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‘Of course.’ His positive words, as always, clashed with his melancholic nature and produced the impression of deceit. He turned to Spencer. ‘A basic type, Jan. It’s steak and kidney pie today and you’re welcome to join us, Commander.’
    ‘You’re on.’
    Vanqua glanced at Cain but, observing protocol, didn’t invite him. He was Rhonda’s alone to command.
    She asked him. ‘Food?’
    ‘Just want to crash.’
    ‘Not till we talk. There’s something you need to know.’

SUBVERSION

    H er den, half sorting room, half command centre, stank of Turkish cigarettes. There were security cabinets, a file-covered desk and casual chairs each side of a small coffee table which supported an overfull ashtray and a dirty whisky glass. One wall of the big stateroom was fitted with a communications console. A vertical AC plasma display showed a map of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Marked on it were the combined-arms Soviet bases at Farah and Shindand — and the border, longer than NATO’s central European front, guarded by eighteen Pakistani divisions outnumbered by Indian forces three to one.
    Rhonda lifted rubber-band-secured files off chairs and dumped them on the floor, where they slid as the carpet tilted. She sat heavily, legs apart, not demure about her crotch. ‘Take the weight off your feet.’
    He sat opposite her, very tired now. ‘So, you know the worst.’ At Cairo, he’d sent an interim report as a burst transmission to COMOPS tagged ‘CO Department D’. ‘How’s Zia?’
    ‘Delighted he wasn’t killed in the crash. Allah’s will, no doubt.’
    ‘So why in hell are we on this tub?’
    ‘Come away jolly sailors . . .’ she trilled in her rich contralto, then gestured at the walls. ‘Vanqua’s obsession. Theta base. I call it his Theta of the Absurd.’
    ‘But we can’t have a base on a participating nation’s warship. Didn’t you tell him to sod off?’
    ‘Not easy. Our Spartan foe — how can I delicately put it without betraying my deep resentments — has the ear.’
    ‘But you’ve run EXIT since Wolf topped himself.’
    ‘In a temporary/auxiliary capacity. I’m in charge of D. There it officially ends.’
    ‘What are you now? Fifty? He’s . . . what?’
    ‘Forty-one.’
    ‘So he’s nine intakes behind you. He’s only been surgeon CO three years. And surgeons are the junior department.’
    ‘Tell that to the Oberkommando Wehrmacht.’
    ‘Christ, Ronnie. You’re everything here. I mean . . . Shit. Tigon gave you East Germany, Wolf chose you as his successor. And now you take orders from that anal Calvinist?’
    ‘Danes are Lutherans.’ She stared around the room. ‘Where are my blasted ciggies? Actually I see him more as a Mongolian trotting duck.’
    He grinned.
    ‘That’s better. PERSPECTIVE IS STRENGTH. I admit I resent being a little lower than his angel.’
    ‘Surgeons can’t be senior to dentists. Be the tail wagging the dog.’
    ‘You’ll be glad to hear that our Führers haven’t entirely suspended common sense. I still run the senior department. But he has final say on strategy. For now.’
    ‘Shit.’ He banged the chair, intensely sorry for her.
    ‘Dear heart, if you were funding EXIT, who’d you rather back? A sanitary, humourless, gloom-ridden, virtuous threepenny-bus young man? Or an ultra-poetical, super-aesthetical, sluttish, satirical dyke?’ She guffawed. In her youth, she’d been an acclaimed Gilbert and Sullivan actress. He could see her as Buttercup or Lady Jane. ‘Name your poison. Hooch or hemlock?’
    ‘I’m trying to give them up.’
    ‘Stuffed if I am.’ She got up, found a bottle of Glenfiddich, searched her desk for a second glass, gurgling with monstrous primness, ‘And I refuse to drink alone.’
    He chuckled. ‘That’ll be the day.’
    She returned with two glasses a third full of straight whisky. ‘Alcohol. The only thing God got right.’ As she handed over his drink she feigned shock. ‘Oh-my-gosh. A dirty glass.