The Striker Portfolio q-3

by Adam Hall

  He smiled. It was the fixed smile of a ventriloquist's doll. 'You really want this one, don't you?'

  I knew then that I'd sold it to him. It hadn't been difficult. Later I knew why it hadn't been difficult.

  There was a flap on when I went through the departments for clearance and it took longer than usual because everyone was under pressure. I went through Accounts, Codes and Ciphers, Credentials, Firearms, Field-briefing and Travel. Accounts made me go through the motions of examining my last will and testament — did I want to make any changes? There was nothing to change: the wording had stood like this for years Nothing of value, no dependents, next-of-kin unknown'.

  When I left the building there was one of the Federal Republic Embassy cars outside but it might not have been anything to do with the flap.

  They drove me to the airport alone and I didn't see Ferris until I was weighing in. We didn't say anything before we got on to the plan.

  Ferris was a thin man with hollow cheeks and horn-rimmed glasses and the remains of some straw-coloured hair that blew about when he walked. He looked like a clever young electronics engineer on the verge of a nervous breakdown, except for his steady eyes.

  'How much did Parkis tell you?'

  The power was easing off and we slipped our belts.

  'Nothing much. Someone tipped them off that another SK-6 was due to hit the deck and I was sent there to confirm.' I watched the lamps of London dimming away below.

  'Have you had anything to eat?'

  'No.'

  'Eat while I talk.'

  The girl was wedging the trays in and we helped her. The seats behind and in front of us were empty; a woman with two small children was across the aisle. I knew Ferris had checked this; he was good on security. When I began on the mutton he said:

  'You'll know some of this because it's in the papers. West Germany's got five hundred Devon Aviation Striker SK-6 swing-wing aircraft in service with the Luftwaffe as part of NATO's nuclear and conventional air force. It's a good machine, adaptable, versatile, got a flexible performance although it's sophisticated, and it can cope with reconnaissance, interception, ground support and bombing. The German Defence Ministry's cost estimates were too optimistic and the development outlay escalated the production bill to six hundred million pounds sterling, but it's a firstclass strike plane and everyone was happy with it until it started falling out of the sky. In the last twelve months they've lost thirty-six of them in high-impact crashes and the pilots can't tell them what happened because they're dead. The pattern's always the same as the one you saw.'

  I wondered where Ferris had been when I was on top of the chalk quarry. 'When were you called in?'

  'They had to brief me before I could brief you.'

  That was all I'd get as an answer. I'd worked with him before and he only told you what he thought you needed to know.

  'I had to persuade Parkis,' I said.

  'Did you?'

  'It wasn't difficult.'

  'How's the chop?'

  So I shut up and he said: 'Nobody's at all happy now. Devon Aviation are bothered and they've sent out some of their people to work with the Accident Investigation Branch of the Ministry. They've had a permanent A.I.B. team of wreckage-analysts over there since the tenth pattern crash. They've got bits at Farnborough and they've rebuilt most of one Striker from a few thousand fragments. The aviation physiologists are trying to be busy but they haven't got much to work on — you saw that crash so you can imagine what the pilot looks like afterwards. So far no one's turned anything up. Everyone's miserable. West Germany's worried because it's their plane and the U.K's worried because we built it and NATO's worried because the Luftwaffe squadrons are part of their striking-force. You want some more of that?' He edged his dish of French beans on to my tray. He'd let the girl give him a tray in case I needed seconds.

  'When do I eat next?'

  'It depends how busy you get.'

  'What's a «pattern» crash?'

  The ones that go straight in, like the one you saw. They've been getting normal accidents as well — control-locking, power-failure, bird-strikes — but they've only lost four planes and one pilot from those. Without the pattern crashes the SK-6 would have a comfortably low accident rate. Of course they've had a few cases of the pilot baling out in a muck-sweat from sheer panic. The Striker's a rogue aircraft and they've only got to notice the clock's a minute slow and they're hitting the ejection tit'

  'Are these things crashing anywhere else?'

  'Not on that scale. The U.K. and French accident rates are normal-low.'

  'It's particular to Germany.'

  That's why they say someone must be getting at the planes.'

  It was Peach Melba again. I took his as well.

  'Why are we interested?'

  'We're not.'

  He was trying to be cagey again so I said: 'Then what the bloody hell are we doing in this aeroplane?'

  'We're not interested in helping Devon Aviation or the Luftwaffe or NATO. It only happens to be Strikers crashing: it could be cruisers sinking or reactors blowing up.'

  This agreed with what Parkis had told me: 'It's not really about aeroplanes.'

  I said: 'We're interested in why somebody's trying systematically to knock out a cold-war weapon.'

  'Why,' Ferris said, 'and who.'

  That's not all.'

  'All for the moment.'

  I sulked for a bit and he didn't break the silence. I don't like being used as a hooded falcon. I couldn't do anything about it, of course. You're cleared, briefed and sent in, and if you ask any questions outside the prescribed limits of the briefing they think you're nosey or windy and they're usually right. The man in the field isn't given the overall picture because there are always background factors that might worry him if he knew what they were. It works all right but on the other hand we always go into a mission knowing there's an awful lot going on in the background on any level from the Foreign Office to the hot-line and we tend to worry about it because we don't know what it is.

