The Tango Briefing q-5

by Adam Hall

  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 soI 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 working just outside this room.

  'Has the thing got a full clip?'

  'What thing?'

  'That gun. Hasit 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 wayabit, 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 of 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.

  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 happyfor 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 keepher 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.

  An assault on the person. Your own person. No one else's.

  Backing and turning and coming in this direction, no longer blocking the road entirely, leaving me enough room to go through if I wanted to. But there wasn't any point: the Fiat was farther along the avenue with a muzzle poking out of a side window. The lights of the Citroen came on, full heads, and most of the scene was blacked out because of the glare.

  'Shall I shoot at them?'

  'No'

  'Why not? They — '

  'When you're outnumbered, the thing is to think, not shoot.'

  I turned my head sideways to avoid the glare. She was looking at me, her skin silvered by the brightness of the light, her eyes exaggeratedly blue because of the contracted pupils. She would have made a good photograph.

  'What will they do?' she asked me.

  'Nothing much. They want some information, that's all.'

  Because if they'd intended to kill, as the other cell had intended, they would simply have sent a marksman to wait for me to leave the clinic or they would have ordered an armed group into the building to do it summarily. And if they'd intended to put mobile surveillance on me they wouldn't have used four vehicles to set it up: they couldn't hope to do it without my knowing and in a mall town like Kaifra it wasn't even necessary.

  They wanted me for interrogation.

  This idea would have worried me in the ordinary way, but not too much. I had twice explored this psychological terrain in earlier missions and I knew roughly what to do: the only possible way is to remove the mind from the body and to look at the situation objectively — the pain is expressed in the nerves and is perfectly natural but it doesn't have any significance; it's totally physical and there's no message; you merely want it to stop and you could say the word but you couldn't live with yourself afterwards so you might as well die now and if you're prepared to die then they've had it because once you're dead you're no more use and they know that.

  The worry would have been about the unpleasantness, that was all, not about whether I'd break. And at the moment they wouldn't have a lot of success because there were bruises everywhere and the effects of the gas were still hanging around and they'd only have to push me a bit too far and I'd flake out and they wouldn't learn anything.

  But there was a new factor involved tonight. I didn't know how long I'd be able to hold out if they went to work on Diane instead of me.

  The Citroen pulled up and someone got out and walked up to us holding a sub-machine-gun. For a moment his shadow grew immense, flitting across the bonnet of the ambulance; then the light blazed again and he came to the side and stood there waiting for something, the muzzle aimed at my head.

  I turned to look at him. Except for the man who'd died in the ravine this was the first time I'd seen anyone from an opposition cell because they'd worked covertly for the most part: the bomb in Tunis, the marksman here in Kaifra. This man wasn't of any interest because he was just a factotum but I looked at him so that I'd know him if I saw him later.

  There were footsteps on the loose sand and another man came up from one of the cars behind us and stood looking in at Diane.

  'Get out of the car.'

  I noted that he was an Egyptian, with a Cairo dockside accent. I told her 'You only speak English.'

  'What?' she called to him through the window.

  He jerked his sub-machine-gun.

  'Get out this side,' I told her, 'with me.'

  'All right.'

  I opened the door and the one who'd come up from the Citroen got worried and jerked his gun at me.

  'Get your hands up!'

  'Oh bollocks.'

  He was Egyptian too. I suppose Loman must have known the UAR was involved but hadn't been allowed to tell me, on the grounds that the less the ferret knows the longer he lives.

  Diane followed me out and we stood waiting. Two other men came up, one from the Fiat and one from behind us, and both had guns trained on us. Only one of them wore a fez: the others looked inferior material, capable of subduing or killing but nothing more. By their speech they were all from dockside Cairo and they called the man in the fez by the name of Hassan.

  'Bring the Fiat here,' he told one of them. Then he turned to me. 'Give me your gun.'

  'I haven't one.'

&
nbsp; I spoke in Arabic because at least one of the opposition cells had a dossier on me: Loman had warned me about that.

  'Search him! Get his gun!'

  Hassan was very nervous and I placed him fairly high up in his cell or even in the network: he had the intelligence to know his responsibilities and to know that if I got out of this trap he'd probably get a chopping.

  One of the thugs frisked me and I didn't make it difficult for him.

  'He has no gun, Hassan.'

  'He must have!'

  I was frisked again and they dragged open the doors of the ambulance and ransacked the compartments and then one of them said it was the woman — she had my gun. Hassan looked at me to see my reaction when they tugged the Colt.38 out of her pocket and I looked suitably upset.

  'He gave the woman his gun,' said a man, 'but we found it!'

  Hassan told him to shut up and turned away and spoke to the man who'd brought the Fiat alongside.

  'Is Ahmed coming?'

  'Yes.'

  The transmitting aerial went on waving, slower and slower.

  I thought that Ahmed wouldn't be likely to come alone: he was obviously higher in the cell and would have at least one trigger-man. So far there were only the four of them here, unless there were others who'd stayed in the Mercedes or the 404 and I doubted this because Hassan was nervous and. would have brought every one of his men in to guard me. There was no hope of estimating how long it would take Ahmed to reach here from their radio base but it would need only ten minutes to cross the whole of Kaifra. He could be here within sixty seconds.

  Hassan was watching me.

  'Where is the rest of your cell?'

  I said I was operating freelance and there wasn't an actual cell, and he just shook his head and didn't take me up on it. I think it was just a random question to try me out. He looked like a hardworking field executive, the eyes alert but unimaginative, a man who had reached the position of lieutenant in a small cell operating overseas. I thought he would put the requirements of the operation before everything else, and would work well with Ahmed when the grilling began. I would have given a great deal to know whether either of them would have the intelligence to use Diane as the means of persuasion; I believed they would, because it had two immense advantages over a single interrogation session: a man might easily hold out if the pain was his own but might as easily break if he had to listen to someone else going through it, especially a young, girl; secondly the girl could be brought again and again to the point of mental unbalance while the man was left with a clear head and the ability to answer questions.