The Tango Briefing q-5

by Adam Hall

  She was watching me. I saw what I looked like, because her eyes showed everything, and I turned away but the window was there with the outside dark making it a mirror, yes indeed, a sorry figure as they say, rather messed about with, one way and another. Saw her point now. Motherly little soul, wanted to tuck me up before the whole bloody auction had time to disintegrate.

  So I walked about a bit to prove it wasn't going to.

  'When's it for?'

  'What?'

  'The rdv.'

  She was still listening to the jet, head on one side. It sounded as though it was going into circuit above the airport.

  'Later,' she said, not looking down.

  'What time?'And she jerked her head to look at me because I'd put a lot of force into it, fed-up with not knowing things and not being able to talk properly or think properly, getting better but not nearly fast enough, upsetting.

  She was watching me critically, trying to make some sort of decision. Her hands were still bunched inside the windcheater, and the weight of the Colt Official Police.38 was dragging it down at one side; you wouldn't have to frisk this pint-sized Mata Hari: you could see shewas armed half a mile away.

  She kept her voicelow, moving closer.

  'Loman has some orders for you. He insisted I didn't give them to you unless you seemed fit enough for some more work. Well, you're not fit but you won't give an inch so what can I do? He's at base keeping up a signals exchange with London in the hope that you'll be able to operate. '

  'That doesn't sound like Loman. He'd grind a blind dog into the ground.'

  'I don't think it's a question of consideration.'

  'More like it, come on.'

  'He wants you to do something he called «sensitive» and if you can't bring it off he said the "repercussions would be grave in the extreme". He also — '

  Suddenly I was shaking her and she drew a breath and shut her eyes and waited and when I realized what I was doing I stopped and stood away and she didn't say anything for a bit, furious again I suppose because she was doing her best and I wasn't helping. Quietly as I could:

  'Just put it in your own words.'

  Couldn't stand the man, that was all, a pox on his grave repercussions, if he meant the whole thing'd blow up if I ballsed it why couldn't he bloody well say so. Besides which I was badly shaken because they'd wanted me to go and report on Tango Victor and I'd done that so I'd thought the mission was tied up and now London had got second thoughts on it, they never let you alone, those bastards, drive you till you drop.

  'Things have been happening,' she said. 'Soon after you went off the air we had an alert from London. We were asked to rebrief you for the end-phase of the mission. We didn't know if you were still alive, but London said they were going ahead on the assumption that you could still operate.'

  The whine of the jet was thinning above us as it came into the approach path and I looked at the square electric clock above the instrument trolley. 23.52.

  'It's for tonight, is it?'

  'Yes. I don't know it all. I can only tell you what I've been instructed. You're to know that a representative of the Foreign Office was flown out this evening to meet the Tunisian Minister of the Interior. It's been arranged that an aircraft of the RAF Tactical Command will be permitted to land here at Kaifra tonight, at approximately midnight. Your orders are to meet it, receive a consignment and take it to base.'

  Final approach now and eight minutes early. I looked from the window but couldn't see anything of his lights in the sky. Then I moved away, not hurrying.

  All right,' I said. 'Anything else?'

  The room wasn't big: nine short paces from this window to the one opposite. I counted the paces because I like knowing about things, especially about the environment I have to operate in. I hadn't walked this far since I'd been in the desert but the legs were holding up all right.

  'Nothing else,' I heard her saying, 'till you reach base.'

  The glass of the window was black and I could see her reflection: she was standing there with her hands in the windcheater, watching me. The only light from below was from a street lamp, reflecting on edges and curved surfaces.

  'The immediate thing,' I said, 'is to meet that plane, right?'

  'Yes,' she said.

  I could hear it landing now, the jets screaming suddenly and then fading right out. I looked down from the window.

  The other side of the building there'd been a Mercedes and a 404, both with their lights off. This side there was the small Fiat I'd seen at the Royal Sahara and a GT Citroen, no lights. They weren't just parked: you don't leave a car like that in the deepest shadow you can find; you put it under a street lamp if there is one, so people won't pinch things.

  I said over my shoulder:

  'D'you think you could've been followed?'

  It took her a couple of seconds.

  'Followed?'

  I came away from the window, again not hurrying, but it didn't matter whether they knew I'd seen them or not because it was too late to do anything about it: this place was a trap.

  15: TRAP

  'I don't think so,' she said.

  She looked small and cold and hunched.

  'Wouldn't you know?'

  She didn't answer.

  I hadn't meant to hurt: I wasn't even thinking about her. I wanted facts, as many as I could get and as soon as I could get them. She moved slowly and I said:

  'No. Keep away from the windows.'

  She stopped at once, looking down.

  I suppose she wanted so much to show me she was a professional, but everything she did was amateur.

  'Did you get here before Chirac brought me, or after?'

  'After.'

  I began walking about to get the circulation going. There hadn't been a psychic spasm since she'd told me about the FO sending out a man to see the President here: the end-phase was being thrown at me like a fast-burn fuse and I had to do a lot of thinking and if the psyche wanted to act the bloody fool it wouldn't get any help from me.

