by Adam Hall
He looked away.
‘Happens in the best of families.’ He paused two seconds. ‘Why didn’t you tell Control?’
‘Didn’t have the nerve.’
He looked at me quickly and gave another short laugh.
‘The Egg wouldn’t have said anything, old boy. I know. If I could have relied on him to kick my arse I’d have told him. Listen, Ferris, are you going to be my director out here?’
‘Yes. Out somewhere, anyway.’
‘Well thank Christ for that. I haven’t had one since Istres. You heard about Istres?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought you were on the Tokyo thing.’
‘They called me in.’
I took a bit of time to think about that. The Tokyo thing was one of the major assignments for this year and Parkis was handling it and if they’d called a top director like Ferris off a mission that big it either meant this one was bigger or something had come unstuck.
‘What’s gone wrong,’ I asked him, ‘in London?’
A pair of bright lights had come out of the cloud base towards the west and were lowering along the approach path, throwing fan-shaped beams through the haze. We stood watching them.
‘Nothing’s gone wrong,’ he said in a moment. ‘We’ve run out of objectives, that’s all.’
He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the lights of the plane.
The hot wind took on a chill and I didn’t say anything till I was ready. I doubt if Egerton has ever run a priority mission into the ground because he takes an immense amount of care in setting the thing up and picking the right operatives and getting the signals network phase-perfect before he hits the tit and gets it under way, but this time he’d picked up the executive while he was abroad on vacation and sent him in without a director and in the third phase he’d had to call in a top man like Ferris from another mission and set up an in-transit rendezvous that could easily have been missed because of conditions in Cambodia.
To date he’d lost Harrison, Hunter, Chepstow, and every one of his objectives. All he’d got left were two men in a car park in Taiwan watching a China Airlines flight making its final approach to the runway, as if they’d got time on their hands.
‘It’s like that,’ I said, ‘is it?’
‘It’s like that,’ he said.
‘Should’ve hung on to Erich Stern, shouldn’t I?’
He turned his head quickly, hearing the tone of my voice.
‘Don’t start that.’
‘Listen for Christ’s sake, why didn’t Control tell me I was the last bloody hope you’d got of making any -‘
‘Quiller, there’s no point in -‘
‘Lost every bloody objective right along the line and left me holed up in the wrong end of a war with signals breaking down and only that poor little bastard Chepstow to -‘
‘I’m not interested in -‘
‘Oh really?’
But it stopped me.
He knew how to stop me.
The wind blew against our faces.
The lights silvered the palm trees and the roofs of the hangars and then the landing-wheels hit and sent smoke out and hit again and the thing was down, vanishing behind the control tower with the thrust reversing and sending up muted thunder.
‘Sorry.’
‘Any time.’
Sweat all over me. Because if Egerton had run a priority mission into the ground for the first time it had been my fault: the one single objective remaining under surveillance had been Erich Stern and I’d been warned the opposition was operating because of what they’d done to Chepstow and I’d been warned they were on to me next because the door didn’t look right or feel right or smell right and I’d been thrown out of commission for eighteen hours while Erich Stern had quietly got out of the area, taking his time.
My fault.
‘We’ve all been up against it,’ Ferris said. He was watching the plane emerging from the far side of the tower. ‘You blew the phase over there but you could have had better directives and they could have told you the Phnom Penh objective was all they’d got left. It could have made all the difference. But we can’t do anything about that now.’ He went on talking, partly to steady me. ‘We didn’t think you could make this rendezvous with any certainty but we knew you’d have to get out of Cambodia with the Americans or risk being interned, so we called on Washington. I had to switch my flights - I was going Bombay-Hong Kong originally - because the USAF said they’d prefer to drop you in Taiwan.’ He turned to look at me. ‘You’ve realized by now that there’s a strong American connection.’
The China Airlines plane swung into the parking bay and cut its engines, their soft whine dying away to silence.
‘Was the connection there from the beginning?’
I didn’t think he’d tell me.
He told me.
‘No. One of the objectives we lost was Satynovich Zade. Two days ago he was seen in New York.’
‘Where was he lost?’
‘Palestine.’
‘What happened to Brockley?’
Ferris looked at his watch. ‘No one has heard from him. We ought to be going, you know.’
We began walking out of the shadow.
‘What’s he down as,’ I asked him, ‘in the report?’
‘Brockley? Missing. What else can they put?’ He walked a little faster, and his mackintosh began flapping in the wind from the ocean. ‘He might have gone to ground, of course: there wouldn’t be much point in making signals once the objective was gone.’
‘How did London know?’
‘From his local director.’
So I shut up.
Harrison, Hunter, Chepstow, now Brockley.
And it was Egerton running this one: a director who prided himself on bringing his ferrets back alive. No wonder he’d pulled Ferris out of Tokyo: he needed the best men he could get.
