Run Around by Brian Freemantle Page B

pretended to be unconscious when he tore at her pants and then drove himself into her, splitting her. And while he grunted and pumped above her she’d taken his own knife from his belt, halfway down his thighs, and put her arms around him in what he’d thought to be belated passion to be better able to stab him to death, plunging the knife into his back again and again like he’d plunged into her.
    Sulafeh had an orgasm, doing it. She’d never had one since: certainly never during the countless couplings that had been necessary for her to insinuate and manoeuvre herself into the favour of the senior hierarchy to achieve the role she now occupied. She wondered if she might know the sensation again, at the moment of what was going to happen in Geneva. It was an often longed-for feeling.

Chapter Seven
    Four of Johnson’s exposures had been developable but the face of the jogger who picked up the drop was only shown on one of them and then indistinctly, as the man half-turned to run on from snatching up the package. Two others showed his back view, as he went towards Primrose Hill Road – in one the name was actually visible – and the fourth at the moment of his mounting the bicycle but again completely turned away.
    â€˜Bungled!’ complained Harkness. ‘How the hell could it have happened!’
    â€˜Easily,’ said Charlie at once, in defence of a friend. ‘It was a brilliantly carried-out collection.’
    The Director was wedged as usual against the window-sill, with his back to the depressing view. The roses today were yellow-hearted Piccadilly, with pink edging, and Wilson wore one in the buttonhole of his jacket to match those arranged in the window vase. Charlie decided that the Director’s tweed suit was as bagged and shapeless as his. Funny how clothes collapsed like that.
    â€˜Tell me why you think this is significant: the sort of thing you’ve been looking for,’ demanded the Director. ‘Why couldn’t whoever it is have been an English contact of the Russians that MI5 haven’t yet got on to?’
    â€˜It was brilliant, like I said,’ insisted Charlie. ‘So the man is a complete professional. No amateur – and an Englishman would have been an amateur suborned by the Russians, not properly trained – would have done it like this.’
    â€˜What’s so completely professional?’ persisted Harkness.
    â€˜Becoming a jogger in the first place,’ set out Charlie. ‘The first essential is becoming invisible, which is exactly what he did. Johnson openly admits that he’d accepted the joggers in the park that afternoon: wasn’t really seeing them any more. But think of the other advantages it gave the man. He was entitled to run, because he was dressed for it. So having made the pick-up he did run, like hell Johnson says. But that would not have looked unusual to any passer-by because joggers do sprint. What it did mean is that the man could literally run away and any Watcher would have disclosed himself, setting out in open pursuit: so it was an abort-or-continue test as well. He was actually looking for us!’
    â€˜I hardly consider using a bicycle professional,’ argued the deputy.
    â€˜It was absolutely professional,’ refuted Charlie. ‘The distance from the drop to where the bicycle was parked is just over half a mile: Johnson later carried out a positive measurement. So he would have begun to flag, after sprinting so far. But on the bicycle he could carry on running – but remain invisible to anyone he passed because he was dressed exactly for riding as he was for jogging – and outpace anyone trying to follow on foot.’
    â€˜What about anyone in a car?’ seized Wilson.
    â€˜Possibly the cleverest part,’ said Charlie. ‘Elsworthy Road runs into The Avenue. And that joins Prince Albert Road, at a junction controlled by traffic lights. The change gives