The Kobra Manifesto q-7

by Adam Hall

  That's the way we'd like to go, when we've got to.

  Not lying around with the drunks in the gutter without even a drop left in the stinking rotten bottle-

  Steady.

  Waiting for a crushed skull and nothing to show for it, the mission run into the ground because-

  Steady. You've got to sweat it out.

  Easy to say.

  But it's got to be done.

  Think. Shoes out of sight and one sock half off to make it look like a potato heel, dirt on my face and my hair roughed up: was there anything I could do to emphasize the image? Not a lot. Roll over another inch or two and get the light off my face because it hasn't got the yellow pallor, the drained look of the man lying next to me.

  Roll over and moan a bit, give a moan. You're a drunk and your head's full of booze. Work for your living. Work for your life.

  The bottle rolled in the gutter. One of the others woke up and cursed and someone told him to screw himself and he shut up but it was good cover, first-class cover, The man hadn't moved.

  He was watching the street Two cars went by, one of them with the emergency light flashing and the siren beginning to howl. Then a truck, with its wheels bouncing over the bumps near the intersection.

  Now the man moved.

  I watched his feet.

  He was going back to the alley.

  Someone was talking and now I could hear a sudden sharpness come into his tone.

  'Hey, Harry. Chuck's had it.'

  The man's feet disappeared into the alley and I rolled over and got up and staggered along the pavement, passing the doorways and keeping close in case I needed them, my shoes in my hand because when you break cover you leave nothing behind you.

  Except, when it's unavoidable, a few spots of blood in the gutter.

  'What happened?' Ferris asked me.

  'I was twenty minutes overdue on the call.

  'They put a bracket on me.'

  'How many?'

  He wasn't listening for bugs this time. 'Four.'

  'What about your face?'

  He meant could anyone recognize me again.

  'It was half dark.'

  'Did the objective see you?'

  'No.' The objective was Zade.

  He was getting his priorities right: there was still a chance to lock me on and he wanted to know how difficult it was going to be.

  'Where are you?'

  'West 69th Street. A pay phone.'

  In a couple of seconds he said: 'The objective's on the move.'

  'Oh Christ, when did-'

  'Don't worry.'

  'Listen, I can't-'

  'Shut up.'

  So I did that but it wasn't easy because I'd just blown the tag and it shouldn't have happened and I was beginning to think I couldn't handle this one and that brought the sweat out more than anything else.

  Be positive.

  I'd let them throw a wall in my face in Cambodia and now I'dBe positive and remember that a mission can be difficult.

  'All right,' Ferris said, 'have you still got your transport?.'

  'No.'

  'Why not?'

  'I can't go back into the area.'

  'What kind of trouble was there?' he asked rather quickly.

  'I've bloody well told you — they put a bracket on me and — '

  'Information. Just information.'

  Ferris is good at pulling you up when he knows you need it.

  'It was just a case of getting out,' I said, and rested my head against the acoustic panel. 'So I got out'

  'I see.'

  He knew I'd give him more if mere was anything more to give but he didn't want a running commentary because one get-out action is like the next and there's nothing to talk about afterwards.

  Some of the bruises were starting to throb and my shoulder felt wrenched, try telling him that, 'I had to terminate,' I said.

  'Oh did you? How many?'

  'One.'

  'D'you need smoke out?'

  'No.'

  'What's your condition?'

  'Stunning — how's yours?'

  Meant I was operational and that's all he wanted to know.

  'Very well. Get to the Hertz office on West 71st Street and I'll have some transport lined up. The objective is at a diner in Queens and we've still got one man on him. Give it another go and this time see if you can take him over. Questions?'

  I needed a clean-up but there wasn't time. I needed some new clothes but there'd be no stores open yet Maps, cash, cover were still intact, 'No,' I said.

  He gave me the Hertz address and where to find the diner.

  'You'll need to be quick,' he said and hung up.

  He was taking a newspaper from me box outside the Varig Airlines — section of the check-in area. The first coin apparently didn't work because he hit the box with the flat of his hand and tried again. Nothing happened so he put another coin in and this time it was all right and he pulled the paper out and let the glass lid slam back.

  Five ten, lean, thick black hair, long arms, feet splayed a little as he stood by the box. Leather jacket zipped halfway up to polo neck sweater. Panda sunglasses, thick gold chain around the neck, two heavy gold rings. Bronzed, general attitude relaxed.

  Satynovich Zade.

  I watched him from inside the Hertz Cougar at a distance of fifty yards. He couldn't see me even if he were looking for surveillance in this area because the sun was 09:16 hours high in the south-east and the reflection off the windscreen would blind him to anything behind it.

