was about to explain something, then changed his mind and said instead, 'I was going to take you to lunch today. However, the Home Secretary needs someone to vent his sadism on. But worry not...'

He pressed a button on his sound/vision intercom and Delly Lomas' face appeared on the desk monitor. 'Delly, I don't know if you have a lunch date. But, if you have, ditch him. You're lunching with Kyle, if you don't mind.'

The woman's face smiled. 'I'd ditch Mr Universe for Kyle.'

The journalist leaned over the intercom. 'I'll take that as a compliment, if you tell me you didn't know I was here...'

'I knew,' she said.

'In that case, who's paying?'

'I am.'

'Isn't that an offence under the Sex Discrimination Reform Act?' the journalist joked.

'You pay, then,' she returned, promptly. 'I'll not feel humiliated.'

Skardon had been watching the exchange with a satisfied smirk. This was a much better idea. They all knew Kyle fancied her and it wasn't beyond suspicion that the attraction was mutual. The Controller knew she was far too ambitious to allow it to get in her way, but she might easily use it to get results.

'Come through as soon as you like, Delly,' he said, sleekly, before switching off the intercom. Turning to the newsman, he beamed, knowingly, 'You should be so lucky...'

But Kyle's face remained deadpan. All at once, he stood up and crossed to study the wall map, with its marked ports and airfields and ARCs, standing with his back to Skardon and his hands stuffed into his pockets.

'No new establishments you don't know about, Kyle, I assure you.'

'You'd never show the first concentration camp on here, anyway,' goaded the other, heeling round to face him. Pulling a hand out of his pocket, he gently dropped a radio bug in the Controller's ashtray and grinned, 'One of yours, I believe.'

When he had left, Skardon viciously kicked back his chair and strode to the window. Before long, an official car drew up at the main entrance below and a uniformed PCD chauffeur opened the nearside passenger door. Delly Lomas, and the journalist entered the car, laughing together.

Skardon paced to the intercom and pressed a button. 'Come up!' he ordered, as Tasker's face appeared on the screen.

'She's taking him to the Trattoria, and I don't want him lost for one minute,' he emphasized, as the man came into the room. 'I want him marked, Tasker. One or two of your best blokes. Not a regiment. Some M.P.s are saying we're overmanned as hell already.'

The restaurant was only minutes away, but the Deputy Controller decided to wait at least half an hour before making his check, in case Lomas and Kyle decided to stop off for a drink first. So Randall had just settled into his book during the lunch hour lull when Tasker materialised beside him. The supervisor looked up, disgruntled over the interruption and wondering if the Deputy did it deliberately, just to catch him out.

'Kyle, please.' Tasker made it obvious that he had noted the book.

Randall ran his finger along a line of names. 'He's not on today's list.'

'He's with Delly Lomas. He'll show up on her signal.' The man shot him a knowing look. '...They're only having lunch.'

The superintendent led the way to one of the monitors and pointed out the appropriate blip in a close-up of the London area.

'That can't be!' Tasker declared, staring. 'That bloody restaurant's not in Highgate! What are they doing in Highgate?' He regarded Randall, accusingly.

The supervisor threw up his eyes and sniffed. 'There's nothing wrong with the set.'

It was Friday and, as the car took them north through London, they passed numerous lines of women spending the lunch hour queueing outside butchers, grocers and greengrocers for their weekend shopping. It was odd, the way the small shopkeepers survived in spite of punitive taxation and competition from the State-run hypermarkets, Kyle thought.

He contemplated Delly Lomas and could not imagine her waiting in the cold, counting her food coupons; but she was compellingly interesting. He wanted to know more about how she lived, passed her time, what she was like and what happened when she discarded that sang-froid. He enjoyed her surprises, such as her response to his suggestion that they ate at her place.

'Why not?' she had agreed, immediately leaning forward to brief the PCD chauffeur.

It was a pity she was on the other side, but perhaps that was part of her attraction; the explosive element in the relationship.

The car glided to a stop outside a well-maintained mansion block of flats, obviously built in a more spacious age. Her apartment was on the first floor and he followed her through an elegantly proportioned living room to a tidy kitchen, where she quickly broke a few eggs into a bowl and began beating them, as butter sizzled in a frying pan.

'Wine in the fridge. Glasses in the top cupboard. Butter and celery in the larder, through there,' she directed him, as she produced a long French loaf and a pleasant selection of cheeses - Camembert, Brie, Dolce Latte, Esrom and Lancashire. He was relieved to notice they had not been ruined by refrigeration. Abstemious in wine, women and tobacco, Kyle nevertheless liked food - good food. In better times, he would have been a gourmet, but ration cards had made them an extinct breed.

Before long, they were eating her excellent omelettes with relish. 'It's your own fault it's not more exotic,' she said. 'I told you I was no cook.'

'You're modest,' he replied. 'And privileged. All this butter and cheese and vino -'

'Steady!' she said. 'Your envy's showing again.'

'And hunks of real meat in that freezer?' he badgered.

She looked faintly embarrassed. 'We don't get all that much over the ordinary person's ration.'

He looked round the well-equipped kitchen and through the door to the comfortable living room, with its stylish decoration and the one or two quite good Impressionists on the walls. From the kitchen window he could clearly see large private gardens belonging to the flats. She did all right.

"Don't feel guilty! You've worked for it! The new élite.'

'You only wanted to come here to see me over that stove,' she accused, lightly, while cutting off chunks of warm bread.

He gave her a lecherous grin. 'That's not the only reason.'

'I've told you often enough. Never.' But her smile made it unconvincing. 'Look somewhere else.'

'It wouldn't be the same, it's become a personal challenge.'

'Do your wife and kids ever see you?' she queried, pointedly.

'I try to make it Christmas Day and Pancake Tuesday, for the kids' sake.'

'And your wife?'

'A very tolerant lady...' He studied her carefully, all signs of humour gone. 'Don't kid me your bloodhounds can't make a computer cough up a total dossier on my visits home - dates, times, hours, even minutes spent there?' He began to grow angry. 'I bet it could even spout the nursery rhymes and bedtime stories I read to the kids, before we learnt to de-bug the house. Your pension-hunting voyeurs were even bugging our bedroom.'

She flushed fiercely and replied, defensively, 'Don't blame me for everything the Department gets up to.'

'Oh no! The virgin Delly!' he retaliated, acidly.

'Just a hard-working, unmarried mum.'

They stared at each other, both slightly dismayed at the turn their meeting had taken. He softened. 'Anyway, you cook a superb omelette.'

They sparred briefly over women's lib, she asserting that, in the seventies, men like him were called male chauvinist pigs. He drew her hand across the table and kissed it, gallantly.

'It's no use doing that.'

'You never know,' he grinned. 'I believe in knocking before entering...' He held her eyes for a moment, then suddenly challenged. 'Why all this hospitality?'

When she did not answer at once, he casually helped himself to Camembert and celery. She did the same.

'No comment?' he quizzed.

She filled his glass again and he watched, admiringly. She had got it together so well, the food, the wine, the clothes, the setting, the voice and the manner, especially that poised, easy manner. No-one would have guessed she was a back-street girl.

She began, 'Well, for one thing, we'd like to know how you came by those crazy figures in today's paper..?' He crunched the celery, noisily. '...Though one might as well ask a brick wall who built it.'

'I don't mind telling you where those figures came from,' he replied, between mouthfuls, watching her astonishment with amusement. 'They tumbled out of some civil service computer.'

'They tumbled out of someone's mouth. I never thought it was even worth asking you. It was Skardon's idea. And, as you know, he's not the greatest brain around.'

Automatically, Kyle glanced over his shoulder. 'Careful!'

She smiled, confidently. 'No bugs here, Kyle.'

'You sure?'

'Not even for this meeting.'

She relented, telling him at last the reason the PCD Controller had called him that morning and why he was now lunching in her kitchen. 'I'm supposed to give you an exclusive.'

He jiggled his eyebrows at her, like Groucho Marx, 'So where's the bedroom?'

'A kitchen exclusive...' She sauntered over to a cupboard and extracted a tin of fresh coffee. The small electric machine ground a couple of handfuls of beans and the room filled with their outrageously evocative smell, redolent of lovers and luxury. A shift to make him wait, because he was undeniably intrigued, and they both knew it.

Then she said, abruptly, 'We thought you'd like to know that sixty people a week are getting out of Britain illegally.'

'Is that all? Only sixty?' His disappointment was fake.

'It's sixty too many. They're people we need, like doctors and scientists and...'

'Writers and artists?' he queried, mischievously.

'You know very well, Kyle. They can leave when they like.'

'And you're glad to see them go, because they're always painting, composing and writing nasty things about you,' he needled, accurately. 'Sixty a week. That's about one in eight of those putting in appeals.'

'On your figures,' she stressed. 'They're obviously buying their way out and you got on to the yachtsmen's racket.'

Kyle broke off a piece of bread and buttered it, very thoughtfully, giving the message time to sink in. He knew he was the only journalist in the U.K. that the PCD would approach with such an offer - individual scoops first, then, later, probably editorship of one of the State-run nationals.... managing editorship. He had it made. But did he want it?

'I'll see what I can dig up,' he promised vaguely, covering her hand with his. She pulled it away. 'Some Mata Hari you are,' he grumbled.

'That's all in poor Skardon's mind.'

'And mine,' he put in, fast.

She drained her glass and stared into space for a moment. 'He's not good enough,' she said in a hard voice, all her ambitions written on her face. Kyle read them with a mixture of repugnance and excitement; suddenly recognising her aim.

'You? You, head of the PCD?'

'Why not?' she responded. 'It's 1990.'

A key sounded in the flat door and the newsman froze, interrogating her with his eyes.

'It's all right,' she said, and two children burst into the room. Delly hugged them warmly, arrestingly different from the ruthless woman of seconds before. Then she introduced them formally to Kyle and added, 'I'll not be long, darlings.' A nanny appeared, to shepherd them into the living room.

'I see now why we couldn't go to bed,' he said, in a low voice.

'Stop fooling yourself,' she snubbed him immediately, and, as he tried to fix her with a tellingly honest gaze, added, 'And stop trying to fool me. You chose omelette here rather than trout at the Trattoria because you thought the restaurant would be crawling with Skardon's bloodhounds.'

'Not exactly true, but fairly,' he confessed.

'Well, there'll be a few outside here now,' she warned. 'In case your next appointment is - er - personal.'

He looked puzzled, 'Why tip me off?'

'I'd expect you to know, anyway,' she professed. But as he continued to study her, she added, 'We need each other, Kyle.'

His eyes glazed with unmistakable hunger, wanting her very much.

'...and not that way!'

They both sat toying with their coffee. Then Kyle jerked his head towards the phone, asking if it was tapped. She was never sure of this and told him so. He hesitated before dialling the number.

'I'm with Delly Lomas at her place in Highgate. You have the address and phone number on our PCD list,' he said.

Greaves sounded perplexed.

'Tiny, I need column five.'

'Column five?' Now he was critical.

'Column five. It's a bit urgent.'

'We'll keep it open,' confirmed the news editor, beckoning to a reporter.

The columnist and Delly Lomas relaxed for the next half an hour and were still sipping brandies with their coffee on the sofa when the doorbell rang. A grey-haired old man, carrying a zip-up canvas hold-all, stood waiting.

Delly looked baffled, but the newsman shouted, 'Come in, Tommy. How many down there?'

'Three out front. Two by the fire escape,' the old man reported on the PCD tails, then pulled off a grey wig and his grubby raincoat. Suddenly, Tom Pearce looked very much like Kyle, who had begun to take off his suede jacket and polo-necked shirt.

'If you'd like us to change in the bathroom?' he offered.

Delly laughed. 'Carry on. You won't upset me.' And watched with amusement as her guest handed over his clothes to the reporter, who put them on.

The columnist then tugged on the red cotton shirt and linen jacket he found in the bag, as the other man, ducked in front of the mirror, combing his hair to set a parting like Kyle's. Pearce put a gold ring on his wedding finger. Kyle took his off and pocketed it. The whole operation was swiftly and neatly completed, with both men clearly used to the routine.

'What about the kids?' the columnist asked.

Delly glanced out of the kitchen window to her children playing in the garden. 'They'll not come in till I call them.' She sat down with a cigarette and watched the strip artistry, good humouredly, as they exchanged trousers.

'Anywhere special you want me to lead them?' Pearce was asking.

'How about hell?'

The young reporter nodded, unamused, and Kyle advised, 'Go out by the fire escape.'

Tom Pearce made a prim apology to Delly for the interruption, and perhaps also for having removed his trousers in her presence, before leaving.

Then she joined the columnist at the window overlooking the fire-escape exit. Two men were hanging about conspicuously below, one smoking and the other pretending to check the waste chute. The woman murmured her surprise at Kyle's indiscretion.

'I thought we'd just done a deal,' he responded, easily. 'I help you. You help me?'

But she found such naiveté in him very unconvincing, so he admitted, 'This is only one way I use to dodge your goons. And I think we've used it enough anyway, so who cares that you know about it?'

The two tails below alerted as Pearce emerged, head bent, hands tucked into his pockets - Kyle's style, and hurried away. One of the men promptly followed, as the other spoke into his hand radio before moving off, too, smoothly, quietly, as they had shadowed a hundred suspects before. Pearce did not look back.

'Time I was away,' Kyle said. 'And thanks for lunch.'

'So that's column five,' Delly Lomas remarked, as though to delay him.

'It was. Till now,' he agreed. 'Though I don't doubt you'll tip off your mates the moment I've gone out of the door, but it'll be a waste of manpower. I'll lose 'em just the same.'

'And then write some more about the over-manning of our surveillance branch?'

'Very likely,' he confirmed.

She smiled. 'They still haven't forgotten that you called them pigs in print.'

'That was a mistake,' he declared, quickly. 'A libel on a noble animal. It makes me want to turn vegetarian.'

'I'll give you soya bean chops next time,' she threatened.

'Ah, there's to be a next time,' he rubbed his hands, delighted.

'That's up to you.'

He eyed her, appreciatively, scanning from her shining dark hair, down the coltish body and the slim, incredible legs, and back again. 'How can you look like you do, doing the job you do?' he said, almost sadly, then turned to the door.

'Kyle!' she appealed. He stopped. 'You can use this trick again.'

He twisted round, full of disbelief, wondering what ambush she was setting.

'Is he really a newsman?' she asked of Pearce. 'Or an actor?'

'A good and misused reporter,' he stressed, wondering nervously whether she could actually be making a pass.

'It's safe with me, Kyle, if he gives them the slip...' she insisted.

Perhaps she had really wanted him all along. 'He will,' he emphasized.

Then she followed up, 'I'm saying it's safe with me, as long as you let me know anything you dig out on the emigration racket...' He stared at her. 'Me, not Skardon.'

The feeling of relief startled him. 'Ambition becomes you, Delly,' he said. 'I could kiss you.'

'Lightly then.' She leant forward and her lips yielded beneath his, fleetingly, before she whispered, 'Give my regards to Faceless.'

'Who says I'm seeing him? Or her?' the newsman asked over his shoulder, and left.

She crossed to the telephone at once and began to button out a number, then stopped, thought for a moment and replaced the receiver. Moving back to the window, she called down to her children and, as they reached the flat, Kyle emerged from the door below and walked away.

No-one followed him.

CHAPTER SIX

Kyle took a cab, the tube and a second cab to reach his own car and, by the time he arrived in the scrapyard, he was late. Brett, Cursley and the manager were leaning over a huge block of compressed metal and using it as a plotting table. The newsman made his apologies.

'Rumour has it you were having it off with a lady from the Public Control Department,' Brett chuckled.

'All I was having was an omelette,' protested Kyle, wondering who watched him most - his enemies, or his friends? He changed the subject rapidly. 'No problems with Vickers?'

'Thursday. It's a doddle,' his partner confirmed. 'I could get five more out besides him...' Answering the journalist's questioning look, 'I've seen the emigration officers' duty roster and we're on clover Thursday and next Tuesday.'

The newsman looked annoyed. 'We haven't five more ready.'

'Some of the other groups have,' put in Cursley. 'I know Cardiff has a queue and so has Manchester.'

'What? Ready and fixed to go?' queried Kyle. He and Brett regarded each other for a few moments, before he added, 'No. We're not ready to link up yet. I don't know enough about 'em.'

The agent objected, keenly, 'So we chuck away valuable freight space?'

'I didn't say that. I didn't say that at all.'

They fell silent as the crusher crumpled another heap of junk metal behind them, roaring and crashing like a foundry.

Kyle turned back to confirm the number of spaces. Six. Then wondered aloud how much the escape operation was costing him in bribes and payola. But the other only scratched his head and grinned, claiming that few activists wanted tips.

'You're in for a busy couple of days, Ian,' the journalist cautioned Cursley. 'First, Vickers. Make sure he knows what he's doing. He's not to go home from surgery. He'll come straight to us. If he wants any family goodbyes, they'd best drop into the health centre, very casually. I don't want him going home...'

The machine hammered down behind them again, then pulled away. 'I reckon we could pick up five more quickies from tomorrow's courts,' he suggested.

Guarded looks passed between them. They had never carried out such an eleventh hour arrangement before, without time for reconnoitre or security checks. The current official stir over illegal emigrants had increased the risk of PCD plants among court appellants. Nevertheless, they were all agreed. The vacant freight space was too valuable to lose.

The first leaves had opened on his rose bushes, so that each parked like a burgundy cloud on the circular bed. The Controller noticed them with immense satisfaction before breakfast. The journey to the office was swift and uninterrupted by a single traffic jam and the duty police had been deferential. A new and pretty receptionist had smiled invitingly at him from her desk and the Memo had been waiting on his desk. It was Herbert Skardon's day.

After reading it, he pounced on the video-intercom and then bustled about the room in a kind of tantrum of delight until his deputies arrived. Their boss pointed gleefully to the Memo, the only piece of paper on the vast wooden surface. Tasker read it over Delly Lomas' shoulder.

'Well?' beamed Herbert Skardon, actually rubbing his hands.

'Very good. Splendid,' enthused Tasker.

'It's a start,' Delly was forced to admit.

'It's the break-through! It's just what we need!' her boss asserted, expansively. 'I've wanted this bunch for months! And I'll not be surprised if the Home Secretary decides to announce this personally to a press conference.' He eyed the red telephone, longingly.

'I doubt it,' Delly Lomas remarked.

Trust the bitch to try to detract from one of his achievements. Skardon scowled at her. 'I know you had no part in our work against this particular group,' he snapped. 'But at least you might show some appreciation for those of us who had.'

'Congratulations,' she drawled. 'It's just that I happen to know the Home Secretary doesn't relish being personally identified with emigration control.'

The Controller lit a leisurely cigarette and tried to look wise. 'It's up to us, as senior civil servants, to see the politicians keep centre-stage. We pull the strings. They take the applause.'

'And the rotten eggs.'

Today he could afford to be magnanimous. 'People think twice these days before complaining. Our Department can take some credit for that.' He viewed her, loftily. She was jealous, of course. He knew that, just as he knew she was after his job. 'You have a better idea?'

'I'd let Kyle have the story exclusive.'

He leered. 'You're not beginning to fancy this bloke?'

The unmistakable contempt in her look shook him. 'I've put forward a proposal and I'd like it to go on record,' she stated in a hard voice. 'Help Kyle. He can help us. The rest of the media follow his stories, anyhow.'

Skardon thought he had better not commit himself. He looked at Tasker. 'So?'

'I'm inclined to support Delly.' The reply came reluctantly.

The Controller affected to ponder his decision, before agreeing, 'Very well. Let's have Kyle in.' He reached for the intercom control.

'Wouldn't it be better if I leaked the story to him privately?' Delly Lomas suggested.

He puzzled unkindly over her motives. She was too smart for her own good - too smart for him at times. The uneasiness she induced in him rankled. Occasionally, she almost seemed to make him feel slightly stupid. But he would never have admitted that, even to himself.

People queued outside the Ombudsman's court, some waiting on the wooden chairs, which lined the corridors, and latecomers standing about aimlessly. No-one spoke. They did not even look at each other. A few had opened newspapers, but without absorbing the words. The rest simply gazed blankly at the grubby cream walls. Kyle had arrived early to listen to the proceedings from the press section in the court.

'We have some sympathy for you, Mr Clayton. But you did sign Form P17 binding you to work ten years in Britain after graduating. And this country needs all the managerial talent it has just now.'

The Chairman was addressing an intelligent-looking man in his mid-thirties, who was standing to attention, like a child trying to behave.

'One day, we may be in a position as a nation to release people like you from such a solemn and binding commitment. That time is not yet. We must, therefore, dismiss your appeal.'

The appellant looked round the crowded room pugnaciously and met Kyle's eyes for an instant, before wheeling round and leaving. Another name was called and a slightly younger man entered to detail the reasons for his appeal.

His wife was German, he explained, twisting a handkerchief in his hands. After living several years in Britain, she had become homesick and gone back to Berlin, refusing to return to the U.K. He wished to join her in Germany. Under questioning, he outlined his job and circumstances.

The chairman pronounced his decision. 'Marital separation is not acceptable under the law for your being excused your commitments. You signed P17. Your training as an aerospace designer was costly. This court hopes you will be able to persuade your wife to rejoin you here. We have to dismiss your appeal.'

It had all taken less than fifteen minutes and the man looked bitter as Kyle watched. The next name was called.

The chairman yawned, a little bored. He was another elderly civil servant, only a few years from retirement. After a lifetime of obedience to the system, he could be relied on to do nothing unexpected and to make no exceptions.

An attractive brunette in her twenties stepped into the court and the old man referred to his notes.

'Carol Harper?'

She nodded.

'I see you are a biochemist on clinical research and your appeal is against the Public Control Department's refusal to grant you an exit visa for post-graduate studies in America.'

Kyle checked that his tape recorder was still running, then glanced absently across the court. Delly Lomas appeared near the door and beckoned to him. He began to edge out.

The chairman probed, 'You are aware that, in these critical times, there is a quota to limit the number of those wishing to pursue post-graduate studies abroad?'

The girl nodded again, but her eyes pleaded.

'You are probably not aware that the quota for 1990 has already been exceeded...' His voice carried after Kyle and Delly as they left. 'Those who have been granted visas have been security-vetted and have given solemn undertakings to return here.' The words followed them, growing fainter as they walked down the corridor.

'What's the game?' quizzed Kyle. 'Luring me from my favourite bullring?'

She looked arch. 'I was going to give you an exclusive.'

'Give, then,' he encouraged. 'I love the sound of your voice.'

'I'd rather talk elsewhere.'

'Name it.'

'My flat this evening... strictly business.'

'I'd not assume otherwise with you.'

She took his arm and bent her head towards him, warning him that he was being location-bugged. Her spicy scent filled his nostrils and he caught his breath sharply. She imagined she had surprised him. But then he merely indicated his tape recorder and replied, 'I know. One of your clowns put one in here. What you mean is that you'd like me to get rid of it before I come to your place.'

'It doesn't matter to me,' she responded, casually. 'I was thinking of you, that's all. Depends on who you're seeing after me.'

'What time then?' There were less pleasant ways of opposing the regime than spending an evening with Delly Lomas. The journalist looked suitably eager.

