This was the second time he had spent the day in the boot of a car and it was, so far at least, nowhere near as memorable as the first. That was four months earlier, in the middle of summer, and one of the most horrifying days in his twenty-nine years. He was not a particularly large man but whoever had chosen the car that day had given scant thought to his size altogether; they had concentrated solely on the objective and not at all on Spinks’s comfort. They could be forgiven to some extent since the whole affair was a hitherto untried experiment and all too hurriedly executed, and Spinks had absolutely no idea what he was getting himself into. He had felt claustrophobic the second the boot was slammed shut and everything went pitch black. It was only when the car trundled through the security chicane and over the sleeping policemen at the main gate to the camp that it occurred to him he should have put something spongy on the bare metal floor to lie on.

The twenty or so mile drive, mostly along country roads, was painful in the dark and cramped space and he spread himself like a starfish in an effort to stop rolling about, but that grew tiring after a while. He imagined all kinds of horrors in the event of a collision, specifically a rear-ender. When the journey ended he thought the worst was over but it had only just begun. What almost killed Spinks was as much a surprise to him as it was to everyone else involved.

His task had been to video the main gate of the Crossmaglen Rangers’ Gaelic Football Club on a bright Sunday afternoon as the team prepared to play Dromintree. Crossmaglen is a small town virtually encircled by the border with most of its roads heading directly into the Republic, and certain IRA members of interest who resided in the South were rumoured to be attending the match. It had been a very hot day and the sun’s rays gradually warmed the car’s metal skin. By early afternoon the inside was like an oven. Spinks later compared it to a prison sweatbox, only his was much smaller, completely without ventilation and prisoners were at least spared a battering journey inside the box over miles of bad road prior to their being baked. He almost passed out with the combination of heat and deteriorating air quality. No one realised how much he had suffered until the car was driven away on completion of the job and the boot opened. Spinks was lying there, dehydrated and hyperventilating, but nevertheless, to his credit, he had stoically completed his task.

On this occasion it was a much bigger boot and he had tailored in an old mattress sponge to lie on. He could roll from one shoulder on to the other if he shuffled around although he still could not stretch out his legs. But more importantly it was now autumn. The previous experience had taught him that one could dress against the cold inside a freezer but there was nothing one could do to keep cool inside a baking oven.

Spinks’s excessive body odour was due to the fact he hardly ever washed himself and his clothes even less. He claimed his lack of hygiene was a necessary part of the job. ‘If you’re gonna be one of ’em, go all the way’ was his excuse. It was true that many of the rural indigenous types they operated against made personal cleanliness a low priority, but Spinks was quite alone in his level of dedication. The rewards for his extreme standards for ‘blending in’ were tasks such as this one, the important criterion as far as his colleagues were concerned was that he worked alone.

He placed an eye in the thin shaft of daylight coming through a small hole in the clear plastic cover of the reverse light where the bulb and socket had been removed. He checked his watch by its tiny light. Six hours he had been here already. The driver had dropped off the vehicle in the middle of the night to avoid being seen, knowing nothing would happen till late morning. It was all part of the necessary security measures, but lying in darkness, with nothing to focus on other than keeping as still and quiet as possible, made it difficult for Spinks to stay awake. He found various ways to amuse himself but these were limited. Farting was one of his pastimes - silent ones of course. He would hold them in for as long as he could, building up their pressure, then expelling them as slowly as possible, without a pause, timing how long he could stretch out the evacuation. Lying in his own stink afterwards was a strange source of amusement to him. He maintained it was unhealthy to hold in farts anyway, even in company, and admitted to enjoying the smell. He believed everyone liked the smell of their own farts and only complained about other people’s.

He stuffed the rest of the sandwich into his mouth and checked through the spy-hole. He felt around in the darkness for his water bottle as he munched. It did not appear to be where he had placed it by his shoulder. He found his MPK5 short-barrelled sub-machine-gun, with its magazine loaded and ready to fire. Beside it was the stun grenade he always liked to carry. The grenade was not standard issue but having seen them demonstrated by the SAS during a room assault entry while in training he stole one thinking it might be a useful piece of equipment to carry. His 9mm Browning semi-automatic pistol rested under the beam of daylight so that he would know where to grab it if he saw trouble coming.

