by Adam Hall
It would depend partly on how well Ahmed and Hassan understood the European attitude to things like this: an Arab would entirely ignore the suffering of a mere woman and it wouldn't be worth touching her.
'Where is the aeroplane?'
'I still can't find it.'
The answers had to be acceptable: it was no good saying what cell, what aeroplane, so forth. He knew I was an agent operating in the local field and he knew I was assigned to the UK Tango Victor mission and if I could give him some answers that would fit in with what he already knew it might get him to think of a few more questions. The more I could persuade him to talk, the more he'd tell me.
'Do you think the aeroplane is somewhere near Kaifra?'
'Well,' I said, 'I don't know about near. We certainly thought it was, but it looks as if we were wrong,'
He seemed about to ask me another one and I waited but he shut up and began stamping his feet impatiently, looking along the perspective of the palm-trees to see if Ahmed were coming. I thought it was interesting to note that this was an Egyptian cell and not the one controlling the marksman; also that one of the other cells was Algerian and working at government level with immediate-category liaison, because Chirac had brought in five squadrons of desert-reconnaissance aircraft just by mooning around up there at dawn this morning.
'Feeling all right?'
'Yes,' she said.
She was looking pale, the gold skin losing colour.
'Do not talk!'
Hassan had swung round nervously.
'You mean don't talk in English?'
'Yes. Talk in Arabic.'
'But this woman doesn't understand Arabic.'
'Then do not talk.'
His olive-black unimaginative eyes stared at me to make sure I was getting the message; then he turned away and looked for Ahmed again.
He wasn't trying anything subtle: he was energetic and efficient but not educated and it was almost certain that his henchmen didn't speak anything but their own crane-hook argot but it'd be too risky to rely on that so I asked her in English:
'Did you leave the other gun in the ambulance?'
I didn't expect her to have time to answer: she hadn't heard about any other gun and anyway she'd be thrown because I'd just been told not to speak in English and here I was doing it.
He came round very fast, Hassan, and his teeth flashed in the light as the animal mouth delivered its speech, the expression more explicit than the words.
If you talk to the woman in English again we will kill you, I will not have my commands disobeyed, if you do it again you will die, so forth.
But I'd got the information I'd wanted because the other three had closed in on me almost by reflex action when they'd seen him swing round, and their sub-machine-guns had come up to the aim. So they didn't understand English and Hassan didn't understand it either or he'd have told them to search the ambulance for the 'other gun' instead of telling me off.
I just hoped Diane would work things out and make a careful note: I'd told her they wanted to interrogate me and she knew you can't interrogate a dead man so if we had to talk to each other urgently we could do it in English.
Hassan was still glowering at me and I could see he'd like to shoot me here and now just for disobeying his orders: he was terribly nervous about the whole situation and didn't really trust in his ability to keep me subdued.
'Oh come on, Hassan, I bet you talk a bit of English, if it's only Coca-Cola.'
He spat, not too far from my shoe. We could hear a car somewhere, its exhaust-note muffled by the phalanx of palms, and he jerked his headto listen, watching the end of the avenue. I was worried because there was so little time and because this situation couldn't be expected to improve. One man and one sub-machine-gun would be enough to keep us immobilized, and this force-already overwhelming — would be augmented as soon as Ahmed arrived.
And I didn't like the thing about Diane.
I could only save her by getting her away and I didn't think I could do that. Once they'd got us in the confines of an interrogation chamber she wouldn't' have a chance. Nothing very important of course would happen: a fledgling agent seconded from an embassy to an active cell would go into the reports as fatally injured during the course of a mission and the incident would be passed on to those responsible for spreading the blackout. Two young gentlemen with diffident voices and polished nails would call at the flat in Lowndes Square to break the news, bearing the personal sympathy of the Foreign Secretary and hoping it might be a consolation to know that this very courageous civil servant sacrificed her life for the sake of others, adding that since her duties had been of an exceptional kind it would be unfair to her memory if any demand were made for enquiries that could only prove abortive and at the same time undo much of the work she had so assiduously accomplished in the cause of active diplomacy.
We never really found out. It was sort of — hushed up, all very strange. They say there were just some Arabs, and it was night-time, and — well we don't let ourselves think too much.
The avenue was still empty: the car was moving at right-angles to it, a good mile away, its note rising and falling as the sound was trapped and released among the buildings. Hassan turned back to us and fumbled quickly for a cigarette, breaking the first match before he could light it.
Nothing very important and it happens two or three times a year to experienced executives like O'Brien and Fyson and we never know how many smaller fry are neutralized. It was infinitely more important that when she began sobbing I should remind them that I hadn't yet been able to locate Tango Victor, that when she first screamed I should repeat that I was only a freelance without a local base, and that when she failed to respond to resuscitation I should tell them they'd been wasting their time simply because they hadn't believed me, and that they would only waste more time if they put me through the same treatment because if I didn't know where the freighter had crashed then I couldn't tell them.
