‘So what’s got into you?’

He kissed her. After a couple of moments she warmed to it.

‘I’ve missed you,’ he said when their mouths split apart.

‘I’ve missed you too.’

‘Come upstairs with me.’

She had started to rub at the crotch of his jeans with one hand. The other worked at the buckle on his belt. ‘What’s wrong with right here?’

He hesitated. The passion in the moment guttered down. She looked up from what her hands were doing, terrifyingly attuned to the confusion fogging his head.

‘Chris?’

‘I don’t want you getting carpet burns,’ he said, and hauled her off her feet. The classic wedding threshold lift. One hand went to her breast, cupping and the blonde gobbles down Liz Linshaw ‘s nipple, smearing crimson lipstick

She laughed.

‘Well, well. Romance.’

Staggering a little, he got her upstairs. They crashed onto the bed and shed their clothes. Carla turned towards him, naked, and he felt a tiny crystal of warmth drip and slide somewhere deep inside him. He had forgotten how beautiful her body was, the broad-shouldered, long-boned pale expanse of it, the flat width of stomach and the full breasts above, breasts that would have been large on a smaller-framed woman but here the swollen hemispheres, flesh taut to breaking point, kneaded by red taloned hands.

He blinked and forced the image aside. Focused on the woman he was with, slotting into the old, comfortable sequence of postures and pressures, the places she liked to be touched, the eventual coupling

Liz Linshaw ‘s mouth, burrowing

He could not lose it. Even when Carla got on her hands and knees ahead of him the way they both liked to finish, he fantasized the other two women into existence on the bed with them. He imagined them vampire-like, clutching and sucking at Carla’s flesh and his own, and he came with that last image printed indelibly across his eyes.

They left then, dragging his post-coital warmth away with them like the fur of a newly slaughtered animal. And afterwards, when Carla shifted and murmured and tightened her arms around him, all he could feel was trapped inside something that wasn’t his.

‘This is fucking great stuff.’

Mike Bryant paced about the office space, leafing through the sheaf of hardcopy. Chris sat in a corner armchair and watched him. He hadn’t slept well, and there was a spreading ache behind his left eye. He was having a hard time getting up to the same level of enthusiasm as Bryant.

‘I mean, Jesus, these guys have got some grievances. Just look at it. Better than a dozen different insurgent leaders and every single one has got family tortured to death or disappeared. Fantastic. Primary Emotional Motivation, PE fucking M, right out of Reed and Mason. Textbook diehard revolutionaries. They’ll never quit. Listen, we only need to hold about a third, no, less than a third, of this stuff over Echevarria’s head, and he should cave right in.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘Of course he will. What’s wrong with you? We’d only need to persuade about three of these groups to team up, give them some second-hand Kalashnikovs out of stock - and Christ knows we’ve got enough of those - they’d piss all over Echevarria’s regular army.’

Chris’s temple throbbed. ‘Yeah, but what if he doesn’t scare.’

‘Chris, come on.’ Mike looked at him reproachfully. ‘You’re ruining my day here.’

‘What if, Mike. Fucking think about it.’

‘Jesus, you got out of bed the wrong side today. Alright.’ Bryant threw himself into another armchair opposite, dumped his feet on the coffee table between. ‘Let’s be grown up about it. What if. Contingency planning. Like I said, we wave about a third of these guys in his face.

And we tell him there are double as many more where those came from, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Then, if he doesn’t see sense, we’ll use someone out of the other two-thirds. That way, whatever reprisals he takes, he’ll be hitting the wrong people. Meanwhile, we talk to the front runner, and if necessary set him up with what he needs. That’d be, let’s see.’ Bryant flipped through the hardcopy again. ‘This guy Arbenz maybe, the People’s Liberation Front for whatever it was. Or Barranco’s Revolutionary Brigade. Or Diaz. They’re all strong contenders. You were there. Who do you make for the best bet?’

‘Well, not Arbenz. He got shot up in a gunship raid a couple of weeks ago. Didn’t you catch the bulletin?’

‘Fucked if I remember.’ Bryant snapped his fingers. ‘Wait a minute, that business with the villages in the south. Echevarria’s been strafing them again, fucking shithead. You know he made me a direct promise those BAe helicopters wouldn’t be used against civilians this year. Lucky we didn’t issue a press statement on that one.’

‘Yeah, well, your BAe gunships shattered Arbenz’s legs from the hips down, and apparently they were running that bioware ammunition, the stuff we saw at Farnborough back in January, slugs coated with immune-system inhibitors. Very nasty. They’ve got him in a field hospital in the mountains, but the last I heard from Lopez, it’s touch and go if he’ll make it.’ Chris rubbed at his eye and wondered about painkillers. ‘And even if he does, he’ll be in no condition to conduct a campaign any time soon.’

‘Okay, so that’s Arbenz out. What about Barranco?’

‘Yeah, I’d leave Barranco alone too, unless you absolutely have to use him. I met him once. He’s committed, and he’s short on ego - tough to win over.’

Bryant pulled a face. ‘You met Diaz too, right?’

‘Couple of times, yeah. He’s a better bet. Very pragmatic, strong sense of his place in history. He wants his name on a statue somewhere before he dies. Oh, and he’s a real Shakespeare nut.’

‘You’re winding me up.’

‘No, seriously. He can quote the fucking stuff. Got a scholarship on some bullshit liberal arts exchange programme in the States when he was a student. He gave me Hamlet, Macbeth, whatsit, King Lear, you name it. All word-perfect.’ Chris shrugged. ‘Well, sounded like it was word-perfect anyway. What do I know? Anyway, he told me, get this; he always wanted to visit Britain and see the mother of parliaments.’1

‘What?’ Bryant barked laughter. ‘You are winding me up.’

‘I swear. Mother of parliaments. That’s what he said.’

‘The mother of parliaments. Man, I love it. I almost hope Echevarria doesn’t cave in, just so we can have this guy across.’

Makin, perhaps predictably, was less amused by it all. He went through the stapled paperwork, one snatched-aside sheet at a time, without saving a word, then tossed the whole thing onto his polished desktop so it slid away from him. He looked across the desk to where Chris and Mike sat in steel frame chairs, bracketing him. He focused on Bryant.

‘I seiously don’t think this is the way to go, Mike.’

Bryant wasn’t up for it. He said nothing, just rolled his head in Chris’s direction.

‘Listen, Nick,’ Chris leaned forward. ‘I’ve worked the NAME before and I’m telling you—‘

‘Youah telling me nothing. I’ve been working Latin American CI longer than you’ve been here. I took top commission in the Americas market last yeah—‘

Bryant cleared his throat. ‘Year before last.’

‘I’m in it for this year as well, Mike.’ Makin’s voice stayed even, but behind the steel glasses his face looked betrayed. ‘When the unwesolveds come in.’

‘Ah, come on Nick,’ Chris felt a tight, feral jag of pleasure as he swung the comeback. ‘That was last season. First thing you ever said to me, man. Can’t live off stuff like that indefinitely: It’s a whole new quarter. Time for fresh meat. Another new appoach. Remember that?’

Makin looked away. ‘I don’t remember saying that, no.’

‘Well, you did, Nick.’ Bryant got up and brushed something off the shoulder of his suit. ‘I was there. Now, this is no longer under discussion. We are going to do it Chris’s way, because, to be honest, your Echevarria game plan is making me tired.’