  When the girl came for the trays I pulled out the stuff they'd given me in Credentials. My name was Martin and I was an aviation psychologist attached to the A.I.B. team operating at the Luftwaffe base at Linsdorf where two of the pattern crashes had happened. I assumed they'd picked on Martin because it could be either English or German according to which I wanted to be at any given time. There was nothing special in this lot and it looked a bit thin on the face of it but that might be because I'd pushed them into dropping Waring at the last minute.

  Ferris saw me looking at the papers.

  'How's your German?'

  'West Hartlepool accent.' I said to show him I was still narked at not being told anything.

  'You shouldn't need much cover.'

  Perhaps that was why it looked a bit thin.

  'Where do I start?'

  The thing is, there are two ways of going at the Striker problem.

  You can analyse the bodies and the wrecks to find how the planes or the pilots are being got at. That's what everyone's already doing at Linsdorf and other places and they've not turned anything up. Or you can jump the queue and try to find who's getting at them and why.'

  'You've said that.'

  'Now I know you were listening.'

  In half an hour the pressure came off our haunches and we began the run in to Amsterdam.

  It was blowing a half-gale and as we came broadside on I could feel the mainplane lifting on the starboard side. Dust from the freight area stung our faces and a hat took off and a man ran after it. We had to hang about for an hour before they called us for the Hanover flight and Ferris wasn't hungry and I'd just had a meal and neither of us talked because he wasn't going to and I wasn't going to try to make him. He wandered round and round the souvenir stall peering through the glass at the varnished clogs and packets of Clan, his thin straw-coloured hair blowing to and fro as he moved.

  I'd stopped sulking now. Ferris was all right I'd done two mi
ssions with him and he hadn't let me down. Now we were at it again: he was here to guide me, show me the way in and set me running like a ferret down a hole. Later he'd support me, feed me information and get my reports to London through the protected communications net; he'd pull me out of trouble if I was worth it or he'd abandon me and throw me to the dogs if I got in too deep and couldn't get out and looked like being a danger to them; then he'd call in a replacement and there'd be someone else eating his Peach Melbas for him while he told them as much as he thought they needed to know. It wouldn't be Waring. If I stopped anything nasty they'd never get Waring into the same area.

  'Why do they have to varnish the bloody things?'

  'To make them shiny.'

  'But they don't look nice, shiny.'

  'They don't know that.'

  It was after midnight when we touched down in Hanover.

  The normal routine would be to take separate taxis to different hotels and he still didn't say anything until we were through Customs and I thought he was leaving it very late this time.

  'Start by seeing Lovett.'

  'Where?'

  'The Carlsberg.'

  'All right'

  Outside at the taxi-rank he said: 'Did you pick anything up in Firearms?' 'Only the pox.'

  Chapter Three — SELBSTMORD

  There was no wind in Hanover. It was cold.

  From the outside the hotel looked like a cinema organ designed by Steinberg. Inside it was an ornate cave full of lamps and shadows. It was quiet even for one in the morning, though people were about.

  'But of course it isn't your fault'

  There were some piles of baggage near the main doors and more people were coming out of the lift, hardly any of them talking.

  I said I didn't want to see the room. Number 14. Lovett was 31 in the register.

  'It's just that my wife is sensitive about things like that' The American was consoling the manager and then consoling his wife, looking around secretively as if for a bar where he could console himself.

  'If you will follow the page, Herr Martin.'

  The other people were coming silently across from the lift.

  'We don't have to stay, honey, but that doesn't mean it's their fault now, does it? We have to be fair.'

  When my bag was in Room 14 and the page had gone I went up two floors and walked along the passage. It didn't seem worth waking Lovett if he'd already gone to bed. There was a light from under his door but there were voices from inside so I went down again because we would have to talk alone.

  A piece of grit had got lodged under my top lid when we were crossing from the plane at Amsterdam and I spent some time poking about with the corner of my handkerchief and thinking about Lovett.

  It was a name from the past and I hadn't seen him for more than a year. He used to be with the Liaison Group and I'd worked three times under his direction, then they sent him to Rome on the Carosio thing and one of the adverse party found him alone and left him for dead. It finished him for operations and the Bureau put him into their political section to sit in on summits and report any rot. He could still move about without crutches or things like that but he was full of platinum tubing and bone-rivets and his face was attractively lopsided so he never went short of a bed.

  There was a NATO conference going on in Hanover this month and I suppose the Bureau had sent him to sit in on it.

  It was a bit of metal, which explained why it had got lodged in so efficiently. The room looked watery now.

  That sort of job must be irksome for a man like Lovett because he'd been very active before and spent most of his leaves in the Box of Squibs showing people how to break a door down without any noise and things like that: the Box is the house in Norfolk where we're sent at intervals for refresher training. But Lovett was good in subtler ways and perhaps he now passed the time trying to get two frames of micro under one full-stop without any tweezers.

  I had to blank my mind consciously before I could get to sleep because I was still narked with Ferris for not telling me anything. Lovett would have to make up for that in the morning.

