London
Hampstead
9 a.m.
April 17th
A golden haired nine year old boy, with a freshly scrubbed face presented himself at the door of what was a very austere dining room. He was followed by a golden haired girl, half a foot shorter, with the neatest of pigtails. They were both dressed in green uniforms. The boy was dressed in a crisp white shirt and green and yellow striped tie, green shorts and the girl was dressed in a green check cotton dress; both were holding straw hats in front of them.
A door chime sounded down the hall and a slim yet motherly blonde woman appeared flustered behind the children. Across a dining table strewn with the remnants of breakfast a severe man in his early forties, dressed in a black three piece suit, pale blue shirt and deep blue tie, lowered a tabloid Times.
The serious face with heavy lidded eyes and thin lips creased into a warm smile. Nigel Sternway removed his reading glasses.
“Aha Summer uniforms so it’s April already.”
He beckoned the children to him and kissed them. As they left the room, waving, a tall thin man stopped and let them pass.
“You’re early Joe” Mrs Sternway frowned watching her children exit the room.
She disliked her husband’s employees coming to the house. Joe was Nigel’s number two and drove him around. She disliked Joe. He was grey and pale. He had x-ray eyes. He was tall and thin. He always wore a dark blue suit and a light blue tie, and oddly, she had noticed, that he wore brown boots, the walking kind. He was thin, but he had a wiry quality. She felt him to be like snake, long and thin, with coiled, poisonous potential within the thin frame. Della Sternway hated her husband’s work.
When Joe nodded and offered a weak and ineffective smile she happily followed the golden children, heading for the school run.
“Morning Joe.” Sternway’s smile for his children slipped suddenly from his face.
Joe closed the dining room door.
“Sir. The sub dropped them this morning. They should be heading this way.”
“Good. We’ll see which one gets through then.” Sternway precisely folded his reading glasses, encased them and slipped them into his jacket top pocket.
“If any DIC 's record on malicious intruders is ten to nothing so far.”
“See they do have their uses. You sure this will work?”
“It’s as good a way as any. These men are the best and one should get through and if they don’t we’ll know it can’t be done.”
Sternway looked at his watch.
“Just before nine, a couple of them at least should be in Inverness by now. When we get to the office send Bentall to you know who to have the conversation. Tell him the game’s afoot, oh and he’s to leave the contact package with him.”
They left the house, Joe in front, opening the door of the black Jaguar for Sternway. Once in the driver’s seat, Joe took his revolver out from under it and slipped it into his holster. Della’s rule on guns in the house made him uncomfortable. Joe wondered why she hadn’t become used to such ideas after ten years of marriage to a member of the British Secret Service.
Sternway ran the ‘dirty work’ section at the secret service and the contradiction of Sternway’s warm family life and cold blooded working day reminded Joe of the poem Vultures, by Chinua Achebe. He glanced in the mirror at Sternway’s ‘cold telescopic eyes’.