  They must be desperate in London. The RAF back in the act and unofficial negotiations at presidential level: if they went on like this they'd shake the whole thing off its bearings.

  'When Loman told Chirac to pull me out he must have known the mission was still running?'

  She lifted her head and looked at me, ready to make another mistake and ready to see what I thought of it, bracing herself.

  'I don't know what you mean.'

  'Oh for Christ's sake — '

  Not thinking properly. Control. We were in a red sector and I wouldn't get us out of it by pushing this poor little bitch till she broke.

  'Don't worry,' I said, 'they couldn't have followed you here. They don't know you.They haven't seen you since you set up the base and if they saw you in Kaifra before then it couldn't have meant anything: they don't know who you are.'

  The breach of security must have been through Chirac. He wasn't a professional either and Loman had got him airborne again at short notice and he'd had to bring me here from South 6 by road and the area was stiff with surveillance.

  'All right,' she said.

  She turned away with her eyes getting wet and I suppose, she could stand up to me when I was being a bastard but she didn't know what to do when I stopped.

  'Listen,' I said, 'I want to know things. When Loman told Chirac to pull me out of the desert, he must have known the mission wasn't over, right? He was still in signals with London, wasn't he?'

  'Yes.'

  'Then if the mission was still running and we were meant to keep it quiet, how could London send out a helicopter for me, right into the target area?'

  This was something she knew about and her head came up quickly. 'He said that after the massive air search by the Algerians no one in Kaifra would go on thinking that Tango Victor was in the region, so a single flight wouldn't attract much attention. But he told Chirac to gain full ceiling before he set his course, as a precaution.!

  'Fair enoug
h.'

  Quickly she said: 'Isthat right?'

  'It makes complete sense.'

  She nodded, feeling better, and I wished to God they'd found someone different to help us on this job, someone I could have ignored or disliked, a girl with glasses and a sniff or a yellow-toothed hell-hag with a barbed wire wig, anyone but this downy-armed child with her courage and innocence who ought not to be here with me now, caught in a trap that could kill her unless I could spring it.

  'Not too near,' I said.

  'No.'

  She turned back, keeping near the instrument trolley, the point farthest from both windows.

  'Are we able to phone base?'

  'No.' Very emphatic about this. 'Loman said it's possible the telephone exchange has been infiltrated. I imagine he means — '

  'Got at.'

  I wanted to think and she sensed it and didn't talk for a bit. Proposition: it wasn't the cell that had set up the marksman for meor they'd be in here by now, at least four of them or any number up to sixteen or more, adequately armed and easily capable of taking us or leaving us for dead, the staff of the clinic powerless to stop them. It was the cell that had orders to survey us, find out where we were going, so that when the objective was reached they'd be there too. So far they hadn't donevery well: Loman had put me into the target area and pulled me out again and they hadn't been good enough; all they'd done was lose a man in a ravine. Tonight they looked like doing better.

  It was a proposition only: not an assumption. Assumptions are dangerous and sometimes lethal. They might be simply holding their fire till we went out there so there wouldn't be any fuss, nothing for the ward-maids here to clean up afterwards. Theycould be that cell: the one with the marksman, the one with orders to stop me reaching Tango Victor wherever it was, in the whole of the Sahara. They hadn't done very well either: they hadn't stopped me reaching the target and reporting on it and getting out again; all they'd done was mess up a Mercedes and leave it full of shells. Tonight they were better placed.

  It didn't matter which cell it was.

  'You mean there's someone outside?'

  I think she had to ask because she couldn't stand it any more, not knowing.

  'Yes.'

  She nodded.

  Her little nods were expressive: just now it had meant she felt better: this time it was acceptance. Nothing more than that because she didn't know the whole thing, she probably thought there was just one man, just one man watching.

  'Where's Chirac?'

  'He went back to the Petrocombine South 6 drilling camp. Loman said he must use that as his base.'

  Further operations: you don't need a base if you've finished operating.

  A spasm came and I wasn't ready and they screeched and their black wings beat at me and I shouted at them without a sound, doing nothing with my hands, repulsing them with my mind, half aware of their unreality, only the psyche sensitized by the thought of Chirac standing by for further operations.

  'Are you all right?'

  'What?'

  'Are you — '

  'Yes.'

  Sweat running and respiration accelerated, normal symptoms of fear. If Chirac was standing by it could be to fly me out again, drop me back into the nightmare, not ready yet to stand it, even to stand the thought.

  She was keeping close to me, watching me, wanting to help. 'You're all right now.'

  'Yes. You know it was nerve-gas, don't you, you were there when I — '

  'Yes.'

  'It's the one that puts the fear of Christ in you.'

  'I know.'

  I suppose they'd heard me yelling my way out of the freighter. A bit embarrassing but it wasn't my fault: there'd been photographs, a press release at the time when the stuff was invented, picture of a mouse in a cage with a cat and the cat was terrified of it, back arched and ears flat, spitting.

  'Listen,' I said and turned away from her, 'what other facilities have been granted?'