Hassan went and leaned into the Citroen GT and put the headlights down to dipped so that he could watch the road without having to move away from us beyond the glare. The smoke from his Egyptian cigarette drifted on the air, tarry and perfumed. He was smoking it nervously, flicking away the ash before it had time to form more than a millimetre. I watched his cigarette.
Diane was yawning quietly, being afraid. It happens in the trenches and behind thebarrera of the bull-ring: the intake of oxygen for the muscles, the release of thyroid secretion for the nerves. I looked at her and nodded and said:
'Okay?'
'Yes, thank you.'
Hassan jerked his dark head to look at me but okay was international and that was why I'd used it and he didn't slam into me this time. I said in Arabic:
'The woman doesn't know anything. Why don't you let her go?'
He shook his head again, taking me seriously. 'We will find out what she knows.'
I let it go at that and moved my feet around a bit, as he was doing, my hands behind me. The snouts of their guns moved, keeping me lined up. I wished I could help her get through the waiting, saying a word or two; but she wasn't meant to understand Arabic and if I spoke English again he might tell one of them to go for the face or the diaphragm to make sure I understood and that wouldn't do any good: I didn't think I could save her but it wouldn't make her less frightened if she saw how helpless I was.
I stopped moving about and leaned with my back against the little Fiat, listening to the faint sounds of traffic on the far side of the town where the highway linked the airport with the drilling camps. I couldn't hear the sound of any particular vehicle nearing. Hassan was listening too and I thought it probably wouldn't be long before he used the radio to ask his base where Ahmed was.
That was the principle of the thing, anyway: whatever they did to her, I wouldn't give them information. Whatever they did to me, I wouldn't talk. They could afford to work on her as far as the point where life ceased and the odd thing was that I was absolutely certain she'd ho
ld out for as long as I did: it hadn't occurred to me that they'd get anything out of her. I could of course have been wrong but I didn't think I was.
She was watching me and glanced away but realized I'd seen her and looked at me again, one eye clear and amethyst, the other in deep shadow, the down on her face silvered in the light from the Citroen, her soft hair shining. One day she'd be a beautiful woman, would have been,yes, as you say, a beautiful woman, but there we are and I suppose there aren't many families without something to grieve for, it's Angela, really, who felt it the most, they were very close you know, terribly fond of each other, almost like twin sisters, but I mustn't go on like this the minute you arrive.
A query in the quiet regard: what's going to happen?
I don't know.
Cursed them again till the sweat came and I looked away from her because I ought to have reassured her but couldn't manage it, cursed them for bringing in a child just because the machine they'd set up was running too fast, sweating in the cool night air, not wanting to make the effort I would have to make and very soon. Not only her life involved, butterflies are pretty too, you find them flattened in window-jambs and the world goes whistling on, but my own life as well, not that I've ever thought of dying in bed, thank you. Two lives and a mission. Made you sweat.
Physical condition not up to standard: the bruising had left me wanting to keep still, every movement making it feel as though something was going to snap, a bone, a tendon. Mentally fed-up of course, the horror still there at the fringe of consciousness, their talons hooking and the farmyard stink of them, quite apart from the worry about what was going to happen. Put it this way, the organism wasn't in awfully good shape for survival.
'Hassan.'
I was still leaning against the side of the Fiat and I didn't straighten up when he came over to me. I was dead beat, he could see that. I said:
'The woman doesn't know anything.'
'You have said this, but we will see.'
'Let her go and I'll tell you everything I know.'
He laughed, just a quick flash of his teeth in the brown skin, and turned his head to look at Diane, the cigarette flattened between his fingers as he raised it and drew the smoke out, the glow of its tip reflected like a spark in his eye and then dying.
They would use a cigarette like this one. Probably one of those in the pack he'd pulled out just now. What is the longitude, what is the latitude, or she will not see anything again, the glowing tip against the amethyst, tell us. They would use other things; they would be selective, efficient.
'You will tell us everything you know,' he said, 'in any case.'
He'd laughed because I'd said something at last that he couldn't take seriously: if they let her go I'd tell them less, in the end, not more; and he knew that. Anyway the whole thing was academic because he was a professional and he knew that any man can be reduced to a gibbering loon if they take it far enough and it doesn't need more than an hour. The only drawback is that he might not be, at that stage, too articulate.
'You can't say I didn't try, Hassan.'
He turned to me, his teeth flashing again.
'You tried,' he said, nodding his dark head, 'yes.'
He dropped his cigarette end, putting his black pointed shoe on it, the loose sand gritting. Then he stood watching the roadway, listening.