'Half past seven. It's two exclusives you're coming for. One for tomorrow. One for the day after,' she promised.

He eyed her knowingly. 'You must be secretly in love with me, or something.'

'It's "or something",' she confirmed, laughing, her long neck curving sensually, so that he felt both drawn and repelled. It was like playing with a tarantula.

If Kyle had any secret idea that an intimate, candlelit dinner for two would be waiting when he arrived at her flat that evening, he was disappointed. Admittedly, she poured him a glass of wine and sat him cosily beside her on the sofa, but the living room was fully lit and the children clearly audible next door.

He retaliated by heckling her about the possibility of their being bugged. After all, she was the one spilling official secrets. She replied, with some asperity, that not only was she up-to-date in bugging techniques, but in anti-b.ts. also.

So he needled her about civil servants' privileges. 'Who else in this country can be sure of such privacy?'

'You don't do so badly,' she retorted.

'I make sure of that.'

She cut through to business. 'You have another two hours before your deadline. And I have one condition.'

'Catch Twenty-Two?'

'No catch. I give you an exclusive for tomorrow and another for the day after,' she confirmed. 'But you run them in the order I say.'

'I don't write to instructions from civil servants - not even super ones with sexy mouths,' the journalist protested, indignantly.

'Then drink up and I'll see all the media get the stories,' she flashed.

'It's a deal.' Kyle capitulated almost instantly.

She crossed to collect her brief-case from an occasional table by the door and brought out a photograph, a poker-faced line-up of four men and a woman, like a multiple police record still.

'That lot have been getting illegal emigrants out from Liverpool.' The newsman tensed and stared at it. '...at least twenty a week over the past year.'

'That's bad.' His mind darted to the last meeting with Cursley. They had had a very near miss. 'You've got them all?'

'They'll be charged the day after tomorrow.'

He studied the faces and masked his own with disapproval. 'Cleaning up, were they?'

'I don't know what their price was.'

'Could have been a free service, of course,' he suggested.

'Do you believe that?'

'No. People do this for greed,' he agreed. 'What will they get? Five years each?'

'Three of them will. Two should get off with treatment at the Institute for Social Responsibility...'

'With a spell in one of the new Adult Rehabilitation Centres?'

'Possibly,' she confirmed, beginning to pour him another drink. 'Now, I'll give you the details, but not on tape.'

The columnist pulled out his notebook.

'This is for publication tomorrow,' she pointed out.

'And the other?'

'I'll give you that tomorrow. After this one's appeared.' She detailed her department's haul efficiently, listing names, addresses, ages and official charges.

There were completely opposite reactions in the independent newspaper office and the PCD headquarters to the appearance of the two consecutive front page leads.

Tim Greaves was trumpet blowing. 'Beautiful, beautiful! Poetry!'

Herbert Skardon was livid. 'Our Liverpool coup undone at a stroke,' he shouted at his deputies and the Chief Emigration Officer sitting before him as he ranted on, looking faintly aggrieved as usual. He slammed a stack of newspapers with a paperweight. 'Here they all are following Kyle about the Liverpool arrests and he has to come up with this bilge about illegal emigrants getting out as unskilled workers on package holidays. It makes us look like idiots.'

Delly Lomas' face was bland and even Tasker seemed unperturbed. 'At least none of them have been able to take out any capital except the holiday allowance,' he offered, short-sightedly.

His boss choked, eyes bulging and veins swelling, 'That's a great consolation. They've had to leave their houses and furniture and motor cars. But they're out, Tasker! The bastards have got out!'

His heavy breathing rasped through the following pause, until Delly decided it was time she created a good impression. 'I want to know who gave Kyle today's story,' she said, in simulated pique. 'After all the work I put in on him to get yesterday's.'

'I intend to find out, Delly, don't you worry,' the Controller nodded towards her with grim determination. 'This is my department and it makes us look stupid. It makes ME look stupid!' He had turned to glare at Nichols. 'You have nine thousand emigration officials and it's my bet that it's one of them who's blabbed!'

Jack Nichols drew himself up, affronted. 'There's not a shred of proof that it's one of my men.'

Skardon tossed him a mean look and thumped his fist dramatically on the heap of newspapers. 'Work on Kyle, Delly,' he directed, thrusting out his jaw. 'I want to know where he got this garbage. I want him put in line. If it's that traitor among us he calls Faceless...!' The consequences for Faceless obviously defied description.

His woman deputy gave a relaxed smile and stood up, 'I'll call Kyle now.'

'That might not be so easy,' put in Tasker.

'What?' rapped his boss.

'I checked with the location room just before I came here. He went off their screen an hour ago.'

Pure hatred twisted the Controller's face, before he brandished a fist at them dismissively. For a moment, Delly Lomas felt almost sorry for him.

She might even have begun to pity herself had she been able to watch Kyle's activities at that moment. He had returned to the scrap yard, where Cursley was waiting with a van.

One by one and surreptitiously, the rejects picked out at the Ombudsman's hearing arrived; the aggressive young manager, the aerospace designer, the girl student and, finally, Alan Vickers.

The men carried nothing, not even overnight bags. The girl carried a small handbag. All four looked frightened, but resolute, as Kyle directed them into the rear of the van, shaking hands with each, before locking the rear doors and banging on the metal roof. At the signal, Cursley put the vehicle into gear and drove away.

When it arrived at the heliport, the van was carrying a number of perforated alloy containers, each stamped with a stencilled destination in France. As they were being carefully unloaded and set out near the helicopter's cargo door for checking, Dave Brett arrived in a hurry. He looked edgy, his eyes darting over them.

'There's trouble,' he muttered. 'They've changed the bloody duty roster. Gorman's been sent to inspect some yacht in Chichester.'

'Let's get 'em back in the van,' exclaimed Cursley.

'There's no time,' the agent replied, indicating two emigration officers already crossing the hardstanding towards them. One was the man who had helped with the Scholes escape. The other was unknown, but of about the same age and seniority.

'Isn't he with us?' murmured Cursley. Brett shook his head. 'Oh Jesus!' He turned to help unload the last container from the van, working noisily in an effort to cause distraction.

The first officer caught Brett's eye and moved to put quick crayon ticks against two of the perforated crates, but the other reached the third container and stood over it with obvious interest.

Dave Brett's fists knotted against his side. If they had all been up an alley instead of in the middle of the open heliport, the unknown E.O. would have stood no chance.

As it was, the agent tried to put over the usual explanation with assumed calmness, 'Chemicals. They need ventilation.' But this was a hard-faced old hand, with no intention of being put off.

'I know this stuff. It's O.K.,' the first emigration officer asserted, his eyes betraying his concern.

The other hesitated, then swung round on the agent. 'Open it up!'

'I told you. They're O.K.,' the first said again, lamely.

'Ninety nine out of a hundred usually are,' responded his colleague, before repeating, 'Open it up!'

'These chemicals shouldn't be exposed to the weather,' Brett blurted in desperation.

'And yet they need air?' the emigration officer pounced, then pointed at the container again. 'Open it!'

There was murder in the agent's eyes as he beckoned to the loader-checker. The first officer moved towards the other, 'Come on, Bill. Take my word for it.' But it was no use. The new man shook his head and insisted. The crate had to be opened.

The loader-checker paused over it, a large screwdriver clenched in his hand like a weapon. For a moment, it looked as though he might plunge it into the inspector, but at last he bent, slowly unlocked the six screws and lifted the lid.

Crouched inside were Doctor Vickers and Carol Harper. The young woman glared up at the emigration officers in anger, no sign of pleading in her eyes now. Dave Brett moved in, flourishing a wallet stuffed with £50 notes. There was a very long silence.

The official looked from the couple in the container to his colleague and Cursley, then, finally, to Brett. 'You can put that away,' he nodded at the wallet.

Carol Harper shifted to stand up. The new emigration officer put a gentle hand on her head and pushed her down again.

The relief all round was unbearable, wordless, each participant in the scene mentally reeling. Then the men on the tarmac caught a last glimpse of Vickers and the girl, tears in her eyes, as the lid was replaced and the new emigration sympathiser ticked the container with his crayon, even before the screws were finally tightened.

Dave Brett was stunned by their luck. After a lifetime of cut-throat deals, it always shook him to discover one person after another for whom bucking the authoritarian system meant more than money.

A white streak of saliva gathered in a corner of the Controller's mouth as he stormed round his office, berating his staff yet again. '...And less than a fortnight after his appeal's turned down, this Doctor Vickers turns up in California. And we have this load of sentimental trash!' His hands splayed down on the spread of the world's press laid across his desk. 'All these international do-gooders threatening to go to the Human Rights Commission in Geneva unless we let out Vickers' wife and child immediately!'

Gone indeed were the days when Herbert Skardon had enjoyed assuming a posture of controlled dignity. Delly Lomas thought she could detect the unmistakable beginnings of a tic by his left nostril.

'The Yanks are on at us. The French. The Germans.' He was fuming. 'But when even the Russians join in the damn chorus - with their record!' He thought of sitting down, but could not bring himself to and galloped to the far end of the room instead, twirling round when he reached the wall. 'It has to stop! This Vickers reckons five others got out with him.' He strode up to tower over Jack Nichols. 'This country's like a sieve and the Home Secretary won't put up with much more of it, I can tell you.'

'Then he should approve a big increase in our establishment.' Delly had watched the whole display with calculating eyes.

Skardon spun round, his voice reedy with frustration. 'He reckons we're overmanned now. And you know it, Delly. That's mischievous. You know he's already accused me of empire-building.'

The woman contemplated him, coolly. 'Then we should improve the quality. A lot of our surveillance inspectors are just boy scouts. Too many second-raters.' Allowing her colleagues little time to work out just which of them was being smeared, she added, 'Anyway, I intend to check on the Vickers case myself. It might lead us to smash the major ring...'

Henry Tasker's sly glance slid after her as she went out. Not long afterwards, he left for lunch early and hurried to Charing Cross Station on foot, stepped into one of the shatterproof plastic bubbles in the forecourt and picked up a telephone, covering the mouthpiece with his handkerchief and dialling out. Kyle asked his name.

'Never mind,' Tasker distorted his voice. 'But if you want some interesting copy, I should be at the Benson Comprehensive School playground around two thirty.'

'Can you tell me why?' the newsman probed.

'Have you got the place and time?' queried Tasker.

'Yes.'

The deputy hung up immediately. At the other end of the line, the columnist looked at his receiver for a moment before replacing it. A lot of his tip-offs came this way and so he was interested, but not surprised.

'Friend or foe?' questioned Greaves.

'I'll not know till around two-thirty at the earliest.'

He dropped into the small bistro on the corner of Bouverie Street for a quick lunch. The owner had cleverly adapted to the restraints of the siege economy and now specialised in skilfully prepared peasant dishes, which made the most of simple ingredients. Kyle savoured the cassoulet with pleasure and set out for the school in a mood of rare wellbeing, slightly seasoned by the anticipation which always accompanied a mystery lead.

The school building had only recently been completed. It was several storeys high. Its factory unit concrete walls were sparsely punctuated by very small slits. Glass-dominated constructions, such as the PCD headquarters, were no longer fashionable, having lost their popularity since it had been agreed that they were too cold in winter and too hot in summer. Architectural design had therefore swung away from the idea of windows and the children in the new school worked perpetually in artificial light.

In the playground, a netball game was in progress and, as Kyle parked in front of the railings, he saw Delly Lomas on the touchline talking to a schoolgirl. Avoiding the nearest gate, he made his way through the main entrance and, as he came up behind them, he saw that the schoolgirl was Alan Vickers' daughter, Mary.

'Delly,' he said, loudly.

She turned quickly and was obviously startled, blushing as he gazed first at her and then at the child. Then she looked down and said, 'I'll not be long, Mary.'

The small girl raised a feeble smile and Delly moved off some distance with the newspaperman. 'You do realise you're trespassing, Kyle? This is public property,' she blustered.

'And public's very private for some,' he retorted, acidly.

She attempted to laugh it off. 'Men who fancy schoolgirls are liable to arrest.'

'I don't fancy schoolgirls. I fancy grown-up, ambitious lady civil servants in the anti-freedom business,' he studied her, covetously. 'And these days I reckon even that leaves me liable to arrest.'

She smiled, encouragingly, 'Not if you keep your hands off me.'

'I'll not touch you without asking first...' She still smiled, thinking she had the advantage because he wanted her so much, but he had not finished yet. '...what were you asking her?'

'I'm sorry?'

'Doctor Vickers' kid.'

She sidetracked, nervously, 'I am with the Home Office, Kyle. We are responsible for child welfare.'

His eyes were now icy. 'Especially when the father's gone abroad.'

'She...she could be vulnerable,' Delly Loinas stumbled.

'To civil servants?'

They walked on in silence and then he challenged, sharply, 'You're not with the Child Welfare Inspectorate, Delly. You're with the Public Control Department. And high up in that.'

But she had regained her control, 'Mary and her mother will be allowed out in a month.'

'Too right they will! Or the world will want to know why not.' He looked at her with a kind of scorn and it jolted her. 'Though I'd not put it past your lot to change the rules.'

'We don't make the laws,' she appealed. 'We only carry them out.'

'That's what the first intake of concentration camp warders will be taught to say. I mean, who are you recruiting for the Adult Rehabilitation Centres?' She was stung and flushed again. 'What were you asking Mary?' he pressed.

'What I discussed with the child is no matter for the media.' She attempted to fend him off, but he twisted round and started back across the playground.

'I'll ask her then.'

'Kyle!' He slowed down. 'Don't you think she's gone through enough?'

He stole a glance at the child, standing forlornly on the touchline, unable to join in the game and hunched, as though chilled, even on this mild spring afternoon.

'Whoever tipped you off to come here was out to damage me,' Delly Lomas was saying. 'I suppose it's no use asking who it was? Was it Faceless?'

The journalist shook his head. 'Too trivial for him. Too personal...I know what you asked her, anyway. You asked her, "When did you last see your father?" '

'Not quite like that,' the woman was embarrassed.

'How much like that?' His face was full of longing and contempt, and her mouth tightened.

'Do you plan to run a story on this?' She was half pleading.

He weighed her up, morosely. 'Not yet. Not just yet. I'm like your lot. I'm building up dossiers.'

In the background, the ball was netted and a cheer went up from the girls. Kyle and Delly Lomas had reached the playground gate. He walked through it, climbed into his car and drove off without looking at her again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The official permit to visit Mayfield arrived on his desk the following morning; delivered by special messenger from Delly Lomas.

After a quick call in at the cuttings library, Kyle headed out of London and, within a couple of hours, was turning into the long drive leading to a large country house deep in West Sussex.

Mayfield, the first Adult Rehabilitation Centre, turned out to be a semi-stately home to which a modern wing had been added. Manicured lawns stretched between bright beds of flowers and bird-song accentuated the atmosphere of peace and tranquillity.

The journalist slowed down to pass a group of patients, or inmates, wearing non-uniform dressing gowns over pyjamas. They looked at ease and were talking amiably among themselves as they strolled from a shrubbery onto the grass.

Seconds later, he drew up before the columned entrance and was shown into a large, first floor office by a soft-faced man, with a very short haircut, who was dressed in a pale blue linen jacket and light trousers.

Doctor Mark Gelbert stepped forward with a boyish grin and outstretched hand. Introducing himself, he waved the newsman towards a pair of deep armchairs set by a coffee table on one side of the room.

After minimal formalities, the doctor mentioned, disarmingly, that although he felt his work deserved publicity, he was a little surprised that a journalist from a non-government newspaper should have been given first access to an ARC.

'You must have well-placed friends,' he concluded.

'Any friend of mine is usually running in the opposite direction,' Kyle responded. 'If he's got any sense!'

'So I've heard,' said the other, with a smile.

He was a tall, handsome man of about thirty-five, with the professional bedside polish cultivated by the old-time private practitioners in Belgravia. He suited the spacious office, with its panelled walls and gleaming mahogany desk. From the cuttings that morning, Kyle had learnt that his speciality was psychiatric neuro-surgery, on which he had written the standard work, and his enthusiasm for the subject was immediately apparent and initially attractive.

'Well, Doctor Gelbert, here I am...' Kyle looked at him, expectantly, indicating a wish to get down to business.

Mark Gelbert beckoned him to one of the windows overlooking the main lawn on which patients walked, or played croquet in orderly and controlled leisure.

'No barbed-wire, no strait jackets, no padded cells,' he stressed, with smooth self-satisfaction. 'After all, this is 1990.'

The journalist registered the uniform placidity on the faces below and turned to the man. 'So. Tell me how the brain-washing business got this way.'

Gelbert burst out laughing and the laughter was genuine, 'What a strangely old-fashioned word. Shakespearean, almost.'

'Prisoners of war in Korea didn't think so,' the newsman pointed out.

'Forty years ago. And now as obsolete as the leech,' the other declared, as they returned to the armchairs. 'Coffee?'

'Thanks.'

The doctor pushed a button set into the table and, as they waited, the columnist had time to examine the office more closely. It was comfortably efficient, luxuriously carpeted and sound-proofed. The library of old medical books looked right in the setting, but the section for cassettes and microfilm seemed incongruous and the low-slung electronic retrieval system for case histories was out of place along one wall. Above it hung a numbered chart of encephalograms and, next to that, a large and coloured cross-section of the human skull with motor, limbic and other brain areas defined and annotated.

Another man in a blue linen jacket entered quietly, with a tray on which were porcelain cups and saucers, a Georgian silver cream jug and sugar bowl, and a vacuum jug. His eyes had a slight thyroidic bulge and he was about forty-five, with the same short haircut as the man who had first met Kyle at the door. His manner was polite, almost obsequious, as he laid the tray on the table with a deferential bob of his head.

Kyle stared after him in shock, as he departed silently.

'Recognise him?' asked Gelbert.

'Yes, indeed. McKechnie. The New Forest murders.' The journalist gave an involuntary shudder. 'An animal.'

'He was once,' the doctor agreed. 'Hacked an old couple to pieces, was committed to Broadmoor - as, it then was - paroled twice.'

'And used the same butcher's cleaver to kill five more people. Two of them children,' put in Kyle. No newspaper man could have forgotten the cases. McKechnie's brutality had made the efforts of Heath and the Moors murderers seem mild.

'And now his door's unlocked, his windows are unbarred and he grows roses,' Gelbert said, proudly.

'All done by kindness,' Kyle was cynical. 'I still think I'll skip the coffee. I saw police photographs of the victims - the bits McKechnie didn't eat.'

'He makes excellent coffee. And not kindness, Mr Kyle. Mind re-orientation, developed here at Mayfield; a mix of aversion therapy and suitable drugs, and simple electricity.' He was leaning forward earnestly, regarding Kyle with an evangelical sincerity which the journalist was beginning to find irritating.

'No tapping holes in the skull to cauterise the undesirable bits?' he challenged.

Mark Gelbert was amused again. 'None at all. Lobotomies enjoyed a brief vogue in the sixties, but it was mainly bored neuro-surgeons tinkering around with heads when it was too wet to play golf. No, Mr Kyle. We've developed no new techniques at all.'

He paused to let the effect of this statement sink in and the columnist frowned, puzzled.

'But we have found, to an accuracy of one hundred per cent, how all the methods discovered over the years really work.' The man's eyes were actually glowing. He was unfolding his creed, his obsession, and the clinical fanaticism normally obscured by youthful charm was suddenly apparent. Kyle absorbed it, glanced at the coffee tray and again was unable to suppress an inward shudder. But Doctor Gelbert was unaware of it as he crossed to speak into his desk intercom.

A pretty girl arrived shortly afterwards and was instructed to show Kyle round. She took him along airy corridors decorated in muted colours, their occasional alcoves furnished like small, cosy ante-rooms, where patients could sit and smoke and talk. The public rooms were practical and pleasant, avoiding the usual pitfalls of institution fittings. There were no long communal tables in the dining room. It was more like a restaurant with numerous small tables, covered by matching cloths, and each seating a maximum of four.

Large chintz-covered sofas and armchairs furnished the common rooms, giving them the same air of comfortable elegance that had permeated Mayfield, when it was still an Earl's country seat.

A few patients sat around reading, or playing cards, and Kyle spoke briefly to them, explaining who he was. The pretty girl made no attempt to intervene and the patients appeared to have no complaints, all professed to be quite happy. He was baffled and frustrated by the time they met up with Doctor Gelbert again at the door to the operation ward.

This was a wide room divided into cubicles, in one of which a patient was lying on an unsterilised operating bench, with the face mask of a general anaesthetic covering his lower facial features. An anaesthetist fussed with valves and tubes and a burly man in a white hospital coat was breaking the point of a disposable syringe and throwing it into a waste basket. Kyle had noticed him earlier, in the garden, sitting reading a copy of the government newspaper and looking up from time to time. Now, he placed a thick gag of black rubber, like a grotesque shoehorn, over the tongue in the patient's mouth.

Gelbert washed his hands, automatically, then attached two round electrodes, joined by an inverted 'U' of insulated metal, to the patient's shaven temples. The electrodes were connected to a cabinet faced with dials and buttons. As Kyle backed somewhat squeamishly against the wall, the doctor began to explain the procedure.

'The equipment looks a bit old-fashioned, I'm afraid. But it's been effective for donkeys' years.'

'Donkeys' years,' the journalist echoed, weakly.

'Electro-convulsive therapy,' Gelbert expounded. 'The patient's been given a muscle relaxant and a general anaesthetic and his tongue is rubber-gagged to stop him swallowing it. Now we'll pass an electric charge through his brain.'

'And his nose will light up,' Kyle interrupted, with defensive flippancy. 'Sorry, doctor. All hospitals spook me.'

Mark Gelbert regarded him in mild reproof. 'This is not a hospital, but your layman's reaction is understandable. What you'll see now is the equivalent of a mild epileptic fit.'

'I can't wait.'

The other pressed buttons to generate the charge to pass through the patient's brain, then watched the dials carefully. The unconscious man's hands and feet jerked and twitched, but not violently. It was quite unlike the first twenty years of ECT, when four people were required to hold the patient down and there were deaths from self-induced dislocation of spines and necks.

Kyle felt himself enveloped in a heavy depression. 'Brave new world,' he murmured, watching.

Gelbert was brisk. 'Not really. Not new. Some Italian discovered it, oh, about fifty years ago. Tried it out on pigs at first.' He paused to check his dials again. 'Very widely used in British mental homes in the 60s and 70s - mainly because of staff shortage - but there wasn't any research you could call clinically objective until '76, '77, I think. We've refined it from there.'

'I have done some homework, Doc,' the columnist remarked. 'They reckon ECT destroys brain cells.'

'Many things do, Mr Kyle,' the other observed, philosophically. 'Alcohol, some tranquillizers, old age. We've merely managed to identify, calibrate, and apply the extent of the destruction.'

He turned away to note the dial readings on a clipboard and Kyle, filled with instinctive revulsion, raised his hand, unseen, in a wave of benediction and sympathy to the patient.

The Controller had received the information about five minutes previously and was now gazing over steepled fingers in icy reproach at Delly Lomas. In contrast, she was leaning confidently on his desk, unperturbed by the prospect of the rebuke she knew was coming.

