Rogue Hercules

by Denis Pitts

  He read, once again, a cable which he had just received from the Foreign Ministry in Paris.

  The airport slept, too. Only on very rare occasions did any pilot elect to land at midday in Djibouti, when the heat rose in great glistening columns from the concrete runway, distorting all distances and making the air thin and weak and treacherous.

  The airport manager’s office was locked. The ticket desks were deserted. Fire crews slept in the little shade that they could find. Even the beggars and freelance porters had disappeared in that curious way in which only Arabs can suddenly melt into nothing at any given time of the day or night.

  The duty controller had left the tower in charge of his trainee assistant, a young Arab who sat alone now in the control tower trying hard to master the English grammar essential to his elected profession.

  The heat, in spite of the air-conditioning, became too much, even for him, and he was quietly dozing when Harry Black’s voice cut through the loudspeaker system.

  ‘Djibouti tower this is unscheduled transport Juliet Mike Oscar. We are ten miles from you at zero one six requesting clearance to land. Over.’

  The young Arab shook himself and yawned. Assuming a nonchalance which he admired so much in his French tutor, he switched on the microphone on the desk in front of him and said in a bored voice, ‘Yeah, okay.’

  *

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’ said Martin, frowning.

  ‘I read it that we are clear to land.’

  The coastline and the hills behind loomed close now. The city gleamed in a brilliant white dot in the yellowish brown coastal plain. They were losing height steadily as Harry carefully adjusted the propeller levers.

  ‘We could wake him with a Mayday call,’ he said. ‘After all, we’ve only three engines.’

  ‘Low profile,’ said Martin. ‘The less noise we make and the less trouble we cause the better. We’ve got clearance. That’s all that matters. Okay, let’s start approach checks.’

  Martin glanced behind. Stubbles was in the engineer’s seat reading a Dick Tracy comic. Sorrel was sleeping lightly in the bunk. Stubbles had taken pity and poured her a large whiskey. Martin chose to let her sleep.

  ‘TD valve switches.’

  ‘Auto and locked.’

  Thirty minutes earlier, Martin and Harry had been playing poker for quarters and dimes using a biscuit tin balanced on the auto pilot for the stake money. Now they were airmen again, terse and concentrating. Stubbles had stowed the comic and was holding his engineer’s checklist. His growth of beard was irritating him and he scratched his chin continually.

  ‘Radome anti-icing.’

  ‘Off.’

  They ran quickly through the rest of the checks. The altimeters were set and Harry studied the approach map to Djibouti from his aviator’s manual.

  ‘Djibouti tower. Juliet Mike Oscar. We are four miles from you at zero one six degrees. Can you give landing conditions, please.’

  There was a very long pause.

  ‘Yeah, okay.’

  The two pilots waited. Now they were almost over the city and could distinguish individual buildings. They could see the short, narrow runway to the south.

  ‘Djibouti tower. We are waiting for wind and ground temperatures.’

  Another long pause. ‘Oh yeah. There is no wind. Ground temperature…hold on.’

  Harry could see Martin mouthing obscenities as he waited impatiently.

  ‘Forty-four degrees, nine nine four millibars.’

  Martin spoke. ‘Djibouti tower, thank you. I take it we land west to east?’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Martin shook his head in disbelief. ‘Pre-landing check. Flaps.’

  ‘As required.’

  ‘Gear down.’

  ‘Gear down. Three greens. Checked and nose wheel centred.’

  By the time they had completed the checks the aircraft had passed over the city. Martin took her well inland and at six thousand feet she leaped violently as she met the up-draughts over the hills.

  It was not an easy landing. As they turned towards the outer marker and began their final descent, Juliet bucked and fought and suddenly dropped violently as they crossed the hills again into an area of low pressure.

  Their descent was fast and Harry changed pitch continually and held the air brakes until the last possible moment. Martin’s eyes appeared almost closed as he strained to see the runway through the heat shimmer.

