‘Exercises are planned long in advance, for obvious reasons. The tankers are one thing, the fighters something else. If this F-15E fighter deployment was last minute, it would prove they were mobilized in response to some genuine emergency and not an exercise. Reasonable?’
Kelso nodded, not sure where all this was leading.
‘So,’ Girling continued, ‘I have to prove that the fighter deployment was last minute. There is a way.’
He consulted his notebook, wrote down a number, and handed it to Kelso. ‘This is a special phone number for pilots, ordinary people like you and me who own private planes. It tells them which areas around the UK have been closed to commercial traffic because of military aircraft movements. It’s run by the National Air Traffic Service.’
Kelso stared at the piece of paper. ‘So what do I want with this?’
‘Dial the number.’
Kelso hesitated.
‘Just do it,’ Girling said. He continued talking while Kelso punched in the numbers. ‘On their way here, those F-15Es would have needed mid-air refuelling in an area called Refuelling Area One, off northwest Scotland. That’s standard procedure. When you get through, ask them whether Refuelling Area One was closed to commercial traffic on Tuesday, the day the F-15Es got here. If they say yes, then ask when the order came through.’
Kelso held his hand up for silence the moment he made the connection. He mumbled two sentences into the receiver and listened intently for the response.
A few seconds later he put the phone down. ‘Monday,’ he said. ‘They closed the son of a bitch the very day before the fighters arrived in this country.’
‘That’s your proof,’ Girling said, managing to control his voice. ‘The rest is up to you.’
Girling had not been back long at his desk when the phone rang. It was Kelso. ‘Get your arse in here smartish,’ he said.
When Girling walked into Kelso’s office, his editor was jotting words onto a desk pad, face flushed to the roots of his thinning ginger hair.
Girling steeled himself for a bollocking.
‘I just got a call back from the MOD,’ Kelso said. ‘They want to know where the fuck we got this information from.’
‘They denied it, you mean.’
Kelso laughed. ‘Of course not. There’s probably a bloody witch hunt going on for our informant right now. Denbeigh thinks there’s been a high-level leak.’
The DPR, Alan Denbeigh, was a shrewd operator, a good man to know well. Few journalists could claim that privilege, but Kelso was one of them.
‘What did he say?’ Girling asked.
‘Nothing attributable, naturally. But when I convinced him we had the story, and we weren’t going to drop it, there was no holding him back. Here is the news. The US Air Force was poised to launch bombers from Lakenheath against a target in the Middle East. This week. All the preparations were made. The bombers were to have flown in under cover of the exercise.’
‘Stalwart Divider?’
‘Exactly as you said.’
Kelso burrowed in the top drawer of his desk and produced a box of Villiger cigars. He offered one to Girling.
Girling shook his head. ‘And London approved the plans?’
‘Certainly.’
‘So what happened to make the Americans change their minds?’
Kelso lit his cigar and sucked the end thoughtfully. ‘Denbeigh said there had been a difference of opinion within the National Security Council. The doves won. The hawks, mind you, did not have a very strong case, it seems.’
‘How come?’
‘They didn’t know who they were meant to be bombing.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Come on, Tom. Work it out for yourself. There’s a small US task force floating off the Lebanese coast right now. Extrapolate a little. Use your imagination.’
Girling got up and walked to the window. He stared across a building site that would shortly yield another new office block.
‘Say US special forces storm the airliner, extract the relevant information from the terrorists, and flash it back to Washington. The F-15Es are already here, ready to go. Once they have the identity of the hijackers, or the terrorists’ camp plotted, the bombers fly, right? Instant reprisal. Just like Libya.’
Kelso clapped his hands. ‘Bravo. The matter, though, has become academic. It would appear that Washington thinks the Middle East is unstable enough as it is.’ Kelso puffed a smoke ring across his desk. ‘Still, it’s a bloody good story. We’ve just got to hold on to it for two days, till we hit the streets.’
Girling suspected that the compliment was aimed at him. Praise from Kelso was as elusive as one of his smiles in recent months.
Girling walked to the door. He stopped short and turned. ‘Of course, the most curious aspect of this whole story is that America — with all those vast resources to hand — has no idea who these terrorists are. Or at least who’s backing them. Doesn’t that strike you as strange?’
Kelso was already measuring up a page, drawing imaginary boxes, allocating photographs.
‘Yes, I suppose it does.’
Girling closed the door.
CHAPTER 4
Girling pulled the cuttings from their file in the library, took them back to his desk and started to read.
The hijackers had boarded a Pakistan International Airlines flight at Karachi, bound for Paris. Some-where over the Arabian Sea they had made their move, storming into the 747’s flight deck and killing the co-pilot; there had been no time for the crew to send a distress signal.
An hour from Dubai International Airport, the hijackers ordered the pilot to make an emergency descent. Dubai tower picked up a Mayday indicating the jumbo had suffered explosive decompression at thirty-two thousand feet. The tower was informed there were casualties on board.
The pilot requested an immediate descent into the airport and called for ambulances to meet the aircraft as soon as it rolled to a stop.
Once on the ground, the hijackers waited for the medics to board the plane, overpowered them, and donned their uniforms. The aircraft was then booby-trapped with explosive devices positioned around the cabin. The terrorists told the passengers and crew that the detonators were primed with infra-red sensing fuses and the slightest movement would set them off.
The terrorists — witnesses later described them speaking Arabic — boarded the ambulances and moved across the airfield to the Pan-Am 747, on which the US Ambassador to Riyadh and his staff were sipping their champagne in the first- and business-class sections. In the cockpit of Clipper 497 the pilot was waiting to receive departure clearance from the tower.
Predictably, the newspapers had been quick to chastise the US Administration for allowing so many of its diplomatic staff to travel on the same commercial flight. In fact, because of the flurry of diplomatic shuttle missions around the Gulf that week, all US Air Force VIP transport aircraft in the region were already in use.
The flare-up in the Gulf the previous month, not for the first time, had taken everyone by surprise. The pace of diplomatic activity to halt hostilities had been breathtaking. Ambassador Franklin — as the USA’s chief legate in Riyadh his role in the initiative was pivotal — had been returning to Washington to brief the President on the Saudi Arabian peace proposals. The cease-fire, though precarious, had lasted five days. The way things had been going, the US President would have sanctioned another bombing mission against Iraq, until the Saudis came up with the goods. Franklin and his team of negotiators had spent two days in Riyadh getting to grips with the Saudi scheme. Reluctantly, Baghdad had said it would allow Saudis, not Americans, to dismantle its underground nuclear weapons facility outside Mosul — incredible, Girling thought, that every US intelligence asset had missed it. Now, instead of the Gulf, the media’s attention — always fickle — had shifted to the hijacking. For the moment, the crisis in the Gulf was on the back burner.