He extended his search for the water bottle towards his feet and felt it in the lower corner. It must have bounced there during the drive. He strained in the confined space, stretching as best he could, his face pressing hard up against the lid of the boot, until his fingertips finally took hold of the bottle. He pulled it to his chest and took a short breather after the effort. He was overweight and out of shape, which did not bother him in the slightest. When he wasn’t on an assignment Spinks stayed in his pit of a caravan listening to Country and Western CDs or sleeping, and if he was not there he could be found in the cookhouse fixing a snack or in the small bar the detachment ran for themselves in their secret camp, sipping on a pint of bitter, which he liked to share with the detachment’s alcoholic Labrador, Jenkins.

Before unscrewing the top of the water bottle he took a few seconds to estimate how full his bladder was. His last piss was before climbing inside the boot, over six hours ago. He could sense a little pressure there. A drink might put his bladder over the top. Peeing his pants was not a major issue for Spinks. It would not be the first time he lay in his own urine for hours on end. There was something he found pleasant about the sensation of warm pee spreading around his crotch area. He took a good swig, dribbling on himself in the awkward position, and swilled his mouth to rinse the sandwich down. As he swallowed he placed an eye back into the beam of light to look outside once again and what he saw nearly made him choke. He dropped the bottle, letting the water spill, and scrambled to find the communication prestel that hung out of his sleeve on its wire. He had to summon every effort to stifle a cough so he could whisper into the collar of his jacket where the tiny microphone was stitched.

‘Four two Charlie,’ he begun, but had to stop to clear his throat again. ‘Four two Charlie, he’s coming out. I say again, O’Farroll is coming out.’

Spinks kept his eye to the hole with unblinking concentration. From where he was parked he was perfectly positioned to see the front door of the church and the people coming out of it. The church was a solitary, squat, grey construction on the edge of a quiet country road a good mile from the nearest town. All the buildings in this undulating, rambling part of County Tyrone a few miles west of Lough Neagh were grey, or so they seemed. Even the rich countryside that surrounded them had a grey tint. Perhaps it was the dark skies. It rained a lot this time of year.

The church didn’t look big enough to hold more than fifty people but then not that many turned out on Sunday mornings these days.Two men in warm three-quarter-length business coats over their Sunday best suits walked out of the entrance, past the tilted, unreadable gravestones and through an opening in the squat stone wall that ran along the side of the road. They stopped to chat while the rest of the congregation, mostly older people, headed to their cars parked on the grass verges.

‘O’Farroll and one unknown male static on main outside the obvious having a chat,’ Spinks whispered.

A strange noise came from his hidden wireless earpiece deep inside his ear, like a garbled human voice underwater. After a second the words became clear. It was the secure communications system that chopped up the sender’s transmission and then sent it through the airwaves all jumbled up to be un-jumbled at the receiver’s end. It was said the most sophisticated code-breaking computers would take a month to piece together just one sentence.

‘One three kilo, roger that,’ said a female voice in answer to Spinks’s message.

Spinks kept an unblinking watch on the two men.

The female voice was that of Agatha, who preferred to be called Aggy even though she didn’t like either name. In fact, anyone calling her Agatha would generally be ignored, unless that person was a senior officer, of course. Neither name was her real one though. No operators used their real names in case they were ever captured and tortured. It seemed odd to have a truncation of a false name but she hadn’t known she would need a secret identity until the day she arrived at the clandestine selection camp. It was all so top secret. Only during that initial processing when her bags and clothes were confiscated and she was stripped and searched did they ask her for a cover name that she would use from that moment on, before she met any of the other recruits, whose identities were also secret, and then for the rest of her time as an undercover operative. If she passed the gruelling four-month selection process, that is. The impatient intelligence officer had given her seconds to come up with a name and she quickly chose Agatha because it was the name of a favourite aunt and then immediately decided she didn’t like it. By then it was too late. He had recorded it and gone into the next room where another recruit was being stripped and identity checked. It was Agatha, or Aggy, from that moment on.