  His hands made deft, microscopic movements on the control column. His right leg ached as he maintained a constant battle using the rudder to counter the uneven engine pull.

  They had no alternative but to hit the runway hard. They had been close indeed to over-shooting and Harry rammed the two inboard propellers into reverse as soon as the massive plane bounced for the second time. He needed no command.

  They had used half the runway before Martin was able to apply the brakes. It was a desperate and dangerous moment. The two inboard engines, even at maximum power and pitch, had little slowing effect in that heat. They saw the sea racing towards them at the end of the runway. Too much brake at that moment on that fiercely hot runway would have shredded all six tyres in a matter of seconds.

  Harry was yelling the ground speed. He did not hide his fear.

  With five hundred feet of runway left, Martin braked. Juliet Mike Oscar came to a shuddering, lurching, teetering standstill with twenty yards of concrete left.

  Book Two

  Colonel-General Yuri Ivan Litvinoff was a huge, bluff, merry-looking man whose only vice was the chainsmoking of Havana cigars which he indulged throughout his long working day. He was a family man who was devoted to his wife and four children and a terrier dog. He enjoyed playing practical jokes and his greatest pride was a complete collection of Laurel and Hardy movies which he ran over and over again in his weekend dacha on the Moskva river.

  During the week he ran the biggest intelligence and counter-intelligence organisation in the world. Litvinoff was the Director of the KGB and, as such, the third most powerful man after the Secretary of the Communist Party and the President, in Soviet Russia. He was in fact invulnerable, omnipotent and entirely secure within that system, and he could thus afford to play practical jokes and to maintain a benign, Pickwickian exterior to the rest of the world.

  He was doing that soon after noon that day to an angry, lividly angry, Natalia Rogov who was pacing up and down the length of his office, gesticulating with her long tapering hands and fingers, her voice shrill and strident. Her lithe body trembled with fury as she faced him.

  It was an extraordinary scene. In Moscow it was incredible.

  Secretaries in the anteroom stopped talking and typing and listened with growing incredulity. Here was a young woman, known to be suspect for her western bourgeois tastes and allegedly decadent habits, openly abusing a man who, with one push of a button on his desk, could have her imprisoned, certified to a lunatic asylum, or dispatched for years of forced labour in the Virgin lands. No one raised his voice to the head of the KGB. Certainly no one ever screamed at him in this fashion.

  ‘Is it not possible for your heavy-handed, big-footed, clumsy operatives to stay out of anything?’ she was shouting. ‘Can’t you see that you are destroying a carefully thought out plan for totally discrediting the United States’ foreign policy in Africa? It was my idea and I was backed by my minister and by Comrade Brezhnev himself. It was working well — and now you have to muscle in. You alert every agent in Africa, especially that drunken oaf Turok. The aircraft will turn back and the whole operation will have been a total waste of time and effort.’

  Litvinoff looked at the girl through huge blue eyes and removed the cigar from the centre of his mouth. He chuckled. His jowls shook.

  ‘You have your father’s temper, little Natalia,’ he said. ‘It is fortunate that you have your mother’s good looks.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me!’ she shouted. ‘I am thirty-five years old. I am not a child any more.�
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  A mock sternness came into his voice.

  ‘If I hadn’t known you as a child, little Natalia, and if I had not fought with your father in Leningrad and eaten rats cooked by your mother during the siege, then you would have been well chastised by now.’

  She flushed and sat down in a chair opposite him. She forced a smile.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Child,’ he said, tapping an inch of ash from the end of the cigar. ‘You have succeeded in breaking every rule in the KGB book. You have acted independently and you know there is no room for private enterprise in the intelligence area. We leave that sort of entrepreneuring to the Americans. You have even set up your own lines of communication, tried to appoint your own agents. Surely you must realise that every move you have made has been monitored by the KGB, that I have had daily, almost hourly reports on your activities.’

  ‘Then why did you let me continue? And why did the minister give his support?’