'I would be most interested to know, Miss Lomas, why you - on behalf of my Public Control Department - gave Kyle credentials to poke around something as politically sensitive as an Adult Rehabilitation Centre,' her boss began, coldly.

She shrugged, completely relaxed. 'Simple. Rope - for Kyle to hang himself. Sugar lumps - to give him toothache. Quid pro quo - costing us nothing. Now he can stop squawking publicly that we never give him facilities and he owes us a favour.'

'H'mph.' Skardon was definitely unconvinced.

'Think about it, Herbert. Kyle hates owing anything,' she stressed. 'And I looked at the Mayfield ARC first. It's just like one of the health hydros exclusive to exhausted Ministers of Cabinet rank and selected trade union leaders.'

'And senior civil servants,' Skardon could not resist asserting.

'Naturally. Per privilege ad astra. Lawns like Wilton carpet, velvet-glove service and daily prayers to inner cleanliness,' his deputy controller smiled. 'Mayfield's just like that and Kyle will spit all the way back to London.'

'He'd better.' Skardon narrowed his eyes and was about to continue when a red light flashed on the console on his desk and there was a continuous bleeping noise. He jumped, visibly.

'The Home Secretary's on his way up. Trouble.'

'He's only a politician, Herbert,' Delly Lomas drawled, as she turned to leave. 'All you have to do is let him talk.'

The Controller stopped her with a lifted hand. 'In that case, Miss Lomas, you'd better stay.' He put her mockery at his momentary agitation in its place. 'If Dan Mellor needs scapegoats, you and Tasker are, after all, junior to me.'

At this, the Rt Hon Dan Mellor, M.P., Home Secretary in H.M. government, erupted into the room, the door slamming against the wall and swinging back to close under its own violent momentum. He was very angry and this manifested itself in a fake and heavy geniality.

Dan Mellor was a hard-liner, originally an official (appointed - not elected) of the Mineworkers' Union, who had become a loud backbench M.P., representing that union and had risen from there rather speedily to Cabinet rank as part of a productivity agreement with the miners in 1983.

His time in the pits had been very limited, but he liked to give the impression that his ablutions for twenty years were in pithead baths paid for under 'washing time', which he had negotiated. Nevertheless, he was a very shrewd politician, having learnt this theoretical trade by hard work at the institution, originally called Ruskin College, but now known as the Oxford Centre for Special Studies.

He scrutinised the civil servants from under shaggy brows. 'Hello, Herbert, how are you? And you, Miss Lomas?' A deliberately demotic speech pattern gave image emphasis to his working-class origins. 'And what's my key department up to this fine, public-spirited morning?'

'We were discussing a journalist's visit to one of the new Adult Rehabilitation Centres,' Skardon looked shifty.

'Oh, that's cosmic. Real think-tank and wet-towels stuff,' Mellors gave an angry, shark-like grin. 'Know why I'm here?'

'No, Home Secretary.'

The grin vanished. 'Because you didn't bloody come to me. First thing.' He took a video-cassette from his pocket and brandished it at Herbert Skardon. 'With this. Off the diplomatic pouch from New York an hour ago. And you had a duplicate.'

Delly Lomas decided another moment had come to use all her charm and reason. 'Our man on external affairs, Mr Tasker, is on leave, Home Secretary,' she cooed. 'His subordinate's thorough, but a little slow.'

'He'll be motionless when I've finished with him,' Mellor snarled. 'Behind the counter in a village post office.'

There was a bleep from the desk video-intercom and a man's worried face appeared on the screen. The Controller leant over it, ferociously. 'Yes, Grayling. I am aware that there is a matter of some urgency in the pouch,' he ground out. 'I believe it is about to be brought to my attention.'

'Damn right. With the volume up.' The Home Secretary snapped off the intercom rudely and slotted the cassette into the console, pushing a button and turning to watch the big television wall screen light up.

The film showed a man on a conference platform accepting handshakes and then in closeup, where he was seen to be about fifty-five and solidly built. Silver-grey hair was brushed back from a square and craggy face, with the lines of belief and experience on it. His expression was one of composure and determination, as he began to speak.

'Brothers and fellow union members. I'm supposed to be up here to oppose a motion from seventeen countries that Britain should, in future, be excluded from the Federation of International Trade Unions. I cannot oppose it.' His accent retained northern origins, but unselfconsciously. This was not the patter act of the professional prole.

Dan Mellor stopped the videotape on the close-up. 'Know who that is?'

'Of course. Charles Wainwright, General Secretary. of the Metalturners Union and next president of the T.U.C.,' Herbert Skardon said, looking slightly confused. 'He's addressing this year's Federation of International Trade Unionists in America. We arranged the British delegation.'

'You arranged more than that,' snapped the Home Secretary, restarting the tape.

Wainwright was seen again, his hands gripping a lectern. 'The motion says we're in violation of the Federation charter on fundamental human rights. I can't deny that. We are.'

He picked up a stapled speech. 'I'm supposed to read this... I can't. It's a load of mindless drivel, justifying a new form of oppression, and I wouldn't insult you with it. We've all believed too long in the real brotherhood of man for me to do that.'

He tossed the speech contemptuously onto the platform, and a shot of the massed audience appeared, differing from earlier trade union gatherings in that fifty per cent of the delegates were women. All were obviously attentive.

'First, I support the proposal to expel Britain from this Federation.' Wainwright turned to the committee seated behind him on the platform. 'Let that vote be so registered, Mr Chairman. Second, I'd like to make a proper speech and I'd better get it right, as it'll probably be my last.'

He took a deep breath, the passion beginning to show quietly at first and then gradualy increasing until his words were resounding with zealous fluency round the conference hall.

'I live in a country where freedom's just a word in a dictionary - like sewage. I live in a sceptred isle surrounded by barbed wire, where a British Parliament of 400, put in by that 20 per cent of the electorate who bother to vote, is a rubber stamp for a faceless Civil Service with the sort of power Genghiz Khan would have envied. I live in a country where, if you don't hold a union card, you starve: where jobs, food and housing are rationed.'

The Controller and his deputy caught each other's eyes, unified for once against the all too blatant threat to their positions. Dan Mellor stood glowering at the screen with his back to them, hands thrust into the pockets of his baggy trousers.

'This isn't the sort of promised land we signed on for, brothers. Not a land where the history books are being rewritten. Not a land where the best brains were driven out by penal taxation in the seventies and the few we've got left are forbidden to leave and have to get out through illegal escape routes. Not a land where every jack-in-office can walk into a citizen's home and turn it upside down; where habeas corpus is extinct and rule of law is wiped out by one signature under an Emergency Measure.'

His voice had crescendoed to a penetrating stridency. There was no mistaking the man's deep and real conviction. It by-passed the interpreters and cut through the multi-language barriers between the international delegates. Every now and again their silent and intensely concentrated reaction to him was shown on the screen.

Herbert Skardon, Delly Lomas and the Home Secretary were all on their feet now, listening aghast, aware that identical cassettes of the seemingly never-ending indictment had already been distributed to the world's news media. There could be no covering up this time.

'The lackeys in pinstripe suits from the Public Control Department should have dragged me off by now. If this had been a British platform, they would have done. So I'll finish with an apology.' Charles Wainwright swayed forward over the lectern and scanned the audience with emotion. 'I've been thirty-five years in the trade union movement. I've been proud of every year except the last seven. The crisis of '83, when my country tore up its constitution and the Magna Carta. When we went bankrupt and welshed on every debt we'd run up. When the world's moneylenders turned their backs on us - and rightly. When we became outlaws of civilization, cringing in an island cave. For those seven years, I'm sorry. Goodbye, brothers.'

He looked over the hall with quiet bitterness. 'Rule Britannia.'

The video-cassette cut off and the image disappeared from the screen. A leaden pause filled the Controller's office. Mellor gave him a hard stare.

'At best, insane. At worst, treasonable,' was the only comment Skardon could think of.

'He made one good point,' the politician retorted. 'Your surveillance boys could have collared him, said he was drunk, or something. Why didn't they?'

The PCD chief viewed him, loftily. 'Because they would probably have been lynched by free-world delegates and the scandal would have been exacerbated.'

'Like this bloody department will be if you don't sweep up the Wainwright mess a bit quick.' Mellor had caught the look and was offended.

But, although Herbert Skardon had a day-to-day apprehension of his political boss, he was not without the traditional civil servant's innate sense of superiority. He knew where the real power lay.

'May I remind you, Home Secretary, that this department was responsible only for drawing up and vetting a short-list of delegates for the New York congress,' he pointed out, with deceptive blandness. 'You made the final decision.'

Dan Mellor's pugnacious jaw thrust forward and his face went an ugly colour. 'That's right. But you can get more than one neck on a chopping-block, Skardon. Remember it.'

'I remember only, Minister, that you are elected and I am appointed. Senior Civil Servants have always had a notoriously longer lifespan than their masters.'

'And a lot of that lifespan can be made very miserable,' the Home Secretary roared back. 'So listen. I want Wainwright in my office the minute his Concorde's wheels stop rolling. If not before.'

'If he's on it.' Delly Lomas, who had watched the exchange with roguish satisfaction, voiced what they were all thinking.

Kyle took several deep breaths of relief as he and Mark Gelbert left Mayfield House to walk through the grounds. The journalist's customary low-key style had been crushed by watching the unconscious patient twitching in the operating room. He had wondered who the man was and why he was there, and had known, with terrible certainty, that those questions no longer mattered. When the patient awoke from the anaesthetic, he would be someone else; his original and essential self destroyed and replaced by another, more acceptable and docile character. Kyle had understood that he was seeing the annihilation of an individual, and there was nothing he could do, or say, or write about it.

The fresh air touched his skin like a shower. The inmates moved calmly through the garden. It was all so genteel, so nice, a hell in Eden.

A group of workmen passed, carrying television sets and expensive furniture towards a single-storey chalet wing.

'What's happening over there?' he asked, glad of the diversion.

'Renovation of the new recuperative wing,' replied the doctor. 'It's still classified, I'm afraid.'

'Something had to be,' Kyle commented.

The attendant from the operating room came hurrying across the lawn and handed Gelbert a folded slip.

'Red, urgent for you, Doctor.'

'Thank you, Halloran.' Gelbert read the message quickly and started to move back to the house. 'See that Mr Kyle gets away, will you?' His eyes were distant, betraying the fact that he had already almost forgotten the journalist's existence.

'Yes, sir,' Halloran responded, smartly, then turned to the newsman. 'Could I see your authority to visit, Mr Kyle?'

The other raised his eyebrows. 'Your boss has already seen it and I'm not about to brandish identity at every jumped-up male nurse in sight.'

Halloran's features remained impassive as he produced a warrant card. 'I'm also a PCD officer.'

'That makes sense,' the journalist retorted. 'The KGB set up. Every institution with its Party watchdog.' He sighed and extracted the signed pass from his wallet, studying his examiner, closely.

A man in early middle age, with thick, muscled and practised hands and an open, bucolic face, in which only a low blink rate and a tight mouth betrayed innate sadism. All at once, his name triggered off a memory.

'Oh yes, Halloran. Made your name in Manchester on the moonlighting squad, when it became illegal for anybody to have two jobs,' the journalist exclaimed. 'You used to specialise in painters and decorators, waiting until they were twenty feet up and then kicking the ladder away.'

The PCD inspector handed back the pass and said, woodenly, 'Just doing a job, sir. The same as you.'

'Not the same as me, chum,' Kyle spat. 'I like to sleep at night, which can't be easy after a hard day breaking legs.'

But he was wasting his energy. Halloran was quite unmoved and stolidly escorted him to his car, then stood watching as he drove down the drive between the flower beds, serene with colour, and out of the great gates.

The journey back to Fleet Street gave him time to marshal his feelings, so that only the familiar, dull residue of rage was left as he walked into the newsroom, scowling and rubbing his temples.

'What's the matter with you? Dandruff?' Tiny Greaves contemplated him, quizzically.

'No. Just wondering what electrodes feel like,' Kyle replied.

'Was Mayfield any good? Or Gelbert?'

'Clean as a whistle, kosher as a barmitzvah, ethical as the Sermon on the Mount,' the columnist returned, in disgust. 'Trying to put the knife in there would be like tattooing a jellyfish: It's a laudable conversion clinic for criminal psychopaths.'

'We'll keep trying. It's got to be a three-card trick when Skardon's lot hand out facilities. But it can wait,' the big news editor dismissed the morning's failure without signs of disappointment and reached eagerly for his video-recorder. 'Look.'

Charles Wainwright appeared soundlessly on the office television screen. Kyle moved to adjust the machine, but was stopped by the other, who explained that the sound was poor, and produced a transcript of the speech.

The columnist began to scan it quickly and hissed through his teeth, while the news editor continued talking.

'We can't use it, of course. Section 5 of the Public Control Act. Quote "Importation or publication of any unapproved Foreign media product is punishable by prison, compulsory bankruptcy and removal of all State privileges".' The fat man looked wistful, for a moment. 'They'll be banning cowboy films next, in case people remember what a good guy looks like.'

'We'd be better off working for Skardon,' commented Greaves.

'In a way we are working for him. With eighty per cent of advertising bought by the Government, they could fold us tomorrow,' the other declared. 'We only exist because the few foreign countries that trade with the U.K. read our squawks and libels and truth, and then believe the financial pages we're forced to print. We're just a front to add credibility to the economic profiles and the five-year plans.'

'Love your idealism,' Kyle drawled and tossed the transcript onto the desk. 'What do we do with this?'

'Get an interview with Wainwright. Play it again, Charlie. Authenticate it with a voice-print and publish it,' Greaves said, decisively. 'Problem. Find somebody Wainwright trusts.'

'Answer. Dave Brett.' Kyle quickly depressed the receiver rest as the news editor grabbed for the telephone. 'That telephone's come a long way since Alexander Graham Bell invented it,' he warned, rapping the desk with his knuckles. 'Tap, tap. Give my surveillance bug to Pearce and I'll find Dave.'

Tiny Greaves had already pushed the intercom button and Tom Pearce appeared in the doorway.

'Impersonation time, Mr Pearce,' Kyle said to his passable double.

As they left the room together, the Chief Emigration Officer entered Skardon's office, insensitive to panic, as always.

The Controller was ticking a check-list of monitoring facilities with Delly Lomas at his shoulder.

'What are you up to, Nichols?'

'The investigation you asked for into Leisure Centre 28.'

'Any joy?'

'We have reasonable grounds for thinking some illegal emigrants have met their helpers there,' Nichols responded in a flat monotone, like a policeman being cross-examined by defence counsel.

Skardon switched the subject. 'I want you to double passenger control at Heathrow and personally supervise the arrival of one Charles Wainwright.'

'If he arrives,' Delly repeated.

'He's embarked. I've checked,' her boss confirmed, before turning back to the chief officer and saying with deliberate pedantry, 'Discreetly, Nichols. You will take the fully-monitored diplomatic vehicle. And you will sit with Wainwright and be as affable as is compatible with your character.' It was Herbert Skardon's headmaster act, the spelling-out for a dull pupil.

'Yes, sir,' Nichols stared ahead. 'May I ask the reason for picking up subject?' His lapse into jargon was automatic whenever he had to deal with the PCD boss.

'No, you may not. On this occasion, you're better off as a genial motorised cavalryman. Yours not to reason why.'

'Some parts of Heathrow are rather like the Crimea now, sir.' He managed a deadpan retort against Skardon's heavy patronage before hurrying away.

The Controller turned to his deputy and instructed, 'We now check very carefully that no-one makes public any part of the video-tape of the Wainwright speech.'

'Unlikely. Except for Kyle.'

'Where is he now?'

She picked up a telephone and said, simply, 'Kyle.' Waited for a moment and then, 'Thank you,' replacing the receiver. 'Surveillance say that their tracer is giving signals from his office.'

'Electronics are fine, but I'm still traditionalist enough to back them up with the personal touch,' asserted her boss. 'Keep a tailing squad on him, Delly.'

As he issued this directive, the two journalists were already exchanging clothes in the newspaper archives room.

'My dossier says I'm fond of curries and frequent a tandoori joint called the Star of Bradford,' Kyle said, with a grin.

'You might be, but I'm not,' Pearce retorted, ruefully, picking up the other's jacket. 'I hate horse meat.'

'Beats betting on it,' Kyle responded unsympathetically over his shoulder as he headed for the exit.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Leisure Centre 28 was housed, like many other Leisure Centres, in a large, converted church which had never quite lost its ascetic atmosphere. A few customers queued patiently in the bleak reception area, waiting to push their different coloured entry cards into the slotted machine which operated the doors.

George, a heavy set man of about fifty, with the souvenirs of knuckles on his face, stood supervising and on the wall behind him were two notices :

 

IT IS AN OFFENCE TO USE A BEVERAGE

CARD FOR ADMISSION ONCE THE

WEEKLY AMENITY ALLOCATION HAS

BEEN CONSUMED.

 

and

 

CITIZENS ARE WARNED THAT BEVERAGE

CARDS ARE VALID ONLY FOR THE WORK

STATUS MARKED.

 

All Leisure Centres were government-owned and controlled and alcohol was severely rationed.

George looked bored, nostalgic for the days when he had been a beer-bellied bouncer for a lady publican in Kilburn, paid in comfort, consumption and cash.

An unimaginative, official effort had been made to introduce a certain liveliness to the interior of the Centre, by pasting up propaganda posters, each of which carried a State message illustrated without subtlety.

WORK SHARING IS NOW COMPULSORY. IT HELPS THE NATIONAL INTEREST TO HELP YOU showed an intellectual-looking technician and a brawny labourer working together on the same machine.

P.C.D. STATUS CARDS MUST BE CARRIED AT ALL TIMES. PUBLIC CONTROL IS IN YOUR INTEREST was more like one of the old insurance advertisements, with a PCD card-holding couple beaming out from under the protective shelter of the State umbrella.

The rectangular room was divided into three colour-coded sections, separated from each other by floor to ceiling wire mesh. Each section contained booths and a bar, over which drink was served according to card classification and work status.

The white bar served near-beer to essential fringe and unclassified, unskilled workers. The red bar was for skilled workers and served real beer, stout and cider. Blue was more comfortable and furnished accordingly, serving beer, wine and spirits to classified skilled workers, government and local authority employees and trade union officials.

As drinks in each bar were handed over, barmen collected the money from the customers, together with their allocation cards, which were stamped in a machine at the side of the till. When each card was fully stamped, no more drink was available to that holder that week.

Dave Brett, expensively and casually dressed, was lounging in a booth in the red section with Agnes Culmore. He poured two solid slugs of brandy from a Finnegan's hip flask in black leather and silver and pushed one across to her, accompanied by an appreciative wink.

'Oh, Mr. Brett, I shouldn't,' she said, bridling extravagantly. 'As co-ordinator of this Leisure Centre, I'm classified as a Grade 7DQ Civil Servant.' Her easy laugh showed how seriously she took the title.

A semi-genuine blonde, well-rounded without being blowsy, Agnes in middle age was that combination of sympathy, sex object and maternal figure which makes the ideal barmaid. She laughed again, enjoying Brett's attention, as most women did.

'At heart you're still the same buxom barmaid who used to slip me drinks when I was under age in Liverpool,' he teased, affectionately, as she sniffed at the brandy fumes happily before taking a first sip.

'And lent you money to buy Supercham for that married woman,' she reminded him.

'Charity, Agnes. Her husband was on shifts,' Brett topped up his own glass again. 'Whatever became of Supercham?'

'It was classified as counterproductive. The factory makes industrial alcohol now.'

They were the only two in the entire Leisure Centre who looked as though they might be enjoying themselves. Drinking was a serious and gloom-filled business in 1990, which the average customer approached more as a duty than an indulgence. It was done with the minimum of talking and all wore identical weighty expressions.

Dave Brett let his eyes wander boldly over her ripe bosom. 'It was you I was really after. Two halves of bitter and I wanted to take you away from all this. Tango till dawn.' She wriggled her shoulders and pulled a face as he continued, expansively, 'You with a rose between your teeth and your hair brushing the floor. Then to nibble strawberries and cream from your cleavage.'

She looked archly pleased, 'Proper Little George Raft.'

'Whoever he was.'

'And look at you now. A big-time official spiv. Thanks for the case of brandy, by the way.'

'Think nothing of it. Fell off the back of a diplomatic limousine,' Dave Brett shrugged and then added, in mock reproach, 'And not spiv, Agnes. An import/export agent. A rare breed. With freedom to move because the country needs the money. Patriot, even. It deserves some perks.'

'You'd see to that,' the woman chuckled. 'And "perks" is banned as a word. It's called fringe and status benefits now.'

'Sorry. Didn't mean to use bad language.'

George ambled up to the booth and handed a note to Brett, who read it, snapped on his lighter and burnt it, his face suddenly serious.

'Friend of mine due in, Agnes. I may need the back room.'

'No need,' she got up, tugging the skirt of her lurex dress straight and pointing to the wall of the booth. 'George re-circuited the microphone.'

'What to?' asked the agent.

'Radio One,' she gave a saucy giggle. 'If the PCD want to play patriotic songs all day, they can listen to them I say.'

She went off without waiting to finish her drink, giving a quick wave and swing of her hips in Kyle's direction as he walked briskly in.

His first question came straight to the point and the agent answered, 'Sure, I know Charles Wainwright, from the days when he and my old man were fire-breathing organisers together. He was best man at Mum and Dad's wedding.'

'Do you still see him?' the journalist asked, and the other hesitated. 'Come on, Dave. It's important.'

'Who for? You?'

'Mostly for Wainwright.'

'O.K. I bring in the odd foreign report and magazine for him. Nothing sinister. Union stuff. It's just that they're banned here.'

Kyle wondered if a meeting could be arranged between him and the trade union leader, but Brett was dubious. 'It won't be easy. He calls your rag "The Last Gasp." Of reaction, that is.'

'I've got to see Wainwright. Tonight,' the newsman said, urgently.

The agent looked incredulous. 'And my next trick will be with loaves and fishes.' He downed his brandy. 'Tonight?'

George came up again, carrying a cloth and, as he wiped the table, busily, he tapped it three times with the middle finger of his left hand.

Brett's features sharpened. 'P.C.D.'

'Blow! Quick!' the journalist rapped.

The agent reeled out of the booth and disappeared, leaving his distinctive hip-flask on the table.

In the white bar at the other end of the room, a squad of PCD officers, led by Jack Nichols, began checking the cards of all customers and two of his men had gone behind the bar to verify the accuracy of the registration counters at the sides of the tills.

As the group marched into the red bar, the Chief Emigration Officer recognised Kyle and spoke to one of the officials, 'Call Miss Lomas. I think one of her cases is here.'

Minutes later, Delly strode up and leant on the table, registering the hip flask and two glasses first and then the newspaper man, who grinned and said, with assumed innocence, 'Well, if it isn't the PCD's leading lady, delicious Miss Lomas: Delly, for short.'

'In person. Your friend disappeared in a hurry.'

'He's shy,' Kyle offered, unconvincingly.

She sipped at Agnes' unfinished drink and commented, 'He needs to be, if he drinks imported brandy of this quality.'

'He's a shy connoisseur,' agreed the columnist, pocketing the hip-flask and waving to the empty seat. 'Nice to see you, anyway.'

