It took them a minute or so to agree that the three letters were U-L-M. Neither of them thought it sounded like much of a name.
‘Whatever he’s called, he’s a colonel in the US Air Force. See that eagle on his epaulette? I wonder why the hell he was meeting a Soviet tactical transport aircraft on a remote Scottish air base?’
‘And you met the same guy today? You think it has something to do with the hijacking?’ Mallon asked.
Girling thought back to his flight in Rantz’s Tornado.
‘Could be. But why is Ulm interested in me, all of a sudden? Do the Americans think I know where their hostages are? Do they think I’m going to blow the gaff?’
‘That’s not their style, Tom. If they thought you were going to compromise their mission they’d have gagged you already. I reckon it’s much simpler. They’re still in the dark and they think you might be able to help.’
Girling’s mind raced.
‘Tom, are you still there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Who was on this Soviet transport aircraft?’
‘MOD neither confirmed nor denied it was even at Machrihanish, remember?’
‘OK, so we’re going to have to try another route.’ He thought for a second and then dictated another set of instructions. After putting the phone down, he sat back in his chair and waited.
It took Mallon roughly half an hour to return with information.
‘Machrihanish isn’t any old base,’ he explained. ‘A recent modernization programme has turned it into Europe’s principal storage site for US nuclear weapons.’
Girling drummed his fingers on the desk.
The line was beginning to break up. Girling shouted to make himself heard. ‘That’s interesting, but it’s not what I’m after.’
‘How about this, then?’ Mallon said. ‘There’s a permanent detachment of SEALs there — you know, US Navy special warfare troops.’
‘Now you’re getting warmer. Anything more on that tack?’
‘Yes. Machrihanish has been extensively updated with US cash since the early eighties. The underground nuclear storage sites account for some of it, but that’s comparatively small — ’
‘Compared to?’
‘Compared to what US Special Operations Command has been doing there. Machrihanish is apparently the main staging post for American special forces coming to Europe. It’s been built up since the Gulf War as a liaison point between the US Eastern Seaboard and any hot spots that develop on this side of the Atlantic. The runway’s been lengthened to take C-5s and C-141s and there’s a new special operations command centre on the base for controlling forces in the field. It’s all hush-hush stuff. Even your contact started clamming up on me.’
Girling clenched his fist and held it in the air. ‘Our man is special forces, which puts him in that USAF outfit… shit, what are they called? The Pathfinders, that’s it. They dropped off the map a couple of years ago. Rumour had it they ran into some kind of trouble in Panama.’
‘And you think they’re in Egypt?’
‘Yes. Ulm sure as hell hadn’t just got off the plane from Washington.’
‘Then everybody has been heading in the wrong direction,’ Mallon said. ‘The conventional wisdom is that any rescue would be launched by Delta or the SEALs from a ship with the task force off the Lebanese coast.’
Girling nodded. ‘Right.’ He only half heard Mallon, because he was looking at the wall map behind Stansell’s desk. He shone the lamp full on it.
‘So where are they then, your Pathfinders?’ Mallon asked. Girling touched a spot in the desert just north of a wide bend in the Nile. ‘Wadi Qena,’ he whispered.
‘What? You’re breaking up on me, Tom.’
‘Nothing.’ Ulm had gone to the train station. He hadn’t gone to the embassy, or the airport. He’d gone to the bloody train station. And he’d been southbound. There was only one possible place he could be heading. The same place Colonel Charlie Beckwith, the man who had led Eagle Claw, had gone over ten years before. The place from which Delta Force had launched its abortive rescue attempt on the hostages in Tehran. With the US Navy prowling in strength somewhere off Beirut, it was the perfect double-bluff.
He gathered his things. As he closed the door the phone began to ring, but Girling ignored it, locked up and headed for the lift.
Girling kept his foot down as he left University Bridge and headed north along Shari’a Al-Nil. A flash rainstorm had left the streets slippery and shiny under the bright city lights. He checked his mirror and saw a car pulling away from the junction behind him. The Mukhabarat were back on his tail.
Half a mile ahead, he could see the lights of the Sheraton reflecting off the oil-black water of the river. He glanced to his right at a barge sailing silently, almost invisibly, downstream towards Alexandria, its wake chopping the river’s surface. The vessel would be laden with cotton, cane, or potatoes. As he slowed and the barge ploughed on, Girling found himself staring at the Meridien Hotel on the opposite bank and realized that he was at the point where Stansell’s body had been recovered from the river. He pulled the BMW into the side of the road and a hundred yards away the driver of the Fiat followed suit. As he stepped onto the pavement, Girling gave the second car a glance, but the Mukhabarat were staying put, invisible behind their lights. He stepped onto a low wall and stared down at the dross floating on the river’s surface. The ripples from the barge’s wake lapped against the small stretch of beach, depositing the water’s jetsam in miniature tide lines on the fine silt. It was a lonely place to wind up dead. As he stared across the river Girling saw the lights of fishing boats bobbing up and down on the water, some of them quite close by. For all the myriad noises that made up the background hum of the big city the sound of their oars dipping in the Nile was crisp and clear in the night.
Girling shivered and he headed back towards the car. He did not want to keep Sharifa waiting any longer.
He gunned the engine and pushed on, past the Sheraton and the Cairo Tower, through the bright lights of the Gezira Club and into the gloomier tracts of Al-Aguza, keeping a tributary of the river on his right. As he took the slip road that led to the 26th of July Bridge, which would take him back to Zamalek and Sharifa’s apartment, Girling lost sight of the Mukhabarat. It was only when he glanced from the rear-view to the off-side wing-mirror that he saw the Fiat, very close and slightly behind, sticking like glue to his blind spot. There was a sharp crack, as if his tyres had kicked up a pebble. Everything seemed to happen so slowly that Girling found himself almost observing what followed. His eyes moved down to the speedometer. Accelerating up the ramp, he’d allowed the car to get up to eighty-seven kilometres per hour. The steering wheel suddenly went slack in his hands as the tyre blew instantaneously. There was a demonic shriek as the bare metal rim scraped across the road. And then he lost control.
The BMW careered across the slip road and smashed into the thin metal railings lining the pedestrian walkway. Girling caught a fleeting glimpse of the brown, turgid waters of the river below him as the BMW up-ended and plunged over the side of the bridge. He was thrown against the door with such force he thought it would fly open, but it didn’t; it held. His hand felt behind him, latched onto a handle and pulled. It seemed to stick. Girling shut his eyes and prepared for the impact.
And then he was free, falling through space, images of his tumbling world imprinted at random on the back of his mind. He saw the bridge above him, the car spinning, the water and the trees…