  ‘Because, dearest Natalia, you were doing well. Some of my officers complained bitterly about your involvement. You are hardly the most popular person in Moscow at this moment. I decided to let you have your head.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it was a brilliant idea. And you are quite right about the heavy-handedness of some of my staff. There is a secondary reason, Comrade niece. It would suit my purposes very well to have you in this department in a senior grade. If you had succeeded in this operation, I could have transferred you without any charge of nepotism. In my position I need people around me whom I can trust absolutely.’

  Litvinoff stood at his desk and his vast bulk towered over the girl. There were five rows of medal ribbons on his simple, grey uniform. Natalia stared at them, trying hard to assimilate what her uncle had been saying.

  ‘I am doing an important job at the Institute.’

  The big man guffawed as he walked around the big picture window and surveyed the city.

  ‘Writing learned papers, greeting delegations of tribesmen in their multicoloured nightgowns? An important job? Nonsense, child. Here you can act. With your intellect and intelligence and with your specialised knowledge of Africa you can have more influence on that continent in one week than the imperialists Cecil Rhodes or Smuts ever dreamed of in their lifetime.’

  ‘But the KGB?’

  ‘Do not disparage the KGB. It is a front line army, niece. While you sit with your books and slide-rules and plan grand strategies, we are in the field preparing the ground. You are young and active and you would be best employed in such an organisation.’

  ‘Then why interfere with my operation now?’

  He turned to her. He walked over and stood behind her and put his arms on her shoulders.

  ‘Because things have gone wrong. The aeroplane is not in flight over Mozambique. It has made a forced landing in Djibouti. We will make the maximum propaganda use of this. And Africa will soon know of the US duplicity within a matter of hours.’

  Natalia was immediately angry again. She shook his hands away.

  ‘Comrade Colonel-General, that is exactly the wrong approach. The Americans can lie their way out of that easily. The missiles could be going anywhere. We have absolutely no proof that they are going to Rhodesia.’

  ‘The KGB does not insist on proof.’

  ‘You talk of a day or so of trouble, Comrade uncle. A few American embassies get stoned, maybe burned down. So, that’s commonplace.’

  ‘And we embarrass the French. Djibouti is very sensitive. We have worked hard there.’

  She stood and tried to gain the maximum height against his.

  ‘Djibouti is a pimple. We can squeeze that at any time. If we can prove to the world that the Americans are smuggling arms into Rhodesia, if we can produce those missiles, we can prove them to be liars in the face of international opinion. The effect on Africans in Rhodesia itself and South Africa would be unbelievable.’

  Litvinoff walked back to his desk and relit his cigar. He gazed at Natalia reflectively as he puffed it back into life.

  ‘Can you be sure that it will be forced down? There is every chance, surely, that with that load of arms it will simply blow into a billion fragments and then there will be no evidence.’

  ‘I am assured by the Red Air Force that it can be done.’

  Litvinoff became pensive again.

  ‘You make a lot of sense, Comrade niece. Very well, I will try to keep my hunting dogs in their kennels for a few more hours. But remember that they are hungry for your blood. And remember too, my dearest Natalia, that if we succeed it is the KGB which takes the credit.’

  *

  No one moved on that flight-deck. No one spoke for fifteen full seconds. The three crew members sat frozen and gazed with empty, vacant faces at the rocky beach immediately in front of the aircraft and the vividly blue sea which beckoned beyond. Harry kept his hand on the engine condition levers because he knew that it would begin to shake uncontrollably if he moved it.

  Martin tasted blood on the side of his tongue. He had bitten his lip in the intense concentration of that approach and landing. Stubbles sat open-mouthed, Sorrel had woken on the initial thump and she was only vaguely aware of the real danger which had faced them. But she sensed the tension and wanted to say something trite and silly which would make these three statues move.

  Stubbles said it instead.

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said, mocking the voice of a flying instructor. ‘That’s one way of doing it, Captain.’

  The engines settled to the soft whine of ground idle.