  I listened to the engine cooling. It had been a fairly exacting run from the diner in Queens to Kennedy Airport because I'd had to assume three elements: Zade, the Bureau tag and fee Kobra protection cell. I couldn't just fall in behind the leader because until we were within three miles of the airport we hadn't followed any of the main routes to the downtown areas and I didn't know if the Kobra cell was in front of me, behind me or both. The only suspect had been a Corvette with two men inside but they'd peeled off and stayed out of sight and didn't come up in the mirror. The only thing to do was put the Cougar through a series of doubling-back patterns whenever I could skin through on the amber and that had called for a lot of acceleration bursts and close control of the brakes and the whole car smelt of a hard run as I sat here watching the objective.

  The Bureau tag had been using a dark blue Pinto and it had gone now. I'd seen him get out and go across to one of the phones and talk to Ferris for thirty seconds; then he'd got back into the Pinto and driven away. The objective was now solely in my hands.

  Ferris had told me he'd still got one man in the running and he hadn't told me what had happened to the other one and I didn't want to think about it now. Later I'd have to.

  Zade moved, opening the paper and glancing at it and folding it as he went into the airport building. I was out of the Cougar at the same time.

  This was a hellishly sensitive phase and I tried not to think about that either because at this moment I could be moving through an opposition surveillance zone and there wasn't anything I could do about it. I believed Zade had got here from Queens without a protection cell because I hadn't seen any evidence of one and I could be wrong.

  There were two reasons why I didn't want to think about the second man who'd been watching Zade at the Lulu Belle Hotel: Ferris wouldn't have simply called him off, and that meant he'd either been got at by Kobra or Ferris had been ordered by London to dispense with him as a disinformation tool and neither eventuality would have been pleasant for him.

  The thing was that I was now locked on to the objective and the field looked clear, and Zade's destination could be the Kobra rendezvous.

  The check-in area was crowded when I got inside the building. 'Porter, are you free?'

  'Can't help you right now — '

  'Here's fifty.'

  'Okay, what do I do?'

  That man in the queue at the Varig desk, black hair, leather jacket, dark glasses-'

  'Sure, I got him.'


  'Hang around close to him and find out where he's going — I want every detail you can get — his name, flight number, destination, single or return. Another fifty if you get it right'

  I moved away and found easy cover in the crowd and did some fast checking close to Zade and extended the field progressively. It was impossible to be certain but I did the best I could. Half the people in the queue with Zade were South American Indians and there was no one I'd seen before since I'd arrived in New York.

  Zade was now at the desk and the porter stayed close to him, bending over some of the baggage lined up for the scales and looking at the labels, 'half-turned away from Zade and working rather well: good agent material but don't let it go to your head, buster, don't get into this game because it's strictly for freaks.

  I stayed where I was until he came away from the desk and began looking for me.

  'He's going to Belem on Flight 238, coach class.'

  'All right, we'll keep moving. Single or return?'

  'Goddamn it, I forgot to — '

  'Never mind. What's his name?'

  'He's a Mr Zane.'

  Close enough. The professional terrorists in the international class didn't use a cover name: they're too proud of the ones they've built their reputation on.

  'Listen, I'm going to the Varig desk and I want you to keep him in sight, The other fifty's still waiting for you but not if you lose him, understand?'

  'Well okay, but I could lose my job if I don't look after those people down by the — '

  'I'll be ten minutes.' The queue at the desk had dwindled. 'If I'm longer than ten minutes you get double.'

  I booked first class because that would allow me to go aboard before Zade and use the toilet for cover while he came through the forward compartment. Once in his seat he wouldn't come forward and since I'd be first off the plane when it landed I could set up the surveillance and take my time.

  'Have a nice trip, Mr Wexford.'

  'Thank you.'

  The porter had moved out of sight but I'd seen the direction and found him at a drinking-fountain near the gift shops.

  'He's right over there, mister.'

  'Yes, all right.' I turned my back and used the window of the coffee-shop to keep him in view. He was standing at one of the telephones, looking around him as he talked. I gave the porter his fifty and told him he was off the hook and went over to the gift shop and bought a plastic rain-cape and put it on. I'd cleaned up a little in the men's room at the Hertz office and seen in the mirror that my suit had in fact been ripped at the shoulder and one knee when I'd done me get-out thing in the alley: good cover for a drunken bum but inconsistent now with the image of a first-class passenger on Flight 238.

  Zade was on his way to the departure gate and I followed him through the X-ray and used one of the telephones in the Varig bay while he stood at the windows looking out. He had my image in reflection but I wasn't concerned because I couldn't board the aircraft without his seeing me and he didn't know who I was.

  Ferris came on the line.

  'Kennedy Airport,' I told him.

  Slight pause. Possibly he'd been thinking the Kobra rendezvous had been arranged for New York and now he knew it wasn't.

  'All right,' he said.

  'I gave him the info: Zade, Belem, flight number, so forth.

  When I'd finished he asked quickly: 'What time are you boarding?'

  'Five minutes.'

  He was thinking again: this was giving him a lot of work to do.

  'Clear field?' he asked next I said I thought so because I'd been checking the whole time since I'd followed Zade into the bay and I'd drawn blank on two counts: no one here was watching Zade and no one was watching me.

  'You think this could be a jump feint?'

