Carr pulled off the daysack and put it on the ground next to the only empty chair.

He unzipped his leather jacket, and sat down.

The guy with the cropped hair leaned forwards.

‘That seat is taken, I’m afraid,’ he said, in an upper-class English drawl that irritated Carr immediately.

‘Aye,’ said Carr. ‘By me, pal.’

The man smiled. ‘May I ask your name?’

‘You can ask it,’ said Carr, ‘but if you don’t know it already, you don’t need to know it. And, by the way, do Six deliberately train you fuckers to stand out like tits on a bull?’

‘You seem very much as described,’ said the man, with a faint smile. ‘My name is Miles Hanson. I’m based in Rome, but Justin Nicholls asked me to pop down here and see a man about a dog.’

‘Right,’ said Carr.

‘Job done?’ said Hanson. ‘Whatever it was.’

‘Job done,’ said Carr.

‘My instructions are to take that bag and get it back to the UK ASAP, so, if you don’t mind, my young colleague here…?’

‘Be my guest,’ said Carr. ‘You’ll want these, too.’

He took the USB stick and iPhone from the pocket of his jacket, and put them on the table.

‘Excellent,’ said Hanson.

The blond guy next to him immediately picked up the bag, the phone, and the memory stick, and walked away without speaking.

Miles Hanson finished his coffee.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘much as I’d like to sit here and chew the fat, my secondary instructions are to get you up to Rome, so that you can catch the first flight home tomorrow morning for a debrief.’

‘Is that so?’ said Carr.

He rubbed his scarred chin and smiled at a girl at the table behind Hanson’s head.

She was dark-haired, with full lips and a fuller figure, which was barely contained in a low-cut black dress, and now she smiled at him briefly before looking shyly away.

He turned to Miles Hanson.

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’m in no rush. You toddle off, pal. I’m going to stick around, have something to eat, and see the sights.’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to my wife who keeps me on the straight and narrow, your counsel is invaluable.

Thanks also to my agent Jonathan Lloyd and all the team at Curtis Brown for their support and guidance, and to all at HarperCollins for their hard work and dedication.

Finally thanks to my friends and former comrades from the Parachute Regiment and 22nd Special Air Service who have helped me along the way, no names but you all know who you are. It’s not the critic who counts…

Extract

Read on for an extract from the first in the gripping John Carr series,

Once a Pilgrim

‘You couldn’t make it up. Brilliant’

Jeffery Archer

1.

SERGEANT MAJOR John Carr stood in the low light, fighting unfamiliar emotions and watching his blokes go through their final equipment checks.