We crossed the road and went through the main hall to the departure gate and I checked the environs at every yard because somewhere along the line the appalling sequence of casualties had to stop. The people in Kobra hadn’t had to wipe out four men in a row: you can break out of a surveillance situation without doing that They’d been spelling out a message for us, that was all.
Don’t get in our way.
Ferris and I were standing a little apart from the other passengers but we kept our voices low.
‘What do you know,’ he asked me, ‘about Satynovich Zade?’
‘Only what I was given in Briefing. Undercover agent for Palestinian factions, once mixed up in the Fourth International, price on his head in Holland.’
‘Who briefed you?’
‘Macklin.’
‘Fair enough.’ He was studying me again. ‘Going to ask you something. Are you fit for operations?’
I looked away.
‘Nobody looks their best,’ I said, ‘under these bloody lights.’
He waited a bit and then said:
‘Well?’
He really wanted to know. That was his job and he was good at it and he never let his people get away with anything.
‘I could do with some sleep,’ I said.
He went on watching me.
‘1 may put you through a medical in Washington. I want you to-‘
‘Look, I bad a bit of concussion, that’s all. It’s a fourteen hour flight so I’ve got some sleep coining to me. Then I’ll be okay.’
He looked away from me, watching the people getting into line by the ropes, lowering his voice until it was lost in (be background of the canned Chinese music.
‘I want you to know something. London thinks this operation has got out of hand. Control himself suggested giving m. to Sargent to run as a paramilitary number if the situation I look that sort of direction. Then the people upstairs decided it’s got to be done as a penetration exercise or not at all. Good logic?’
‘Yes.’
Because we were still not in the open and jumping frontiers and the situation was t
oo fluid for anything paramilitary:
ere were no targets, no bridges to blow up, no airfields to knock out. We had to zero in on the Kobra rendezvous, penetrate it and take whatever terminal action London ordered.
The Egg has a lot of faith in you,’ Ferris said softly. ‘If this is a penetration job he thinks you can do it. He didn’t want anyone else for this one-did he tell you that?’
‘He was civil enough to mention it, yes.’
Ferris gave a wintry little smile.
‘I don’t know about his being civil. He’s just backing the only horse who’s got a hope in hell of coming in. The thing is, he’s rather relying on you to do that for him.’ He brought his eyes away from watching the line of passengers and looked at me steadily. ‘He’s had orders to stop the slaughter, you see. He thinks you can help him do that.’
‘By staying alive?’
I thought of the door and the wall and the shock of flame and the murderous blast of its thunder as my body was spun away at the fringe of the explosion. .
‘I could try a bit harder,’ I said.
The trauma was still there and the light was too bright for my eyes and I wanted to lie down and sleep and go on sleeping.
That’s all we’re asking,’ Ferris said. The current situation a this: three of our people have got Satynovich Zade under surveillance in New York and they believe they can keep him in view till you reach there. Once you reach there and get Zade in your sights we’re calling the others off.’
I like working solo and he knew that. And there was another reason: with three of them circulating in the immediate vicinity of the objective, someone was going to get killed. Again.
‘Does Control think, the Kobra rendezvous is going to happen in New York?’
‘He doesn’t know yet. We’ve got you lined up for a special interview in Washington first. Then he’ll know.’
He was watching the departure gate again. The chief stewardess was there with her papers.
This interview,’ I said. ‘Can you tell me a bit more about-‘
‘No.’
Strict hush.
Fair enough: he was here to direct me and he knew what was good for me and what wasn’t good for me and I could rely on that because I’d been local-directed by Ferris before and he was first-rate.
I tried again.
‘Zade. Is he the last hope?’
'Yes.’
‘No one’s trying to locate any of the objectives we’ve lost?’
‘No. It’s-‘ he stopped, giving a slight shrug. ‘It’s Zade we’re concentrating on now.’
That wasn’t what he’d been going to say. He’d been going to say it was too dangerous. They were worried about the losses.
The line of passengers began moving.
‘At this point,’ Ferris said, ‘Control has instructed me to say that if you’re not fit for operations, or if you feel the demands are too high, he would perfectly understand your coming in.’
He pulled our tickets out of his mackintosh and checked them over.
I knew it wasn’t a formality: he was waiting for a direct answer. I felt a bit annoyed about it but it wasn’t his fault.
‘I’ve told you, all I want is some sleep.’
‘I’m sure you do.’ He turned his head and watched me with his bland yellow eyes. ‘But there’s the other thing: the demands are rather high, and Egerton knows that.’
‘For Christ’s sake, I blew it in Cambodia didn’t I? So now I want to give him Kobra. The complete works, and on a plate.’
‘He doesn’t expect that’
‘No, but! do,’
Chapter 9
SIREN
A series of soft thuds.
I woke.
The airframe was settling, and plastic creaked, ‘Was that the undercarriage?’