She shook her head at the invitation. 'I'm working. And, if that was Faceless, he deserves the name. The Department has its doubts about the clientele here and it looks as if we were right.'

Kyle disclaimed the connection, maintaining that Leisure Centres were too antiseptic for Faceless. 'I used to like pubs, with sawdust and people laughing and some hammer-fingered pianist playing "Lily of Laguna".'

She looked at him with disapproval, pointing out that pubs were obsolete and inefficient and adding that she preferred the Centres, where citizens were graded according to their importance to society and could drink accordingly.

Public duty did not become her, he thought to himself. It took the fluidity out of her movements and gave her a crabbed, unattractive expression. He could see how she was going to look in twenty years' time.

'Spirits for shop stewards and civil servants only. Beer for essential proles. Wine for local-authority form-pushers,' Kyle indicated each shabby bar as he listed the categories with a sneer. 'And the poor sods without status cards can queue all night at the State pharmacies for their allocation of happy pills.'

'Recreation should be directed - as well as work,' Delly Lomas insisted.

He raised a provocative eyebrow. 'With double the figures for alcoholism and three thousand deaths a year from home-brewed moonshine.'

She took a step back from him, her body stiffening. 'I take it you have a stamped card for these drinks here.'

'I use private stock. Like you and Skardon,' Kyle claimed, regarding her with suddenly dull eyes. 'Don't push me, Delly. Not unless you want a large feature on officialdom's leading booze-hounds, with private Customs receipts to back it up. And I still live in hope of access to your cellar.'

She relaxed again and smiled, 'When you're thirsty enough, Kyle. And in my time.'

'And, meanwhile, if I had a talking picture of...' he hesitated, significantly, before concluding '...Wainwright.'

He got to his feet. A large PCD officer materialised behind Delly Lomas and placed a ham-sized hand on his chest. The deputy controller nodded at the official, who withdrew his physical threat reluctantly, allowing the journalist to leave.

A very worried man, Kyle almost ran to his car, disbelieving her perfectly true reason for being at the Leisure Centre and very nervous about Wainwright.

The flight from New York had just arrived and the General Secretary of the Metalturners Union had been hurried through Customs and into the waiting limousine by the Chief Emigration Officer. As it pulled away, he asked about his luggage and was given a reassuring reply.

'It's being searched for political dirty books, you mean,' Charlie Wainwright observed lightly, covering the tenseness and foreboding which, with the disorientation of jet-lag, gave his face a faintly mask-like rigidity.

He pulled down an arm rest. 'This is civil of the PCD, I must say. What is it? Red carpet or handcuffs?'

'Mr Skardon made all the arrangements personally, sir,' Nichols answered, carefully.

'I bet he did.' Wainwright inspected the interior of the vehicle.

There was a short lull while his escort pondered on the Controller's instructions to be affable. At last he said, 'Did you have a good trip to America?'

'Your gaffers know what sort of trip I had. Otherwise they wouldn't have sent this mobile broadcasting van for me.' Charles Wainwright leant forward to stare into the button-sized lens, almost concealed above the exclusion window to the chauffeur.

'Are you there, Herbert?' he said. 'How's the snooper's army these days? How's the draught from all the little keyholes?'

In the Home Secretary's office, Skardon's reaction was one of tight-lipped annoyance, as the trade union man taunted him from the television screen.

'He'll find out,' he resolved aloud, from between clenched teeth.

'Easy now, Skardon,' Dan Mellor settled into his chair, with a foxy smile. 'The gentle approach first and I'll make it.'

His powerful personality completely dominated this place. It might have been designed specifically for him, as it contained exactly the mixture of ultra-modern gadgetry and traditional accoutrements of status which would appeal to such a man: retrieval systems and streamlined desk furniture, dark panelled walls and heavy velvet drapes framing tall windows, a union lodge banner on one wall and busts of union leaders of old gazing nobly through concealed lighting from a pair of niches. A miner's helmet, complete with safety lamp, hung ostentatiously on the hat-rack, as if to show that Mellor was prepared to descend 300 feet underground at a moment's notice whenever his ministerial open fire needed making up. However, the fire itself burnt logs.

Skardon left this main office as the limousine carrying their victim turned into Whitehall, and Mellor started the re-run of the American telecast onto a big wall screen as the trade union leader arrived.

At the end of the speech, Wainwright was seen nodding acknowledgement as applause thundered out. The politician switched it off and allowed the ensuing silence to sink in.

'Real Nye Bevan stuff, Charlie,' he said, at last, more in sorrow than in anger. 'And most embarrassing for the Government, as you must have known it would be. Not like you, Charlie. GenSec of one of this country's biggest unions. Not on.' He shook his head in apparent bewilderment.

'I couldn't spout the rubbish the PCD gave me. Not in front of real trade unionists,' Charles Wainwright declared, gazing at his old friend earnestly. 'They deserved the truth. They know it, anyway.'

'What truth, Charlie?' asked Mellor. 'A standing ovation from a bunch of foreigners?'

The other waved a hand in dismissive rebuke. 'We were the dissenters once, Jim. The lodge banners at the Durham Miners' Gala, the picket lines, the negotiations, the belief. We were both there.'

Mellor hunched largely over his desk. 'And we won. We sit on every company board. We own 40 per cent of Parliament,' he asserted, forcibly. 'I was a trade union M.P. myself.'

'Won?' Wainwright exclaimed with scorn. 'When everybody does what the PCD tells 'em?'

'We've got Ombudsman's courts, people's tribunals.'

'I had a bicycle bell once that made more noise and was a damn' sight more use than that lot put together,' the trade union leader jeered. He stood up and walked over to look seriously at Mellor. 'Dan, don't you remember? When we were in Sweden? '75, was it? Everybody had a number and there was a data terminal in every police car. If they picked you up, a computer could spill your life history for 'em in ten seconds. Every detail. We all said it couldn't happen here. Well, it has.'

The Home Secretary tutted and returned his gaze with an avuncular smile, 'Progress, Charlie. You'll never change that.'

'I don't want to. I just want to push it along the right lines,' the other pressed, with deep sincerity.

'Skardon thought you might ask for political asylum,' Mellor put in the apparently casual jibe.

'He would. And I was offered it, by four countries,' Wainwright rejected such an idea and stated his faith simply. 'I'll not turn coat, Dan. I'll toe the Party line. But I'll still work for what I believe.'

The Home Secretary got to his feet and paced down the long room, apparently musing, hand to chin, the brows furrowed. 'I had a job to stop the Cabinet stamping you flat and using you for lino; on a treason charge,' he began, finally. 'I said I'd handle it. This is how. I respect your views - we've known each other long enough, but I want your word that when the American speech leaks out...'

'If it doesn't get jammed,' the other interrupted, bluntly. 'We've got the most powerful equipment since Stalin.'

'All right,' said Mellor, quickly. 'If it leaks out - you'll deny it. It was a put-up job. And there won't be any more speeches or statements like it in this country.'

Wainwright's face closed tight. 'I can't promise that, Dan.'

'It needn't alter your beliefs. You can still work for them,' argued Mellor, persuasively. 'Here at the top and privately and in rooms like this. Now, I need your word, Charlie.'

Charles Wainwright hesitated, looking hard into the other's eyes. Then he extended his hand. 'You've got it.'

Mellor took the hand firmly and nodded, satisfied, 'That's been good enough for me for thirty-five years.'

Arm thrown fraternally over the trade union leader's shoulders, he led him to the door and saw him out, smiling and clapping him on the back. Then, standing at the head of the wide staircase, he watched until Wainwright had crossed the entrance hall and been escorted back to the limousine by a commissionaire.

The Home Secretary returned to his desk and pressed a buzzer. Herbert Skardon and the principal of Mayfield Adult Rehabilitation Centre came into the room from a side door.

'Well, you heard it,' Dan Mellor looked at Mark Gelbert, who was carrying a clip board. 'What d'you think, doctor? Megalomania?'

'Oh, no, Home Secretary. Nothing as complex as that. Just common or garden idealism. Quite simple to treat.' He could have been talking about measles and his confidence in the cure had its own menace.

'You're quite sure that the results of the Mayfield experiments are complete?' the Controller worried.

Doctor Gelbert eyed him coldly. 'Clinically and statistically, Mr Skardon. My professional reputation does not allow any margin for either guesswork or error. The Jesuits used to say, "Give us a child before it is seven and we will give that child to the Church for life".' His features, fastidiously pinched round obsessed eyes, took on the mould of a Spanish inquisitor. 'Give me a...misguided, yes, that's the word - a misguided person for seven days and I will give him to any creed of my choosing.'

'Our choosing, doctor,' the Controller corrected, with deadly softness.

'Yes, of course,' the man replied, hastily. 'I'm sorry.'

The Home Secretary cut in, 'Right, Herbert. You'd better lift Wainwright and get him down to this mind laundry of Doctor Gelbert's. Nice and quiet. He's still an important man with lots of pull. Thank you, doctor.'

Mark Delbert glanced from one to the other. A prima donna in his own field, he was suddenly aware that this was the real nerve centre and these men were the true manipulators. It made him uncomfortable to be dismissed with so little ceremony, but he was glad to leave.

Mellor turned to Skardon, 'The cover-up'll take some working out. Very, very careful.'

'We've done it before,' the Controller pointed out, with assurance. 'I'll put Miss Lomas on it. Strange, how women have always been much better at deception than men.'

Kyle pulled in to park on the edge of a vast cultivated field. A large sculpture of a family running towards the open space stood on the opposite side of the road, in the centre of an arch leading to lights and heavy traffic. The field was part of Hyde Park.

Waiting nervously, the journalist tapped the steering wheel and softly sang a variant of a 1930s quasi-cowboy song called 'Old Faithful.'

'Old Faceless, we roam the range together.

Old Faceless, in every kind of weather...'

He stopped singing, abruptly. 'Where the social contract are you?' he muttered and peered out into the dim evening light. 'Social contract' had now passed into the language as a mild obscenity.

As though in answer, the souped-up Mini drew in next to his car and one of its dark windows rolled down about two inches.

'About time,' Kyle commented, with unusual sharpness. 'And why Hyde Park? It's patrolled.'

'Old times' sake, Mr Kyle. Spring, daffodils, young lovers, the groomed horses cantering in Rotten Row,' the voice of Faceless was discursive and without urgency.

'O.K., O.K. And now it's soya beans round a school for riot police. What have you got for me?'

'You're nervous, Kyle,' now the voice was smiling slightly. 'Not like you.'

'I've started taking an interest in mental health,' the journalist explained.

'Yes, I know. Liberal indoctrination at the Mayfield ARC. But you were only there for a day. It used to be a stately home, you know, until Wealth Tax ruined the owner. Even his title didn't help him. He's a cleaner in a bus garage now.'

The outdoors seemed to have affected his informant's mind, Kyle thought, irritably, not at all prepared to continue the risk for the sake of idle conversation. 'Serves him right for being patriotic and staying where he was born. What have you got?'

'Mayfield is due to take in its first really important patient quite soon,' declared Faceless.

'Charles Wainwright?'

'You've been studying telepathy, too,' he confirmed. 'Wainwright it is.'

The window of the Mini rolled up and the car moved noiselessly away at speed. Kyle switched on his own engine and headed back to Leisure Centre 28.

Charles Wainwright had already arrived there and was sitting in the booth with Dave Brett, who pushed a glass of brandy towards him.

'You know I don't touch it.' The trade union leader pushed it back and lifted the top slice from a plate of beef sandwiches, which Agnes Culmore had just laid on the table. The meat was generous, bulging the bread. 'Thank you, miss. You don't see beef sandwiches like this often. Not in public.' He scrutinized Brett. 'Black market?'

'More sort of greyish,' the agent gave a grin.

'What about coupons?' Wainwright asked Agnes.

'Mr Brett's seen to that.'

'No, he hasn't,' the other replied, firmly. 'They're not transferable and I'm not breaking any food laws.'

He took a ration book from his pocket and tore out a catering strip, which had a price printed on each coupon. Agnes took them from him and returned to the bar.

'How's your father keeping, young Dave?' The older man's expression relaxed a little, to show he was not really offended.

'Cantankerous as ever. Digging his illegal allotment and giving most of the stuff away, rather than turn it over to the State Produce Centre.'

Charlie Wainwright was beaming broadly now. 'He doesn't change. Where's this friend of yours?'

'Here,' Dave Brett jerked his head and the other turned, recognised Kyle coming towards them and immediately looked angry.

The agent raised a placatory hand. 'Now keep your wool on, Charlie.'

'I'm not talking to him,' growled the trade union leader. 'Bloody gutter-headline merchant.'

'Don't, if you don't want to. Just listen,' the agent appealed, as Kyle sat down in the booth with them.

'What's he want?' Wainwright ignored his presence and addressed Dave Brett.

'An interview,' said Kyle. 'Confirming the gist of the speech you made in America.'

'Nothing doing. That was America. This is here. And God knows how you found out.'

'You still believe what you said there.' It was not really a question.

'Yes,' Wainwright replied, firmly. 'I told the Home Secretary so.'

'Why didn't you take political asylum, Mr Wainwright? Why did you come back?'

'Simple. Nobody ever improved a society from the outside. I belong here.'

'Then let me help. Give me the interview.'

'Not a chance.'

Kyle gripped his arm and pleaded insistently, 'Before it's too late. The PCD are going to put the clamps on you - and you'll stay clamped. You're down for the Adult Rehabilitation Centre at Mayfield.'

The General Secretary of the Metalturners Union shook himself free and glared. 'If you believe that, you've been on too many of these new funnybone pills.'

As the journalist opened his mouth for more argument, George brushed passed the table, tapping rapidly three times, then pointing a forefinger at Wainwright.

'PCD,' Brett warned. 'Come on, Charlie. Move. They want you.' He and Kyle were already on their feet.

The trade unionist sat, unshaken. 'You run if you want to. I've no need to scuttle out of back doors.' He felt into his pocket and produced a pipe. 'Dan Mellor said I'd be all right. He won't break his word.'

Kyle closed his eyes at the man's sincere stupidity, before spinning round to follow Brett - always a lightning disappearing artist.

Jack Nichols entered the booth, accompanied by a heavy; all hooligan under a public school veneer.

'PCD, Mr Wainwright,' the Chief Emigration Officer showed a warrant card. 'We'd like you to come with us. Just routine.'

'Routine,' Wainwright responded, calmly. 'In that case, I'll finish these sandwiches.'

The scheme had gathered a momentum of its own. Meetings had taken place, the plan been approved, typists called in, official-looking documents produced and appointments made. The lights in the Home Secretary's office were visible from Whitehall long after the surrounding windows had gone dark and he was still working when Delly Lomas delivered the completed papers, which he read with approval.

'Ingenious, Miss Lomas. I like it. A very efficient and circumstantial tissue of lies. Thorough. I like that.'

'Thank you, Home Secretary,' she replied, pleased.

He had pressed a buzzer and a man, wearing emphatically framed glasses on a narrow, intelligent face, came into the room from the waiting annexe.

'Sit down, Mr Griffith,' Dan Mellor met him sociably. 'Good of you to get here at such short notice. I'd like your advice.'

Ivor Griffith, Assistant General Secretary of the Metalturners Union, recognised the flattery, but was still impressed.

'I'll do what I can, Home Secretary.'

He was very much a career union man, with a good first in PPE, taken almost casually. He had moved fast and, at thirty-eight, was not sorry his hairline was receding slightly, as this made him look older.

'I know you will, lad. I've heard good reports of you,' Mellor declared and then sighed. 'Though I'm afraid this isn't going to be pleasant for any of us.'

He turned to introduce Delly Lomas. Griffith managed a smile, but, despite his position, experienced the fear felt by anyone when the PCD was involved. Dan Mellor gestured to the woman and sighed again. It was an expert handover of the dirty work to be done.

'It concerns your General Secretary's recent trip to America,' the Deputy Controller spoke formally, in the tones of a professional at work. 'Our surveillance people turned up some very disturbing facts. Wainwright's drinking, for example.'

'He never touches it,' Griffith exclaimed.

'Not in public. Privately, he's a bottle-a-day man,' she returned. 'Then there's the question of his expense and currency allowance. Not just this trip, but the last half-dozen. On a deep audit, there's clear evidence of evasion and fraud.'

'I don't believe it,' Ivor Griffith protested, vigorously. 'Somebody's making it up.'

The Deputy Controller studied him frigidly. 'I don't think you mean that, Mr Griffith,' her voice was icy. 'I do hope not.'

'No. I'm very sorry,' he stood up to apologise and remained standing.

'The lad's upset,' Mellor put in, benignly. 'I know I was.'

The woman picked up a folder from the Home Secretary's desk. 'There are details here of a bank account in the SwissLux Federation. As you know, it is an offence punishable by imprisonment for any British citizen to bank abroad - especially undisclosed sums of this magnitude.'

She opened the folder towards the trade unionist, but without actually bringing it close enough for him to read. He did not dare reach out for it.

'What are you going to do?' he asked, helplessly.

'That's what I want to talk to you about,' Mellor intervened. 'Thank you, Miss Lomas.'

Delly inclined her head and left, as the Home Secretary crossed to a drinks cabinet built into his bookcase and poured whisky into two glasses.

'Sit down, lad. Bit of a facer, isn't it?' He handed Griffith a drink. 'I've known Charlie Wainwright thirty-odd years. I blame myself, you know. I should have seen Charlie was working too hard. He had to crack.'

'He's in real trouble, though, isn't he?' Wainwright's assistant looked genuinely anxious.

'Unless we can get him out of it.'

'We?'

'Yes. I'll try and cover for him. Charlie's served his country too well to end like this. I'm going to plead ill-health for him,' the ex-miner resolved, generously. 'He might have to admit a few things, and, of course, resign as GenSec of the Metalturners.'

'He'll never do that. He's got five years to run,' the other pointed out. 'And the Executive will support him, right or wrong.'

'That's where you come in,' Mellor raised his glass in a half salute. 'Call an emergency meeting, but get around the individuals first. You know the drill. Use the corridors. Word here, a hint there. It's for Charlie's good.'

Griffith began to look almost enthusiastic. He was shrewder, brighter and less scrupulous than his boss, Charles Wainwright, but had been at pains to hide this superiority in the same mental cover as his intense ambition.

'I'll try,' he promised.

Mellor read him like a PCD handout. 'You'll do it, lad. Then you'll be Acting General Secretary for the rest of Charlie's term. And that's a nice, ripe plum for somebody your age.'

He refilled the other's glass, knowing that the bait of fulfilled ambition had been offered and accepted.

Kyle made a couple of stops, to discover the latest news on Wainwright, on his way to the office the following morning, then went straight to the archives room.

When Greaves found him, he was studying a diagram in a large medical book. It was a cross-section of the human skull, similar to that hanging in Gelbert's office at Mayfield.

'Ugh. Why was I born squeamish?' shuddered Tiny, who had had a large, late breakfast.

'This? It's only the inside of somebody's skull,' the columnist was airy. 'All the highways and byways for electroconvulsive therapy to trot down.'

'I'll stick to street maps,' promised the other. 'Whose skull?'

'Could be Wainwright's. And now that the PCD have picked him up, he'll change his mind about giving me an interview.'

'If you can find him,' Greaves cautioned.

'I can find him. Give this to Pearce, will you?' He took out a surveillance bug from his pocket.

The news editor dialled a number on the internal and Pearce appeared in the doorway a few minutes later. He handed Kyle a large envelope, then noticed the bug and groaned.

'Oh no. I'm beginning to look like a chappatti. Here are all the photos of Wainwright you asked for.'

Kyle inspected him, pointedly. 'Who told you to get your hair cut?'

'Nobody,' the young reporter muttered. 'I thought...'

Kyle indicated his own longer hair and scowled, 'Well, don't in future. Ask.'

By lunchtime, it was a fait accompli and the leading participants gathered in Doctor Gelbert's office at Mayfield to complete formalities.

Charles Wainwright, now dressed in a short-sleeved surgical tunic was sitting in front of Gelbert's desk, reading the dossier put together by Delly Lomas. The doctor himself sat behind the desk and Dan Mellor and Ivor Griffith waited by the window. Halloran was also ominously present.

Wainwright threw the dossier down on the desk. 'You don't need me to tell you this lot's a pack of bloody lies. Put together by experts,' he said, contemptuously.

'Isn't that your signature on the SwissLux bank account?' Mellor challenged smoothly.

'You know it isn't. It's the PCD forgery mob. All right, Dan,' the General Secretary of the Metalturners Union leant back in his chair, a big, angry man wielding authority. 'If you want a show trial, you've got one.'

He signalled to Griffith. 'Ivor, I want a full executive and delegate meeting of my union. I want fraternal subpoenas on all the union leaders who were with me on these trips where I'm supposed to have been a drunken expense fiddler.'

His assistant stood motionless, looking embarrassed and guilty.

'Go on. Get on with it,' Wainwright ordered.

'A meeting's already been held, Mr Wainwright.'

'At my instigation,' confirmed Mellor.

'You had my word on it, Dan,' Charles Wainwright stared at him, accusingly. 'I'd have kept my mouth shut. Are you going back on yours?'

'Words, Charlie. Don't be a simpleton,' the other sneered. 'I needed time to think. I want your resignation and a full recantation of past mistakes.'

'You can want for bloody ever,' Wainwright shouted. 'I'm going to get out of this fancy dress and thump on every union door in this country.'

He placed his hands on the desk to heave himself upright and Mark Gelbert nodded his head. One of Halloran's thick hands clamped down on the back of the trade union leader's neck, thumbing accurately and hard on the motor nerve centre. Charles Wainwright slumped forward.

'Sedation, Halloran,' the doctor instructed.

'What about after?' Mellor queried, suddenly wary.

'I know your problem, Home Secretary, and I assure you that it can be resolved quite easily.' As Halloran deftly wielded a hypodermic, Doctor Mark Gelbert's confidence was absolute.

For all the men in the room, Charles Wainwright no longer existed. He was now a patient at Mayfield.

CHAPTER NINE

As the Home Secretary and new Acting General Secretary of the Metalturners Union returned to town in chauffeur-driven cars, Herbert Skardon was smugly waving a handwritten note on Ministerial paper over his coffee tray at Delly Lomas.

'A rare document, Delly. We must have it framed.'

'Like Wainwright,' she responded, acidly.

'My dear Delly, a memo of commendation in the Home Secretary's own handwriting is nothing to be cynical about,' he observed, holding the scrap of paper at arm's length and admiring it, without the faintest sense of the ridiculous.

'We're only half way through and some instinct makes me itchy,' she cautioned, pursing her lips. 'Nichols said it might have been Kyle talking to Wainwright at the Leisure Centre.'

'Nonsense. He's under full surveillance, visual, as well as electronic,' the PCD boss confirmed. 'He was in his office. Even Kyle can't be in two places at once.'

Delly Lomas shook her head, remembering the journalist's cloak-and-dagger performance with Tom Pearce at her flat. He could be in two places at once all right.

She prepared to work late again that night, re-checking all details, and decided to see that her chief did so, too. He seemed to think their responsibilities were over, although it was still possible for the whole plan to be sabotaged.

While she worried over Skardon's complacency, Charles Wainwright was lying unconscious on the operating bench at Mayfield. His short sideboards had already been shaved to allow the electrodes contact with the flesh at his temples. Halloran was standing by, carrying stopwatch and clipboard.