The three men hadn't moved for minutes. Most of the time they watched me but turned their heads now and then to see what Hassan was doing, one of them staring at Diane until he saw me watching him, one of them looking sometimes along the road's perspective. Their sub-machine-guns had fallen away from the aim since Hassan had told me off for speaking in English but this was normal for the situation: they were standing at ease, in the military sense, to avoid the onset of syncope that sends our guardsmen toppling with such embarrassment at the Trooping of the Colours. Their guns could swing up and fire within a tenth of a second and at this range the shells would go through me and through both sides of the Fiat and there wasn't anything I could do about it: Hassan was running an efficient little cell and this trap was man-tight.
Near the end of the avenue a dome turned white and then darkened again as headlights swept across the building, and Hassan's thin dark body stiffened, straightening. We could hear the car but it wasn't coming in this direction and he relaxed after a while, shifting his feet and getting the packet of cigarettes, pulling one out.
'Don't worry, Hassan, he'll get here.'
He put the cigarette between his lips.
'Oh yes,' he nodded, 'he’ll get here.'
'Can I have one of those?'
He came over to me and I got some matches out, striking one for him. When he'd lit up he held the packet out to me and I took a cigarette, putting the tip between my lips and striking another match. It occurred to me, in one of those stray thoughts that pass through our minds at unlikely moments, that it wasn't a very easy death I was giving him.
17: MARAUDER
They were Unicorn Brand but that was all I knew about them. The important thing was that they were British made and therefore likely to have fewer duds among them than a Continental make, so that the odds against this kind of operation succeeding were considerably lower even though it was a strictly one-shot set-up without a hope of another go.
The oxygen carrier might have been anything, potassium chlorate, manganese dioxide or possibly lead oxide, with the usual sulphur for the flame-burst medium mixed with dextrin, powdered glass and so on for the binding and striking agents. The actual splint would have been treated with sodium silicate or ammonium phosphate as an impregnation against afterglow and although in this climate it was tinder dry I decided to throw directly into the fuel tank orifice while ignition was still in progress rather than wait for the flame to become established because the air rush could blow it out.
There was an area of danger during the actual setting-up of the operation. I had gone to lean against the Fiat instead of the Citroen GT because there wasn't a hinged panel over the petrol cap: a panel would have made a noise springing open and I would have had to stand slightly away from the bodywork to give it room, which would have exposed my hands and the panel itself. With nothing more than the half-turn cap to take off it had been a pushover even with my hands behind me and no one had seen what I was doing because finger movement alone was necessary, the forearm and wrist remaining perfectly still.
The area of danger had involved the petrol cap itself once I'd removed it: I couldn't put it into my pocket without their seeing it, so I'd had to leave it wedged between my spine and the body panel in order to leave my hands free to get the matches and strike them; and the whole operation would have been abortive if for any reason I'd had to lean away from the car because the petrol cap would have dropped with quite a lot of noise.
There'd been a certain amount of strain on the nerves because the fact was that two lives and the end-phase of a priority mission were now depending on a blob of chemicals literally as small as a match head and this resulted in quite normal but dangerous purpose tremor when the time came to bring out the matches: my fingers weren't steady as I struck the first one and I had to get over this by considering a simple enough fact: that if nothing at all had depended on doing this thing properly I could have done it at the very least a dozen times with perfect success. In other words I was on an odds-on favourite at twelve to one so there wasn't any real need to worry.
I think my fingers had been quite steady again in the instant before I struck the second match but there wasn't time to give it any attention. The operation was now in final sequence and almost automatic: the match had to be moved through a hundred and eighty degrees laterally and downwards approximately forty degrees from the horizontal and the eye would pick up the target at once because it was well defined as a dark hole in a light-coloured panel. The actual timing was critical but presented no physical problem: all I had to do was swing half round with my right hand moving downwards during the ignition phase, allowing almost two fu
ll seconds for the manoeuvre — more than twice as long as I needed for the muscular commands and responses.
The ignition was normal and I waited for the oxygen release from the carrier and the formation of sulphur dioxide with heat increase before I turned and threw the match into the fuel orifice. At this stage the chemical process was becoming rapid and the final oxygen release almost explosive and I got clear and let the petrol cap drop to the roadway.
Hassan didn't have any time to react. The mental process involving the sequence of surprise, suspicion, comprehension and physical avoidance commands was much too long and I doubt if he'd done more than assume the startle posture, head forward and shoulders hunched, before the fumes caught. He was standing, in effect, directly in front of a flame-thrower.
The timing of the main explosion wasn't important. Both Hassan and one of his men were in the immediate flame area and were thus technically out of action as soon as I threw the match. My target was the man standing seven or eight feet away towards the Citroen GT and I went for him in the same movement that got me clear of the explosion.
He didn't have a chance and I knew that. His surprise phase would last much longer than it would take me to reach him: two seconds ago the night had been quiet and he had been party to a situation affording him absolute power and he was now faced visually with a conflagration that covered seventy-five per cent of his static field of view and mentally with a reversal of concepts difficult to accept without a sense of unreality. He was moving instinctively into a half crouch when I spun the sub-machine-gun to break his hold on it and flung it clear and dropped him and went for the other man.