Aggy was pretty and in her early twenties. Her face, specifically her eyes, was distinctly feline but everything else about her, her mannerisms and clothes, was masculine. She didn’t own a dress and always slouched in an unladylike way; a foot up on her seat or hung over the armrest. Her hands were nearly always in her trouser pockets and she could hardly stand still without leaning on anything close enough that could support her. During selection she kept her hair short and was known as the kid because she was like a pretty young boy. After arriving at the detachment her nickname, behind her back, was much less kind and threw into question her sexual preferences. Considering the profession she had chosen, what she went through to get selected, and what she was required to do, her tomboy qualities were as much an advantage as they were a disadvantage. She was expected to be as tough as any man, do a job that was at one time considered to be exclusively male, but do it as a woman. She was taught and tested as if she were a man, treated with the same level of harshness and brutality one expected of an undercover operative on a selection course famed for its toughness, without any respect for her less robust physique. Then at the end of it she was asked to cultivate her feminine side and was sent out to do the same job as the men but looking and acting like a woman. Her marked failure in the feminine department might have drawn more criticism from some of the hard-line operatives if she did not have such a pretty face. Women were recruited into the job because of a specific need for female undercover operatives; there was no point having one that looked like a man. In fact, many regarded it as manifestly dangerous.

Aggy sat in her dark brown Audi four-door in baggy jeans and black ski-jacket with her trainers up on the dash either side of the steering wheel. The car was tucked into a clearing in a small Scots pine wood just off the road a couple of miles from the church. Beside her was Ed, the crusty, worn-out operative who had dropped off Spinks early that morning. They were waiting for Spinks to cover the meeting, tell them his task was complete and that the church area was clear so that Ed could go back and pick him up. Aggy would drive up the road, drop off Ed a few hundred yards from the church, out of sight of persons or habitats, then he would walk up the road alone, pick up the car with Spinks inside and drive it back to the detachment headquarters.

It was one of those typical ‘long wait’ jobs and Aggy was peeved with it, not because of the job per se but with the team selection - or to be precise, Ed. The cover for a male and female operative waiting in a secluded area in a car was usually of the romantic nature. If anyone should happen past they could kiss and cuddle to avoid suspicion: car sex was a very common pastime in Northern Ireland. Ed could not have looked more unlikely as her boyfriend and on close inspection their little off-the-road tryst would have convinced few that they were anything remotely close to passionate about each other. He was gaunt with a potbelly, had a scruffy hombre moustache, and chain-smoked Woodbine roll-ups, a habit since he was thirteen that no doubt contributed to his dried and haggard face, which looked much older than his forty years. Ed abhorred any form of physical training. The last time he ran anywhere was on his selection course eighteen years previously.

As if the differences between him and Aggy were not great enough she found him to be the most boring and obnoxious moaner she had ever met. Out of those eighteen years in the military he had been in the actual field as an operative for six of them. The other twelve had been spent in various administrative posts in the Intelligence Corps, his parent unit. Ed had achieved the rank of sergeant simply because of his seniority in years. It had nothing to do with his abilities, which were limited. In fact, his move through the ranks could be solely attributed to the undercover unit: since he was often away he was assessed in absentia and because of the nature of his ‘special work’ his upgrade was a generous one. He was not a hinge-pin of the unit but as a dinosaur he did have his uses. He was the oldest operative on the books and one of the few who could quite naturally spend hours in a boozy, smoke-filled working man’s bar and blend in unnoticed. Unfortunately for Aggy, Ed saw himself as quite the sage and keeper of the undercover wisdom and he never let any of the ‘young pups’, as he referred to her generation of operatives, forget about all the years he had under his belt.

Ed was as peeved with this particular assignment as Aggy. He was one of the main complainers about women operatives and it did not help matters that he was referred to by other operatives during this particular partnership as the paedophile. This no doubt contributed to his reluctance to cuddle her when the situation required it. They had been forced to embrace three times since arriving just after four a.m. Ed was unshaved, stunk of cigarettes, his moustache was wet with the coffee he continually sipped from his flask, and he held her like she had an infectious rash. One of their cuddles lasted a gruesome fifteen minutes because of a horny couple that had turned up in two cars for an early morning shag.

‘They probably think I’m a bloody homosexual,’ he moaned as he held her. He offered his standard complaint more than once that day. ‘Weren’t any women when I first started this job eighteen years ago,’ he would say in his thick Yorkshire accent. ‘We made do wi’ wigs when we ’ad to . . . Any’ow, I don’t know any bloody women ooh sit in a car with their bloody feet up on the dashboard.’