  'He can't be!'

  She laughed at first, like some people do, but her eyes were beginning to go bright and she went on staring at me with the laugh still on her face.

  It seemed genuine.

  I said: 'He threw himself out of a window on the fourth floor. Last night, about eleven o'clock.'

  It was genuine all right. I got to her before she could hit her head on anything. She didn't go right under. When I helped her into the chair she stayed there without moving, like a dress thrown across it, but her eyes opened and she began staring again and I said:

  'Have you got any brandy?'

  After a minute she asked me: 'How do you know?'

  They told me at the hotel. I was going to talk to him this morning and that's what they said happened.'

  There wasn't anything but beer and a dreg or two of vodka in the bottom of a bottle so I gave her that, but she didn't drink it. Her colour was coming back and she sounded almost normal when she spoke again.

  'So that was Bill.'

  She wasn't dismissing him. She just didn't feel like consoling herself with the usual deceptions: but there must be a mistake, I was only talking to him yesterday, so forth. She was the kind of woman who would appeal to Lovett. His wife would have approved.

  'It's the official version,' I said, 'anyway.'

  'So you know him well.'

  'He wasn't the type.'

  'No. What's this?'

  'Drink it.'

  'What do you think I am?'

  It was a small room with a bunk bed and there were two dressing-gowns behind the door. I didn't know who the other girl was. They'd given me this one's name at the hotel. She was on the translating staff for the conference. I'd asked them who came to see him most at the Carlsberg and she'd been the only woman on the list and I thought she'd probably know him better than the others.

  Ferris hadn't actually told me to start enquiring. It was the only thing to do.

  He'd sounded upset. 'Well, they were on to it bloody early.'

  'Did they see us coming through?'

  'No. They don't know us.'

  I listened to his breathing on the line. He was trying to think what to do now. He'd have to tell me a bit more, because Lovett couldn't.

  'They must have got on to him a few days ago. You can't rig that kind of thing at short notice.' I could hear him sweating it out. 'That Striker you saw.'

  'Yes?'

  'It was Lovett who told us it would happen. You were sent out there to confirm. They must have caught his signal, something like that.'

  Suddenly I got a glimpse of the background behind the mission, just a glimpse. Lovett hadn't been active since Rome. He'd been passing on information and it had been correct: the thing had come down almost on my head. Someone had told Lovett that the next Striker would crash at noon on the 29th in the Westheim-Pfelberg-Nohlmundt area. Whoever could tell Lovett a thing like that must be someone who knew the whole works.

  I'd been sent here to find him and Lovett was meant to tell me where to look. But they didn't want him to. They pushed him out of the window so that he couldn't.

  'Is this thing off, then?' I asked Ferris.

  They've blocked our run.'

  That wasn't the same thing at all. 'What do you want me to do?' There was another pause while we listened for bugs. It seemed all right.

  'Get in their way.'

  The room seemed to go cold around me. You always have that feeling, a sort of goose-flesh that doesn't show on the skin. But I liked him for handing it to me without a tray underneath. Someone else — like Loman or Bryant — would have said well I don't really like to ask you and of course you know you can refuse, so forth. Ferris had just said go and bloody well do it. Get in their way.

  Nobody likes it.

  You can be told: they're holed up in that arsenal over there and you'll have to go through the barbed wire and round t
he machine-gun post and across the minefield and past the armed guard with the Alsatians, after that it's easy. And most of us will go in. It's not pleasant but we know what the odds are. However bad we know what they are. We're frightened but it's a different kind of fear, a, more supportable one, from the fear of what we call 'getting in their way'. Because then we don't know anything. We don't know who they are or how many or where they are or what they're doing or why. We have to find them by letting them find us first, and they can be anywhere in a street or a lift or a car or a shadow and when we get close to them we might not even know it, might have our back to them. We always find them in the end. Always. But quite often the only thing we know about them is that they were the people who fired the shot and didn't miss.

  'All right,' I told Ferris.

  Before he rang off he said: 'You didn't actually see him?'

  'No.'

  They said he'd gone through a glass roof first and woken everyone up.

  'You might put his stuff together and check it for anything useful.'

  There wasn't anything useful. A picture of Sheila, some notes on the conference (they would be props), two tickets for the Operhaus dated tomorrow night, money, cigarettes,'keys, the litter we leave behind. But I stayed a good hour in his room pretending to go through it and then asked the manager and the staff a lot of questions and then went back to his room and moved past the window quite a lot. Then I put his personal stuff together and posted it The only attention I attracted was from the police who wanted to know who I was. Someone in the hotel had obviously rung them up. They were perfectly satisfied that it was a case of Selbstmord because my unfortunate friend had left a note. I didn't advise them to compare the handwriting: perhaps it had been done on Lovett's portable and anyway they'd have used his own pen for the signature.

  Then I went to see Sheila, the girl in the photograph, because that was what they'd expect me to do, call on his friends and contacts. No one tagged me when I left the Carlsberg.

  'I suppose you can't give me anything to go on?'

  She got up and tried to pour the vodka back into the bottle but her hand was shaking too much.