Understrike

by John Gardner

  'All right, let's try this one.' Captain Andrews looked round. 'Give me full power.' The Flight Engineer leaned forward between the pilots' seats and put the flat of his hand across the throttles, holding them steady as the Captain eased the jets into their upwards roar.

  'Full power.'

  'Rolling.'

  The rpm indicators showed a steady 8,000 as they trundled out; speed building up; the nosewheel hugging the centre of the tarmac; the horizon steady; the needles on the airspeed indicators travelling in their smooth arcs and the First Officer shouting above the noise:

  'Airspeed both sides .. . one hundred knots ... V-One ... Rotate!'

  Andrews eased back on the control column yoke. The nose lifted and the ground fell away.

  'V-Two ... noise abatement climb.' The Captain put the Comet into a steep fullpower climb that took them up to one thousand five hundred feet in a matter of seconds, quickly reducing the earsplitting whine that fractured the nerves of householders in the immediate vicinity of the airport.

  Boysie, still sitting rigid, retched, made a grab for the little brown bag poking from the net holder on the seat in front, and was noisily sick. The man sitting next to him looked embarrassed and turned away.

  Later, after the illuminated sign - fasten seat belts. No smoking - had flicked off, the stewardess collected the bag, exchanging it for a large Courvoisier to settle the 'queasy tummy'.

  'Something I ate last night,' lied Boysie. 'Been feeling a bit off ever since I got up.'

  His neighbour swapped a knowing look with the stewardess, and Boysie pushed the cylindrical button under the chair arm, slid the seat back into the dental reclining position, closed his eyes and tried to blot the vacuum hum of engines from his mind.

  As always at times of tension or stress, Boysie's lips began to move - showering a soundless stream of obscenities in the direction of Mostyn, the man he ever held responsible for any terror that came his way.

  Slowly, as though the inaudible invective acted as a soporific, he seemed to relax. At the end of it all there would be Iris - lovely, lithe, athletic, red-haired Iris.

  He lit a cigarette with the Windmaster, which bore his unfortunate monogrammed initials B.O, and contemplated the svelte behind of the stewardess as she bent over a passenger farther up the aisle. If Boysie had realised what confusion was about to be released by his lecherous and carefully planned Riviera jaunt, he would have been on his knees pleading to be taken home.

  *

  In a pink and white villa nestling on a terrace above the point where the Corniche Inferieure bends into Beaulieu-sur-Mer - between Nice and Monaco - a man called Sheriek was replacing the telephone receiver.

  'The London people are really excellent, my dear,' he said to the girl who was engrossed in varnishing the toe-nails of her right foot. 'He is on his way. Unfortunately, there is a woman in tow, but I don't think she will cause us much trouble - a minor detail.'

  The girl cursed mildly as a drop of Dior 135 spilled on to the hem of her eau de nil housecoat.

  Sheriek continued, his soft accent almost running the words together: 'They also tell me that our co-ordinator for this operation - someone rather important - is en route. It is up to us: we must show some enthusiasm, my dear. In fact, I think we should take steps before we are contacted, just to prove that we are on the ball - as our American friends so quaintly put it. A drink?'

  *

  At London Airport a young man in a cavalry-twill suit was dialling a Whitehall number and asking for 'Number Two.'

  *

  The Comet crossed the Channel coast, nosing along the airways towards Nice.

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