  Martin’s face broke very slowly into a wide grin. He looked at Harry. ‘Brother, if you could see your face. It isn’t just pale, it’s transparent.’

  Harry risked taking his hand off the lever. It did not shake. He felt his whole body shuddering, however, with relief. He smiled.

  ‘You dangerous bastard,’ he said. ‘No bloody wonder that you can’t get a job with a civilised airline.’

  They began to laugh. Nervous, childish laughter which spilled the fear and agonising tautness from them. Stubbles thumped his hands on his knees. Martin whooped like a cowboy. Harry kept saying, ‘Christ Almighty’.

  They were close to hysteria when a new voice joined them. The accent was heavy, French. It was an acid and demanding voice.

  ‘This is Djibouti ground control. Unidentified aircraft you are instructed to leave the runway and turn right on to the apron and park after two hundred yards. You are to switch off your engines and wait in that position. You are not to leave the aircraft under any circumstances.’

  They stopped laughing. There was menace in this voice. They did not like it.

  ‘Friendly,’ said Harry.

  ‘After landing checks,’ said Martin grimly. ‘Flaps?’

  ‘Up.’

  ‘Navigation equipment?’

  ‘Off.’

  Martin glanced out of his side panel before taxiing off the runway. There were two jeeps parked at each wing tip. Machine guns were clipped on to the bodywork. They were trained onto the flight-deck of the aircraft by two unsmiling and entirely businesslike foreign legionnaires.

  *

  Murphy walked briskly along the Corso Umberto and turned into the maze of dingy streets which lead to the Capitano Palace and the hotel suite where the girl was waiting for him. It was a hot, humid day and Naples was vibrantly alive. Each doorway had a different sound, of backroom industry, of shrill gossip, of family squabble, of the soft senta of pimps and whores; and each a different smell, of leather, of bread, of laundry steam, of garlic and cheap perfume. It was a walk to take slowly and savour. But Murphy moved quickly, side-stepping the street vendors and tarts. He was in a hurry.

  He had driven into Naples that morning with every intention of losing himself until Juliet Mike Oscar had delivered her load in Salisbury and the money had been released from the National Bank of Switzerland where it was being lodged in his personal account in the Liechtenstein Hangl Bank.

  He would ma
ke four million dollars from this deal.

  He could afford to pay a hundred and fifty thousand to the crew.

  Had Martin Gore not insisted on the girl being on the flight, Murphy would have ensured that the crew would have seen little of this money. For one thing he disliked Martin Gore. He disliked most Englishmen but Gore was a special case. He was smooth and hard and a professional. He was also too honest for Murphy’s liking.

  And Gore had asked far too many questions about Ragnelli and the organisation.

  The deal had been arranged in a matter of hours. The two envoys from the Smith Government were desperate for these weapons. Smith and his government were being gradually forced to bow to world opinion. A British minister was, even at this moment, flying between various black capitals in Southern Africa. A settlement was becoming a distinct possibility.

  With these arms safely in his possession, Smith would be in a far stronger bargaining position.

  The Rhodesians had relied until now on South Africa for arms. It seemed quite certain that the American Government would persuade a worried South African Government to stop military aid.

  No wonder the two Rhodesians had been keen to part with such large sums of money.

  He had planned this day with thoroughness. By noon he had hoped to have brought off the deal with the Kurds for ten million dollars worth of anti-tank missiles. That, in fact, had turned out to be disastrous. The Kurds could not prove the availability of the necessary money and he had almost literally thrown them out of the office.

  He had planned then to go to the suite in the hotel where the girl whom he had met at Rome Airport the previous evening was waiting for him.

  He had allowed two hours for making love to her and when that had been completed he would begin to disappear from the face of the earth for six months.

  He had leased his villa at a satisfactory rent which would be paid into a numbered account in Luxembourg. He had sold the Camargue for a pleasing profit to an oil broker in Cannes and the Corniche, his favourite toy, was already being offered in a Naples showroom at a sensible loss for a quick sale.