by Adam Hall
‘I didn’t hear of anything else. He didn’t tell me about anything. I was there all the time while the signals were going through, till he sent me here to brief you.’
‘All right.’
Paradox: the Tunisian government was prepared to receive a plane with RAF rondels in Kaifra but I couldn’t go down to the reception desk and phone the police and say there are four cars outside please have their drivers arrested on suspicion. But it wasn’t quite like that: the Tango mission had been’ ultra-sensitive from the start and a visit from the Foreign Office type with a request for immediate military overflying and landing rights could have tightened things to the limit.
We were strictly an our own.
The thing that worried me most was the timing. The plane was down and the crew was expecting me and I was here in a trap and I didn’t know how long they’d wait or what they’d do with the consignment I was meant to receive.
‘What is this thing, d’you know?’
‘Which thing, please?’
‘Whatever the RAF are bringing in.’
‘I don’t know. Loman called it “the device”.’
‘The what?’
‘ “Device”. It’s the word he used for it in signals.’
‘You didn’t get any clues? Chemical antidote? Some sort of destruct system? Gas-mask?’
She thought back and then said no. This was logical because if Loman had been allowed to tell me what the thing was he would have briefed the girl, instead of which he’d obviously made sure she didn’t pick anything up during the signals exchange.
I kept on walking, the mind exercising the organism, wouldn’t be possible in this condition to do very much if they came in for us, effort required, keep on walking and do it properly.
‘Is there any kind of a deadline on this?’
‘He didn’t say so.’
Logical too: the military aircraft had landed and I ought to be there to meet it because there’d be no point in letting it hang about the airfield. The deadline was already past.
I stopped by the window, the one at the front of the building, and looked down as I’d done before. It presented them with a model target, a silhouette with back-lighting, but that was all right because if they wanted to pick me off they’d have done it the first time and in any case they wouldn’t have sent four vehicles with crews numbering up to sixteen if all they wanted to do was make a small hole in a skull.
It wasn’t easy to see things through the reflections on the glass but the white oblong down there had a cross on the side and a pennant mounted on the windscreen pillar, French style. It was parked about halfway between the gates and the front entrance of the clinic and from this angle I couldn’t see if it was in sight of the Merc and the 404. They were in the shadow of the palms on the road outside and there was a hedge of desert tamarisk in their general line of vision: if they could see the ambulance at all it would be through the gateway.
‘How many are there?’
I shortened focus and looked at her reflection in the glass. At this distance I couldn’t see her eyes but her voice had sounded steady enough, just a degree strident as if she’d made herself say it. She was young and inexperienced and would make the worst possible agent material and if they ever pushed her into a mission where she had to operate solo for five minutes that’d be as long as she’d live, but she looked as though she had guts and I thought the safest thing would be to tell her what the actual situation was so that she’d have a chance of saving herself if I forgot to duck.
‘There are at least four cars.’
Her reflection gave a little nod. She didn’t say anything.
I looked through the glass again. Conditions outside were the same as last night when I’d walked out of the Royal Sahara to the Mercedes: bright starlight, still leaves, moonless and windless. Low natural visibility without haze, acoustic irradiation conditions somewhere near a hundred per cent with the hygrometer down towards zero and the air totally static. I would have preferred low cloud and a moist wind, the dark to hide in, the wind to take sound away.
I turned and began walking again.
‘What’s the code-intro?’
She was watching me with very bright, very alert young eyes: she didn’t understand what I meant and was trying hard to think and get it right and not look stupid.
‘What’s the code-introduction when I meet these RAF types? Password. What do I -‘
‘Oh yes - Firefly. They’ll be carrying photographs of you and you’ll be asked to show them the scar on your left arm. You must destroy the photographs immediately.’
‘My Christ, is that all?’
She just shut her eyes and stood there hunched up but I wasn’t even thinking about her because London had covered the code-intro with actual pictures and a physical feature so it wasn’t just a gas-mask they were handing over: it was something so classified that the Air Ministry wouldn’t deliver it before they’d forced the Bureau into providing treble-check identification. They couldn’t be standard aircrew on that plane: they were seconded from D16 or Liaison Branch, or the Bureau wouldn’t have let those photographs out of the files.
I suppose she thought she’d got it wrong again because of the way I’d said was that all. She only knew half of what was going on and whenever I asked her anything she’d only got a fifty-fifty hope of coming up with the right answer and it was wearing her down.
‘What car did you come in?’
She opened her eyes.
‘The Chrysler.’
‘Loman’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘You came from base direct?
‘Yes.’
‘You know the way back?’
‘Past the mosque.’
‘That’s right.’
It was a three-minute trip.
If I could get her out of here she could be back in cover within three minutes but three minutes wouldn’t give her anything like enough time to flush a tag and she hadn’t been trained to overshoot base and take him on to neutral ground and do what I’d done to Mohamed. With four vehicles waiting out there I thought they’d probably just take her somewhere for interrogation and she wasn’t trained to cope with that kind of thing either.