‘Yes,’ Ferris said.
The sun was high in the windows opposite my berths los Angeles?’
‘Yes.’
I checked my watch. 06:00 hours.
Nine hours’ sleep.
‘What’s the local time?’
‘Fourteen hundred.’
We bounced twice.
‘Do we change planes?’
‘Yes.’
I went along to the lav.
A roaring began outside and there was a lot of deceleration.
‘Have you altered your watch?’ Ferris asked when I went back.
‘Not yet’
There’d be extensive jet lag to take up when we reached the east coast and I wanted to know my own metabolic time for a while in case there was a chance to adjust.
‘They’re having a bad day,’ Ferris said.
‘What?’
I still had some buzzing in the ears, ‘Look at that lot.’
The smog was mud-brown, hazing out the tops of the buildings, and we caught the Euston Station smell of it as we left the aircraft.
‘How long have we got?’
‘Ninety minutes.’
‘Call or take-off?’
Take-off.’
We went along to the men’s room and had a wash and linen Ferris disappeared for a while and came back to our rdv in the coffee-shop and sat down on the next stool and ordered buttermilk.
They’ve still got the road up,’ he told me, I supposed he meant in Whitehall.
Taking their time.’
I didn’t see why he’d decided to get into signals with London from Los Angeles when he hadn’t done so in Taipei.
I certainly couldn’t ask him now.
‘How’s Charlie?’
Not his correct name. Correct name was Diego.
Trouble with his dentist. Suing him.’
He crouched over his buttermilk, using a straw.
Diego was our man in downtown Hollywood and that was the only way Ferris could have signalled London in the limited time he’d been away: by phoning Diego and getting him to crank up the short-wave radio. That was partly what he was for. I assumed Ferris had just been reporting our travel pattern but it seemed a bit superfluous.
‘How the hell,’ I asked him, ‘did our chum over there manage to screw the price of first-class berths out of those poxy old tarts in Accounts?’
‘He looks after people.’
His straw made a sudden sucking noise as he got to the bottom.
On our way back to the departure gate we had three or four minutes in an open space and he said:
‘Your interview in Washington is arranged to take place in the White House. The contact’s name is Robert W. Finberg and he’s an adviser to the US Secretary of Defense. You’ll be put through a routine screening by the EPS at the British Embassy some time before noon tomorrow, all going well Questions?’
‘EPS?’
‘Executive Protection Service. They provide security for the White House and the diplomatic missions in Washington The actual screening won’t take long because there’s only the question of identity to be taken care of: the purpose of your visit and the nature of the interview are both subject to very strict hush.’
He was watching the passengers coming across to the gate and so was I. So far, three of them had been on the Pacific flight with us, two of them in the coach class and one in the first.
‘I’ll brief you first thing in the morning but it might be as well to get one fact memorized straight away: at this point only one man in the whole of the United States has any knowledge of our mission to counter the Kobra operation, and only one man knows that you and I have arrived in the country. That man is of course Robert W. Finberg. Questions?’
There wasn’t a lot of time: a Pan Am official was taking up his station at the departure gate. To be noted in passing was a man in a white shirt standing next to him and using a walkie-talkie and looking everywhere except at the passengers. He didn’t look like a boarding inspector and I would put Mm down tentatively as FBI.
‘Did Finberg come to us, or did we go to him?’
‘I don’t know that,’ Ferris said.
These p
eople we’ve got surveying Satynovich Zade: do they know we’re here?’
‘No. They won’t be told.’
‘Not when I take over?’
‘No. We’re going to put out disinformation that they’ve lost their objective.’
They don’t know about the interview?’
‘No. They won’t be told. The minute you take over the surveillance on Zade they’ll start for the airport. Anything you’re unhappy about?’
‘Not so far.’
‘Fair enough.’ He turned his sandy head and gazed at me for a moment like an owl. ‘You look in good form.’
The shave helped.’
‘I told London you were fit for operations.’
‘I should bloody well hope so.’
‘And I told them you’ve no intention of coming in.’
‘Not really.’
It was raining when we got into Dulles International Airport.
My watch read eleven in the morning Taiwan time and in Washington it was ten at night but I’d slept the whole way across the Pacific and some of the way across the States so the jet lag was minimal.
By the time we’d gone aboard in Los Angeles I’d noted a total of four people who were in transit from Taiwan and we stayed in the baggage claim area and saw them out of the building before we went over to Avis and picked up a dark grey Mustang. Ferris was touchy about checking the transit passengers: he said there was absolutely no chance of any kind of surveillance in this travel phase and I said there’d been absolutely no chance of the opposition getting on to me so early in Phnom Penh but they’d hit me with a wall just the same.
It rained all night Some of the time I slept again but Ferris used the phone in the next room at midnight and three a.m., initiating the first call and receiving the second: I could hear the bell.
