"Never happen," said one.
"We been tryin' for four hundred years."
"You been doin' it wrong," said the stranger. "You been shootin' here and shootin' there, when you only need to get one lady."
"Miss Hazel Thurston," yelled one of the men at the end of the bar.
"Exactly," said the stranger.
"You can't get near her."
"Who'd want to?" said another.
"I not only know how you can get to her, but where you could put her until the bloody British get their bloody arses off true Irish soil."
"You make a lot of talk, stranger. Let's see you do it."
"Well, come with me and I will," said the stranger.
"One last drink."
"You've had your last drink. Now you're going to have yourselves a British prime minister," said the stranger. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name's Arieson."
"That's hardly a McGillicuddy or an O'Dowd."
"It's a fine old name," said the stranger. "You'll learn to love me. Most men do, but they won't admit it nowadays."
Protecting the Prime Minister of England were not only Scotland Yard and several branches of British intelligence, but a group of terrorist experts who surrounded this great lady with a shield that had never been broken. It was they who, in the last minute, moved her from a hotel room downstairs to the dining room just before her bedroom blew up. What they had, and what the terrorists did not know, was a simple little code that three times out of five could pick up a terrorist target.
It had come from the same great minds that had cracked the German codes in the first days of the Second World War.
It had come from the simple and brilliant British logic that had produced so much good reason in the world. While the terrorist acts might appear random, most were brutally logical and planned from a central source: a KGB office in Moscow.
Despite all the various grievances on different continents in different civilizations, if one simply stepped back from the local complaints and looked at the broad picture, every international terrorist organization was directed against Western interests. None was directed against Communist-bloc countries, where grievances were often greater.
It was a war directed against the populations of the West.
Given that one office in the KGB directed this worldwide network, or at least trained its leaders, then certain techniques had to be standard. There had to be an operational fingerprint. What would appear to be random acts were not.
Knowing there had to be a pattern, the men of British special intelligence formed a broad picture of every incident and put it on a graph, and almost like a production chart did they see a pattern emerge, especially for the IRA, since it was taken over by ostensibly radical Marxists not aligned with Russia.
While they could not protect every target without giving their knowledge away, this special group could most certainly protect the royal family and the Prime Minister.
Thus, when Prime Minister Hazel Thurston's bedroom was about to be blown up, they could move her out of it.
Thus, this day while the Prime Minister was taking a short vacation near Bath and its supposedly curative waters, they detoured her party off a main road.
"Another attack?" asked Prime Minister Thurston. She was pale, with a proud, almost aristocratic face, despite the fact she had been born of middle-class merchants in the shires.
Her special aide looked at his watch.
"I would estimate within two minutes on the normal route," he said.
"You have it down that well?" she asked.
"Sometimes," he said with classic British calm. Two minutes and fifteen seconds later, while the Prime Minister's little protected caravan cruised a narrow back road between golden fields, under a rare and blessed British sun, a muffled boom was heard far off on the main highway.
"I suppose that's them," she said.
"Should be," said her intelligence aide.
"I do hope no one was hurt," she said, and went back to her papers. This was sheep country, and on the back roads, as they had for centuries, the British herders moved their flocks and slowed traffic. The sheep took priority over Rolls-Royces-even government Rolls-Royces.
A herder, his tweed cap weathered by sun and rain, saw who was being delayed, and with his crook in hand came over to the large black car to apologize.
Hazel Thurston smiled. This was the salt of England. The good farmer stock. Did their work. Kept their peace, and when called on, always filled the ranks of Britain's armies. She had known this sort of men from her father's store. Not a one of them was not good for what he owed.
She knew her people and they knew her. The Prime Minister lowered her window. As the herder bent down, so did his staff. It had an opening in the top, rather curious when one looked at it, because this staff happened to have rifling. The herder cleared up the puzzle by explaining that if the British bitch didn't do exactly as he said, a more than wee little bullet was going to come out of the barrel of that staff and blow her bloody British brains all over her intelligence chaps and her official Rolls-Royce.
Chapter 7
"You'll never get away with it," said the Prime Minister. "You simply can't hide a British prime minister on English soil. There aren't places to hide. Now, if you surrender this moment, I will be lenient."
Hazel Thurston looked around the spacious room. It was forty feet by forty feet, with clean stone walls on every side. It had once had windows, but these were sealed by something dark. In fact, the only light came from a single light bulb powered by a generator. It was dank, but the whole country was dank at this time of year. She knew generally where they were, just outside Bath. She had clocked it. They hadn't traveled more than fifteen minutes. And people at the old stone Roman aqueduct nearby had waved to her just before the herder had stuck that gun in her face and blindfolded her.
There was absolutely no way they could hide her within fifteen minutes of a British city. It could not be done.
Already, she and her intelligence aide knew, all traffic in the area was being stopped and searched. Anyone who was not certain to belong in the area was being brought in for questioning.
The intelligence people would search every room, closet, alley, ash can, cellar, attic, belfry, and pew within fifty miles.
"It's probably only minutes before our chaps get here," said the Prime Minister. "So I am giving you a last chance to be easy on yourself."
"Bugger off, we're gettin' what's due us, and this time you gotta give in," said the man who had been disguised as a herder.
There were four others in this large room. The intelligence chap had been tied up and placed in a corner.
"Young man, you're filled with your success. But it's going to be short-lived. There is absolutely no way you can hide a British prime minister so close to where she was kidnapped on British soil. It cannot be done."
"We don't need your lip. We've 'ad enough of that in Belfast, I'll be tellin' you."
"Then let me express myself in a manner you might find more understandable. If you surrender now, there will be a short jail term and you can go back to writing your dissertations on how the world should be turned upside down with us at the bottom and you at the top and running things. lf you don't, sir, we will hang you by your privates until you wish you had been run over by an armored car at birth."
"Pipe down or I'll shoot your brains out."
"Well then, shoot, you pig-faced unemployable drunk."