Free The Journeyman Tailor by Gerald Seymour Page B

think about the majority. The majority are decent people, excessively friendly, hard working and law abiding. You concentrate on the minority, the one in a hundred or maybe even the one in a thousand, the lethal minority ..."Bren grabbed his case and his grip and ran.
    Wilkins had missed the chance to wish him God speed.

    4
    The aircraft was continually smacked by Force 8 winds. Bren barely noticed. He sat strapped in his seat, very still, refusing food and declining a drink. His mind was running over and over what Ronnie had told h i m . . . He was headed for a war in which dinosaur traditions governed and destroyed a gentler and more reasoning age. A pitiless war, unremarkable in the context of what had gone before. It was as always; the gravediggers stayed busy, and every time they paused for breath the war would erupt again to bring new soldiers, new patriots and new innocents to the cemeteries. The war was terrifying to the stranger, not least because it was incomprehensible in its brutality and its apparent irrelevance to the twentieth century. He thought only a native might be able to understand it, slim chance for the stranger drafted in to try to help to put a stop to it.
    Bren jolted in his seat as the aircraft banged down onto the Aldergrove runway.
    The aircraft taxied. He felt a swift thrill of exhilaration. He was a junior Executive Officer of the Security Service. More than anything he wanted to be worthy of the posting. One step at a time . . . and first step was Parker. Parker, he had been told, would meet him at the airport.
    He unclipped the belt. He stood and stretched his cramped knees. He had not the faintest idea when he would next see the inside of an aircraft that was heading back to London. He was breathing hard. He walked down the aisle.
    A l l so normal.
    H e walked in a cavalcade of grannies and carried babies and collapsed pushchairs and young men who had been to a soccer match in London. The life of any other small airport, anywhere, swam around him. Ordinary and happy and relieved and excited people flowed by him, past the armed policemen and the anti- terrorist posters, the same as in any other small airport. But he was different, because he was a junior Executive Officer of Five and from now on a man's life depended on him , and from this moment onwards his own life was on the line. He felt the gush of pleasured excitement, enjoyed it.
    She wasn't really a girl, she was more of a woman. It was probably a photograph that she had hidden in her palm. She looked down and then up again at the surge of the passengers. She came forward. She had singled him out. He stopped, put down his suitcase.
    "It's Gary, yes?"
    "I'm called Bren," he said brusquely.
    "Please yourself."
    "I was told Parker would meet me."
    He thought she laughed at him. She wasn't pretty, certainly wasn't beautiful. The only brightness was in her eyes. He reckoned her accent was money, class.
    "I'm Cathy - it's a God awful flight over, right?"
    "They said it would be Parker." He heard the snap in his voice, wondered how he could be such an idiot.
    "Did they now?"
    "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude."
    She wore trainers and jeans that were threadbare at the knees, and a quilted anorak that was scuffed at the elbows.
    "Lets be on the on the move then."
    "Right ." Bren bent to pick up his suitcase. She had beaten him to it, He knew it was heavy. She gave him a withering look. She walked away carrying the suitcase and he followed her.
    Her head barely came up to his shoulder. There was a pale blue scarf at her throat. She had small hands and he thought that under the anorak there was only a slight body. She had no make-up, and her cheeks glowed with a weathered colour. Her hair was golden red and cut short.
    She led the way out through the doors. When he had run for the flight at Heathrow he had had to change hands on the suitcase because of its weight. She didn't change hands. They threaded their way through the car park.
    She