“How are you these days, Joker?” The Colonel looked Cramer up and down like a surgeon contemplating a forthcoming operation. Cramer wondered if he looked like a man who’d lost his nerve.

“I get by,” Cramer replied. “Why do you ask? Is Mars and Minerva thinking of doing a feature on me? It’d be nice to get an honourable mention in the regimental journal.”

“You sound bitter.”

“No, not bitter, Colonel. I can’t spend all my time looking back, there’s no profit in that. I just want to get on with my life.”

The two men sat in silence. Overhead they heard shouts and the sound of running feet. “You should let them try it with live ammo,” said the Colonel with a smile. “See how they like it.”

“Yeah,” agreed Cramer. “They’d piss themselves stupid the first time they used a real weapon.”

The Colonel looked at Cramer with unblinking eyes. “What about you? Could you face action again?”

Cramer started, the question catching him by surprise. He looked at his former boss, wondering if he was joking. “I’m Elvis, Colonel. You know that. Yesterday’s man.”

“You were right when you said the boys could spot undercover officers, Joker. We need someone who fits in, someone who doesn’t look like he’s just come off a parade ground. You know as well as I do that even when our men grow their hair and slouch around in torn jeans and Nikes, they still look like soldiers. Undercover work isn’t our speciality.” Cramer was already shaking his head. “We need someone who has lost his edge, Joker. No disrespect, but we need someone who doesn’t look as if he can handle himself, someone who has let himself go.”

“Thanks, Colonel. Thanks a bunch. You’re really making me feel good about myself.”

“I’m being honest, that’s all. Have you taken a look at yourself recently? You reek of drink, you’ve got broken veins in your cheeks that have been months in the making, and you’ve a gut on you that’d do credit to a Sumo wrestler. No-one in their right mind would ever suspect you of being in the SAS.”

“That goes for me, too, Colonel. Double.”

“We want Mary Hennessy, Joker. We want to take her out. A hard arrest, a shoot-to-kill operation, whatever you want to call it.”

“Revenge.”

“That’s as good a word as any, Joker. And you’re the man who can get it for us.”

Cramer finished his whisky and picked up the bottle. It was empty. Completely empty. He dropped it into the wastepaper bin by the side of his desk. “You’re asking me because of what happened to Newmarch, aren’t you? And because of what she did to me?”

“I’m asking you because you’re the best man for the job. The only man.”

Cramer shuddered. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“I understand that.” The Colonel stood up and held out his hand. Cramer shook it. “You know where you can reach me, Sergeant Cramer.”