'As usual, Halloran. Selective application of calibrated ECT, at five second intervals,' Gelbert instructed. 'Ready?'

'Yes, sir,' the PCD officer clicked the watch. 'Now.'

The doctor pressed a switch and Wainwright's hands and feet twitched and jumped for precisely five seconds.

'Now,' Halloran said again and the ECT symptoms repeated.

'Now.'

Mark Gelbert moved from the cabinet to feel Wainwright's neck pulse. 'Excellent, excellent,' he said. 'Thank you, gentlemen.'

The patient was wheeled out and the doctor made his way to his private suite to eat a light but epicurean supper, accompanied by a bottle of chilled Gewurtztraminer.

By the time he had finished, the moon had risen, bathing the graceful old house in light and shining through the abutting woodland.

Kyle and Dave Brett did not need their torches as they covered the powerful motorbike with a camouflage sheet and cleared the wooden fence between the road and the perimeter of Mayfield's grounds.

Once in the shelter of the trees, Kyle stopped to check the contents of a knapsack and took out a tape-recorder, clipping a sonic calibrator to the side of it.

'You look like a fugitive from a jumble sale,' his partner grinned, but the journalist was unappreciative.

'Can you work one of these?' he asked, shortly.

'Recorder? Everybody can. They just can't write these days.' Dave Brett, thoroughly enjoying himself, flashed a light along the ground. The escapade took him back to his questionable boyhood, when he had spent a lot of night hours diving over walls and through windows and down alleys, during raids on small shops and, later, factories. Even the leatherings dished out by his old man had not stopped him because the risks and tension had been bigger attractions than the thieving itself.

Little had changed, he thought, with rueful amusement. Now he was deep in the illegal emigrant and black market rackets, as much to feel his skin creep as for any personal vendetta against the regime. It kept him alive. He inspected the sonic calibrator.

'What's that gadget?'

'It's to authenticate the voice-print,' Kyle explained. 'To prove it's Wainwright.'

'In we go then,' the agent was all for bounding forward.

'Hang on,' the journalist warned. 'There'll be a PCD hard case in there, called Halloran. He breaks legs.'

A case-opener, a small crowbar in hardened steel, slid down Brett's sleeve and into his hand. 'I was in Manchester when he was doing it. No bother.'

They came to a second fence, wired this time, and crouched beside it.

'Did you bring the photos of Wainwright?' asked Kyle.

'Only because you said so,' replied the other, looking baffled. 'I didn't know it was nostalgia week.'

'It isn't. Take these as well.' He gave Brett the envelope from Tom Pearce. 'Now listen. Gelbert uses ECT and one result is that your memory gets jogged loose from its moorings. That's why it's been banned in some countries for twenty years. Wainwright might not even recognise you. So you wander him down memory lane and pick up the bits he still remembers. If any.'

'Christ!' Brett had stopped smiling, and now looked genuinely shocked.

The newsman had attached two bulldog clips joined by copper wire to one of the fence wires, to circuit the alarm. Then, cutting the length between the clips, he held up the wire for his partner to start crawling through.

A silent breeze stirred the branches, covering the few scuffles they made while creeping through the shrubbery towards the new recuperative annexe.

This was a row of ten timber cottages, only one of which was lit. As they watched from the bushes, Halloran, wearing a white jacket and obviously on guard, paced the length of the chalets, bouncing a bunch of keys in the air. Reaching the end of the row, he stopped and leant patiently against the wall.

Brett slid away, gesturing to Kyle. The journalist stood, scraping his feet on the gravel, obtrusively, and the PCD officer came forward, alert, with a heavy cosh in one hand.

Brett moved in silently behind and smashed the case-opener onto his skull. The thug dropped. The agent immediately plunged a large and none-too-hygenic hypodermic syringe into his inert body.

'Where d'you get that from?' Kyle asked, his eyes flaring. 'A vet?'

'Yes,' the other replied, truthfully, taking the keys from Halloran's pocket. 'Sling him in the bushes. If we're lucky, he'll catch pneumonia.' He ran towards the single occupied chalet.

A brief glance through the window showed Wainwright sitting on a bed, gazing blankly at a television set, which was not switched on. Already he looked drawn and even a little thinner.

The room was well-furnished, like a single suite in a very expensive hotel, with ankle-deep carpet, furniture by name designers, wallpaper in printed silk, private bathroom and air-conditioning. Only the hospital bed looked incongruous, with its adjustable levels and restraining attachment.

Wainwright did not look up as the clock clicked, but, as Brett entered, his head turned and some terror showed.

'Who are you? I've taken my tablets. I don't want to go to sleep yet. Who are you?'

The agent gently laid the tape recorder and the envelopes of photographs on the bed and knelt beside his father's old friend.

Outside, Kyle had put on Halloran's jacket and was standing at the end of the chalet line, with his face averted from the light. He wiped sweat from his top lip and looked at his watch. The indistinct mumble of voices from Wainwright's cottage told him that the interview had begun.

'Charlie, it's Dave Brett. Ted Brett's son. You remember Ted,' the agent reached for the photographs, without taking his eyes off the trade union leader. 'You grew up with him in Liverpool, when the trams used to run along Scotland Road and there was a boozer on every corner.'

He showed an old photograph of the city. 'Look.'

'Tore it all down. Built flats. Big ones,' Charlie Wainwright looked dazed and he shook his head. 'Ted married...married...'

'Maggie Collingwood. My mother,' prompted the other, struggling to keep compassion out of his voice and bringing out another photograph. 'Look. That's you at the wedding.'

The man shook his head again and half turned away, but Brett persisted with another photograph. 'And this is you on a works outing, Charlie. There, see. On the platform.'

'Something to do with the union,' Wainwright fumbled, doubtfully. 'Union?'

'Union, that's it,' the agent was eager. 'You were a convenor.'

But the General Secretary of the Metalturners Union looked vacant.

There were three cans of videotape on the Controller's desk. He indicated them and looked over his glasses at Delly Lomas.

'Top confidential. The only three known copies of Wainwright's American outburst. To be destroyed - by the Home Secretary's express order,' he announced, impassively.

'Certainly, Mr Skardon,' she replied, playing the game.

'Will you sign to that effect?'

'Certainly, Mr Skardon.'

She scribbled on an official form, as he lit a thoughtful cigarette and gazed past her, remarking distantly, 'And, if one should happen to find its way into our private dossier on the Home Secretary, I'm sure it will be convincingly re-labelled.'

'I'd thought of marking it "Insurance",' she offered.

He nodded. 'Accurate, if not imaginative.'

They took the deceit casually. Knowledge of where the bodies were buried was paramount. Foul rumours had always kept Civil Servants in jobs and the PCD had built up an explosive bank of information for its own purposes and future power.

'I wish I could be sure there weren't any private tapes,' the deputy frowned, perturbed.

'It won't matter soon,' said her boss.

'Then we should have a special security squad crawling under every bush at Mayfield,' she stressed.

He eyed her with some impatience. 'Your obsession with Kyle's omnipresence is becoming tiresome. However...'

He picked up the phone to the surveillance room, where the mention of Kyle's name brought immediate response, and he turned back to Delly Lomas.

'Having dinner. Biryani again. He'll ruin his lower intestine with all that spicy food.'

'Sooner the better,' she said.

'Oh, and the last visual on him reported that he's had a haircut.' Said to needle her and belittle her suspicions, it had the opposite effect.

'When?' she demanded, starting to her feet. 'That doesn't show on any surveillance report. Where did he have it done? How?'

Herbert Skardon shot a despairing glance heavenward. 'My dear Delly, I'm not his barber.'

She snatched the telephone, exclaiming, 'I'd better check on Wainwright.' And rattled the receiver rest impatiently. 'Come on, for God's sake!'

Mark Gelbert, wearing a silk dressing gown and looking very annoyed, took his time to reach his office and pick up the red telephone from the top drawer in the desk.

'Yes. I'm at a scrambler phone now and not best pleased at being disturbed,' he snapped. 'Who is that?'

He stiffened to attention at the reply. 'Oh, PCD. I'm sorry. I didn't realise. What? Yes, of course, Miss Lomas, I'll check on Wainwright, but Halloran's with him, one of your own officers.'

His knuckles showed white and his head began to bob rapidly, as he tried to see through the window and across the dew-silvered lawn to the chalets, while he talked. 'No, Miss Lomas, I wouldn't presume to argue. I'll do it at once. Hold on, please.'

Stabbing buttons on the intercom, he barked into it, 'General alarm. Supervision squad over to the new wing immediately.'

Dave Brett had just closed the chalet door behind him and was grim-faced with rage and pity as he joined Kyle.

'Let's find the bastard who runs this place and jog his head loose. All of it. Permanently,' he snarled.

Suddenly, floodlights swept across the front of the recuperative wing and alarm bells screamed from the main house. Running feet and the barking of guard dogs sounded on the drive.

'Later,' said Kyle and sprinted with his partner towards the woodland.

Behind them, Gelbert could be heard shouting Halloran's name and four uniformed security men plunged into the shrubbery with two dobermans, baying and savage at the leash. But, as the doctor rushed into Wainwright's chalet, the powerful motorcycle was heard roaring into a racing start on the road.

In the news room next morning, Kyle and Greaves bent over the tape recorder, listening.

'Who are you?' Wainwright's voice was heard asking. Kyle pressed the machine's forward speed. 'Something to do with the union.'

'Union, that's it,' replied Brett's voice.

'That doesn't sound very promising,' the news editor commented.

'ECT's scrambled his head,' the columnist explained, speeding the recorder again. 'His mind's in bits, but Dave picked up enough pieces for me to work on.'

The agent's voice was heard again. 'The American speech, Charlie. This is what you said - I live in a country where a British Parliament, put in by that twenty per cent of the electorate who bother to vote, is a rubber stamp for a faceless Civil Service,' Wainwright's voice began to join in, a beat behind. 'With the sort of power Genghiz Khan would have envied.'

Brett's voice faded out and only the trade union leader's continued, hesitantly, 'A sceptred isle surrounded by barbed wire. The best brains driven out.'

'That's it. That's better,' Dave Brett encouraged.

Kyle stopped the machine. 'I can put it together. And the legal boys - that well-known firm of Caution, Wait-a-Minute and No - have cleared the voice-print. We can publish.'

Tiny Greaves punched his arm heartily and whooped, 'When Wainwright's union find out what's happened to him, they'll go berserk.'

'I wouldn't count on it,' his columnist responded, wearily. 'Too many of the top brass have been bought off for years under the old patronage list.'

He turned a piece of foolscap into his typewriter. 'Some of the membership might squawk, but Mellor will buy 'em up by cancelling football matches for a month.'

'Jesus wants you for a sunbeam,' the big news editor shook his head over such cynicism. 'But not this week.'

The Home Secretary had gone that nasty colour again and his eyebrows had collided in bristling fury as he scowled at Skardon and Lomas standing before him. He was on the verge of thumping his desk.

'I hold you responsible, Skardon. What sort of flea circus are you running? One of your own best officers with his skull fractured and somebody ambling in like Sunday afternoon to chat to Wainwright.' He did thump his desk. 'Call this public control? And Gelbert reckons Wainwright's recovered some degree of retentive rationality - whatever that means.'

While her boss shifted uneasily beside her, Delly Lomas calmly picked up the Home Secretary's phone. 'May I?'

'Make yourself at home,' Dan Mellor waved ironic permission. 'I've got a clean shirt in the drawer if you want it.'

'Not my size,' she responded, without the flicker of a smile, then spoke into the receiver. 'Doctor Gelbert? Lomas, PCD. I want an accurate forecast of the time required by you to rectify - how shall I put it?' She examined her well-kept nails for a moment. '- the unfortunate setback suffered last night in Charles Wainwright's condition.'

As she listened to his reply, her face became steely. 'I'm not interested in the professional ethics of intensive treatment,' she asserted, harshly. 'I require merely results and a time. Thank you.'

She replaced the receiver and Mellor observed, with sarcasm, 'Well, that's the medical bulletin and three cheers. Of course, we still don't know what Charlie Wainwright said, or who'll use it.'

'Nobody.' The Deputy Controller contemplated him steadily and sat down in one of his armchairs. 'Home Secretary, I'd like you to announce a mandatory public-service telecast for nine o'clock this evening.'

'Nine. That's a bit late,' Mellor demurred, though looking interested. 'Mandatory telecasts are always at 8.15. The curfew arrangements are geared to it to keep people indoors.'

'Re-gear them,' she said. 'Curiosity value alone should give us a bigger audience.'

She handed a sheet of paper over the desk. 'Just a few rough notes, Minister. Guidelines, no more, on what you might like to say.'

The Controller was still on his feet and, during this exchange, his frown had deepened as his bewilderment had increased. Now, he looked unmistakably angry. Delly Lomas was operating as a soloist and, whilst he could accept improvisation, the production of notes on which he had not been consulted, came as a definite internal-politics ploy.

Dan Mellor was reading them and smiling. 'Might work. Ought to work.' He glanced at Skardon, a little spitefully. 'You've not had much to say, Herbert.'

But the Controller had fixed on an inscrutable smile. 'Hardly seemed necessary, Home Secretary. As Miss Lomas will tell you, my staff make a point of keeping me informed of all contingency plans emanating from my department.'

He had moved across the room and opened the door for Delly Lomas, and now had some difficulty in resisting the urge to boot her through it.

Grilles had been pulled down over the bars in Leisure Centre 28, though there were still some customers standing at them, impatiently tapping on the counter with glasses. Agnes Culmore walked towards the end booth, raising her voice to that unique shrillness achieved by lady publicans, 'Not a bit of good rattling glasses and gasping. If you want a drink, you'll have to watch the telly first. You know I'm not allowed to serve during public-service broadcasts.'

A slightly drunken customer swayed in front of her in dispute, 'Bloody parrots. Load of rubbish.'

She looked at him, with a hint of recognition, then shouted sharply, 'George! Throw him out. If he can't keep quiet, he can get pinched for curfew breaking.'

The big bouncer obliged with zealous vigour, putting an armlock on the unfortunate man which would allow him to scratch the top of his head from behind for a week, and hurling him through the door to the street.

Dave Brett, already in his usual seat, looked up, surprised. 'Well done, Aggie. We'll make a real bureaucrat of you yet,' he goaded.

'Not with that one, you won't,' she returned equably. 'He's been planted by the PCD to see the set's on in here, and he won't get pinched either.'

The agent grinned as Kyle joined them and they turned their attention to one of the big wall screens in the bar. A close-up of the Union Jack filled it.

As massed bands played 'Land of Hope and Glory', Dan Mellor was submitting to the attentions of a make-up girl at the side of a television interview room. When she had finished, he took his own small comb from his top pocket to bush out his heavy eyebrows, while she held out a mirror.

A lectern was in position in front of a scenery flat, both blazoned with the words 'Rule Britannia'. The set was fully lit and two TV cameras were lined up opposite the single prop. A few technicians moved around them, languidly. Lomas and Gelbert stood nearby, with Ivor Griffith in the background..

On the other side of the room, Charles Wainwright was also being made up, the girl paying particular attention to shading the area round his temples.

'You're sure he'll be all right?' Delly jerked her head towards him, as he stared without focusing at the mirror before him.

'Absolutely,' Mark Gelbert reassured her, smugly. 'I've briefed the producer on the teleprompter speed.'

As the music crescendoed, a red light flashed on and off and a home counties' voice was heard announcing, 'Citizens of Britain, I would now like your full attention for a mandatory public-service telecast by the Home Secretary, the Rt Hon Dan Mellor, M.P.'

In Leisure Centre 28, Kyle, Brett and the customers watched in silence as Mellor appeared on their screens, wearing his concerned but bluff, genial man-of-the-people face.

'Fellow citizens, I won't take up much of your valuable leisure time. You know me. I believe in plain words and plain actions.' He leant forward to gaze into the camera with eye-to-eye frankness. 'My role tonight's just to introduce an important announcement from one of the most respected figures in our society towards progress, Charles Wainwright, General Secretary of that vital and public-spirited union, the Metalturners.'

Kyle and the agent waited tensely as the Home Secretary stood to one side, clapping his hands. Wainwright approached and peered over the lectern, hesitantly.

'Fellow-citizens and brothers in the trade-union movement,' he began, very slowly and obviously reading. 'I've come to you with a problem which has been worrying me for a while now. For...a...while...' He blinked and rubbed his forehead.

At one side of the interview room, Gelbert hissed at a floor manager, 'Tell that idiot producer to slow the teleprompter down. It's losing him.'

Then Wainwright continued, synchronising again with the teleprompter and looking totally uncomprehending. 'I've had full and frank consultations with my good friend, Dan Mellor, with my loyal and hard-working Assistant Secretary, Ivor Griffith, and with the dedicated Executive of my union. I'm not getting any younger and my health isn't what it was. What...it...was....'

He looked round him, confused, and Dave Brett in the Leisure Centre clenched his fists and bunched his shoulders in bull-like rage.

'That isn't Charlie Wainwright.'

'Surprise, surprise,' responded Kyle, bitterly.

'I've started to make mistakes,' the trade union leader continued, pathetically. 'As you all know, it is the patriotic duty of every Briton to assess his own job-fitness, answerable to his local job-grading tribunal. I've done that. I don't measure up any more. My sad duty tonight is to resign formally as GenSec of the Metalturners, a position I've been proud to hold for...hold for...' The figure eluded him and he squinted forward again.

In the newsroom, Greaves had switched off the sound in disgust and was staring at the strained elderly face on the screen.

'That blows it,' he said to himself, glumly, before asking the switchboard to put through Somers, the printer. 'Rip out Kyle's story. Put in that pre-set about import controls reducing living standards. Yes, I know it's got whiskers on it, but there's nothing else. Wait a moment.'

Greaves shouted to ask Pearce if he had checked that the editions could get on special national trains for distribution.

'Not a chance,' the young reporter replied. 'Just a big PCD horse-laugh.'

'Cut the run, Mr Somers. Local distribution only.' The news editor sighed as he put the receiver down. 'Another PCD lesson on what happens to us when we try to get clever.'

'Or tell the truth,' offered Pearce.

'No such animal, laddie,' returned his boss. 'Not in their book.'

Wainwright was stumbling to the end of his speech. 'I've tried to set an example all my working life. I'd like to end my career still setting that example. Thank you, fellow citizens and brothers, and Rule Britannia.'

He nodded his head awkwardly as the television interview room resounded to the sound of applause and stamping feet.

'Five seconds, then cut the canned applause,' Delly Lomas instructed the floor manager, who nodded and looked curiously at Wainwright.

The ex-trade union leader was bobbing his head, acknowledging a bare wall, where his mind could see serried ranks of delegates and hear their roars, supporting belief. He walked from the lectern towards her.

Dan Mellor moved in to shake his hand, warmly. 'Well done, Charlie. One of the best speeches you've ever made.'

'Congratulations, Mr Wainwright,' Griffith put in, mechanically.

Charlie Wainwright looked at them, blankly, and asked, 'Who are you?'

'Bastards, bastards, bastards,' Dave Brett mouthed silently, his eyes suspiciously bright. Then he turned to Kyle and said, audibly. 'Charlie Wainwright turned into a zombie. I remember him singing "Jerusalem" and really believing in it.'

'Not any more,' said the newspaper man.

'Kyle.'

'Yes?'

'If ever they throw me in one of those places, get in somehow and kill me.'

The journalist looked at his friend, nodded the promise and meant it.

CHAPTER TEN

The servant's bored eyes questioned him and Kyle shook his head almost imperceptibly, then watched the Minister of Trade deftly relieve the tray of another large Scotch, before the man slid on his way through the clusters of diplomats.

Burdon, the Minister, leaned back on his heels for a moment and surveyed the coterie of black envoys around him with that condescending bonhomie unique to tall, upper-middle-class Englishmen with generous paunches. The magnificent room with its brilliant chandeliers, respectful attendants and low voices became him, as a polished remnant from what had been known as the Stockbroker Belt, before top civil servants bought all the houses.

Catching the columnist's eye, he raised his glass in self-satisfied salute.

'If Britain can't extend a helping hand to an old friend, it's not worth its place in the First Division of the world's nations.'

'We're not in the First Division, Minister,' Kyle responded.

'There! What was I saying?' the politician exclaimed. 'It's doom-drips like you, Kyle, who're to blame for so much of the world's misery. I bet you see the rainbow in various shades of black.'

One or two Africans looked severe, but Burdon remained oblivious.

Kyle retorted, 'I don't write about the weather.'

'More your line, I'd have thought. All those natural disasters...' The group relaxed and laughed at the jibe. '...Though you'd be lost for something to say when the sun shone and the harvest was bountiful.'

'Bountiful's the word for this trade deal you've signed. Britain could have got copper a lot cheaper elsewhere,' the journalist observed acidly, aware that the foreign and trade office negotiators behind him were beginning to shuffle uncomfortably.

The Minister of Trade frowned and delivered a snappy sentence on the need to make up for the sins Britain's white forefathers had committed against their black friends. He waved expansively at his host, the ambassador of an emerged African State.

'We're the poor relations now,' Kyle pointed out.

Burdon snorted and gave a shrug of appeal to the group. 'See! Self-deception! He even believes his own lies.'

The deal, which had been announced without warning and after precious little discussion between the Africans and the Minister, involved payment by the U.K. in both cash and goods, in particular the mountain of surplus dairy products created by severe rationing. It was a combination totalling a price considerably higher than the current world market value of copper.

'It's like Oliver Twist tossing anglodollars into Rockefeller's begging bowl,' the newsman declared, angrily.

The Minister's genial expression stiffened into a waxwork mould. 'Crawl back among your characters from the past, Kyle,' he snarled, between grinning teeth. 'It's where you belong.' And he turned his back deliberately to exclude the columnist from the circle, saying smugly, 'Some among us will never understand that there's more to trade and aid than greed and profit, that friendship and generosity between nations yields gains that can't be measured by money-men.'

As a little round of applause broke from the toadies, the journalist felt a hand press his arm.

'You're the joker tonight, Mr Kyle,' a voice murmured.

He turned to see the young African he had noticed staring when he arrived at the reception.

'My name is Paul Bright and I'm proud to meet you,' the stranger continued. 'In some countries you would be in jail.'

'Give 'em time. The British need time,' he pointed out, grimly, giving the other a guarded look.

'All I need is a few minutes,' the soft voice paused. '...Outside.'

But the newsman remained wary and played for time. 'It's raining.' PCD spies materialised in all settings and colours.

'Better wet than bugged,' the African returned, looking at him firmly.

'As you all know, I'm dedicated personally to deep and lasting friendship between our two countries and there's nothing I will not do to cement it.'

The Minister's voice booming in the background forced a decision. Kyle swung irritably away to join Paul Bright in the doorway outside the Embassy.

'He's a humbug,' the young diplomat commented.

The columnist grimaced. 'Who isn't? Most of my friends are striped.'

'And a corrupt one...' the other added, significantly.

They both registered the PCD man hovering nearby and speaking discreetly into a wrist-watch mike.

'Even if you are bugged, I'll go on,' Bright emphasized. 'I've had my bellyful.'

