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them in.”
    Savary went out and returned with the Jobert brothers. They stood there looking worried, and Hernu said, “Well?”
    “No luck, Colonel, he wasn’t in any of the books.”
    “All right,” Hernu said. “Wait downstairs. You’ll be taken home. We’ll collect you again later.”
    “But what for, Colonel?” Pierre asked.
    “So that your brother can go to Valenton in the Renault and you can follow in the car just like Rocard told you. Now get out.” They hurriedly left, and Hernu said to Savary,
    “We’ll see Mrs. Thatcher is spirited to safety by another route, but a pity to disappoint our friend Rocard.”
    “If he turns up, Colonel.”
    “You never know, he just might. You’ve done well, Inspector. I think I’ll have to requisition you for Section Five. Would you mind?”
    Would he mind? Savary almost choked with emotion, “An honor, sir . . .”
    “Good. Go and get a shower then and some breakfast. I’ll see you later.”
    “And you, Colonel?”
    “Me, Inspector?” Hernu laughed and looked at his watch. “Five-fifteen. I’m going to ring British Intelligence in London. Disturb the sleep of a very old friend of mine. If anyone can help us with our mystery man it should be he.”
     
    The Directorate General of the British Security Service occupies a large white and red brick building not far from the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane, although many of its departments are housed in various locations throughout London. The special number that Max Hernu rang was of a Section known as Group Four, located on the third floor of the Ministry of Defence. It had been set up in 1972 to handle matters concerning terrorism and subversion in the British Isles. It was responsible only to the Prime Minister. It had been administered by only one man since its inception, Brigadier Charles Ferguson. He was asleep in his flat in Cavendish Square when the telephone beside his bed awakened him.
    “Ferguson,” he said, immediately wide awake, knowing it had to be important.
    “Paris, Brigadier,” an anonymous voice said. “Priority one. Colonel Hernu.”
    “Put him through and scramble.”
    Ferguson sat up, a large, untidy man of sixty-five with rumpled gray hair and a double chin.
    “Charles?” Hernu said in English.
    “My dear Max. What brings you on the line at such a disgusting hour? You’re lucky I’m still on the phone. The powers that be are trying to make me redundant along with Group Four.”
    “What nonsense.”
    “I know, but the Director General was never happy with my freebooter status all these years. What can I do for you?”
    “Mrs. Thatcher is overnighting at Choisy. We’ve details of a plot to hit her on the way to the airfield at Valenton tomorrow.”
    “Good God!”
    “All taken care of. The lady will now take a different route home. We’re still hoping the man concerned will show up, though I doubt it. We’ll be waiting though, this afternoon.”
    “Who is it? Anyone we know?”
    “From what our informants say, we suspect he’s Irish, though his French is good enough to pass as a native. The thing is, the people involved have looked through all our IRA pictures with no success.”
    “Have you a description?”
    Hernu gave it to him. “Not much to go on, I’m afraid.”
    “I’ll have a computer check done and get back to you. Tell me the story.” Which Hernu did. When he was finished, Ferguson said, “You’ve lost him, old chap. I’ll bet you dinner on it at the Savoy Grill next time you’re over.”
    “I’ve a feeling about this one. I think he’s special,” Hernu said.
    “And yet not on your books, and we always keep you up to date.”
    “I know,” Hernu said. “And you’re the expert on the IRA, so what do we do?”
    “You’re wrong there,” Ferguson said. “The greatest expert on the IRA is right there in Paris, Martin Brosnan, our Irish-American friend. After all, he carried a gun for them till nineteen seventy-five. I heard he was a professor of