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Seguridad, the Colombian Secret Service. The other was MI6’s Head of Station at the Embassy in Bogotá. He was tall and blond, in grey flannels and blazer and what looked like a club or regimental tie. He touched his companion on the elbow. Abono peered through the viewfinder of a compact camera, adjusted the zoom and took a couple of headshots of O’Brien. Then they went downstairs to the crowded concourse and watched the Irishman exit onto the pavement. 
    O’Brien surveyed the line of parked cars, spotted the one he wanted and walked over to a two-tone Honda SUV. The driver wound down his window and exchanged a few words with the Irishman. O’Brien dumped his bag on the back seat and got in. The two observers watched the SUV disappear into traffic. The Brit tried to spot the tail pulling out to take up position behind it. There wasn’t one.
    “You’re not having him followed?” The Englishman was stunned.
    “Not much point,” said the Colombian, “he’ll be headed for the safe-haven. A tail’s not much use on the open road and anyway I have no jurisdiction there.”
    “Then why not arrest him now? While we have him in our sights?”
    “And charge him with what exactly? We’ll pick him up on his way back. After we find out what he’s up to.”
    It took O’Brien one day and one night to get where he was going.  Dawn broke over the craggy peaks of Cauca province, the early morning heat lifting a dense haze through the triple canopy of jungle. The chorale of birds and insects was shrill.
    One hundred and twenty miles south of Calí the road took a couple of sharp hairpin bends. The driver turned off the main road and joined an unmarked track, ascending steeply up into the rain forest. After a couple of hundred yards, out of sight from the highway, the driver parked the car and both men got out, stretched their limbs and peed copiously. Then the driver tied a black bandana over O’Brien’s eyes and resumed the upward
    climb. After a few kilometres they came to the first of a series of checkpoints. The driver identified himself and his companion. One of the guards made a call on a WW2 field telephone, obtained approval from the next checkpoint and waved them through.
    Two hours and five check points later they arrived at the FARC encampment. O’Brien was shown to a wooden hut equipped with a fold-up bed and little else. He slept for four hours fully clothed and was woken by a young woman in khaki fatigues, toting an Uzi sub-machine gun.
    “Venga conmigo.”
    The camp consisted of several dozen wooden huts of assorted sizes arranged around a central open space, in the middle of which the embers of an overnight fire still glowed. To one side was a bank of communal latrines. O’Brien estimated the place could accommodate two or three hundred guerrillas. The rain forest would provide all their needs; fruit, game, water, fuel. Men and women in camouflage gear busied themselves with assault drills and target practice. Somewhere in the far distance the staccato of machine gun fire shattered the silence. A flock of startled birds rose squawking from the trees. A cloying heat lay on the jungle like a sodden blanket.
    The camp was littered with military equipment of all kinds from rifles to rocket launchers and ground to air missiles, mostly of eastern European or Israeli origin, most of it brand new. The FARC’s problem wasn’t acquiring arms; it was learning how to use them. How to calibrate and maintain them, keep them clean, even how to fire them.
    “Holy Mother of God,” thought O’Brien. “If we could spend money like this, we’d have the British out of Ireland in a month.”
    O’Brien followed the woman across the clearing to a cabin set apart from the rest at the top of a low rise. The roof of the squat building bristled with antennae. The woman un-slung the SMG and stood guard at the door as O’Brien entered. The walls of the hut were crammed with communications equipment. The system was entirely