by Adam Hall
‘How is the mad Arab?’
‘Comment?’
‘L’Arabe fou, comment va-t-il?’
She spoke English perfectly well: she was the girl who’d fixed me up here yesterday and she’d talked to Vickers, the, big oil-driller; but she was annoyed because I wanted my hand done differently.
‘Je ne comprends pas, m’sieur. Ecartez les doigts, s’il vous plait.’
And she didn’t want to talk about the mad Arab, either. That was all right but there were one or two things beginning to needle me and I didn’t like it: the American said just now that it wasn’t anything to do with ergot and I could believe him. They were checking the bread supplies as a formality while a more specialized medical team was trying to find out the real cause of the trouble. There’d been other Arabs, Vickers had told me, and what I wanted to know is how they’d get anywhere near that aeroplane without first knowing it was there, and how they’d survived and reached Kaifra without broadcasting the fact, because even in delirium they’d surely mention the plane, and that would have initiated an immediate air search.
But it hadn’t. The Arab had been here in Kaifra at 15.00 hours yesterday raving about the ‘mountains’ and ‘great birds’ out there but he couldn’t have mentioned the freighter or the Algerian squadrons would have overflown the area much sooner.
Blank period and someone held me suddenly, tried hard to surface, no go. Memory throwing images for me but no sequence, the dazzle of the headlights blinding and fading and the trays on the waiters’ hands and the storm of dark plumage against my face, keeping me upright, holding me steady, could hear my breathing, its rhythm slowing, a cold compress on my forehead, her eyes worried, Diane’s, poor little bitch, been sitting prettily in the British Embassy ordering buns for the Queen’s Birthday and then the bastards had shanghaied her and now she was having to wet-nurse something the vultures had left, not at all nice.
‘All right’
They still kept a hold on me and I had to say it again I’m all right till they’d let me go, difficult patient, yes, I grant you, but don’t like being held up, demoralizing.
When the nurse had gone off I said:
‘Go and tell them.’
‘Tell them what?’
She thought I hadn’t been listening. The nurse had finally had enough of me and she was going to bring help and get me undressed and into a bed.
‘If they try anything I’m going to smash the place up so make sure they understand because it’ll save a lot of noise.’
She went off a bit impatiently and I had five minutes to straighten out, steady deep breaths, muscles relaxed, one or two questions, why wasn’t Loman here, he must be packing us up at base, the Arab could have been working in strict hush for the opposition yes but in delirium he’d have broken down, shouted aeroplane all over the place, something didn’t quite add up in this area.
Opened my eyes and she was there again, her eyes worried, waiting for me to start collapsing but I wasn’t going to any more, didn’t intend to, the organism was trying to take over and I was going to let it.
‘You tell them?’
‘Yes.’ She stuck her small hands into the windcheater but she was obviously ready to pull them out fast to do something if I keeled over again and that annoyed me and I got off the bed and went a couple of paces and leaned on the wall and she had more sense than to help me, could see my face.
Very good being on the feet again. Therapeutic.
‘Who was the doctor?’
‘He’s visiting the American camps.’
‘Where did Chirac land me?’
‘At South 6.’
‘And brought the doctor along with me?’
‘He’ll be able to shoot that stuff into the Arabs now.’
‘Yes.’
‘The last one died in the night.’
Turned away as she said it and turned back when I didn’t answer. She looked quietly furious, not a bit worried now. I said
‘Getting on your nerves, is it, all this?’
Surprise, comprehension, frustration: she had wonderful eyes and you could read everything in them and that was why they’d been such bastards to use her, reaction-concealment capacity sub-zero and her hands too small to lift a gun.
‘Do you always go on till you drop?’
‘Oh Christ,’ I said, ‘don’t you start.’ I leaned off the wall and tried walking about, not too bad, no pratfall. ‘Listen, they were in poor condition anyway, what d’you expect, a diet of dates all their life, or they inhaled more of it than I did. You’ll have to find something better than me to worry about.’
I walked some more, a few steps to the window and back, did it again and felt the hallucination thing starting up and their high cackling screech and the fourth one smashing into the instrument-panel and stood and didn’t do anything, hung limp, remarkable efficacy of total muscular relaxation, very old ferret, an instinct now, the wall steadier but I had to slow the breathing consciously, I didn’t think she’d moved to help me, learned fast.
‘We have do -‘ try again and get the slur out while you’re at it, ‘Do we have a rendezvous Lo - with Loman?’ Possibly it wasn’t good enough yet but I didn’t want to repeat it, certain amount of satisfaction in having pulled out of the spasm without having to sit down and ask for an aspirin or anything.
I turned round, away from the wall, and looked at her. She wasn’t looking at me, looking upwards, listening. I could hear it too.
‘Not immediately.’
I didn’t understand. Traces still threatening the psyche, his upturned face and the expression on it and the way the leg had snapped when I’d hurled the thing away, I suppose I was a bit tired, that was all, it didn’t help, not being on top form.
