by Denis Pitts
‘Hallo, black man,’ said Vincenzo. ‘One tiny move and you’ll be dead in five seconds.’
The other man was grinning. Harry felt the prick of the knife point and lay very still.
‘Black man, I promise you it’s nothing personal. Indeed, I tell you, I’ll make a deal. I can make this last a very long time like with Murphy. Very noisy before he went through the exit, your boss Murphy. Just tell me where the girl is and you won’t feel a thing.’
Harry said, ‘Murphy’s dead?’
‘Affirmative, Mr Black. Very dead. I hate to tell you but you’re all going to die. I have signed an agreement to that effect.’
‘Why, man?’ asked Harry weakly.
‘Where’s the girl?’
‘How would I know?’ said Harry. He felt the pressure of the knife increase.
It was at that moment that the first of ten bombs planted by the Somali United Front Party exploded under a parked car in a street six blocks away. The noise was enough to deflect Vincenzo’s attention and allow Harry to convulse himself away from the knife and off the bed.
He was naked, supremely vulnerable.
Vincenzo leapt on to the bed and stood on it for a second, the knife poised like a matador’s sword. He was still grinning when he stepped towards Harry.
Harry was ready this time. Breaking all the rules of unarmed combat he moved towards the Italian, reaching out for the knife hand. He felt a sharp sting and heard the blade grating along the bones of his right hand. His weight and power and rage carried Vincenzo against the wall.
Harry brought his knee hard into the other man’s groin and crashed the top of his head against Vincenzo’s nose.
As the killer sagged and began to slide down the wall, Harry grabbed at his throat with his good hand and strangled him.
*
Martin was woken for the fifth time that night, this time by a frantic hammering on the hotel room door. He opened it to find Harry, swaying drunkenly, a sickly, ridiculous grin on his face. Martin’s first instinct was one of fury, but then the co-pilot held up his hand. ‘It’s okay, Martin.’ He could barely whisper. ‘It’s my right hand. I can still fly on my left.’
He fell forward and Martin grabbed him by the shoulders. Sorrel was awake now and helped him to lay Harry on the bed. Blood was fountaining from the cut making an irregular set of splashes on the marble floor.
‘He’ll need stitches,’ said Martin.
‘Stitches?’ said Sorrel. ‘Don’t you see how deep that cut is, Martin? He’ll need major surgery.’
She was prodding Harry’s arm in search of the artery when there was a massive explosion in the street outside. The windows in the room appeared to bulge inwards and then they, too, exploded into a million fragments. For a fraction of a second it seemed that the floor was upended. Martin and Sorrel were hurled across the room and crashed through the open doorway. They came to, seconds later, lying on a carpet of glass fragments.
*
Turok heard the bomb from several miles away. He woke and walked unsteadily to the verandah of his house.
As he watched, another bomb flashed from the direction of the docks. The “crump” of the explosion followed a few seconds later. He heard the clatter of machine gun fire and the blast of smaller explosions.
‘Fools,’ he shouted. ‘Ungrateful fools. They should have waited for the signal. Moscow will have me shot.’
He heard his wife say from behind him, ‘Come to bed, Alexander Alexandrovitch, there is nothing you can do. They cannot punish you more than they have punished you by sending you to this terrible place.’
The Consul-General shrugged his shoulders in agreement and followed her into the bedroom.
*
Fifteen hundred miles to the south of the apron of the small airport at Mocímboa-da-Praia, Major Yefgeni Uglov sweltered in his silver ‘G’ suit by the fuselage of an orange painted MIG 21 UTI fighter and quietly cursed Africa. The mercury fuel cell which powered the air-conditioning inside the suit had failed and the nearest replacement was a thousand miles to the south in Beira. The rubbery plastic clung to his body making each movement an agony of discomfort. The suit itself was optional wear. He could have flown in shirt and slacks, except that the aircraft was still inhabited by red ants from the practical joke of the previous week. They appeared from all parts of the fuselage and engine housing. The only protection was to seal himself completely. He preferred this to the fierce agony of their bites.
