A man with an angular face and a weary voice had greeted him. He seemed to have the organisation in hand and had told him, ‘I understand people call you ‘Badger’. If you have no particular hostility to the name then that’s what we’ll use. If you don’t know somebody’s name and title – and you don’t know mine – what would you call them?’

He’d said that if he didn’t know the name of a man who ran a show he’d refer to him as ‘boss’.

‘Oh, I’d like that… and over there, that’s Foxy. I don’t think anyone else will need identifying. Foxy and Badger. Very good. We’ll talk a bit when we get there, but in the mean time I’d be grateful for your patience.’

They had been led by ground crew towards the Lear jet, its engines ticking over and the steps down. All bizarre, but Danny ‘Badger’ Baxter was not one to be fazed by lack of information. The flight was smooth, they were above the clouds and…

He had shown his documentation at the gate, and the RAF police hadn’t jotted down any of the details listed on his Box ID. He’d been told to park his wheels in a space outside the perimeter fence, like no one wanted to acknowledge that he had ever been here. Then he’d been taken in a minibus to a prefabricated departure annex. He was half dead on his feet, had left Builth before five, reached the airbase a half-hour before dawn and hadn’t spoken to either of the other men waiting for the flight call. He had almost been asleep when the boss had spoken to him.

When he’d left home to take up the work in Wales, locked the door of his bed-sit in the hostel the police used in Bristol, he had been wearing clothes that could either be described as rugged or vagrant’s gear, but he had clean socks and underpants that probably stifled most of the smell; he looked ragged, and felt out of sorts because of it. He’d noted that the other two had eyed him as if they expected dog-shit on his shoes and fleas in his clothing. He was unshaven and hadn’t run a comb through his hair.