Aggy would simply roll her eyes. It was pointless to even try to argue with him. Spinks’s communication was therefore a welcome sign that the task was nearly over and they could dump each other.

‘I confirm O’Farroll and one unknown male,’ Spinks whispered into his lapel, O’Farroll being the older man. He pushed a button fitted into the rear light module.The shutter of a camera, built into another light, silently clicked, capturing O’Farroll in the wide-frame shot talking with the stranger, and the film rolled on to the next frame. The other man was undoubtedly inferior in rank to O’Farroll, who was the Real IRA’s quartermaster and second in command of the War Council. That was a fair assumption since all of the RIRA godfathers were known and it was unlikely a new and superior one would have arrived on the scene without military intelligence finding out.

The stranger laughed at a comment O’Farroll made and then did something that unnerved Spinks. He looked directly towards the rear of Spinks’s car for what he felt was a little too long. Every undercover operative had a well-developed sense of paranoia, which they have to learn to control. The two men looked relaxed and jocular as if just passing the time of day, but Spinks, an experienced watcher of people, sensed a definite edge between them.

A few minutes later the stranger did it again. His eyes wandered away from O’Farroll to snatch a glance directly at the back of Spinks’s car. Spinks took another photograph and stared at the stranger, trying to think of anything he could possibly be looking at. A car then pulled up and stopped in the road, blocking Spinks’s view of the two men. It stayed for half a minute, its engine running, and when it drove away O’Farroll had gone, leaving the stranger by himself in the road. The man paused for a moment, sliding his hands into his coat pockets. Then as he turned to move away, once again he looked directly towards Spinks before moving out of sight.

A troubled feeling rippled through Spinks. Something inside was tapping out a warning on his nervous system. Experience in this deadly game had taught him to make allowances for his imagination, but there was a limit. He tried to stem the trickle of concern, reasoning that there was nothing he could do that would not blow his cover. Since the lid of the boot was locked, his only way out was to push the back seat forward and climb into the car. If he gave into his paranoia and there was nothing nefarious going on outside, he would blow the mission. If his fears were justified his actions would be validated. If he was wrong, the detachment’s bosses would understand but then they would suspect Spinks’s nerve had withered, which was not uncommon in this line of work. He could then say goodbye to the extended tour of duty he was hoping for. His three-year stint in the unit was up in two months and he wanted to stay on for another three years. Hell, he wanted to stay on for ever. There was no way he could go back to the regular military, not now, not after life in the detachment, and the thought of civilian life was unbearable.

Spinks came from the Air Force, where he was an ordinary airman, a general duties gash-hand. It was hard enough for him then, having to wear a uniform every day, and keep it clean. He had joined the RAF after he left school because he could think of nothing else in the world to do, a lost soul with no ambitions or motivations. He was sent on the detachment selection course only because his boss had received a Ministry of Defence circular asking for volunteers for ‘special duties’ and saw it as a great opportunity to get rid of the disorderly airman. Six months later Spinks was in his new life. To go back to that mundane existence after having been an undercover agent would be impossible. If he had to leave he would go outside and become a civvy, but life would no longer have purpose or meaning for him.

He decided that if there was something going on outside, if there was danger, he would wait until there was no doubt, even if that made it a bit late to do anything about it. Such was the life he had chosen.

Spinks was not a top-shelf operative. Not that there was an official ranking or ratings list. But there was an unofficial one, in the opinions of his fellow rank and file. There were many tales of daring deeds but nearly all were of operatives who had passed into history, some stories even mythical. It was the dream of most undercover agents to have at least one great event that would propel them into that exclusive club of superheroes, but few came even close. One had to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and come through it with some kind of positive result other than having just survived.The hero status thrust upon undercover operatives by the rest of the military minions by virtue of their mysterious and dangerous job was not enough for some. To be a superhero amongst heroes was the dizzy and largely unobtainable height many fantasised about.The more direct route to fame was, of course, through a kill. But one kill did not ensure fame, although it was a good start. Real fame came with multiple kills. Lucky kills didn’t count either.

