‘You look like a navvy dressed up as a nun.’

MacConnachie’s teeth gleamed for a moment. He said,

‘If you want to pee, now’s the moment.’

Then he handed the gun to Ansell and drew the knife, saying,

‘We’ll r/v at the tree, right-hand bottom corner of the square. You see it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s go.’

‘Good luck.’

In twenty minutes they reached the edge of the fields, MacConnachie walking upright, Ansell tracking him at fifty feet distance. A cool breeze had sprung up. MacConnachie looked back a moment, and smiled. In all this time he had caught no single glimpse of Ansell. The boy didn’t know it, but he had a gift for assimilating natural cover as remarkable as any MacConnachie had seen; he was a born stalker. Of course it was MacConnachie who was the born killer so that, for the moment, Ansell’s gift was supportive rather than assertive. But since MacConnachie appreciated it, and knew how to make use of it, its value was assured.

He turned and walked up the track towards the village.

Ansell followed, somehow remaining, despite the relative brightness of the fields, invisible against their separating banks.

Ten minutes more, and MacConnachie had reached the scrub that bordered the village. He dropped from view. Ansell closed the gap to five yards. He could just make out the figure of MacConnachie ahead of him, lying full length and peering between the huts. He checked once more to their flanks and rear and adopted the same position.

They lay at the point where the track entered the village to become its main street. A hundred yards along this street, the square opened out to the left. The café was on the right, another thirty yards farther up, the glare from its pressure lamp still flaring harshly back against the buildings to the edge of the square. This was a danger they could do nothing about, since to attempt to put it out would create a greater hazard than leaving it alight.

Among the huts a dog whined.

MacConnachie rose and signalled that he was going up the right-hand side of the street. Ansell acknowledged; then held himself tightly against the moment that always occurs at the outset of such an operation when the striker, on first emerging from his hide, seems to scream for attention as though floodlit, and his cover man has to choke back a cry of warning. The moment passed, and Ansell ran quickly and lightly to the corner round which MacConnachie had disappeared.

The street was deserted. MacConnachie was working his way up to the right in well-judged breaks from cover to cover. He looked purposeful and calm. Ansell waited until a gap of twenty feet had opened up and then he too moved out into the street, slipping from shadow to shadow in MacConnachie’s wake, maintaining distance and stalking him. Thus for fifty yards they progressed undisturbed. Then a man came out of the café and weaved his way towards them. He didn’t appear too badly drunk since, apart from the occasional explosive belch, he remained blessedly silent, bent, it seemed, solely on getting his legs to bed. Ansell reversed the gun to use as a club; MacConnachie he knew would be holding the knife low and close, the blade ready. But the man, utterly oblivious of their presence, passed stiffly within a few feet of them, entered one of the huts, exchanged curses with the voice of a woman and fell silent. MacConnachie looked back and shrugged cheerfully. Then, for fifteen minutes, they stood without moving until the sense of stillness came over them again.