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clean things up single-handed?”
    “To be honest, Major, I never think about it.”
    “And yet you took on a job like this present affair for a bunch of well-meaning amateurs and for no pay?”
    “We all make mistakes.”
    “You certainly did, my friend. Those boxes on the plane. Morphine ampoules on top, Stinger missiles underneath.”
    “Jesus.” Dillon laughed helplessly. “Now who would have thought it.”
    “They say you have a genius for acting, that you can change yourself totally, become another person with a look, a gesture.”
    “No, I think that was Laurence Olivier.” Dillon smiled.
    “And in twenty years, you’ve never seen the inside of a cell.”
    “True.”
    “Not any longer, my friend.” Branko opened a drawer, took out a two-hundred pack of Rothmans cigarettes and tossed them across. “You’re going to need those.” He glanced at Zekan and said in Serbo-Croatian, “Take him to his cell.”
    Dillon felt the Sergeant’s hand on his shoulder pulling him up and propelling him to the door. As Zekan opened it Branko said, “One more thing, Mr. Dillon. The firing squad operates most mornings here. Try not to let it put you off.”
    “Ah, yes,” Dillon said. “Ethnic cleansing, isn’t that what you call it?”
    “The reason is much simpler than that. We just get short of space. Sleep well.”
     
     
    They went up a flight of stone steps, Zekan pushing Dillon ahead of him. He pulled him to a halt outside an oak door on the passageway at the top, took out a key and unlocked it. He inclined his head and stood to one side and Dillon entered. The room was quite large. There was an army cot in one corner, a table and chair, books on a shelf and, incredibly, an old toilet and in a cubicle in one corner. Dillon went to the window and peered through bars to the courtyard eighty feet below and the pine forest in the near distance.
    He turned. “This must be one of your better rooms. What’s the catch?” Then realized he was wasting his time, for the Sergeant had no English.
    As if perfectly understanding him Zekan smiled, showing bad teeth, took Dillon’s silver case and Zippo lighter from a pocket and laid them carefully on the table. He withdrew, closing the door, and the key rattled in the lock.
    Dillon went to the window and tried the bars, but they seemed firm. Too far down anyway. He opened one of the packs of Rothmans and lit one. One thing was certain. Branko was being excessively kind and there had to be a reason for that. He went and lay on the bed, smoking his cigarette, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about it.
     
     
    In 1972, aware of the growing problem of terrorism and its effect on so many aspects of life at both political and national level, the British Prime Minister of the day ordered the setting up of a small elite intelligence unit, known simply by the code name Group Four. It was to handle all matters concerning terrorism and subversion in the British Isles. Known rather bitterly in more conventional intelligence circles as the Prime Minister’s private army, it owed allegiance to that office alone.
    Brigadier Charles Ferguson had headed Group Four since its inception, had served a number of Prime Ministers, both Conservative and Labour, and had no political allegiance whatsoever. He had an office on the third floor of the Ministry of Defence overlooking Horse Guards Avenue, and was still working at his desk at nine o’clock that night when there was a knock at the door.
    “Come in,” Ferguson said, stood up and walked to the window, a large, rather untidy-looking man with a double chin and untidy gray hair who wore a baggy suit and a Guards tie.
    As he peered out at the rain toward Victoria Embankment and the Thames, the door opened behind him. The man who entered was in his late thirties, wore a tweed suit and glasses. He could have been a clerk, or even a schoolmaster, but Detective Inspector Jack Lane was neither of these things. He was a cop. Not an