The local bowser crew had succeeded in spilling several gallons of kerosene at the last refuelling and the stench drove him from the only available shade under the razor-edged delta wing. His morning mood of sadness and disillusion with this continent had returned. Africa, he decided, should be left to Africans. They deserved it. It deserved them.
It deserved, certainly, this one particular cursed fly which had been plaguing him for the past half hour. It had settled on his cheek earlier and he had slapped at it so savagely that he had loosened one of the stainless steel fillings in his teeth. His morale was always at its lowest ebb at that time in Africa and on this particular day it had never been lower.
Earlier Uglov had been decidedly cheerful as he left the Ambassador’s office. The signal from Moscow meant that he was in action again for the first time since, clad in the uniform of a Lieutenant in the Egyptian Air Force, he had led his squadron of MIG 23s against Israeli tanks in the Sinai Desert.
The message had specified exactly how the operation would be conducted. A Mozambique pilot would take the actual credit; he, Uglov, sitting in the rear seat, would ensure that the black man did not become too exuberant and destroy the C 130. Indeed, Uglov had made up his mind that he would conduct the entire operation with the African as a passenger only.
He worked at the maximum speed in near impossible conditions that morning in the belief that his target was airborne and would be overhead in a matter of a few hours.
His pilots, in their keenness, had used the entire quota of the SB 06 air-to-air missiles several days before; and his intention now had been to convert two actual missiles which were fully armed and heavily packed with high explosive into weapons which would create a relatively small explosion at a distance which he judged to be “safe-dangerous”. It was a task which would have dismayed the finest armourer, and Uglov was without any advice or expert assistance except for the air force signal from Moscow.
The work had involved taking and clamping the ten foot long cylinder on to a workbench with a makeshift vice; and then, using a massive wrench and aided only by a Mozambiquan mechanic, applying all his strength to unscrew and remove the globular aluminium head.
The first two feet of the missile were taken up by the infra-red guidance system, an entire miniature computer, the size of a large thermos flask, which had the capacity to seek and find the heat of an aircraft exhaust within a radius of three miles. This was relatively simple for Uglov to remove. The complex assembly was placed on the workbench. The problem now was to remove the high explosive inside.
It was when he placed the small inspection light into the metal cavity that he saw how impossible the rest of the job was. The steering engine unit was made up of four electric motors, each of them operating independently and controlling the angles of the four shark fin-like steering vanes. They were obviously impossible to remove in the short time allotted to him.
He had stared for a long time at the confusion of machinery. Behind this, he knew, was a bulkhead which removed to expose four long cotton padded tubes of melinite, each primed with an individual fail-proof detonator. He looked at his wrist watch and made a decision which, he knew, might well cost him his life.
Using a watchmaker’s lens and a minute screwdriver, he carefully adjusted the mechanism of the close proximity detonator unit in the rear of the guidance system to ensure that the missile would explode at the maximum possible distance from the target. In this way he could be sure of damaging the transport, but, unless he could get in a perfect shot at the su
bsonic speed required, there was an excellent chance of the blast crippling, probably destroying his own aircraft at the same time.
The missiles were then carefully clipped into their pods beneath each wing and their launching systems checked.
The secondary armament system on the MIG were two NR 30 mm canons in either wing. Methodically, Uglov defused each of the forty shells in each ammunition belt. At least, he reasoned, he could puncture the fuel tanks on the target without starting a fire.
Finally, with a cynical prudence, Uglov had disconnected all firing systems in the front cockpit. Umboto, the pilot he had selected for the mission, was excitable and almost certainly would not understand the subtlety of the manoeuvre they were attempting.
The tall Mozambiquan pilot had almost danced with delight at the briefing. Uglov had to physically restrain him from calling his relatives.