But Spinks did not share those dreams, not like that anyhow. He knew his limitations. He would not even imagine being up there with the likes of Stratton for instance, who had several kills; four official since he arrived in the province, but everyone knew about at least two others.Then there were the rumoured countless kills from Stratton’s ‘other military employment’, dozens some said, but no one in the detachment would ever learn the truth about them, not from Stratton anyhow. Spinks did dream of fame.What was unusual was that he had a plan to get himself some. He discovered that after volunteering for the first couple of more unpopular assignments, and carrying them out satisfactorily and without complaint his name was being mentioned in operations meetings and team leaders were requesting him for specific tasks, ones that no one else particularly wanted to do. He had made himself the go-to guy for the crap stake-outs. He had found himself a niche. He had carved himself a unique and positive reputation, which was more than could be said for most. Undercover agents came and went but few were remembered and even fewer talked about by later generations. If an operative was required to be up to his neck in shit to do an assignment, literally, then Spinks was your man.

Spinks suddenly realised he had not given the clear for Ed to come and drive him away. He chastised himself for being so stupid, found the prestel and whispered into his collar.

‘One three kilo, this is four two Charlie. O’Farroll is gone mobile towards south. I am clear for pick-up,’ he whispered.

Aggy pushed the concealed send button wired into the framework of the car just below her seat. ‘One three kilo, roger that. Towards your location now.’

‘Four two Charlie,’ Spinks acknowledged, releasing the prestel and trying to relax. He figured Ed should take about seven minutes. Then he sensed something, or perhaps it was more like he felt it. It seemed as if the side of the car had been gently brushed against. He tried to extend his senses to the outside of the car. It happened again, a gentle movement against the shell. Spinks hardly breathed, frozen like a rabbit with a snake peering in through the entrance to its hole.

‘Now?’ she asked, irritated with his timing.

‘I’d better ’ave a little sprinkle before I pick up old Spinksy. Long drive back to camp,’ he said and casually walked over to the bushes undoing his fly.

‘Dick,’ she muttered to herself and left the engine running. Not that there was any rush. It was a low-key, relatively relaxed operation, a Sunday morning job in just about every way. Spinks could wait another few minutes. She was feeling short tempered with Ed simply because he annoyed her. She was impatient to be rid of him. There was nothing else on her agenda for that day. She would do her small amount of washing, clean up her tiny room that was barely large enough to take the single bed, desk and wardrobe, then perhaps fit in an aerobic session although she did not feel in the mood just yet. She could check and see if any new videos had arrived, that’s if no one else was hogging the TV room. Then she remembered, of course, it was Sunday. The blokes would be watching bloody football all afternoon. There was that long overdue letter to her mother she kept putting off. It wasn’t that she had a problem with her mother; it was the letters themselves. They were all lies and getting more and more difficult to write. It was hard for her to think of new things to invent. Aggy’s mother thought she was in Germany attached to a tank regiment but Aggy had never actually been to Germany. She could never tell her mother what she really did, not while she was still in the job. Her mother would go daft with the constant worry.

She looked at the back of Ed, who was taking his sweet time. ‘Come on, wally,’ she muttered to herself.

As Ed climbed in Aggy pulled smartly away, throwing him back into his seat and causing his flask to fall off the dash and on to his lap.

‘Steady,’ he complained. ‘Where’s the bloody race?’

In retaliation he produced a tin of tobacco, removed a pre-made roll-up, lit it and puffed on it without inhaling until the car was filled with smoke. She rolled down her window, biting her lip and counting the minutes she had left with him.

‘That’s tactically unsound, driving with your window open,’ he said dryly.

She wondered what she had done to deserve this.

The engine suddenly roared to life, two doors slammed shut and Spinks was thrown back as the car screeched away. It must have driven on the grass verge for several yards because it bounced horrendously, tossing Spinks around inside as if he was shooting rapids in a barrel. The gears changed quickly as the car built up speed, returned to the road and swerved as it accelerated hard along it. Spinks lost his prestel and weapon in the turmoil. He searched around for the gun and had just put his hand on it when the car took a sharp corner, bounced over the verge, and slammed him into the roof of the boot. If the lid opened he would be thrown out for sure. He gave up on the gun and found his prestel by following the wire from his sleeve.