  When I turned back she was just standing still trying to think what I meant, trying to answer before I lost patience again. So I said: 'The UK's had permission to land a military aircraft here but I mean what else? Did Loman ask for any kind of assistance, police, army, secret service liaison?'

  'I didn't hear of anything else. He didn't tell me about anything. I was there all the time while the signals were going through, till he sent me here to brief you.'

  'All right.'

  Paradox: the Tunisian government was prepared to receive a plane with RAF rondels in Kaifra but I couldn't go down to the reception desk and phone the police and say there are four cars outside please have their drivers arrested on suspicion. But it wasn't quite like that: the Tango mission had been' ultra-sensitive from the start and a visit from the Foreign Office type with a request for immediate military overflying and landing rights could have tightened things to the limit.

  We were strictly an our own.

  The thing that worried me most was the timing. The plane was down and the crew was expecting me and I was here in a trap and I didn't know how long they'd wait or what they'd do with the consignment I was meant to receive.

  'What is this thing, d'you know?'

  'Which thing, please?'

  'Whatever the RAF are bringing in.'

  'I don't know. Loman called it "the device".'

  'The what?'

  ' «Device». It's the word he used for it in signals.'

  'You didn't get any clues? Chemical antidote? Some sort of destruct system? Gas-mask?'

  She thought back and then said no. This was logical because if Loman had been allowed to tell me what the thing was he would have briefed the girl, instead of which he'd obviously made sure she didn't pick anything up during the signals exchange.

  I kept on walking, the mind exercising the organism, wouldn't be possible in this condition to do very much if they came in for us, effort required, keep on walking and do it properly.

  'Is there any kind of a deadline on this?'

  'He didn't say so.'

  Logical too: the military aircraft had landed and I ought to be there to meet it because there'd be no point in letting it hang about the airfield. The deadline was already past.

  I stopped by the window, the one at the front of the building, and looked down as I'd done before. It presented them with a model target, a silhouette with back-lighting, but that was all right because if they wanted to pick me off they'd have done it the first time and in any case they wouldn't have sent four vehicles with crews numbering up to sixteen if all they wanted to do was make a small hole in a skull.

  It wasn't easy to see things through the reflections on the glass but the white oblong down there had a cross on the side and a pennant mounted on the windscreen pillar, French style. It was parked about halfway between the gates and the front entrance of the clinic and from this angle I couldn't see if it was in sight of the Merc and the 404. They were in the shadow of the palms on the road outside and there was a hedge of desert tamarisk in their general line of vision: if they could see the ambulance at all it would be through the gateway.

  'How many are there?'

  I shortened focus and looked at her reflection in the glass. At this distance I couldn't see her eyes but her voice had sounded steady enough, just a degree strident as if she'd made herself say it. She was young and inexperienced and would make the worst possible agent material and if they ever pushed her into a mission where she had to operate solo for five minutes that'd be as long as she'd live, but she looked as though she had guts and I thought the safest thing would be to tell her what the actual situation was so that she'd have a chance of saving herself if I forgot to duck.

  'There are at least four cars.'

  Her reflection gave a little nod. She didn't say anything.

  I looked through the glass again. Conditions outside were the same as last night when I'd walked out of the Royal Sahara to the Mercedes: bright starlight, still leaves, moonless and windless. Low natural visibility without haze, acoust
ic irradiation conditions somewhere near a hundred per cent with the hygrometer down towards zero and the air totally static. I would have preferred low cloud and a moist wind, the dark to hide in, the wind to take sound away.

  I turned and began walking again.

  'What's the code-intro?'

  She was watching me with very bright, very alert young eyes: she didn't understand what I meant and was trying hard to think and get it right and not look stupid.

  'What's the code-introduction when I meet these RAF types? Password. What do I — '

  'Oh yes — Firefly. They'll be carrying photographs of you and you'll be asked to show them the scar on your left arm. You must destroy the photographs immediately.'

  'My Christ, is that all?'

  She just shut her eyes and stood there hunched up but I wasn't even thinking about her because London had covered the code-intro with actual pictures and a physical feature so it wasn't just a gas-mask they were handing over: it was something so classified that the Air Ministry wouldn't deliver it before they'd forced the Bureau into providing treble-check identification. They couldn't be standard aircrew on that plane: they were seconded from D16 or Liaison Branch, or the Bureau wouldn't have let those photographs out of the files.

  I suppose she thought she'd got it wrong again because of the way I'd said was that all. She only knew half of what was going on and whenever I asked her anything she'd only got a fifty-fifty hope of coming up with the right answer and it was wearing her down.

  'What car did you come in?'

  She opened her eyes.

  'The Chrysler.'

  'Loman's?'

  'Yes.'

  'You came from base direct?

  'Yes.'

  'You know the way back?'

  'Past the mosque.'

  'That's right.'

  It was a three-minute trip.

  If I could get her out of here she could be back in cover within three minutes but three minutes wouldn't give her anything like enough time to flush a tag and she hadn't been trained to overshoot base and take him on to neutral ground and do what I'd done to Mohamed. With four vehicles waiting out there I thought they'd probably just take her somewhere for interrogation and she wasn't trained to cope with that kind of thing either.