Soon after 11.00 am that morning they had taken off from the Beira base and flown at supersonic speed to Mocímboa, only to receive word that their target had been delayed. They were to remain on standby.
Umboto had disappeared. He had last been seen striding happily across the tarmac in search of a new conquest in a strange town.
Uglov stood and cursed his pupil and Africa even more fluently. His suit clung to his naked body. The control tower at Mocímboa was not able to relay messages on the military frequency. He was forced to stand on the concrete griddle and wait, listening to the crackle of the receiver in the MIG for the latest word from the Embassy.
He was composing another sad letter to his wife in his mind when he heard his call sign being shouted.
‘Volley. Volley. Stand down for six hours. Report by land line.’
Uglov climbed up to the cockpit and switched off the receiver. He pulled the master power switch to ‘off’. He slid the canopy closed and began the long, uncomfortable walk, his suit sloshing around him, across the airfield to the control tower.
*
The letter was headed FROM THE DESK OF GENERAL GEORGE SAUNDERS and it was typed on an IBM 3,000 typewriter which printed in the familiar Pentagon type. It was addressed to Group Captain Michael Borrison, DSO, DFC, Royal Rhodesian Air Force, and it read:
My dear Mike,
I want to introduce you to Harry Black, one of the best flyers the US Air Force ever had, who will be delivering a consignment to you. He is by far the most outstanding CHARLIE ONE-THIRTY flyer we have available at the moment and he has a truly remarkable Special Service record. I feel that his experience in Uganda may be of special interest to you, especially in view of his color. Don’t forget that I am due to remove a few bucks from you on the golf course when we get together here in June. I am enclosing six Dunlop 65s with the load — I gather they are hard to come by in your neck of the woods.
With best wishes,
George.
*
Natalia Rogov held the letter which was contained between two sheets of glass and turned to Litvinoff.
‘Explain, please.’
‘When you set out to deceive it is best to do it with absolute thoroughness,’ said her uncle. ‘There are more.’
He indicated the pile of documents on a table by the window in his office.
‘The letter you hold simply indicates the connection between the Pentagon and the rebel government in Rhodesia. It will be found in Black’s briefcase. We know that the typewriter in General Saunders’ office has certain minute irregularities and we have reproduced them in our workshops. We also have a set of the General’s fingerprints and they will be attached to the letter. An independent forensic expert will open his letter and examine the contents. That has been arranged.’
‘What else?’
‘Various items which will be essential for the world’s press. A letter from Interguns Incorporated which also implicates the State Department. A love-letter from the girl Francis to her boss Murphy typed on the Interguns typewriter which once again is easily identifiable. That will tell us a great deal about Gore and his Secret Service associations.’
‘All forged?’
‘But, of course.’
‘I agree you are being very thorough,’ said Natalia. ‘But might you not be adding too much dressing to salad? Surely the weapons themselves are sufficient.’
Litvinoff laughed. He put his arms around his niece and clutched her shoulder with a giant hand.
‘This is an exercise in propaganda, Natalia my innocent,’ he said. ‘The great reading public delights in minutiae like this. An aeroplane full of hardware, so what? It will be forgotten in a day or so. But build up a conspiracy and then unfold it piece by piece, letter by letter, a little romance, an indiscretion here and there, that’s what they will have for days on end. Just look at this.’
Litvinoff picked up a small blue book from the table.
‘A deposit account in the name of Martin Gore at the National Westminster Bank, Town Hall Branch, 103 Church Road, Hove, Sussex. See — a regular payment of £150 has been paid into his account on the first day of each month from Barclays Bank, London Road, Uxbridge, Middlesex since July, 1969, the date of his discharge.’
‘Meaning?’
‘The RAF pay office used that branch of Barclays Bank.’
‘But surely they will deny this immediately?’
‘Not immediately. Gore has an actual account at that bank in Hove. It will be several days before the bank will be prepared to make any statement about a customer’s account. By then the world will be content in the knowledge that Martin Gore is still in the pay of the British Government.’