She was watching me. I saw what I looked like, because her eyes showed everything, and I turned away but the window was there with the outside dark making it a mirror, yes indeed, a sorry figure as they say, rather messed about with, one way and another. Saw her point now. Motherly little soul, wanted to tuck me up before the whole bloody auction had time to disintegrate.
So I walked about a bit to prove it wasn’t going to.
‘When’s it for?’
‘What?’
‘The rdv.’
She was still listening to the jet, head on one side. It sounded as though it was going into circuit above the airport.
‘Later,’ she said, not looking down.
‘What time?’ And she jerked her head to look at me because I’d put a lot of force into it, fed-up with not knowing things and not being able to talk properly or think properly, getting better but not nearly fast enough, upsetting.
She was watching me critically, trying to make some sort of decision. Her hands were still bunched inside the windcheater, and the weight of the Colt Official Police .38 was dragging it down at one side; you wouldn’t have to frisk this pint-sized Mata Hari: you could see she was armed half a mile away.
She kept her voice low, moving closer.
‘Loman has some orders for you. He insisted I didn’t give them to you unless you seemed fit enough for some more work. Well, you’re not fit but you won’t give an inch so what can I do? He’s at base keeping up a signals exchange with London in the hope that you’ll be able to operate. ‘
‘That doesn’t sound like Loman. He’d grind a blind dog into the ground.’
‘I don’t think it’s a question of consideration.’
‘More like it, come on.’
‘He wants you to do something he called “sensitive” and if you can’t bring it off he said the “repercussions would be grave in the extreme.” He also -‘
Suddenly I was shaking her and she drew a breath and shut her eyes and waited and when I realized what I was doing I stopped and stood away and she didn’t say anything for a bit, furious again I suppose because she was doing her best and I wasn’t helping. Quietly as I could: ‘Just put it in your own words.’
Couldn’t stand the man, that was all, a po
x on his grave repercussions, if he meant the whole thing’d blow up if I ballsed it why couldn’t he bloody well say so. Besides which I was badly shaken because they’d wanted me to go and report on Tango Victor and I’d done that so I’d thought the mission was tied up and now London had got second thoughts on it, they never let you alone, those bastards, drive you till you drop.
‘Things have been happening,’ she said. ‘Soon after you went off the air we had an alert from London. We were asked to rebrief you for the end-phase of the mission. We didn’t know if you were still alive, but London said they were going ahead on the assumption that you could still operate.’
The whine of the jet was thinning above us as it came into the approach path and I looked at the square electric clock above the instrument trolley. 23.52.
‘It’s for tonight, is it?’
‘Yes. I don’t know it all. I can only tell you what I’ve been instructed. You’re to know that a representative of the Foreign Office was flown out this evening to meet the Tunisian Minister of the Interior. It’s been arranged that an aircraft of the RAF Tactical Command will be permitted to land here at Kaifra tonight, at approximately midnight. Your orders are to meet it, receive a consignment and take it to base.’
Final approach now and eight minutes early. I looked from the window but couldn’t see anything of his lights in the sky. Then I moved away, not hurrying.
All right,’ I said. ‘Anything else?’
The room wasn’t big: nine short paces from this window to the one opposite. I counted the paces because I like knowing about things, especially about the environment I have to operate in. I hadn’t walked this far since I’d been in the desert but the legs were holding up all right.
‘Nothing else,’ I heard her saying, ‘till you reach base.’
The glass of the window was black and I could see her reflection: she was standing there with her hands in the windcheater, watching me. The only light from below was from a street lamp, reflecting on edges and curved surfaces.
‘The immediate thing,’ I said, ‘is to meet that plane, right?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
I could hear it landing now, the jets screaming suddenly and then fading right out. I looked down from the window.
The other side of the building there’d been a Mercedes and a 404, both with their lights off. This side there was the small Fiat I’d seen at the Royal Sahara and a GT Citroen, no lights. They weren’t just parked: you don’t leave a car like that in the deepest shadow you can find; you put it under a street lamp if there is one, so people won’t pinch things.
I said over my shoulder:
‘D’you think you could’ve been followed?’
It took her a couple of seconds.
‘Followed?’
I came away from the window, again not hurrying, but it didn’t matter whether they knew I’d seen them or not because it was too late to do anything about it: this place was a trap.
Chapter 15
TRAP
‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
She looked small and cold and hunched.
‘Wouldn’t you know?’
She didn’t answer.
I hadn’t meant to hurt: I wasn’t even thinking about her. I wanted facts, as many as I could get and as soon as I could get them. She moved slowly and I said:
‘No. Keep away from the windows.’
She stopped at once, looking down.
I suppose she wanted so much to show me she was a professional, but everything she did was amateur.
‘Did you get here before Chirac brought me, or after?’
‘After.’
I began walking about to get the circulation going. There hadn’t been a psychic spasm since she’d told me about the FO sending out a man to see the President here: the end-phase was being thrown at me like a fast-burn fuse and I had to do a lot of thinking and if the psyche wanted to act the bloody fool it wouldn’t get any help from me.
They must be desperate in London. The RAF back in the act and unofficial negotiations at presidential level: if they went on like this they’d shake the whole thing off its bearings.
