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out, and they had emptied each last one of the full tins into the ditch, and had a hell of a laugh, and said that the bottom of a tin of paint was just a pretty obvious place to move a firearm or ammunition . . . His coat came off, and his shirt. They were dropped on the verge. A soldier bent and tugged his shoes off. Another was talking into his radio, another was inside the car and ferreting, another had the bonnet up and was peering down into the engine.
    The sergeant sneered, "Off down the pub to get pissed up?"
    "No, I'm not."
    "That's the Paddy weekend, isn't it, getting arseholed ..."

    "I'm not drinking, I'm driving."

    " . . . Then, when you're all pissed up, all arseholed, all brave, going out and blowing away a few kiddies, a few little girls. That's the fucking Paddy weekend, eh?"
    It was the wind-up, nothing new.
    "I'm going down the shop."
    "You're real brave bastards, aren't you? Blowing up little kiddies.
    Watched it on the news, did we, Paddy, with the Missus and all your own little kiddies? Right fucking heroes, Provo shit."
    Mossie Nugent was too old to be wound up. He was thirty- seven years old. Twenty years ago he might have stuck one on the sergeant.
    Just what they wanted. Grievous Bodily Harm or Criminal Assault, anything they cared to think up. He held onto the seams of his trousers, kept his hands down. The cold whipped through his cotton vest, and the damp seeped in his socks.
    They were bored by the time that Pakkie Henty came along with his tractor and a load of silage, so they let him go. He dressed. He climbed back into his car and drove on.
    Mossie Nugent was the Intelligence Officer of the mountain- based Company that was the driving force inside the East Tyrone Brigade.
    The men from Altmore mountain dictated everything that went on in East Tyrone. And the Intelligence Officer would never have been stupid enough, knowing that he and his car were Charlie One, to carry a weapon, explosives, ammunition, or documents. He had been going to meet his O.C. They were careful now, all of them, the officers and the volunteers on Altmore. Too many roadblocks, too much military presence. He had been going for a talk. Not any more, not once he had been through a vehicle check point.
    He drove to the shop in the village. He bought three tins of baked beans, and a sliced loaf, and a pound of sausages.
    And he was stopped again and questioned again on his way back home. When he was let through, he waved to Pakkie Henty whose sileage trailer was still being searched.

    The Commander sat straight in his chair, a cup of tea on the table beside him.
    "What I can tell you, sir, is that every resource available to me is currently deployed in the hunt for this man. There is absolutely no complacency in SO 13. What it comes down to is patience . . .
    " . . . Over the last three years we have recovered four lists of targets, and they added up to 210 persons and locations. Currently I have 172 of those under some form of surveillance. As I told you at the time, when your Parliamentary colleague was killed, he had attended a public meeting without notifying us. Two of the earlier bombs were against targets that had not figured on any previous list. Mr Tennyson was on one of the lists, but was not provided with protection because it was not thought he was a priority to our e n e m y . . . "
    There was a sharp intake whistle of breath from the Prime Minister.
    The Commander could happily have kicked himself. The last thing he wanted was for the Prime Minister to chide him for not regarding the lives of Tennyson and his family as 'priority'.
    " . . . They have patience, we have to demonstrate the same quality.
    Because he is intelligent, he will know that his chances of survival become slimmer with every hit. He has made one mistake a lr e a d y
    . . . "
    The mistake had been on the second attack. The victim, the target, the poor bastard who hadn't done anything worth dying for, had been the principal editorial writer for