Natalia looked worried. ‘I still think the dressing is too thick. The arms in that aeroplane are the important item. They will be forgotten in this Agatha Christie charade. I have a feeling that this will rebound on you.’
Litvinoff threw the bank book on to the desk in front of them. His voice barely concealed impatience.
‘This charade, as you call it, will be on a TU 144 to Mozambique tonight,’ he said. ‘I am waiting at the moment for one more document which, you will be shocked to learn, is a letter from Cyrus Vance to the head of the Mafia in New York.’
Natalia was instantly furious.
‘How insane can you become in this office?’ she shouted. ‘Even if such a document existed, it would never be carried on that aeroplane. You’re crazy.’
‘Of course it will not be found in the aircraft, silly child.’ Litvinoff beamed with delight. ‘It will be found in a garbage can, torn into four pieces and slightly charred. The garbage can will also contain remains of incinerated trash and will be outside Frank Ragnelli’s apartment in 59th Street, New York City, exactly twenty-four hours after the first major denial of complicity by the State Department.’
Litvinoff continued to smile.
‘You like it?’
‘It’s ridiculous,’ stormed Natalia. ‘Just who is going to grub through the trash cans of Central Park South?’
‘Comrade niece, you forget that the biggest growth industry in the United States is investigative journalism. The press would be delighted with such a document. The fact that it was found in a trash can adds, I assure you, to its authenticity.’
The big man failed to notice the look of disgust on his niece’s face.
‘It will not be believed,’ she said.
‘It will, especially when you produce it at the United Nations together with the rest of the collected evidence.’
‘When I produce it?’ Natalia’s eyes were wide open with disbelief and shock.
‘I must tell you, Natalia, that you have just been appointed the principal advocate for the prosecution. It was your idea. We have added, as you say, the dressing. You leave for New York tomorrow.’
*
Marceau sat in the ambulance which took them, its sirens howling, through the darkened streets of the city to the airport. One explosion had destroyed the electricity generator allowing thousands of demonstrators to roam the streets, shattering windows and hurling stones at police and with legionnair
es with impunity.
‘What did I tell you?’ he yelled, ‘The whole city will be ablaze by dawn. I want you out of here, you understand?’
The agent clutched a radio transceiver in his hand. There was a continual chatter in excited French.
Harry was lying on the stretcher, his hand heavily bandaged. Sorrel was stroking his head with a piece of lint soaked in eau-de-cologne. Martin sat grim-faced and looked at his co-pilot.
They heard the noisy crashing of stones against the side of the ambulance. Then a shot and the sound of the bullet ricocheting from the roof.
‘Get down!’ shouted Marceau. ‘We have reached the airport.’
They climbed directly from the ambulance into the waiting Hercules. The aircraft was completely ringed with jeeps and machine guns now and they could hear the yelling of demonstrators in the darkness beyond.
Stubbles was waiting on the flight-deck. His clothes were smeared with oil and grease. He blinked at the sight of Harry.
‘Holy Cow, Skipper,’ he said. ‘What in hell happened to him?’
‘I’ll tell you. Can we get this aircraft off the ground?’
‘The engine was fixed fifteen minutes ago. I’ve tested it as best I can. I’ve got my fingers crossed.’
‘Help me get Harry into the bunk. Can you co-pilot?’
‘I’ll try, Captain. What’s the big occasion?’
‘Get in that seat and start the checks,’ said Martin urgently. ‘Sorrel, strap Harry in, leave him and sit in Stubbles’ seat and do as he tells you.’
‘You’re joking,’ she said.
There was a series of violent explosions from the perimeter of the airport.
‘Close the main door and do as I tell you,’ he shouted. He saw Marceau standing at the foot of the steps.
‘Is this a fast enough turn round for you?’ he asked. His voice was heavy with sarcasm and irony.
‘I apologise that you had to rush, Captain,’ said the Frenchman. ‘I would have liked to have talked to you some more.’