‘She’s safe. For the moment. Why don’t we sit down? I’m sure there are questions you want to ask. We have a little time until Harry returns. Fire away.’

Dreyfuss sat on the chair Harry had been using. Villiers, however, remained standing, leaning against the far wall next to another door.

‘Okay,’ said Dreyfuss. ‘What’s COFFIN?’

‘An easy one to start with. Very well, let’s take COFFIN’s lid off.’ Villiers smiled at his own joke, but Dreyfuss remained unmoved. Villiers’ face lost its humour. ‘COFFIN, Major Dreyfuss, stands for Combined Forces International Network. It has an interesting history. I myself was unaware of it until quite recently. By then, COFFIN had decided it needed a few agents in the field, people who couldn’t be traced back to it. People, in other words, outwith the armed forces. Eventually they came to me, and were able to introduce me to Harry. Really, she’s the more …’ he seemed to search for the right word, ‘professional of the two of us. But I’m afraid we’re very lowly figures, comparatively speaking.

‘COFFIN came about by accident,’ he continued. ‘You see, generals don’t always agree with their governments, and they command more respect from their men than do politicians. Well, a lot of generals – from the United States, the other NATO countries, even a few of the non-aligned states – got together and found that they had a good deal in common. More in common, in fact, than they did with their own countries’ leaders. So they started to swap information, intelligence, that sort of thing, all very informally, very sub rosa. That seemed to work to everyone’s advantage, so they started trading all kinds of things.’

‘What kinds of things?’

‘Oh, tactics, armaments, maybe even a few men for certain special missions. Of course, no one ever questioned orders, and so no one ever knew that the generals were doing more and more off their own bat, without anyone else knowing about it outside the forces themselves.’

Dreyfuss whistled, trying to sound impressed. Damn it, he was impressed, ‘But how could you hope to keep something like that secret?’

‘Easily enough,’ said Villiers, warming to his subject. ‘For one thing, who did they have to hide it from? A few men from the MoD and the more investigative of our journalistic profession. But the thing was so big – is so big – that virtually no one can see it! That’s its beauty.’

‘Then why the need for a burial?’

‘Look around you, Major Dreyfuss.’ George Villiers paced the floor like an actor of old. This was his big soliloquy, and he knew it, but to Dreyfuss he was all amateur dramatics. Amateur dramatics or no, he still held the Beretta. And while he held the gun, Dreyfuss could do little but listen.