‘Four two Charlie . . .’ he managed to say before being flattened once again into the roof as the car hit another bump. ‘Four two Charlie, I’m mobile! The car’s been nicked! I repeat, I am mobile and the car’s been fuckin’ stooooleeeen!’

‘Four two Charlie, this is zero alpha, confirm your car is mobile.’

‘I’m mobile awright,’ Spinks managed to say between severely winding bumps. ‘We’re goin’ like the bleedin’ clappers! ’

‘Zero alpha, roger that,’ said the signaller, or bleep as they were affectionately called, and continued as if commentating on a bowls match. ‘One three kilo, this is zero alpha.’

Aggy went for the send button but Ed pushed her hand aside and hit it himself. ‘One three kilo here. We’re still toward four two Charlie’s static location, or previous static location. That’s not me driving.’ The way Ed spoke in his slow, laborious manner, trying to be calm and stating the obvious at such a tense moment added to Aggy’s list of Ed’s irritating habits.

‘There it is!’ she suddenly shouted as she recognised Ed’s car heading towards them on the other side of the road. As it tore past at speed they could see only one person in front and possibly another in the back seat.

Aggy pushed the send button. ‘One three kilo, four two Charlie just passed us from red four to blue seven doing about eighty, possibly two up. I’m in pursuit.’

She hit the brakes slowing the car just enough to throw it into a ‘J’ turn, which was messy. The driver’s side rear wheel spun mud in the verge as she dropped the gear and put her foot down. The engine roared. The car inched forward, finally made traction and screeched up the road. Ed held on tightly throughout the manoeuvre, one hand gripping the bottom of his seat, the other outstretched against the dashboard. His roll-up dropped out of his mouth as his foot pressed firmly into the floor, trying to push down a brake pedal that was not there.

Spinks pushed out with his arms and legs in an effort to stop being thrown around but the heavier bumps did whatever they wanted to him. The MPK5 hit him hard on the head as it made its way around the boot. He made another effort to get a hold of his pistol but it was like trying to grab a leaping fish.There was a wrenching sound and Spinks was almost blinded by the sudden light as the back seat was ripped down. A powerful arm reached in, grabbed him by his hair, and brutally dragged him halfway into the car as they drove at top speed.

‘Come on, me little Pink,’ the man said in an Irish accent.

The man moved his hand to Spinks’ throat and leaned his full weight on to it. Spinks’s face swelled as he choked and his eyes filled with liquid and went out of focus as the man kept the weight on him while he searched him. He found the small, flat radio in its harness inside Spinks’s jacket and ripped it away, pulling the wires from it. He stuck a large finger into Spinks’s ear, dug around and pulled out the tiny wireless earpiece. The man seemed to know exactly what he was looking for and where to find it. He ripped open Spinks’s shirt and felt under his armpits and around his body; he undid Spinks’s trouser belt, pulled it out as if trying to start a boat engine, and tossed it to one side; he yanked open Spinks’s trousers, tearing apart the zipper as he pulled them down to his knees.

‘Where is it?’ the man shouted as he quickly checked Spinks’s bare legs. He brutally turned Spinks on to his front and ripped up his shirt to expose his back, pushing his hand under it to feel his skin up and over his shoulders. He pulled Spinks’s underpants down far enough to expose his arse then felt around Spinks’s hips. ‘Where is it, Pink?’ he repeated threateningly. He pulled up one foot after the other and ripped Spinks’s shoes and socks off, inspecting each shoe quickly before tossing it away.

He pulled Spinks over on to his back again and gripped his throat, pressing down hard on it. ‘You know what I’m looking for, Pink, don’t you? Where is it?’

Spinks gripped the man’s wrist to try and take some pressure off his throat and shook his head in ignorance of the demand. The man shoved the end of a pistol so hard into Spinks’s cheek he shattered a molar. ‘Where is it?’ he said again. Then as an afterthought, he lifted up Spinks’s underpants with the end of his pistol to expose his balls and penis.

‘If I focken’ find it on you I’ll blow your focken dick off,’ the man said sticking the gun back in Spinks’s face. ‘Is that clear, boyo?’

Spinks blinked hard as his eyes came back into focus. It was the stranger who had been outside the church with O’Farroll.