I’d have to leave her here and tell the staff to look after her while I drew off the opposition.
‘What are your orders?’
‘Orders?’
‘What were you told to do, once you’d briefed me?
‘Get back to base.’
She’d already briefed me: FO involvement, Tactical Command sortie, rdv, code-intro, there wouldn’t be anything else; it was a simple pick-up job. So now Loman wanted her back at the Yasmina to man our communications and leave him free to make neutral-ground contact with Chirac and perhaps others so I couldn’t leave her here and ask the staff to look after her while I tried to break out.
I’d have to take her with me.
‘Are you frightened?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘very.’
‘That’s good.’
She wasn’t exactly shivering: there was a tension in her body that was making her contract, hunching herself into the windcheater as if she were cold. It was the classic animal posture in the face of a predator, the body drawn in on itself to protect the vital organs and present a smaller form, the limbs at the same time contracted in readiness to strike or spring if defence were changed to attack.
‘Why is it good?’
‘You’re producing everything you need: adrenalin, muscletone, sensory alertness. No one else can do it, for you and you can’t get it out of a bottle.’
She nodded.
I took another walk and passed the window and glanced out and went on. There wasn’t any sign of life down there: the Mercedes and the Peugeot 404 made blocks of shadow among the trees and the ambulance showed up as a blur of white against the tamarisk hedge. In the building here I could make out voices but they were distant; twice since I’d regained consciousness I’d heard the lift work
ing just outside this room.
‘Has the thing got a full clip?’
‘What thing?’
‘That gun. Has it got a full magazine?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is the safety-catch on?’
She had to look, tugging the thing out of her pocket as if someone had said give me that bag of toffees, I’ve told you before. Then she nodded.
‘Yes. It’s on.’
She was pleased because she’d got her lessons right and I thought oh you bastards if you rope in a child again to help us in the kind of work we do I’ll have your thumbs off first and then mind your eyes.
‘Do you want it?’
She was holding it out to me.
‘No. Put it away.’
‘All right.’ She got it back into her pocket and looked up at me again and the fear was still in her eyes, I suppose because I’d made her think we were getting ready for some kind of trouble. I’d only wanted to check on the safety-catch because she might have to run and if she tripped and the thing fired it’d blow her leg off. I would have taken it away from her altogether and dropped it into a waste-bin before we left but it was just possible she could save herself with it if things got rough.
‘Diane.’
‘Yes?’
‘We’re going.’
‘All right.’
‘There won’t be much trouble.’
‘I see.’
Light eyes and a firm mouth and her bright hair in a bandeau and out there in the night a bunch of thugs who’d do what their orders were to do, shoot her down or take her somewhere and put her through forced interrogation, anything they were told to do, anything they wanted to do. I’d say her chances were fifty-fifty, the same as my own.
But the alternatives I’d come up with were riskier still and I wanted to try the break-out before the opposition control decided to send them in for us. We’d be better off in the open, with room to move.
So I told her to find a couple of white coats, the linen things the doctors used, and she drew blank in the cupboards here and had to go out and across the landing and try her luck over there. I could still hear voices from somewhere below in the building but they weren’t loud. It was almost midnight and activity in the clinic was at a low level.
She came back.
‘Will these do?’
‘Yes. Leave them here for a minute. We’re going to walk across the room, past that window. Just slowly, talking.’
‘All right.’
‘No, this side of me.’ I took her arm. ‘I want them to see you closely. But don’t look out of the window.’
We got moving and before we reached the window she’d begun trembling.
‘Do I do all of the talking?’
‘No. We’re just in conversation. The main thing is not to look out of the window. This way a bit, a few inches this way.’
If she passed too near the window she’d only present an almost black silhouette and if she were too far from it the reflected light from the walls would strike her face. I didn’t want them to see her face but only the pale blue windcheater.
‘Don’t look out.’
‘How do you know I want to?’
‘You want to see for yourself who they are. A bit slower. But you wouldn’t see them anyway, it’s only a couple of cars parked under the trees.’
‘You said there were four.’
‘The other two are at the back of the building.’
‘I see. It’s giving me gooseflesh, knowing they’re watching me now.’
‘Don’t worry.’
The trembling was still in her arm, under my hand. ‘Why are we doing this?’
‘They know you’re with me here, because you must have passed this window a few times before I told you to stay clear of it. They could even have been outside when you drove up. I want to remind them, as late as possible before we leave here, that you’re wearing blue.’
We reached the wall and turned round and started going back, the window on my side now. She said:
‘Why did you tell me to keep clear, before?’
‘I thought there was a chance they’d shoot you.’
‘Why don’t you think so now?’
‘Because I’m still alive.’
