"Two men," he said. "They came looking for you."

Derek and Ian both looked at me accusingly.

"Who were they?" Ian asked him.

"I don't know," Derek said. "They were wearing those ski masks, like balaclavas, but I don't think either of them was very young."

"Why not?"

"Something about the way they moved," Derek said.

I, meanwhile, believed I knew exactly who they were, and Derek was right, neither of them was young. Two desperate men in their sixties, trying to recover the money they thought they had successfully stolen, but which I had then stolen back. But where was Alex Reece?

"Are you sure there were just two of them?" I asked. "Not three?"

"I only saw two," Derek said. "Why? Do you know who they are?" He and Ian looked accusingly at me once more.

"What exactly did they say?" I asked, trying to ignore their stares.

"I don't really remember. It all happened so fast," he said. "They had somehow got into the house and were in our bedroom. One of them poked me with the barrels of a shotgun to wake me up." He was almost in tears, and I could understand how frightened he and my mother must have been. "They said they wanted you, but we told them we didn't know where you were. We said we thought you were in London."

So not telling my mother where I was had saved me a visit from the ski-masked duo. But at what cost to her?

"But why did they take her with them?" I asked, but I already knew the answer. They knew that I'd come to them if they had my mother. "Did they tell you where they were taking her?"

"No," Derek said. "But they did tell me that you would know where she would be."

"Have you called the police?" Ian asked.

"No police," Derek said urgently. "They told me that I mustn't call the police. Call the police and Josephine dies, that's what they said. They told me to think about it for a while and then to call you." He nodded at me. "But I didn't know where you were, and I don't even have your phone number." He was crying now. "All I could think of was asking Ian."

I would know where she would be. That's what the kidnappers had told Derek.

I would know where she would be.

And I did.

I approached Greystone Stables, not from the road and up the driveway as my enemy might have expected but from the opposite direction over the undulating farmland, and through the woods on the hill above.

In war, tactical surprise is essential, as it had been during the recapture of the Falkland Islands. The Argentine forces, far superior in number, had believed that it was impossible for the British to approach Stanley, the island capital, across the swampy, uncharted interior, and had dug in their defenses for an attack from the sea. How wrong they were. The Royal Marines and Parachute Regiment's "yomp" across the island, carrying eighty-pound Bergens over more than fifty-six miles in three days, has since become the stuff of folklore in the army. It had been one of the major factors in that victory.

In my case, I was just glad not to have an eighty-pound Bergen on my back.

I stopped a few feet short of the limit of the trees and knelt down on my left knee. I looked again at my watch with its luminous face. More than two hours had passed since Derek had arrived so distressed at the door of Ian's flat. It was now three forty-two a.m. The windless night was beautifully clear, with a wonderful canopy of twinkling stars. The moon's phase was just past first quarter, and it was sinking rapidly towards the western horizon to my left. In forty minutes or so, the moon would be down completely, and the blackness of the night would deepen for a couple of hours before the arrival of the sun, and the dawning of another day.

I liked the darkness. It was my friend.

In the last of the moonlight I studied the layout of the deserted house and stables spread out below me. I could see no lights, and no movement, but I was sure this was where the two men had meant when they'd told Derek I would know where my mother would be.

But would she actually be here, or had it been a ruse to bring me to this place on a wild-goose chase, to fall willingly into their waiting hands while my mother was actually incarcerated somewhere else?

It had taken all my limited powers of persuasion to convince Ian not to call the police immediately. Derek too had begged him not to.

"But we must call the police," Ian had said with certainty.

"We will," I'd replied. "But give me a chance to free my mother first."

Did I really think that Jackson Warren and Peter Garraway would harm her, or even kill her? I thought it unlikely, but I couldn't know for sure. Desperate people do desperate things, and I remembered only too well how they had left me to die horribly from starvation and dehydration.

I had left Derek and Ian in the latter's flat, Derek cuddling a bottle of brandy he had returned briefly to Kauri House to collect, and Ian with a list of detailed instructions, including one to telephone the police immediately if he hadn't heard from me by six-thirty in the morning.

They had both watched with rising interest and astonishment as I had made my mission preparations. First I'd changed into my dark clothes, together with the all-black Converse basketball boots, the right one requiring me to remove my false leg to force the canvas shoe over the plastic foot. Next, I had gathered the equipment into my little rucksack: black garden ties, scissors, duct tape, the red-colored first-aid kit, the length of chain with the padlock still attached, a torch and a box of matches, all of them wrapped up in a large navy blue towel to prevent any noise when I moved. This time I did borrow one of Ian's kitchen knives, a large, sharp carving knife, and I'd placed it on top of everything else in the rucksack, ready for easy access. I had then borrowed a pair of racing binoculars from my mother's office, and finally, I'd removed my sword from its protective cardboard tube and scabbard.

"Surely you're not going to use that," Derek had said, with his large brandy-filling eyes staring at the three-foot-long blade.

"Not unless I have to," I had replied casually, as I'd rubbed black boot polish onto the blade to reduce its shine. But I would use it, I thought, and without hesitation, if the need arose.

Killing the enemy had been my raison d'etre for the past fifteen years, and I'd been good at it. Values and Standards of the British Army demanded it. Paragraph ten states that "All soldiers must be prepared to use lethal force to fight: to take the lives of others, and knowingly to risk their own."

But was I still a soldier? Was this a war? And was I knowingly risking my own life or that of my mother?

I wasn't sure about the answers to any of those questions, but I knew one thing for certain. I felt alive again, whole and intact, and eager for the fray.

I scanned the buildings below me once more, using my mother's binoculars, searching for a light or a movement, any sign that would give away the enemy's position, but there was still nothing.

Was I wrong? Was this not the place they had meant?

I had skirted around the walls of Lambourn Hall on my way to this point, but it had been dark, locked and seemingly deserted.

They had to be here.

The moonlight was disappearing fast, and I would soon need to be on the move down across the open ground between my current location and the rear of the stables. I took one last look through the binoculars, and there it was, a movement, maybe only a stretching of a cramped leg or a warming rub of a freezing foot but a telltale movement nevertheless. Someone was waiting for me in the line of trees just to the right of the house as I looked. From that position he would have commanded a fine view of the driveway and the road below.