  'No,' I said.

  Zade was too big for that. I knew something about his style and he preferred working solo, as I did, and if there were any peripheral footwork to be done he got someone else to do it and when he booked a seat for Brazil that was exactly where he was going.

  I don't think he was holed up in the Lulu Belle Hotel on Broadway in order to pull his travel pattern together while his protection cell tested for ticks: he had a reputation for getting through half a dozen girls a day when he was under operational tension and the Lulu Belle had been a characteristic port of call on his way through the city.

  'We haven't got anyone in Belem,' Ferris said. 'Our nearest man is in Recife.' He gave me the address and asked for a repeat. 'You think the objective might be in transit there?'

  'If he is, he didn't book right through.'

  'Oh bloody hell,' he said quietly and I knew what he meant. Most of the South American countries need a visa and medical certificate with smallpox on it and a subsistence attestation and anything up to four passport photos and Ferris was going to have to get them for me in New York and do it fast enough to make sure I didn't lose Zade at Belem Airport.

  I wondered if he could do it. The Travel people in London are first class but if the director in the field has to use local facilities there's always a risk and you can blow a complete mission with a suspect border-franking if you're forced into frontier-jumping by the opposition: it's one of the objects of making a feint.

  'Listen,' Ferris said. 'Brazil is a signatory to Interpol.'

  'Fair enough.'

  But it doesn't always work and he knew that, 'What about signals?' I asked him.

  'Through the consulate. Booth Building, Avenue 15 de Agosto.'

  Repeat.

  'I've got two minutes,' I told him. The boarding call was coming over the speakers.

  'I think that's everything.'

  He sounded rather vague.

  Ferris is never vague.

  'What happened,' I asked him, 'to that other tag?'

  There was time now to think about that. I still didn't want to, but there was time.

  'He was called off,' said Ferris.

  'What the hell for? You had both of them running when-'

  'Orders from London. He — '

  'Listen,' I said, 'I want to know.'

  Brief pause.

  'It's not your concern.' His tone had gone cold. 'You are now locked on to the objective in a clear field and you know I what to do and we expect you to do it. Questions?'

  Quite a lot but he was right: it wasn't my concern.

  In any given mission London knows as much as there is to know: as much as Briefing can get out of their files and as much as Signals can get out of their network and as much as Codes and Cyphers can get out of their computers. London gets all there is. But they don't pass all of it on. They give the director in the field precisely as much as it's essential for him to know; and out mere in the field where the pattern is changing rapidly from phase to phase the director uses his own discretion as to how much his executive needs to know in order to work at his full potential.

  The executive is a ferret. They put him down the hole and he doesn't ask any questions that don't concern him. All he's I got to do is stay alive and come up with the goods and the only way he can do it is by trusting London. If they don't I tell you everything you've got to believe it's for your own good ad eventually your own salvation, 'No questions,' I said.

  The line went dead.

  'Would you like something to read?'

  'Please.'

  New York Times.

  This was the edition Zade had bought.

  He was sitting twelve rows behind me in the coach class:' I'd gone into the forward toilet and swung the catch and shut the door against the lever, using one eye at the three-millimetre crack until I picked up his image as he passed through the front-end compartment.

  Since we shall be flying for most of our journey over water, so forth.

  The whine of the reactors increased and we began moving across to the runway.

  I knew what they'd done with the tag. The other one.

  Those four men on Broadway and West 69th Street had been local hirelings, like the ma
n reporting on the Secretary of Defense in Washington. Two of them had still been in fit condition When Zade had left the Lulu Belle Hotel and they might have given him mobile protection on his way to the diner in Queens: I didn't know because I wasn't there. But I'd been there when Zade had driven from the diner to the airport and there hadn't been any protection and there still hadn't been any protection at the airport itself and I could think of only one reason.

  London had in fact used the tag as a disinformation tool.

  The girl with the limpid brown eyes was showing us how to put on the oxygen mask when it dropped out of the panel.

  At the diner I'd signalled Ferris I was locked on to the objective. The tag in the dark blue Pinto was still working but Ferris couldn't call him off because the only way to do that would be by asking me to tell him and I couldn't do it: there was to be no contact. So the Pinto had been with us to the airport and when the man had reported location Ferris had called him off and I'd watched him go.

  The field was at that time clear.

  But except for the Pinto tag it had been clear since we'd left the diner and it shouldn't have been.

  Somewhere in the area where the executive isn't concerned. Control or Ferris or our man in Washington had rigged a bug or bust a code or in one of a dozen ways had found out that Kobra were getting worried and were ready to snatch and interrogate if the chance came: and the chance was given them. The disinformation had been pushed across to the Kobra intelligence and they'd believed the field to be clear and they'd dispensed with any protection cell for Zade at some time between his leaving the hotel and reaching the diner.

  A disinfo tool doesn't always survive. Statistics at the Bureau put it at fifty-fifty. But it's no good thinking about that sort of thing or you'll jar the nerves and finish up making mistakes.