'I'm clean,' the newsman assured him. 'I hope you are.'

The African smiled. 'Virginal white.'

As they walked out into the Belgravia downpour, the PCD shadow stared into the distance and pointed a finger at them. Yards away, his colleague squinted out through an observation slit in a parked surveillance wagon and locked an ultra-sensitive, miniaturised sound camera onto the target, then turned up the sound. A screech and hopelessly scrambled speech filled the van. The driver looked round, enquiringly.

'One of them's using a scrambler. Or both,' grumbled the PCD technician, as he adjusted the sound without success. 'I'll try a big close-up and see if the office can lip-read the bastards.'

The lens sucked up a larger image of the two men. Kyle looked straight to camera and, as he opened his mouth to speak, the scrambler switched off.

'That's a PCD spy wagon,' he announced, poker faced and pointing straight at it; then continued loudly and carefully, as though to an extremely deaf listener. 'They have highly qualified pensionable lip readers back in their fortress, did you know that?'

Paul Bright looked amused and joined in, 'I'm an amateur ventriloquist, should we try them?'

But Kyle had had enough of the game and, with a parting gesture to the camera, steered him towards the gardens of the square. An excellent shot of their backs came up on the VTR screen in the van and the scrambler screeched on again.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, the journalist cautious, waiting.

A gleaming hearse of a car purred to the columned porch opposite. The uniformed chauffeur jumped out to open a door and a red-haired woman in full-length furs swept past the butler and into the house, followed by a purposeful male companion.

Number eighty-six. Home of Lady Emma Tarnagh. A favourite haunt of Dan Mellor and other members of the élite. The door closed. The car glided off to its centrally heated stable. Some survive, Kyle thought to himself.

'We've given Burdon his own Aladdin's cave - in a bank vault in Zurich.' Paul Bright spoke suddenly.

'Our Minister of Trade?' The newsman was instantly attentive.

'Your man from Integrity,' the African agreed, quickly checking the distance between them and the PCD tail. 'He's a bit of a sailor now. We've got him up with an ocean-going yacht name of Manuela, berthed at Monte Carlo. Twin screws. Fully comprehensive radar. And a main cabin with twelve portholes and six Picassos.'

The newsman whistled. 'Originals?' he queried.

Paul Bright looked back in mock reproof. 'Kyle! Would a rich nation like his deal in prints?'

'He'll evade Wealth Tax on that lot, if he stays outside the twelve mile limit.' The journalist's innate puritanism was offended.

'That's what he said,' his informant grinned.

They had reached the far side of the square and were momentarily protected from PCD eyes by a clump of bushes. Kyle gave Bright a quick tap of thanks and farewell before eeling down a dark mews. By the time the PCD man rounded the corner, he had disappeared.

The technician in the van scowled at the VTR picture. 'Close up of damn all. I'd best wipe this. If he sees it, he'll have us at the re-training camp before you can say Skardon.'

This was a serious underestimation of the PCD boss's response. With the number of illegal emigrants rising and the increasingly wide circulation of underground news sheets of protest and the continued refusal of the politicians to allow him additional manpower, Herbert Skardon's reaction to failure was growing progressively more dangerous. The arrival of another damning video-tape from the United States the following morning did nothing to improve his mood.

Lomas and Tasker were summoned, directed to chairs in front of the wall screen and not offered coffee. The Controller stayed sulkily behind his desk, watching them watching the playback.

It began with a close-up of a streamer poster, reading :

                                     FIGHT

                                       FOR

                                   LIBERTY

                                         IN

                                   BRITAIN

And a man's voice, 'I tell you this, my American friends, your moral and financial support is vital to those brave men and women who resist the evil system that is snuffing out freedom in the United Kingdom...'

Applause sounded and the camera swung to focus on the speaker. It was Doctor Alan Vickers addressing a campaign meeting from a rostrum draped with the proclamation:

           UNITED STATES ACTION GROUP

                      FOR A FREE BRITAIN

                               (U.S.A.G.F.B.)

'...They work ceaselessly. They work without thought of reward. Don't swallow a word of the British Government's propaganda about those who risk their own liberty to smuggle out people like me, whose only crime is to be well trained.'

The young doctor leant towards his audience with anxious sincerity. '...Don't for one moment believe that those marvellous men and women do it for personal gain. They don't. When I came out, I offered cash to the man who fixed it, one of those Scarlet Pimpernels of 1990...'

Skardon choked and stood up. 'Scarlet Pimpernels!'

'...who have the notorious PCD running around like panicky Doberman Pinschers.'

'He must have somebody writing for him,' Delly Lomas put in, sourly.

'And let me tell you what he said. "Keep your wallet zipped tight, mate," he said, "till you've made a packet in the States". Does that sound like a mercenary?'

Skardon buttoned off the tape with some violence.

'It sounds like a traitor who shouldn't be on the loose.' He turned to Delly. 'You met this smart-alec rabble rouser before he skipped, didn't you?'

She nodded. 'In the Ombudsman's Court that rejected his appeal for an exit visa.'

The head of the PCD crossed to the rain-streaked window, his hands clasping and unclasping with frustration behind his back. The deputies looked at each other in some trepidation, temporarily closing ranks against the threat of another explosion.

He spun round, glaring. 'Something has to be done! The U.S.A. harbours our enemies, nurtures them, lets them stump the country with their lies about us...about us being a land of jailers...and demanding...him, him demanding that we let out his wife and child.'

'Steady, Herbert. The European Convention does state...with Clause 29b.' Delly was deliberately low key.

'I could recite it backwards,' he rasped at her. 'Could you do the same with Clause 45J?'

'If an illegal emigrant has made money corruptly...' she began, instantly.

Skardon could not wait. 'We have the right to refuse exit visas to his dependants until the money is repaid to the State.'

His woman deputy reminded him that the ruling was subject to one year's limit.

'Well, he's only been out a couple of months,' came the retort. 'It's the noise he's kicked up that makes it seem longer.'

And, when she expressed surprise that Vickers had been on the fiddle, he pointed out, with a disparaging look, that two patients could be produced, who would say that the doctor had taken cash for treatment.

Doubtless, a hundred patients could have been induced by the PCD to swear the same. Delly Lomas tried to mask her impatience. The trouble with Herbert Skardon was that he was not merely slow, he was also obvious. Subtlety to him was the English translation of a foreign movie.

'Do we want to avoid an international do-gooders' picnic or not?' she asked, rhetorically. 'If he keeps this up, he'll have every anti-British pressure group on earth yelling for our blood. Last time, there were mobs in the States and Canada and Sweden, waving placards showing our Home Secretary as Count Dracula.'

'If he'd not had his teeth fixed, they could have got away with photographs.' Tasker could not resist it.

'Thank your stars we're not on record, Henry,' his boss growled. 'Don't underestimate Old Dan the Miners' Man. He twitches when they go for him and talks darkly about bringing back hanging.'

Noting the blood pressure rising again, Delly remarked, soothingly, 'He's only the Minister. He's paid to be a target.'

'And we're paid to see the rotten eggs don't hit this country,' Skardon returned.

'We could have the Doctor snatched,' offered Tasker, unhelpfully.

'And have the CIA muscling in over here?'

'So what d'you think they're doing now?' quizzed the deputy.

'Being polite.' The reply was hard-voiced and undeniably accurate. Tasker's mouth opened, then closed again.

His female rival decided to look on the bright side. 'We should be making the most of Vickers. He may be winning hearts. He's also talking too much; enough, I'd say, to drive any Scarlet Pimpernel to his worry beads.'

'What's he said?' Skardon challenged, contemptuously. The bloke who got him out has blue eyes, dark hair, is in his mid-thirties, and operates from Leeds. Well, the bastard probably has brown eyes, fair hair and has never set foot in bloody Leeds in his life.'

'Feed it to the computer.' It was Tasker's day for thoughtlessness.

'And up it would come with...?' His chief stabbed a desk pad with a pencil and the lead point shot across the surface. 'Don't expect miracles, or I'll throw up.' He scrutinised Lomas from under solemn brows. 'You mean what he's been saying gives you a lead?'

'It might,' she answered, hesitantly. 'If I were on the spot.'

'Gravy train trips to Washington are out,' Skardon rapped, immediately. 'He's shouted a name at you?'

'No,' she covered, quickly.

'Hinted, then?'

'I have one or two vibes from all that.' Tasker gave the situation a snide stir.

There was a pause as each refused to make another move.

At last, she stood up and made for the door. 'Any more tapes, I'd like to see them.'

'She's after your chair, Herbert,' the West Indian goaded, as it closed behind her.

Herbert Skardon gave him a knowing stare. 'She's not the only one...' He switched on the VTR picture again, but without sound. Alan Vickers mouthed on. The Controller shook his head. 'If this defector's paid by the minute, he'll be a dollar millionaire by the end of the year.'

The Surveillance Room blip told Delly Lomas that Kyle was in his office. For once, it was correct. He was going through a batch of photographs with Tiny Greaves. They came from a folder labelled 'Burdon, J. G. (1987 -?)'.

The news editor was gazing with certain envy at a still of a superb ocean-going cabin cruiser. 'Some tub! I'd not mind departing these prison shores in that one day, one jump ahead of the PCD, sipping rum and looking at those Picassos. And proof of ownership?'

'Coming up, I'm digging,' his leading columnist replied.

'Did God give you an unbreakable neck, Kyle?'

'He gave me a stiff one and a sore throat. I got very wet getting this far,' Kyle's bloodshot eyes and heightened colour showed he was paying for playing hide-and-seek in the rain with the Belgravia branch of the PCD.

'You know Burdon's not only Minister of Trade. He's also a close mate of Dan Mellor's,' the fat man commented, warningly.

Kyle nodded. 'The odd couple. One from the Yorkshire pits, the other from the stockbroker belt.'

'Our leader writer re-named it the Bureaucrats' Belt,' the other recalled, with some glee.

'And look where it got him. He's having convulsion therapy at the Mayfield ARC.'

'He had family problems.'

'He has now,' agreed Kyle, pushing a scrap of paper across the desk and returning to the business of the Trade Minister. 'This says half a million was paid into Swiss account number YT63475.'

Tiny did not look impressed. 'I'm not numerate, and it doesn't say the number's Burdon's.'

Kyle was about to explain when the phone buzzed. The editor reached for it, listened and handed it over.

'She seeks you here, she seeks you there, this lady seeks you everywhere.'

Delly's voice sounded in his ear and the journalist's expression grew noticeably warmer. 'Thought of trying your Surveillance Room?'

'That would be nasty,' she replied, silkily. 'Especially as I'm asking you to dinner tonight.'

'De-bugged and with real meat in the middle?' He began to smile, unaware that Greaves was watching closely.

'And authentic French asparagus. Special coupon nosh,' she promised.

'Lucky lady bureaucrat.'

'I'll get my pinny on then.' There was the suspicion of a giggle before she hung up.

'Be careful with her,' his old friend cautioned, looking vaguely alarmed, while pushing the radio photographs of the Manuela back into the folder. 'And this free-unloading contact of yours? You sure he's not just a man-eating plant with PCD tentacles?'

'Sure?' Kyle raised his hands in mock surrender. 'Who's ever sure?'

Greaves caught the spirit and beamed. 'The Editor will need splints up his backbone to run this story. And the Union shop will be up in arms.'

Then he called after Kyle, who had taken the file and was on his way, 'Don't gluttonise!'

'What?'

'New verb. To scoff with a bureaucrat on special rations. Some Oxford don coined it.'

The columnist grinned widely. 'One more like that and he'll be on porridge and soya bean cubes in Dartmoor.'

Men like the Minister of Trade did not reach the top of the new society, especially with the disadvantage of an upper-class background, without extra special qualities; not the least of these being a sixth sense for brewing trouble, plenty of useful friends, and the ability to move fast.

He had jumped instinctively, hustling into the PCD headquarters with Dan Mellor, like a land mine, in tow.

'His name's Kyle,' he declared.

'Again!' Mellor stressed, pointedly.

'He's not only harassing me, but my wife, my Parliamentary Secretary, the Permanent Secretary in the Department, and he's seeing every enemy I've got,' Burdon continued, plaintively. 'His innuendoes are evil. Evil.'

Mellor towered over Skardon's desk. 'This muck raker has to be stopped, Herbert. Settle his hash, eh?'

The PCD Controller twitched. 'You're right, Home Secretary. My finger's on the button already.' He bobbed his head to Burdon. 'Leave it to us, Minister...'

He sounded obsequious, but, at the same time, stood up and offered his hand. Civil servants of his status decided when most meetings should end in 1990. 'And tell your wife and friends not to worry.'

'I'm most grateful, Skardon. Most grateful...' Nigel Burdon made the mistake of responding with smooth conceit, as though thanking an old retainer for a small extra service. He turned to shake hands with Mellor. 'Thank you, Dan.'

The ex-miner waved the gratitude aside and steered him to the door, clapping him jovially on the shoulder as he went out, then turning back to the PCD boss. 'Silly bugger. He's been taking back-handers.'

'I'll get the Anti-Corruption Inspectors onto him.' Herbert Skardon was genuinely furious.

The Home Secretary nodded his agreement. 'Not yet, though. Let's get our priorities right. Nail Kyle first.'

He strolled to the drinks cabinet, opened it and casually extracted a large cigar from the box kept for V.I.Ps.

'Shouldn't be difficult,' the Controller observed.

'We can get him for breaches of the Official Secrets Act, Contempt of Government, Anti-State articles, Subversion of His Majesty's Servants...'

'That's playing into his hands,' the other interrupted. 'Can't you do better than that?'

Herbert Skardon gave an oily leer. 'Official? Or unofficial?'

But the Home Secretary was too wise an old fox for that ambush. 'You're the expert, Herbert,' he acknowledged, standing sufficiently close to the small bug on the side of the cabinet for there to be no mistaking his reply.

The children and their nanny had been spirited away, the heavy curtains drawn, low lights and candles lit, and the flat filled with appetising aromas by the time Kyle arrived.

Delly Lomas was looking slinky in velvet pants and an almost transparent shirt, knotted under her breasts. She greeted him with affection, allowing his hand to linger on the bare small of her back as she led the way to the dining alcove. There, she talked with animation and wit over the succulent asparagus and mayonnaise. By the time the marinated loin of pork was served, hints of minor scandals among her colleagues were being tantalizingly dropped into the conversation.

Kyle felt amused and bemused. 'I'm not sure if you're out to smash me or seduce me. I mean it's a bit Cordon Bleu for a Last Supper.'

She wrinkled her nose, teasingly. 'Maybe the wine's poisoned.'

'I know it's duty free,' he emphasized. 'As if you didn't have enough perks of office.'

'I'd have settled for less,' she admitted.

'With respect, darling, you're worth less,' he taunted, then relented. 'But not as a cook.'

'"Or as a mistress" is what your eyes are saying.' She confronted him boldly.

He raised his glass. 'My will's not signed, but the State takes all, so who cares?'

'I do...' she said simply.

Kyle felt a surge of desire. Their eyes met and her lips parted. He reached across the table to put a hand over hers. Unexpectedly caught in her own trap, she found herself torn between warning him of and setting him up as her own victim. Surprised, she felt herself blush.

'The Department's really after you now, Kyle,' she murmured.

'They keep trying.' He still held her eyes.

'The mood's hardening,' she underlined, earnestly.

'So's my skin.'

They studied each other for a long moment in the candlelight, before she withdrew her hand and bent to eat again. At least she had tried.

'Remember Doctor Vickers, Kyle?'

He remembered very well, but looked vague.

'Now he's shooting off his mouth across the States, saying what a repressive lot we are.'

'Naughty lad,' the newsman wagged a finger, before agreeing that he had seen a mention of the speeches in the New York Times and commenting that the man was only trying to put pressure on to get his wife and child out.

'He's wasting his breath,' she asserted harshly.

'Don't bank on it.' He drank wine faster than was polite.

'He's also saying more than is wise about the man who got him out.'

'This bloke the American Press calls Pimpernel 1990?' Kyle's brain had swivelled rapidly away from all thoughts of seduction.

'They make him sound romantic,' the woman sneered.

'I'd not mind interviewing him,' he needled.

'Neither would we. We are off the record, Kyle...'

He nodded; wondering where this was leading.

'I saw a summary from our Washington office today of what Vickers has said about the man who got him out, bits from several speeches and interviews.' She was contemplating him, steadily. 'Pieced together we get an image of a thirty-five year old with blue eyes, dark hair, of medium build, Leeds-based. Now all that could be the exact opposite of...'

'Very likely,' Kyle put in, easily.

'He's also very mercenary, we hear.' She took his plate and busied herself unnecessarily with the dishes. 'Suppose I were to ask you to get a friend out for a whacking great fee?'

Kyle poured himself another glass of wine, thoughtfully. Then, 'I'd say, "Keep your wallet zipped tight, mate, till you've made a packet over there".'

A fork dropped with a little crash onto the china. 'That's just what Vickers says this over-rated Pimpernel told him.'

The columnist gave her a slow, loving smile. 'It's a right old cliché. Anyone would say it.'

'I don't agree.' She sounded fierce.

He leaned out and held her wrist as she began to move past him towards the kitchen. She looked down with an expression of regret and need, before drawing away.

'You never do,' he said.

She had taken the afternoon off to prepare for this evening and so knew nothing of the visit by Burdon and Mellor to her boss, nor that the Chief Emigration Officer had been summoned to headquarters even before the elevator carrying the Home Secretary had reached the ground floor.

The Controller waited late at the office and was looking out over the dark city when Nichols arrived. He turned and apologised for causing him the rush journey from Southampton and the man looked pleased that the Head of the PCD knew about the cruise ship there, currently being investigated for illegal emigrants.

'I thought the Celtic was full of our worthwhile people?' Skardort probed.

'Nine out of ten passengers are civil servants,' the other confirmed. 'It's the crew that's up to no good. They got fourteen illegals out last trip.'

'And how many have they bunged in the rats' quarters this time?' was the next query.

The officer drew himself to attention and asserted, proudly, 'Reason to believe, sir, twelve, with more to board. I'd like to be there when we ferret 'em out.'

But Herbert Skardon shook his head. 'I have something more urgent and important, Jack. Total warrant.' He made an exception and poured a drink for his subordinate. 'Name Kyle mean anything?'

'The hack?' Nichols took the glass and looked suitably flattered.

'Full strip off,' instructed his boss. 'Down to the fig leaf.'

'I'd have thought that a job for the Culture Inspectors,' the Emigration Officer remarked. 'What's Tony Judd going to say?'

Skardon instantly regretted the drink. 'I'm Controller here, Jack,' he snapped. 'Leave Judd to me. He didn't hold back when those illegals were getting out with the National Theatre Company. Now you can have one on a plate. Officially, you're looking for evidence that Kyle's into the emigration rackets.'

'And he's not?' Nichols was thorough, but endowed with limited intelligence.

'No, he's been nosing into the private enterprises of our Minister of Trade, the Right Honourable Nigel Burdon, Privy Councillor et cetera.'

'But that's not what my search warrant's about?' The Emigration Officer said, doggedly.

'You've got it!' Skardon confirmed with relief, then walked up to stand directly in front of the man, in order to spell it out. 'I don't want Kyle yelling blue murder to the hacks of the world's Press about jack-boots marching down Fleet Street, any more than I want even a hint that Kyle's been digging dirt about our spotless Minister of Trade.'

'But we are after Burdon?' Nichols was beginning to look like an enthusiastic beagle, eyes brightening, jowels quivering and nose damp.

'After, being the word. After Kyle,' Skardon decreed, carefully. 'I want Kyle. I need him badly, Jack. Legs wide open. And I don't want him in the martyrs' hall of fame. I want him to pay us respect. I want evidence that he's just a grasping mercenary. I want him nailed once and for all.'

'Right away?' His man looked a little less keen.

Skardon nodded.

'Only I was planning to see North Region play Moscow Dynamo in the New Europe Cup in Manchester before our snatch at Southampton.'

The PCD Controller returned deliberately to his desk, placed both hands heavily on it and leaned forward. 'Violent sport, soccer,' he said at last, very slowly. 'They break shins, don't they, Jack?'

There was no mistaking the menace.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

They hardly bothered to knock. Just a token rap before pushing into the office and crossing to the filing cabinets next to Marly's desk. Jack Nichols stood stolidly in the doorway, as his men began rummaging in the drawers.

'Who are you?' Marly jumped to her feet.

'PCD, Ma'am.' He was officially polite.

'No!' she cried, moving towards the intruders.

'Miss, then,' he smirked.

'Citizen 6392244,' she corrected, in an unshaken Northern accent. 'And these files are confidential.'

'Nice number you've got.' He became ingratiating.

She locked the second filing cabinet briskly and stood against it, a small, staunch, middle-aged woman refusing to be bullied.

One of the PCD men tried to snatch the key from her, pushing her against the wall as he did so.

'Leave her alone, Murray,' his leader ordered in a tough voice, indicating to the other to deal with that particular cabinet. The man produced a miniature thermal lance and began work, forcing the lock with little effort.

Frightened now, though hiding it successfully, Marly returned to her desk with dignity and picked up the telephone. Tiny Greaves entered the room at that moment.

'You bloody pigs!'

'I could have you charged for that insulting remark about His Majesty's officers, Greaves,' the Chief Emigration Officer bridled, guarding the authority of his position with a paranoid aggression resulting from a lifetime of affronts from the public.

The huge news editor viewed him as though he was a maggot in a dung heap and drawled, 'Charge me then.'

Jack Nichols' eyes slid away towards Marly, who had buttoned out a number.

'If that's Kyle you're calling, I hope you find him,' he snarled, sarcastically. 'He's the original vanishing man.'

His subordinates were turning out the files, flipping through each, then shaking the contents carelessly onto the floor, their search deliberately wanton and malicious.

The number rang out at the other end of the line. It stopped and the secretary heard Delly Lomas answer, 'Highgate Special Line twenty two...' before she asked for her boss.

Then his voice, 'Yes, Marly.'

She looked helplessly at the chaos of papers now covering her office floor and her voice trembled. 'The PCD are here. Your papers...it's vandalism.'

'All right, Marly,' he responded, reassuringly. 'There's nothing in that room to interest them.'

'They're ruining our files!' she exclaimed in agitation.

'Put the fattest pig on the line, love,' he directed in a calm tone, which belied his protective rage over her distress.

They had worked together for many years and he had learnt to admire her perfectionism, and respect her extensive knowledge of the newspaper business. Bank managers, bores and bigots were kept at bay by her and he had never heard her sound alarmed before. She gave him total loyalty and now, when she needed his in return, he felt ashamed at being discovered socialising with a PCD Deputy Controller.

'Kyle?' A man's voice queried the line. 'Inspector Nichols here.'

'Emigration?' He was taken aback.

'I have total warrant, Kyle.'

'You usually do!' the journalist exploded, throwing down the receiver and whirling to face Delly Lomas. 'You keep me here while your animals wreck my office. Lovely lady!'

'I don't know what you're on about,' she frowned, baffled. 'You're here because you had too much wine last night.'

He had crossed the room and snatched his jacket. 'You can't miss the 1990 award.'

'I'm sorry?'

'Bitch of the Year!' he spat and slammed from the room.

