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will offer my resignation without hesitation."
    "If I want it, I'll ask for it, Brigadier," she said sharply. "But you can't expect me to have much faith in the activities of your section when one of the chief ministers of the Crown comes within an inch of assassination. Now tell me about this man Barry? Why is he so important and, more to the point, how does he remain so elusive?"
    "A brilliant madman, ma'am. A genius in his own way. As important to the international terrorist scene as Carlos, but not so familiar to the public."
    "And why is that?"
    "A question of his personal psychology. Many terrorists, take some of those involved with the Baader-Meinhof gang, for example, have a craving for public display. They want people to kno w n ot only who they are but that they can make fools of the police and intelligence departments they confront any time they wish. Barry doesn't seem to have a need for that kind of publicity and, as it suits our purposes best to give him none, he has remained an unknown quantity as far as the public is concerned."
    "What about his personal background?'
    "I'm afraid it couldn't be worse from the point of view of media sensationalism. He is an Ulsterman by birth. Held a commission as a National Service second lieutenant with the Ulster Rifles. Served in Korea. Excellent record in the field, I might add. He's a Protestant. His uncle is an Irish peer, Lord Stramore. Much involved in Orange politics for most of his life, but now in ailing health. Barry is his heir."
    "Good God," the Prime Minister said.
    "During the early years of the Irish Troubles, Barry professed to be a Republican. As usual, he did his own thing. Organized a group called the Sons of Erin, which gave us tremendous problems in the Province. Repudiated totally by the Provisional IRA. In nineteen seventy-two, when Group Four was first set up, I managed to penetrate Barry's organization with an agent of mine, a Major Vaughan. The upshot of that little affair was that Barry was very badly wounded indeed. That he lived at all was only due to the skill of the surgeons of the military wing of the Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast."
    "You had him?"
    "He escaped, ma'am. Not even capable of walking, according to his doctors, but walk he did, right out of the hospital, dressed as a porter. Turned up in Dublin within twenty-four hours. We couldn't touch him there, of course. He was in and out of hospitals there and in Switzerland for more than a year."
    "And afterward?'
    "Since then, ma'am, he has, in some cases to our certain knowledge and in others to the best of our belief, been responsible for at least fifteen assassinations and a number of bombing incidents. Hi s t ouch is distinctive and unmistakable, and political commitment seems to be the least of his considerations. A resume of his activities during the past few years will explain what I mean. In nineteen seventy-three he assassinated the general in command of Spanish military intelligence in the Basque country. Responsibility was claimed by the Basque nationalist movement, the ETA."
    "Go on."
    "On the other hand, he was also responsible for the murder of General Hans Grosch during a visit to Munich in nineteen seventy-five. A source of considerable embarrassment to the West German government. Grosch held a post roughly equivalent to my own in the East German ministry for state security. So, as you can see, ma'am, on the one hand Barry kills a Fascist--on the other, a Communist."
    "You're saying he has no politics?"
    "None at all." Ferguson took a sheet from his briefcase and passed it across. "A list of the jobs we think he's been concerned with. As you can see, his victims have been from every part of the political scene you can think of."
    The Prime Minister read the list slowly and frowned. "Are you saying, then, that he works for whoever will pay him?'
    "No, ma'am, I think it's more subtle than that. Everything he does falls into a pattern that causes maximum damage wherever it