The Operative

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In a work of fiction it will be no surprise to anyone that none of the characters in this book are other than the product of my imagination. If there are any resemblances to any living persons, they are entirely accidental and unintended. Equally readers will appreciate that for obvious reasons I have deliberately disguised a number of technical details of the composition of the explosives.

1

Stratton climbed from a local taxi outside a row of detached homes just off the Wareham road in Poole, Dorset, paid the driver, and headed along a gravel track towards the front door of the largest house. His battered old leather jacket was draped over an arm in the crook of which he held a bottle of inexpensive wine. A large present splendidly finished off with a red-ribbon bow rested in the other. Stratton owned a car, an eight-year-old Jeep that he’d had for several years, but he had been away on an assignment for the past three months and when he’d tried to start it that morning for the first time since his return the engine wouldn’t turn over. He wasted little time with it, refusing to squander his first day home tinkering with his ride, so he called a mate in the camp’s motor transport department who said he would take a look at it the following day. Then Stratton spent the morning shopping for a new pair of trousers, a shirt and a pair of shoes, getting a trim for his tussled dark hair, and generally being self-indulgent.

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