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back and everything gets put out of synch.’
    â€˜You actually yelled at Steve and Paul.’ ‘Let’s hope they pull their full weight next week.’ When he tried the door that night, Slater discovered Ann had put the security deadlock on – a matching deadlock she’d insisted he have installed the day after the letter arrived, on the art gallery she ran on Main Street, as well as CCTV cameras on both – and when she answered the door, after assuring herself who it was, Ann said, ‘I thought you’d come in through the garage. You think it’s a good idea to leave the car out?’
    Saying nothing Slater went back to the car, triggered the garage door lift and put the vehicle away, entering the house through the inner connecting door. Finally inside the house he saw she’d slipped the bolts, as well as resetting the deadlock. The following morning, the episode in his mind, Slater found himself instinctively checking for surveillance as he drove into Frederick. There was a quick flare of irritation, just as quickly dispelled. What was wrong with that? he asked himself.
    According to Peebles’ schedule Mason would still be in the penitentiary and he genuinely believed what he’d told Ann, that there was no conceivable possibility of Mason ever locating them, even if her former husband attempted to do so, which Slater doubted just as strongly. But he’d had the specialized training and attained the expertise, an expertise he still utilized to a limited extent in the business he now ran. He’d even taken that expertise – or caution – into his business. To avoid the need for a large, potentially curious work staff Slater designed the security, but subcontracted the actual fitting and installation to others.
    Why not maintain – or rather recover – all his other expertise, Slater now asked himself? There was no excuse for letting that craft wither out of shape, as he’d acknowledged from the most recent camping weekend that he’d neglected the physical fitness he’d once so strenuously kept up. Hadn’t one of his personal, professional mantras been that an all important edge should be constantly honed, to remain sharp, not allowed to become blunted? It shouldn’t be difficult, to bring it all back. Everything was still there, except for the back-up of the omnipotent KGB. His skills were just dormant, like a learned language was initially difficult to recall to fluency if it wasn’t regularly spoken.
    It wasn’t a decision he’d tell Ann: wasn’t sure, even, if he’d keep to it himself. Despite their solemn mutual undertaking always to be honest with each other, Ann had kept things – far more relevant things – from him: I’ve waited for the past 15 years! echoed in Slater’s mind, not just the words but the virulence with which she’d said them. He wouldn’t be withholding as she had withheld from him, for so many years. To tell her, to hint even, what he was only vaguely considering would cause her much greater worry than the letter had.
    Hadn’t he been waiting for the past fifteen years for Mason’s release, complacent until now that he still had another five years to go until he needed to confront the possible repercussions? No! Slater determined at once. Mason wasn’t a physically violent man. He’d looked capable of it but it had been a pretence, like so much else about Jack Mason was pretence; the way he’d convinced any woman under the age of sixty with a faint pulse that he was the stud upon whom James Bond had been modelled. At the man’s trial it had emerged that almost invariably Mason intentionally let slip to any woman he was trying to seduce that he was a CIA agent who’d risked his life in Moscow and Vienna and Prague, although not that it was in the Russian capital that he’d been photographically entrapped, literally with his trousers