The other window wasn’t important because from the Fiat and the Citroen they couldn’t see the ambulance. She was still trembling and I said: ‘You’ll feel all right once we get going; it’s only the delayed action affecting your nerves. Can you drive a DS 90?’
‘Yes. We’ve got one at the Embassy.’
‘Fair enough. There’s a DS ambulance outside. I want you to go and start it up and bring it over to the front steps.’ We were clear of the window now and put on the white linen coats. ‘Keep that thing tucked well in: I don’t want them to see any blue. All right, we’ll take the lift.’
There was nobody in the main hall. Posters about inoculation against cholera, preventive hygiene to fight sandfly trachoma: a pair of sandals lying in a corner near the door, artificial flowers on the reception desk with a faded ribbon on them. Sand gritted under our feet; there is sand everywhere in Kaifra, even inside the buildings.
‘Take off your bandeau and put it in your pocket.’
‘All right.’
‘See the ambulance?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll wait for you here on the steps.’
She went down them and I stood watching her.
There wasn’t anything else we could do but this; nothing that had as much hope of working out smoothly, provided they didn’t get too close a look at us. I wanted to keep the action down because she had all her life in front of her and we had a mission to run and I wasn’t in fit condition to risk a major mistake.
She walked nervously, her step springing a little, but she wasn’t looking around her though I knew she must be wanting to. They couldn’t see her yet: it would only be when she crossed the gap made by the gates that they might see her. I could think of no reason why they should shoot. It was just that she looked small and vulnerable out there where there wasn’t any cover and I wished I’d gone with her but it was too late and anyway impractical because this was part of the whole set-up: a change of image as convincing as we could make it.
She got into the ambulance and the sidelights came on and the engine started up and the pennant gave a couple of lazy flaps as she locked over and came towards the steps.
‘I’ll drive.’
She slid across and I got behind the wheel as quick as I could because one of the voices I’d heard on the ground floor would belong to the ambulance driver and he’d know the sound of this vehicle and wonder what was going on. I would have preferred to let her drive: she’d already established the image behind the wheel and now we’d altered it but if they weren’t satisfied with what we were giving them they’d tuck in behind and we’d have to lose them and she wasn’t trained for that.
‘Seat-belt,’ I said.
She pulled it across and buckled it.
The fuel was at three-quarters. I turned the facia-lamp rheostat to medium power, getting enough of a glow to show up my white coat but not to light my face. Then I put the heads full on and drove through the gates and turned left so that if they decided to follow us up they’d have to make a half-turn first. I could see the blue flash of the roof emergency lamp in the mirror-frames and thought about using the hee-haw but there was no traffic and it might be overdoing things.
There was a slight clang from behind us, probably the chrome-armoured tube of the oxygen unit against the cylinder because we were leaning in a close turn; and there was another sound, fainter and underlying the first and not easy to identify: possibly a piece of equipment shifting.
‘You all right?’
‘Yes thank you.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘No.’
I really thought they’d accepted the image and then some lights swung from behind us and I knew the sound I hadn’t been able to identify had been the first o
f them starting up.
‘Keep low in the seat.’
‘All right.’
I kicked the throttle to bring the ratio down and the rear tyres lost traction on the sand but we weren’t even picking up useful revs before the lights showed me the Citroen GT moving broadside across the road in front of us. There wasn’t anything I could do because this was an avenue of close-standing palms and there was no point in trying a slide U-turn because there were lights in the mirrors now.
Their orders hadn’t been to tag us. They’d been told to set up a pincer trap for anything that moved, and we were in it.
Chapter 16
HASSAN
No, this is Angela, with Robert.
They’ll be coming over to see us while you’re here and I’m longing for you to meet them.
Yes, aren’t they? And always hand in hand - they weren’t posing like that for the photographer. Deeply in love, and we’re so very happy for them.
On Tuesday, coming down from Cambridge. They’re just dying to meet you - of course we’ve told them all about you.
No, that’s our youngest. She - she was a lovely child.
Yes, I’m very sad to say. It happened in North Africa, one of those mysterious and dreadful things that sometimes happens to people when they’re abroad.
We never really found out. It was sort of - hushed up, and even our own Embassy advised us to let the enquiries drop. Yes, all very strange.
Murdered. But no one was ever accused. They say there were just some Arabs, and it was night-time, and - well we don’t let ourselves think too much.
Oh not a bit, no. That’s why we keep her picture here, with the rest of our little family. She was such a lovely girl and it sort of helps, to talk about her to people. It makes her seem - well - still a little bit alive.
The Citroen GT was backing and turning.
The term in the personnel files is ‘an assault on the person designed to extract intelligence’. If you’ve held out against it you get the 9 suffix to your code name but it’s not exactly an award for meritorious duty or anything: it just means they can give you some of the high-risk jobs in the hope that you’ll do the same again, refuse to expose the mission or the cell or the Bureau even though the light blinds and the flesh burns and the scream is private inside your skull, for pride’s sake.