Immediately, she pressed a red button on the phone, the direct line to the Controller's office. Within seconds he was replying, coldly, 'Yes, Miss Lomas. I authorised it...'

'Without reference,' she pointed out, justifiably annoyed. 'Kyle's my responsibility.'

'And normally with my kind regards, Miss Lomas,' he agreed, levelly. 'But not this time. Nichols has a job to do.'

'Nichols? We have something on Kyle over illegals?' Something was up! What was it she wondered to herself.

'Not yet,' Skardon was saying, gropingly, as though making up his answer as he went along. 'I have Nichols in mind for the third Deputy Controller post alongside you and Tasker. I'm trying him out on something other than Emigration Control.'

'That's the real reason?' Not believing a word of it. What had happened in her absence? Tasker! It had to be one of Tasker's moves.

'I think you'd best come in,' the Controller instructed and hung up abruptly.

Delly put the phone down slowly and lit a cigarette. She looked unusually apprehensive.

By the time Kyle reached his office, the PCD squad was already on its way out of London, Jack Nichols driving the high-powered official car hard down the motorway.

'People can stay too long hugging a desk at Centre, Evans,' he observed to the man beside him. He was full of a sense of achievement over the morning's work. Even that gross, insolent news editor had been forced to acknowledge his control. It was good to show trouble-makers like him who held the essential power. 'Give me the real thing like this any time.'

'More fun, yes, sir,' the man beside him agreed. 'But they should give us uniforms.'

'You're an emigration officer, Evans. A cut above Customs,' asserted his superior. 'Look what uniforms have done for Customs officers. People hate 'em.'

'And us, sir,' Evans commented, recalling Greaves' instinctive outburst.

Nichols overtook a couple of trundling vehicles with panache. The PCD van carrying the rest of his men and equipment was trailing behind. He smiled. 'When they know who we are.'

'Oh indeed, sir,' the official agreed, settling comfortably into the passenger seat and watching signposts to suburban towns off the motorway flash by. 'Much farther?'

'Twelve miles or so.'

Like Jack Nichols, Evans felt slightly exhilarated. The two men could not wait to do their duty.

Meanwhile, following their visit to his office, Kyle had begun helping Marly to restore order and was biting his lip in suppressed fury as he noticed her fighting tears and rummaging aimlessly amid the debris. Currents of violence shook him. He wanted to smash somebody, beat them up and kick them to pulp. Anybody.

Tiny Greaves walked into the office, looking hopeless.

'And where did our brave Editor-in-Chief cower?' the columnist quizzed him malignantly about their boss. 'In the loo?'

'Out late last night, at dinner with the Minister of Information. In late this morning,' the news editor replied.

'I'm writing this up. He'd better run it,' the other declared, grabbing a handful of crumpled and torn letters.

'He won't. He can't. No way, Kyle,' Greaves answered. 'Nichols served us with a G Notice forbidding publication under the rule protecting persons under suspicion.'

'That's me!' snapped the thwarted journalist.

Greaves rested against one of the tipped out filing cabinets, which creaked in protest, and drummed his fingers on the metal. 'They're protecting you from yourself, Kyle. You can't write a line about this in your own interest.' He shook his head sympathetically at Marly, now kneeling over the havoc on the floor. 'Our pens aren't mightier than their sword, Kyle. They're bloody water pistols. I was a pacifist till this morning.'

After he had gone, Kyle and his secretary worked together steadily and in silence, the woman gradually growing more composed through the monotony of the job.

'So what did they take that's any more use than loo paper?' he asked with a wink, pleased to see her relax at last.

'Your notes on the Government's plans for a safe power base in case of insurrection,' she replied, looking a little anxious again.

He shrugged. 'I've printed all that. And the notes gave away no contacts.'

'I don't think they were looking for anything,' she admitted, switching off the electric kettle and pouring them both a well-deserved cup of government issue coffee. 'They just came as frighteners.'

'They were doing what they call in their evil trade a strip-off, Marly,' he explained. 'But they could have been after my notes on our Minister of Trade.'

She looked happy. 'They'd not find them here, would they?'

He smiled back, with affection. 'No, you're a clever woman.'

She produced a packet of biscuits from her drawer and laid them with a flourish on the desk, picking up the phone before its first ring had ended. 'Mr Kyle's office...your wife.'

The columnist sighed as he took over. 'Yes.'

'I think you'd better come home, Jim,' Maggie Kyle's voice, said.

'What's wrong now?' he asked, irritably, then suddenly understood. 'Not the bloody PCD?'

'Them,' she confirmed, then paused, as though catching her breath. '...the Pigs, Clowns and Devils in person. I've only once asked you to come home before, Jim. We need you here now. Preferably with a carpenter and maybe a builder for all I know.'

He could hear the sound of hammering in the background. 'I'm on my way...' he stressed, hanging up and turning unseeing to Marly. 'Bastards!'

'Not there as well!' she exclaimed. 'Poor Maggie.' He had already collected his briefcase and coat. 'Time you went there, anyway,' she added. 'You've not been home for nearly two weeks.'

Kyle brushed a friendly hand across her hair. 'Get Dave Brett to meet me on the way. Same place as usual...' He studied her for a second, noticing the eyes over bright with tears. 'Maybe Tiny's right.'

'What?'

'Words are water pistols,' he said bitterly.

Darkly attractive, intelligent and cool, Maggie Kyle surveyed the PCD men ripping up the floorboards in her living room. The well-worn carpet had been rolled up and dumped in the garden. Jack Nichols was examining the interior of the piano with deep suspicion, as though expecting to discover a cache of grenades strapped behind its strings. Most of the books which lined the far wall, were already scattered on the floor.

'My husband would hardly keep files under the floorboards,' Kyle's wife said, coldly.

'You'd be surprised where people try to hide things. And we're after more than files,' the Chief Emigration Officer pronounced, weightily. 'Krugerrands, sovereigns, any loot they may have given him for getting illegal emigrants out.'

'And pigs may fly,' she retorted, unimpressed. 'Except your kind.'

The muscles round his jaw tightened and he systematically depressed every note on the piano, to make sure it played, before beginning, 'if we do find Krugerrands...'

'You'll have brought them,' she snapped. Then catching sight of Bevan, her twelve-year-old son, standing scared and appalled in the doorway, added with scorn, 'Do you get a deodorant allowance?'

Nichols turned his back and busied himself with the rest of the books. 'We're only doing our job, Mrs Kyle. Some persons offer us tea and toast.'

The boy ran off and Maggie contemplated the rising pile of books. 'Do you also burn them?'

'Not yet, Ma'am,' he replied, with edge; then jerked his head at one of the men, directing, 'Find his study.'

She asked, 'You will be replacing these floorboards?'

'Not necessarily, Ma'am' he answered, with a sneer. 'It depends on how helpful you are.'

The other PCD inspector had reached the door but suddenly stopped in his tracks and retreated rapidly back into the room. Kyle's son, Bevan, appeared looking white and determined and aiming a shotgun straight at him.

'Leave my mother alone and get out,' the boy ordered, grim-faced, and there was a click as he released the safety catch.

'No. Bevan. Not that.' Maggie automatically jolted forward.

But the boy swung round to aim at Nichols. 'Get these stinkers out.'

The Chief Emigration Officer looked hastily over his shoulder at his three subordinates, who had backed as one man to the furthest end of the room. Their eyes confessed a desire to be brave, but pensions were at stake.

'Don't be foolish, son,' he turned on an unconvincing smile and held out his hand.

'I'm not your son,' the boy shouted back. 'Out.'

The shotgun jerked and Nichols' outstretched hand flew protectively to his face, as he cringed for an instant.

'Now, son,' he pleaded, nervously.

'Out!'

The official thought he would try exerting authority. 'Hand it over before you get into real trouble, boy,' he demanded, loudly.

The shotgun was raised higher and aimed with care. 'Out!!'

'Let me have it, Bevan,' his mother's firm voice intervened.

He shook his head, vehemently, but she moved between him and his target. One of the watching men seeing the chance, flung himself to grab her from behind. Bevan dropped the shotgun and rushed to her side. A second inspector seized his arm, twisting it up his back, so that the boy howled in pain. The man caught him round the throat and the child's face changed colour, turning red and puffy, his eyes protruding as he began to choke under the pressure of a vicious armlock.

'Leave him!' The Chief Officer instructed, after a deliberately sadistic hesitation.

Bevan lurched coughing and spluttering to his mother, who took him in her arms.

Furious at having been made to look publicly idiotic, Jack Nichols picked up the weapon and glared at it with narrowed eyes. 'Big gun for a little boy...His father's?'

Maggie Kyle nodded.

'...And no licence.'

'Wrong.'

'Let's see it.'

'I've no idea where it is.'

'We don't dish out gun licences to people like your husband,' he asserted.

'Check with your Department,' she replied, uncaring. 'He helps them sometimes. God knows why. And they reciprocate.'

'I see.' He obviously did not believe her. 'And what does he want a gun for? Shooting sub-editors?'

'Vermin.'

'He got any?'

Maggie Kyle gave him a penetrating stare before answering with feeling, 'Not yet.'

Nichols turned to Evans. 'Check with Centre if he has a licence...'

'Try one of your Deputy Controllers. Miss Lomas,' Maggie Kyle said, coolly.

The man stopped dead. No-one quoted that name without being sure of the facts.

'I'll check it myself,' the Chief Emigration Officer muttered, feebly, knowing he was beaten. Then, twisting away from this slim woman, who refused to be intimidated, he began to take it out on the boy. 'I could have you removed and locked up a long time for what you've done...' It was like looking, into the mother's eyes, the same colour, the same contempt. 'You'd not see your mother and father...' he bullied.

'Don't try to frighten him,' Maggie Kyle put in, with venom.

The PCD Emigration Chief gave her a calculating glance. 'He could be a menace to society.' This was the whip hand. She would crawl now.

'I said don't bully him! You'll not always have it your way.'

They stared at each other. She was not going to cringe.

'Isn't it past your bedtime?' Nichols pinched the child's ear, spitefully, as he addressed him. Bevan wanted to spit at him, but his mother said, quietly, 'Go and look after Jamie.' And the PCD men watched as he trailed, reluctantly, from the room.

Their boss turned on them. 'Come on, it's not lunch break yet.'

Stoically picking up their hammers, they resumed the search, wrenching out the skirting boards and sweeping the contents of the cupboards onto the floor. A pink china elephant fell with a crash. Maggie picked up the pieces and left the room.

She walked slowly up the stairs to her bedroom and sat by the window, looking out onto the quiet, suburban street. One or two people she recognised went past. They did not see her, but the PCD van was as conspicuous as a Black Maria and they gave it startled glances before hurrying on. She felt branded. There had to be something constructive she could do, better than sitting around in despair.

A few minutes later, she returned downstairs. The men were on the hall floor now and the house resounded with the noise. Jack Nichols barely looked up as she approached.

'I could help a little,' she offered, hesitantly, ignoring the hostility. 'If you put the floorboards back.' The pieces of the broken ornament chinked in her hands. 'I'd like my husband here more. His job keeps him away and I don't like that.'

The Chief Emigration Officer was basically a respectable citizen. He did not approve of 'goings on' and, in his limited imagination, pictured people such as journalists, actors, musicians and the like living highly immoral and promiscuous lives. The woman seemed to be saying something which confirmed this.

'I have a family, Mrs Kyle,' he replied. 'I enjoy them. You have my sympathy.'

'This is in confidence, of course,' she appealed.

'Your husband, you mean?''

'There's a well down the garden.' Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. 'You must know about it.'

'Yes,' he admitted, beginning to look interested.

'About half way down there's somewhere he keeps things. I know he has to move two stones or bricks.'

All at once, Jack Nichols' day returned to its former brightness. Calling his men, he went bounding out through the small French windows and across the lawn.

Dave Brett had picked up Kyle in his ostentatious car outside Edgware Road tube station. As always, people had turned to watch the streamlined limousine roar away and now they hit the motorway.

Kyle said little. He had thought himself accustomed to taking risks and living with danger, but the attack had come so unexpectedly. Had there been a tip-off? Or were they bluffing? Or perhaps the whole affair was a cover for something else altogether. What? Always able to face the possibility of ending up in the PCD clutches, it was the implication of Marly first and then his family which had really jolted him.

'I should spend more time with Maggie and the kids,' he muttered.

'That's what I think,' Brett agreed. 'Don't let the bloody PCD get you down, though. I'll talk you out of anything whatever they find.'

'They'll find nothing there,' the journalist assured him.

'And you the word-merchant!'

'I trade in facts,' Kyle insisted.

Brett grinned. 'And me?'

Kyle managed a faint smile. 'When nearly everybody had a car, Dave, there were second-hand dealers, remember? You'd have been the best, wriggling round the Trade Descriptions Act like an articulate rattlesnake.'

Dave Brett chuckled. 'Nice to be admired.'

'I hope the pigs are still there,' the newsman worried.

'I'm doing the ton,' replied the agent.

'Maggie will know how to delay 'em,' Kyle said, almost to himself, conscious of her dependability and disliking himself.

They drew up soon behind Nichols' staff car and the PCD van. The road was empty and no noise carried from Kyle's house.

'You go in,' Brett said, eyeing the two parked vehicles. 'I'll be with you in a tick.' Taking a small metal object from his pocket, he squatted down beside the van.

Kyle stepped quietly over the exposed joists in the hall and listened to the voices in the living room.

'There's not a single loose brick down that well,' Nichols was saying in strangled tones.

'It can't be easy to find.' Maggie sounded meek.

'There isn't one,' the Emigration boss yelled.

Kyle entered, taking in the damage and chaos at a glance, before crossing to kiss his wife and turning to the official delinquents. All four men were covered in slime and the room was filled with the stench of stagnant water. For one hysterical second, he almost lost control and burst out laughing, then felt Maggie's hand on his arm.

Looking round the room again with slow deliberation he snarled at Jack Nichols, 'How do you spend your holidays? Trampling on kids' sand castles and crunching their fingers?'

'We've a right to be here,' the man aswered, defensively, and looking embarrassed.

'Get those boards back,' Kyle ordered.

The Chief Emigration Officer regarded his wet and reeking work force standing miserably in the corner, and drew himself up. 'We restore only at our discretion. And your wife had lied to waste our time,' his voice rose to a squeak of indignation. 'And your son threatened me with a gun. And you know what that could mean for him.'

Kyle picked up the phone.

'I'm authorised by the Controller himself,' the man burst out.

The phone was replaced. 'Overtime searching for nothing,' the journalist commented.

'And dirty job bonus...' said Nichols, with rancour, indicating his inspectors.

'You merit that anyway.' The columnist had to grin.

'Every time,' Dave Brett agreed behind him.

Nichols aggressively demanded to know who he was and the PCD men moved forward. Dave Brett smirked and flipped open his ID card. 'A-Class Citizen. Import-export agent,' he drawled, mocking as Nichols checked the watermark against the light. 'It's genuine. We bring in the dollars, marks and yen that keep you cosy in your feather beds. Without us, Emperor Dan the Miners' Man would be shivering in the Home Secretary's office, minus heat and pension.'

'Thank you, Mr Brett.' The Head of Emigration Control was carefully courteous now as he handed back the card.

'So what did you unearth?' the agent probed. 'A couple of escaped hamsters and a bit of woodworm?'

'They are the woodworm,' Kyle observed, maliciously, as his son, Bevan appeared in the doorway.

Jack Nichols dipped into his pocket and produced a leather pouch. 'One of my men found this...' He poured out a handful of Krugerrands. 'It's an offence to hold gold Krugerrands, Kyle. And we have reason to believe they were in payment for services to illegal emigrants.'

'Rubbish!' Brett interrupted, instantly. 'I gave him those. He gave me contacts in two foreign embassies, and I flogged twenty-five million quids' worth of machine parts. Strong stuff, exports, Nichols. Touch me and your bosses will be down on you so hard you'll not hear your skull crack...'

The official looked uncertain, his hand tightening over the coins.

'Give 'em back,' Brett instructed, standing with hands on hips as the man slid the money back into the pouch,

'They smashed this, Jim.' Maggie handed the pieces of the pink china elephant to Kyle. It had been a present from him to her in younger, happier days, when they had holidayed once by the sea in Devon.

Stung, he heckled Nichols, 'What does it say on your ID card? Public Vandal Number One?'

'That was an accident, Kyle. You can claim on Form J237.' The reply was pompous and without regret.

'It's your family that'll be claiming unless you get out,' the journalist surged forward, threateningly.

'And put that loot back where you found it,' commanded Brett. 'If I stop getting export orders for this country because you go knocking off my back-handers you'll soon be an ex-Inspector with a ticket for suitable treatment in Cumberland.'

Nichols was now completely out of his depth. Somehow, the plant had backfired. Thoroughly alarmed at the prospect of losing PCD gold, he moved swiftly to the door. 'I'm just going to radio the office.'

Brett stepped in front of him. 'You're going to put that down first.'

The out-manoeuvred official reluctantly placed the bulging pouch on the coffee table. Young Bevan was standing truculently by the door, obviously determined to kick him as he passed.

'All right, Bevan,' his father said, gently. 'You've lots of time, son. Nichols!' he added. The man turned. 'If ever our country climbs out of this dark age and the lynch mob comes for you, I promise you this - I'll not notice a thing.'

The man slunk off leaving the three inspectors huddled together, lost without their leader. They were shivering with cold as water still dripped from them onto what was left of the floor.

'Well, make yourselves useful, lads,' Dave Brett instructed, briskly, waving his arm at the stacked floorboards. Do you all have warrants? Or just the boss man?'

They shuffled and did not reply.

'Only I'd like to see them.' He glanced at his friend, who was now staring into space, numbed by the attack on his home. 'Wouldn't we, Kyle?'

The agent's voice prodded the newsman into life again and he turned, fuming, on the invaders, picking up the shotgun, taking off the safety catch and aiming.

The first inspector fumbled fearfully for his warrant card and his companions followed suit.

Brett checked the documents. 'Authentic. Would you coco?'

Kyle slowly lowered the shotgun with a wry, smile. 'Put your eyes back in. Just testing.'

Jack Nichols had closed the front garden gate and was scuttling towards the PCD van, absently registering that it seemed low on the road. Then his face went taut and he stopped to examine the wheels. Every tyre was slashed.

Behind, its crouching position told him that the gleaming official car had not escaped either.

CHAPTER TWELVE

By the time they had replaced the ripped-up floorboards, called for special transport and crawled back to headquarters, it was dark. They were still damp and malodorous and they had eaten nothing all day.

The inquest on the fiasco continued into the night, Lomas, Tasker and Skardon bickering over who was to blame.

'And the first I hear about it is when he's already being stripped off.' Delly was angrily accusing.

'Perhaps it was felt you were getting too close to him.' Skardon wriggled, uneasily.

'I was getting somewhere. Now we grovel,' she retorted. 'We have to give him Krugerrands that were never his and send a repair party to deal with the damage.'

The Contoller sighed deeply. 'I'm not proud, Delly,' he confessed, gazing mournfully at his hands, clasped prayerfully together on the desk. 'But we'll get him. He's an enemy of the State, and of this department.'

'He's useful to us,' she reminded him. 'He tips us off now and then.'

'And then knifes us from behind.'

'It's time he was put down for good.' Tasker knew his observation would irritate her.

'You didn't do our paper on the control of dissidents in the public eye. I did,' she returned. 'I want Kyle subdued. In our time.'

'Before we're all dead, you mean?' Tasker niggled, with an attempt at wit.

'Some of us are.' Her glare would have made sure of it in his case. 'In our good time.'

The PCD boss chose this moment to announce that Kyle had been digging up dirt on the Minister of Trade, but she was unimpressed, maintaining such a revelation would not be difficult for a junior reporter.

'Real dirt,' Skardon stressed. 'Our masters won't wear it.'

'Masters?' she exclaimed, with impatience. 'You mean the political puppets?'

His face changed colour. 'Don't say things like that out loud, Miss Lomas.' He dabbed his mouth with a handkerchief. 'They want Kyle. So do we.'

She threw up her hands in pseudo-hopelessness. 'So we send Nichols and his heavies who vomit with fear at the sight of a twelve-year-old!'

'He did have a gun, Miss Lomas.'

'...then they SOS for transport because their tyres are down!'

Skardon's eyes swivelled with embarrassment. 'That's unfair, Miss Lomas.' But he knew it was not.

'Tyres down. Pants down. A bunch of wets.' There was no stopping her. He was tired. It had been a long week and this would happen on a Friday night. He wanted to get home.

'Just leave Kyle to me,' she concluded.

He wished he could, but the threat of Dan Mellor's axe hung over him by a thread. He shook his head. 'Kyle's a Number One target, Miss Lomas. And Tasker knows how to - er - detach him from the scene, I think.'

They were colluding again. She lit a cigarette and waited.

'I've had several meetings with the computer,' her opposite number began cockily. 'Kyle hasn't declared dollars earned in the States. His house is grossly undertaxed...'

'So you say,' she remarked.

'And so will say his House Taxation Officer presently.... And the Newsmen's Union is ready to accuse him of unpatriotic journalism.'

'He'll ride that,' she observed.

'But not this,' Tasker was triumphantly smooth. 'His son menaced Nichols and his officers with a loaded shotgun.'

'Popgun.'

'Shotgun. Twelve bore. Licence courtesy of you. Catch off. Our Inspector of Juveniles may wish to remove Master Kyle to a sanatorium for his own mental well-being...'

'Not that.' He was really just like Skardon. Clumsy. Without foresight. Next they would accuse her of being sentimental.

'We're not here to be sentimental,' he sneered, right on cue.

'Henry's right,' Skardon declared, true to form. 'Little menace.'

'I can fix Kyle...' she spoke the words with exaggerated emphasis, so that the men stopped to study her. '...And not through his child. That wouldn't be good for our image, would it?'

'How?' The PCD boss asked.

Tasker received a cold look. 'If Henry has a lot to do?'

His eyes hardened and he held his ground. But Skardon inclined politely towards him, 'If you'd not mind, Henry?' And he was forced to leave.

Skardon scraped his chair forward and inspected her, warily. 'Right. Secrets time.'

'I'd like to go to America,' she announced.

'I said the gravy train's not running.' This was annoying of her.

She answered quickly, 'Cost less than all those Krugerrands.'

They contemplated each other : Skardon wondering how much licence he dare give before she cut his throat, and Lomas knowing she was winning.

Old Faceless had peculiar taste. Kyle slid sheepishly into the church, sniffing the incense and veering away from confrontation with the altar. He shivered slightly, with nerves and cold.

Third on the left. He looked round apprehensively. It was all too much like part of his childhood. Those weekly disgorgings of little sins. The man definitely had a warped sense of humour. There it was! Cursing inwardly, the journalist sidled into the confessional.

'You loom large in my Department's headlamps, Kyle. They want you,' the familiar voice announced amiably through the grille. 'And they're putting the foot down. Or the boot in.'

Kyle could just make out the shadow of his face and felt the usual twinge of curiosity. Male, middle-aged, cultured, certainly one of the old school, yet must be senior in the PCD to obtain so much privileged information and to be able to escape from headquarters to pass it on during office hours.

In fact, it would be comparatively easy to trace his identity through the distinctive car alone, but journalists have always been romantics at heart, and Kyle enjoyed the mystery for its own sake.

