After that,

everything started to go ratshit. The ship's captain and the ops officer took one look at the girl - still spitting and snarling - and the kit she had with her, and told Andy and me that on no account should we talk to anyone. I described to them the scene in the back of the truck, how I'd guessed she had a homing device - which was what it seemed the thing was - and there were long faces as the officers tried to figure out how an enemy agent had managed to breach their 'impenetrable' security cordon. No one knew how she had got on, or whether it was at Portsmouth or Ascension Island where the ship had stopped en route. Small wonder we had been taking such losses to air attack.