‘When Loman told Chirac to pull me out he must have known the mission was still running?’
She lifted her head and looked at me, ready to make another mistake and ready to see what I thought of it, bracing herself.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake -‘
Not thinking properly. Control. We were in a red sector and I wouldn’t get us out of it by pushing this poor little bitch till she broke.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘they couldn’t have followed you here. They don’t know you. They haven’t seen you since you set up the base and if they saw you in Kaifra before then it couldn’t have meant anything: they don’t know who you are.’
The breach of security must have been through Chirac. He wasn’t a professional either and Loman had got him airborne again at short notice and he’d had to bring me here from South 6 by road and the area was stiff with surveillance.
‘All right,’ she said.
She turned away with her eyes getting wet and I suppose, she could stand up to me when I was being a bastard but she didn’t know what to do when I stopped.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I want to know things. When Loman told Chirac to pull me out of the desert, he must have known the mission wasn’t over, right? He was still in signals with London, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then if the mission was still running and we were meant to keep it quiet, how could London send out a helicopter for me, right into the target area?’
This was something she knew about and her head came up quickly. ‘He said that after the massive air search by the Algerians no one in Kaifra would go on thinking that Tango Victor was in the region, so a single flight wouldn’t attract much attention. But he told Chirac to gain full ceiling before he set his course, as a precaution.!
‘Fair enough.’
Quickly she said: ‘Is that right?’
‘It makes complete sense.’
She nodded, feeling better, and I wished to God they’d found someone different to help us on this job, someone I could have ignored or disliked, a girl with glasses and a sniff or a yellow-toothed hell-hag with a barbed wire wig, anyone but this downy-armed child with her courage and innocence who ought not to be here with me now, caught in a trap that could kill her unless I could spring it.
‘Not too near,’ I said.
‘No.’
She turned back, keeping near the instrument trolley, the point farthest from both windows.
‘Are we able to phone base?’
‘No.’ Very emphatic about this. ‘Loman said it’s possible the telephone exchange has been infiltrated. I imagine he means -‘
‘Got at.’
I wanted to think and she sensed it and didn’t talk for a bit. Proposition: it wasn’t the cell that had set up the marksman for me or they’d be in here by now, at least four of them or any number up to sixteen or more, adequately armed and easily capable of taking us or leaving us for dead, the staff of the clinic powerless to stop them. It was the cell that had orders to survey us, find out where we were going, so that when the objective was reached they’d be there too. So far they hadn’t done very well: Loman had put me into the target area and pulled me out again and they hadn’t been good enough; all they’d done was lose a man in a ravine. Tonight they looked like doing better.
It was a proposition only: not an assumption. Assumptions are dangerous and sometimes lethal. They might be simply holding their fire till we went out there so there wouldn’t be any fuss, nothing for the ward-maids here to clean up afterwards. They could be that cell: the one with the marksman, the one with orders to stop me reaching Tango Victor wherever it was, in the whole of the Sahara. They hadn’t done very well either: they hadn’t stopped me reaching the target and reporting on it and getting out again; all they’d done was
mess up a Mercedes and leave it full of shells. Tonight they were better placed.
It didn’t matter which cell it was.
‘You mean there’s someone outside?’
I think she had to ask because she couldn’t stand it anymore, not knowing.
‘Yes.’
She nodded.
Her little nods were expressive: just now it had meant she felt better: this time it was acceptance. Nothing more than that because she didn’t know the whole thing, she probably thought there was just one man, just one man watching.
‘Where’s Chirac?’
‘He went back to the Petrocombine South 6 drilling camp. Loman said he must use that as his base.’
Further operations: you don’t need a base if you’ve finished operating.
A spasm came and I wasn’t ready and they screeched and their black wings beat at me and I shouted at them without a sound, doing nothing with my hands, repulsing them with my mind, half aware of their unreality, only the psyche sensitized by the thought of Chirac standing by for further operations.
‘Are you all right?’
‘What?’
‘Are you -‘
‘Yes.’
Sweat running and respiration accelerated, normal symptoms of fear. If Chirac was standing by it could be to fly me out again, drop me back into the nightmare, not ready yet to stand it, even to stand the thought.
She was keeping close to me, watching me, wanting to help. ‘You’re all right now.’
‘Yes. You know it was nerve-gas, don’t you, you were there when I -‘
‘Yes.’
‘It’s the one that puts the fear of Christ in you.’
‘I know.’
I suppose they’d heard me yelling my way out of the freighter. A bit embarrassing but it wasn’t my fault: there’d been photographs, a press release at the time when the stuff was invented, picture of a mouse in a cage with a cat and the cat was terrified of it, back arched and ears flat, spitting.
‘Listen,’ I said and turned away from her, ‘what other facilities have been granted?’
When I turned back she was just standing still trying to think what I meant, trying to answer before I lost patience again. So I said: ‘The UK’s had permission to land a military aircraft here but I mean what else? Did Loman ask for any kind of assistance, police, army, secret service liaison?’