'How well do you know Miss Lomas?' Old Faceless interrupted his thoughts.

'We've met,' he replied, guardedly.

'Often, I hear.'

'Fairly,' the newsman admitted.

'Would it surprise you to know she's about to walk all over you?'

Kyle blinked, puzzled by this unexpected news. Old Faceless rarely concerned himself with personalities.

'...There's this Vickers chap,' his hidden informant continued. 'Some GP with a grudge, stomping the U.S. with a plea for his wife and child to be let out to join him. Know him?'

'Yes, slightly.'

'Miss Lomas would say you're understating,' the voice probed.

'Normally she'd accuse me of exaggerating.' Kyle's smile reflected in his reply.

'I trust you're not too fond of her.' He did not sound as detached as usual and there was a pause, before he added, 'This Vickers. In his naive praise of those who spirited him out of this sceptred prison isle set in a silver sea, he's been leaving clues like confetti. Our Department now dissects his speeches as if they were Shakespeare's or T. S. Eliot's. And Miss Lomas has a forensic brain second to none.'

'She's diligent. She works hard,' the columnist remarked.

'Especially now,' said the voice, with bite.

Kyle sighed slightly. 'I'll call her.'

'No, Kyle.' It was a command.

'I know her pretty well,' he protested.

'Not well enough, clearly. She's off to Washington tomorrow. He'll get visas for his wife and child, if he'll come back and testify you got him out.'

An image of Delly leaning into a candle to light a cigarette, glossy hair falling forward against her face, flashed through Kyle's mind. 'Bitch of the Century,' he muttered, savagely.

'Don't use words like that in a place like this, Kyle.' Old Faceless was reproachful. The hollow acoustics of the church echoed the muffled shufflings and whisperings of a few worshippers. Old Faceless was still talking, voice reduced to a murmur. 'If it's any comfort she's doing this because Deputy Controller Tasker was set to devour you anyway. It's professional survival.'

'She'd survive a direct hit from an H-bomb,' the columnist responded, cynically.

'I'm in here under false pretences, Kyle. I can't advise.' It was strange to hear the note of concern. 'But if I were you, I'd skip this country with some urgency. I wish you well.'

There was a faint scuffle in the priest's stall followed by footsteps on the flagstones growing fainter. Kyle's hand rose shakily to his forehead to wipe away the sweat. His mind grabbed and discarded instant schemes and solutions for seconds before he tiptoed hurriedly out to the street and to the telephone box on the corner. After a few words, he climbed into his car and drove at once across the bridge to the north side of the Thames, cutting up behind Charing Cross Station.

Despite the urgency, he detoured along the Mall to snatch brief enjoyment from St. James's Park, one of the last to remain intact.

Hyde Park had been ploughed up, along with most other large, open spaces, including Hampstead Heath, Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park, as part of the effort to achieve national self-sufficiency. But one or two of the old parks were left, although with their original areas diminished.

St. James's Park remained, strategically bordering Buckingham Palace, as part of the illusion that Britain was still a democratic monarchy rather than a totalitarian bureaucracy. Battersea, with its funfair, had been considered sacrosanct and renamed the People's Park, and Regents Park had been preserved because so many top government and civil service officials lived near it.

Kyle entered Mayfair from Piccadilly and pulled up, uncaring, on a double yellow line in a narrow alley off South Audley Street.

A lean and elegant American came down the U.S. Embassy steps to greet him. They walked off through the square together. It was a cold and windy day and the seats in the garden were deserted. The American took the object from the journalist before they detoured to return to Kyle's car through the other end of the mews.

Dave Brett was interviewing a number of prospective emigrants who had arrived with a colleague in a van. He had just finished questioning one man and called for the next, when the journalist's car came into sight round the heap of metal. His aide quickly shut the door of the van on its occupants.

'Well and properly de-bugged...?' Brett asked, leaning through Kyle's open window, and receiving a nod of assurance. 'Only I hear they've been crawling all over you?'

'Centipedes,' the journalist agreed. 'I'm clean as a whistle, they think I'm in Grosvenor Square.'

By now his bug would be safely parked on a United States diplomatic desk, deep inside the Embassy.

He pulled his coat collar round his ears. 'You don't have any urgent business in the States, I suppose?'

The import/export agent shrugged. 'Unless...' he offered, encouragingly.

'It is unless,' the newsman stressed. 'Can you make the three o'clock Concorde?'

'That old airbus,' Dave Brett demurred.

'Is there a flight that can be in Washington before it?' the other asked.

He was forced to admit, 'The American SST's not leaving Heathrow till four.'

'Concorde it is then,' Kyle directed. 'You're travelling first near a lovely bitch.'

As the journalist drove away again, Brett waved dismissal to the disappointed men in the van, started up his own car and sped off too.

Within two hours he was taking his place in the first class section of the Concorde next to Delly Lomas, already established in a window seat, with a steward obsequiously in attendance.

Kyle was right, the agent thought. She was a dish. He noticed the slim, thoroughbred legs, the long fingers, with well-kept nails, hair dressed by an expert to look seductively casual, the wide, scarlet mouth. A stylish, dangerous dish.

'You must be a civil servant,' he said, easily.

'Yes.' She sounded neither surprised nor inquisitive.

'First class. Window seat. They all go to civil servants,' he shrugged. 'And you'll have a Scotch in your hand before I've even ordered.'

'Brandy,' she corrected.

'Napoleon, I bet.'

'You'd win,' she concurred, giving him a cool look which missed nothing.

'Ministry of Trade?' he pumped. 'Overseas Aid? Delegate to the UN?'

'None of those.' Neither friendly, nor unfriendly.

'I can't imagine,' he persisted.

'Stop worrying, you're doing all right. First class.' It was her turn.

'Out of my own pocket...' he responded, with some pride. 'Don't tell me you're with the spooks?'

The plane had started to taxi down the runway.

'I'm sorry?'

'The PCD.' It was amusing to see her expression of annoyance instantly suppressed. She turned to gaze at him with some firmness, as the steward arrived with the brandy.

While waiting for the elevator to carry her to Alan Vickers' suite, she had compared the five star hotel with the downtown slum booked for her by the PCD. He pressed a buzzer when she arrived and, moments later, a floor waiter appeared with a bottle of Dom Perignon in ice.

Ruefully she remembered the last time she had seen the young man, cringing in the Ombudsman's Court, and could not resist jibing, 'They do you proud over here, Doctor Vickers. Five star hotels all the way?'

'They like my lectures,' he replied without smiling. 'I'm an authority on National Health Services here, you know. And they're just into theirs. So it's five star hotels and dollars galore.'

'But not just for knocking our State Health Service,' she challenged.

'I don't knock it,' he corrected. 'I just tell 'em how good it was before the bureaucrats cocked it up.'

The woman looked severe. 'Not to mention your digs about Britain being a jail.'

'I want my wife and child out,' he retorted. 'All the lecture tour dollars go into the Freedom for Britain fighting fund.'

She eyed him with unconcealed disdain. 'Ambassador for Britain.'

Vickers glared. 'I'll give you jailers no peace till my family's free and not even then,' he vowed in a steely voice.

Unperturbed, she raised her glass. 'Last time I sipped bubbly of this class was with a newsman named Kyle.' She pretended to examine the sparkling contents, before turning penetrating eyes on him, trained to recognise the involuntary quiver of his own glass and the tightening of facial muscles as he adopted an expression of innocent disinterest.

'Oh yes - the one I went to see before the Ombudsman's hearing,' he said, vaguely.

'The one who got you out,' she asserted.

The doctor shook his head. 'Guessing'll get you nowhere, Miss Lomas.'

'Every time you tell these Yanks about him you say the man who got you out is dark, where Kyle is fair; tall while Kyle is lean; Leeds-based when Kyle's a Londoner; Scottish accent, which Kyle hasn't.' It sounded garbled, and she knew it. The whole luxurious set-up had irritated her and thrown her off-balance.

He grinned, infuriatingly. 'You all right, Miss Lomas? Is it jet-lag, or do you often talk nonsense?'

'I've read every word you've said and written over here,' she pressed on, relentlessly. 'I can give at least five quotes that were Kyle to a T...'

The man sipped his champagne and looked back with a sudden hatred, which she ignored as she began to disclose the deal. 'Come back with me and testify against Kyle.'

He stood up. 'Gulp it down fast, lady.'

'We could hold your wife and child for ever in the U.K.,' she pointed out with complete and ruthless confidence.

There was a flicker of alarm before he replied, grimly, 'I'm out to see the world won't let you.'

'With words?' She half laughed.

'Drink up and go!' Alan Vickers ordered furiously.

'Testify against Kyle, and your wife and child will be free to leave immediately.'

Those were the terms. He looked momentarily bewildered, and then, 'On whose word? Yours?'

'I am a Deputy Controller.'

'The higher they come, the bigger the lies,' he pronounced with venom. 'And I could be recording every word you say.'

Delly Lomas produced a device from her pocket and raised it towards him, lazily. 'And this would blot it out. We'd give your wife and child exit visas the same day you testify.'

'Who's to know we had a deal?' He turned away in disbelief. 'You'd have all three of us instead of just my wife and child.'

'The Home Secretary will announce you're all free to leave.' Delly was very certain. 'So will our delegates to the Human Rights Commission in Geneva.'

'Those liars?' he spat, then stared at her with a look of cunning. 'I'll tell you what. Let my wife and child out. Then I'll come over.'

'No, you wouldn't,' she contradicted. 'Think it over, Vickers. I'll call you this evening.'

'I might need longer than that.'

She stood up and began to cross the room. 'Don't see me out.'

'I wasn't going to,' he replied, sitting down deliberately and refilling his glass.

As the door closed behind her, the bedroom door opened and Dave Brett came out of hiding.

'Not bad, is she?' he winked at the doctor.

'She's PCD,' he replied, vehemently. 'She's all bad.'

The agent made himself comfortable in her discarded chair and picked up the champagne bottle. 'Nobody can be all bad who knocks back bubbly like that,' he commented, draining the last mouthful.

'It gives me indigestion,' Vickers remarked, sourly.

'Tell her you agree,' Dave Brett's advice came as a surprise. 'But you'll only open your mouth in that witness box when your wife and kid are over here.'

Alan Vickers looked upset. 'I need time to think,' he insisted.

Events moved fast, as always when the PCD forced the action. Within a week of Delly Lomas's return to England, Kyle found himself standing in the perspex dock at the Central Criminal Court before three judges.

The atmosphere was deceptively casual, lacking the formality of the days before the new regime. Counsel and judges were unwigged and unrobed and there was far less ritual.

But Kyle knew that the easy ambience was an illusion. The discarding of traditional gowns and ways symbolised loss of independence. All lawyers were now merely tame servants of the State.

Press and public were still permitted to observe proceedings, though on a more restricted scale. Kyle registered the few reporters and two TV newsmen with hand-held, lightweight cameras, and was consoled to see Greaves and Marly seated not far from Dave Brett in the public section and in front of the American diplomat he had visited in the U.S. Embassy.

The State Prosecutor had begun his preamble. 'Offences against the State are growing each day: the black market; forging of ration books and identity cards; the unlicensed underground Press; the import of forbidden printed and other media matter; the hoarding of gold coins; slanders on our State and on our leaders by dissidents. But none has grown on such a scale as illegal emigration, this unpatriotic exodus of men and women whose skills our country needs.' He stopped to gaze dramatically round the court, timing the pause carefully, before continuing the declamation. 'This evil transport must be stopped by example, and it is a pity that the maximum penalty you can impose on the accused is five years in prison or three in an Adult Rehabilitation Centre with psychiatric treatment. I call Mr Herbert Skardon.'

Skardon stepped into the witness box, looking almost distinguished in the best Savile Row could produce.

'Your name is Herbert Skardon?'

'Yes.'

'You are the Controller of the Public Control Department?'

'Yes.'

The Public Prosecutor looked conspiratorial. 'Without disclosing official secrets, can you tell us the present scale of illegal emigration?'

The Controller consulted some notes before tersely outlining that the numbers of illegal emigrants had increased from 937 to 11,000 in the past two years.

'This evil traffic in people is organised by both mercenaries and idealists?' asked the Counsel.

'Idealists?' snapped the PCD boss. 'Dissidents.'

'Dissidents then,' the lawyer agreed hastily.

'Mainly. That's why the penalties this court can impose are greater than for those convicted of carrying out this trade for gain,' Herbert Skardon explained. 'And the accused today? Kyle is a persistent enemy of the State, Prosecutor.'

The journalist glanced quickly at his legal adviser, but the man made no move to protest and the Controller continued, uninterrupted.

'He has delusions that freedom means licence - both as journalist and dissident. My department has shown extreme patience.'

'Thank you, Mr Skardon.'

The judges looked wooden as Kyle's advocate rose, diffidently.

'Mr Skardon, do you regard any critic of your department as an enemy of the State suitable for treatment?'

'I'm very tolerant,' the other replied, inspecting the man pointedly, as though marking his name on some mental blacklist for future reference.

Defence Counsel sat down hurriedly and Herbert Skardon returned to his official seat behind the State Prosecutor as Delly Lomas entered the stand, publicly confirming her name and position.

'It has been among your duties to observe the anti-State activities of this man?' the Prosecutor began.

'He has helped us from time to time,' she admitted.

'And often hindered?'

She nodded.

'Is it a fact that for certain periods, days on end, his movements cannot be accounted for?'

He received a reproving glance before she replied, 'I'm not at liberty to discuss, even in this Court, our checks on citizens' movements.'

'All the same he does disappear. And those disappearances often coincide with the illegal exit of forbidden emigrants?' the lawyer persisted.

'Yes.'

'Your deposition listing dates, times, and names of groups of defectors is with this Court?' he queried.

'Classified information,' she warned.

Her eyes flickered in Kyle's direction as the Prosecutor gave the document reference to the judges, before turning his attention back to her.

'You made a thorough computer check on this man?'

'Yes,' she agreed.

Kyle had always known the risk he took in their relationship and she had never concealed it. Yet intimate images punctuated his view of her testifying against him now, and he felt betrayed.

'Vickers' descriptions of the man who got him out...' the State's Counsel was saying. 'This traitor known to the more juvenile sections of the American Press as Pimpernel 1990 - these descriptions tallied with what you know of this man?'

The woman shook her head. 'They were the opposite in almost every detail. It was some of the quotes which tallied.'

'Exactly?'

'Almost word for word.'

'Thank you, Miss Lomas.' He turned and bowed smugly to the chairman. 'I doubt if any further questioning will prove necessary.'

Kyle's defence lawyer stood up and glowered at his opponent before moving to confront the woman Deputy Controller.

'I have a copy of those Vickers quotes, Witness, the ones you say match those of Kyle. Are you relying on memory? Or did you tape them at the time?'

Delly Lomas looked uncomfortable and threw another quick glance in the journalist's direction. The perspex dock was like a shop window in which the accused was enclosed yet could be seen right down to the shoes. It was designed deliberately to make those who stood there feel exposed and insecure.

'You posed as a friend of his. A very close friend?' Defence counsel was pressing.

She denied it.

'Over a considerable time,' he insisted.

'You said posed. I was a friend... am,' she claimed.

'By the standards of the PCD?' he sneered.

There was a stir in Court and the chairman leant forward, angrily. 'That will do.'

The State Prosecutor stood up and Skardon growled at Henry Tasker, 'That lawyer's gone too far. He's one for the list.' The Deputy Controller made a margin note.

'If my colleague has finished?' the Prosecutor had stepped forward, as the other retreated red-faced. 'My witnesses are available for recall... Doctor Alan Vickers.'

All the participants in the case turned to watch the young doctor ushered in to take the stand. He looked perturbed and flushed, refusing to meet Kyle's eye.

His first answers were muttered inaudibly so that the chairman directed, sternly, 'Speak up, Witness.'

The Prosecutor paced the floor, movie-style. 'You were an illegal emigrant.'

Alan Vickers shifted slightly. 'Yes.' He seemed almost ashamed.

'You have come home to your country because your conscience impels you to tell the truth?' was the next question.

'If there were any longer an oath, I would swear it,' the witness avowed.

The State Counsel chuckled and surveyed the listeners in the public section. 'You are old-fashioned, doctor. But well-meaning. You felt for your country.'

Vickers stood rigidly straight. 'I felt for my wife and child.' Suddenly, he was hard-eyed and off programme. Hyper-sensitive to official atmosphere, everyone in Court knew it and a faint flurry ran through the room.

'We sympathise,' the lawyer tried to salvage the situation. 'We knew you were apart.'

'Still are. The PCD gave them exit visas last night and they flew out right away,' the young man announced, airily. 'I spoke to my wife at a friend's house in New York two hours ago.'

'I see,' the Prosecutor was disconcerted. This was not the performance he had been promised.

'I agreed to come over and give evidence on condition they were let out,' Vickers explained before he could be stopped.

'That's not something for this Court, Doctor,' his examiner asserted, desperately. 'What matters is that, when you left this country, you had no exit visa?'

'Right.'

'And you were helped out illegally?'

'Obviously. I'm no evasion expert,' the witness pointed out, laconically.

There was obviously no point in delaying the crux of the proceedings any longer.

'Do you recognise anyone in this Court?' he was asked.

Doctor Alan Vickers scanned the room. His eyes rested on Delly Lomas.

'I know her...' he said, then they moved slowly across to the figure of Kyle. 'And him.'

'In what way?'

'I met Miss Lomas at the PCD headquarters when I tried for visas,' he outlined. 'And Kyle at the Ombudsman's Court, when I was turned down on appeal.'

'And then?' The interrogator was eager.

'Then what?' the doctor seemed puzzled.

'Kyle helped you?'

'He wrote a few lines, that's all,' the man answered. 'No - it wasn't him.'

There was instant stillness and the State Prosecutor looked stunned.

'You're sure? Be careful,' he warned.

'I've just told you,' Vickers declared, coldly. 'My eyes are perfect and my memory's sharp. I don't know the name of Pimpernel 1990, but it wasn't him.'

The lawyer blinked helplessly and moved as though to sit down. Skardon tapped him sharply on the shoulder and whispered, and he turned back with renewed severity.

'Perjury is a serious matter, Witness.' The blackmail was almost tangible.

'What are you suggesting?' the other looked amused.

'The State is trying to be benevolent, Witness,' the Public Prosecutor ground out, powerfully. 'I am advised it would not wish to hold you in this country till the case is re-tried, which could be some weeks hence.' There was a long and menacing pause before he added, 'Especially as your family is now in America.'

Alan Vickers scowled. 'It... you... the PCD... can't hold me...' he asserted, heavily; then reached into his pocket and brought out a small, black box. With a gesture of victory he held it up for all to see. It was a passport. 'I'm now a citizen of the United States...'

The communal gasp echoed and was followed by a confusion of murmurs and comments. Kyle threw a wink at the American and Brett, as Vickers concluded, 'I came here of my own free will. I will leave the same way.' He glared at Skardon, Lomas and Tasker. 'And let the PCD try locking me up and extracting phoney confessions!'

The judges were on their feet. The simulated air of informality had vanished.

'Guards! Clear the Court! Clear the Court!' the chairman was shouting in near panic. 'Press and public must leave the Court now!'

A body of men in paramilitary uniforms materialised and began pushing everyone towards the exits. Kyle leant against the dock frame, eyes closed as he released a long, slow breath. Then, looking over warmly to Vickers, Dave Brett and the American, he gave a huge smile to his wife and child, before catching sight of Delly Lomas making her way towards him. His eyes froze and the smile switched off. She hesitated, then turned away.

It was a good day, sunshine, girls in summer dresses. London buzzed colourfully, almost as it had done in the old days when tourists had flocked to the city. Kyle was jaunty, bouncing up the steps and unconscious of the noise his shoes made ringing on the stone as he crossed the dim interior.

'Good afternoon,' he said, cheerfully, peering into the box.

'One up to you, Kyle. Don't stay for the next round.' A pair of eyes glinted in the gloom. Old Faceless sounded serious. 'Skardon wants to skin you. He's furious over that Court humiliation. It shouldn't happen to the PCD, and he's incensed - pardon, the word slipped out,' the voice almost smiled, '... that you've resumed your dig into the ruins of our incorruptible Minister of Trade. He doesn't blink any more and looks like he's smiling when he isn't.' There was an ominous pause. 'My advice is to get out, Kyle, while the going's good.'

The newsman's feelings had deflated during this speech. 'I'm not running,' he answered, stubbornly.

'You'll not be walking either, if some of our backroom experts get to you.' Old Faceless was impatient. Suddenly his eyes focused beyond Kyle, who turned and saw Delly Lomas on the far side of the church, softly crossing the vast space towards them.

'I must be slipping,' he muttered, apologetically. 'I left my bug at the office and ditched two followers.'

'If it has to be the day of judgement, I'm in the right place, Kyle.' That was what he lived about Old Faceless, a man whose humour never gave way.

He moved hastily to intercept the PCD deputy controller.

'I didn't know you'd gone religious.' She was trying to appear detached, but her eyes searched his face, anxiously.

'I'm giving it a try,' he shrugged, looking bored with her.

'You should take the right taxi when you commune with God.'

So that was how she'd traced him. It was getting tougher. PCD spies really were everywhere. His face betrayed nothing.

'Thanks for the tip. I thought maybe your surveillance was on spiritual contact. Anyway, what's this? Guilt?'

'I had to, Kyle.' She touched his arm in appeal. 'I had to.'

He moved back. 'I know. You're only doing your job.' The tone was bitterly sarcastic.

'Tasker was out to crucify you on a much more serious charge - undermining the security of the State,' the woman stressed. 'Indefinite psychiatric treatment in one of the ARCs without the option. I couldn't think of you in one of those hellpits.'

He gazed into her face with bleak eyes. 'I can't think of anybody in 'em. That's the difference.'

'Get out, Kyle, while you can,' she pleaded, urgently.

A wave of hostility grabbed him. 'That a threat?'

'A friend's warning.' Her eyes were dark with sincerity.

'Friend!' he exclaimed, jerking away to begin walking between the pews towards the church door. Delly Lomas bit her lip.

'Our people put Vickers on Concorde an hour ago. One-way to New York.'

'They'd have had a job to do any different,' he commented. 'Shouldn't you be thinking of emigration yourself? After that fiasco in Court?'

'Skardon's a credit-snatcher.' She was complacent. 'He took the credit for your prosecution.'

He stopped to face her again and said, firmly, 'It was your trick, that.'

'But he grabbed the credit, prematurely - and threw away an awful lot of State Krugerrands when Nichols took up your floors,' she continued, as though he had not interrupted. 'He's under pressure, not me. And getting nastier with it.' Her hand gripped his arm again. 'Please get out, Kyle.'

He shook his head and promised, 'I'll see you out.'

All at once she shot him a quick, sly glance and spun round the way they had come, studying the confessional in the shadows.

'Let's see if I can talk away my guilt,' she declared, already crossing swiftly towards it.

Unable to stop her, he followed in slow despair. She reached it and stared in. The box was empty.

Delly Lomas, Deputy Controller of the PCD, swung back, her face a mixture of frustration, desire and anger.

'Pity,' she murmured.

With a last look of contempt, Kyle turned and walked away.