Neilson nodded. 'Can you get me to Azaran - today?' he demanded.
CHAPTER TEN
VORTEX
THE four-engined aircraft cruised to the apron, slewed round and stopped. Electric trolleys moved forward to unload the cargo. The crew, tired from a non-stop flight from London during which they had never topped 6,000 feet and had been buffeted for seven hours without respite, clambered down the ladder and made their way to the flight office. A uniformed Arab and a bullet-headed European greeted them perfunctorily as the Captain handed over the aircraft papers.
The European flicked through them and passed them to the Arab, and then extended his pudgy hand for the crew's personal documents. He let the Captain go through immediately, but when he looked up at the next two men standing before him he referred again to the papers in his hand.
'Who is this?' he asked in German. The two air crew members looked blankly at him. He repeated his question in halting Arabic.
Yusel, Lemka's cousin, the younger of the two, smiled ingratiatingly. 'My second navigator. He not understand Arabic or the language you use first.'
The Intel man scowled. 'I've not been notified of any change in crew plans. Why are you carrying a second navigator?'
Yusel explained. 'For route familiarisation. We have to fly so low; no air pressure up top.'
Not really satisfied, the Intel man re-read the documents.
When he could find no fault in them, he threw them across the desk. Yusel picked them up and led his companion into the crew room where they got out of their flying kit. His companion was Neilson.
'That's the worst over,' Yusel told him. 'Now I'll take you to my cousin's house. It'll be quite safe. Her husband, Doctor Abu Zeki, will contact you as soon as he can.'
Neilson nodded. 'The sooner the better.'
Yusel drove him to Abu's home and then returned to Baleb. It was late afternoon when he got to the cafe, and he had to wait an hour before his cousin arrived. When he did come Abu Zeki had the furtive air of a man who knows he is watched. Quietly, over two bottles of locally-made Azarani Cola, Yusel told him about Neilson's arrival.
'He wants to see Doctor Fleming and Professor Dawnay,'
he finished.
Abu Zeki glanced anxiously around the bare little cafe.
'I don't know if they can both get away,' he said. 'But I will tell him.'
As soon as he heard that Neilson senior was safely in the country, Fleming decided to throw caution to the winds and go and see him. He told Dawnay to be ready to leave as soon as it was dark, if she was willing to take the risk.
The weather helped them. A violent storm broke with nightfall, sheet lightning illuminating the sky and short bursts of rain lashing the buildings and swirling sand. The guards crept, frightened and shivering, into any shelter they could find. Fleming and Dawnay plodded through the cascades of rain without once being challenged.
The drive was appalling, Abu's little car slithering in the thick scum of mud on the desert sand. But the rain had been local. After forty minutes they were driving on dry terrain, the storm providing an accompaniment of reverberating thunder and almost continuous flashes of lightning.
Fleming felt a sense of quite unreasonable relief when Lemka opened the door and he saw Neilson standing behind her. The American's wordless greeting, the way he gripped his hand, was absurdly reassuring.
To Dawnay, Neilson was someone who signified a gleam of hope that she had refused to admit existed, but she was still not sure why he had come. They both sat quietly, suppressing their excitement, while the big calm man ate his way methodically through a bunch of grapes and told them what had been happening in London. They learnt for the first time how Osborne had survived the shooting at their country-house prison, how Neilson had been called in to 'head a probe into this weather thing', as he put it, and how they also had put two and two together and traced the source to Thorness. And how they had then come to a dead stop until they had received the message from Dawnay.
'Is there really any hope?' he asked her.
'About as much as a grain of sand in a desert.'
She pushed aside the little tray on which Lemka had set Neilson's supper and spread out the bundle of papers she had crammed into the waistband of her skirt.
She impatiently flattened out the creases. 'These are most of the figures for the D.N.A. helix,' she began. 'The computer has worked out what I think you'll agree is a feasible analysis. So far as I can judge, it's a potential bacterium. But the molecular structure is one thing. Getting the components and synthesising them another, but it might, possibly, produce the anti-bacterium we need.'
Neilson studied the figures. 'And this is the work of the machine Jan built?'
She nodded.
'I can't help wondering...' A tremor made his words tail off.
Fleming was sitting beside the cot, absent-mindedly revolving a toy suspended for the child's amusement. 'What would have happened if your son had stayed,' he finished.
Neilson turned to him. 'They shot him in cold blood,' he said. 'In front of our eyes. If I could find the man....'
'I can't tell you who pulled the trigger,' Fleming said. 'But I know who told him to. A man named Kaufman, who is "looking after" us here.'
'I should like to meet him,' said Neilson.
'Maybe you will.'
Dawnay began gathering the papers together. 'At least your son's death was quick,' she said with compassion.
'Which is more than ours will be. Unless these work.' She stuffed the papers back in her skirt band. 'There's a lot more to come if only the girl can get it for us.'
'How is she?' Neilson asked.
Dawnay looked down at the baby; the child was wide awake, smiling at the sight of so many faces around him.
'She was an artificial sort of life,' she muttered. 'Not like... '
She turned abruptly away from the baby. 'There's some constituent lacking in her blood; something I didn't know about and something the computer didn't allow for.'
'Can't she get some help from the machine for herself?'
Neilson asked.
'No time,' Fleming replied. 'She might have done, I suppose, but there was this anti-bacterium job. She elected to work on it .... '
Neilson eyed Fleming speculatively. 'That was a hard decision,'
he said.
Fleming paused to light a cigarette. He inhaled deeply.
'Yes,' he said at last. 'It was a hard thing, as you say.'
Fleming rose and turned away from the others. He crossed to the window and stared out into the night. Hastily, to ease the tension, Dawnay began asking if Neilson wanted copies of the computer data. Neilson shook his head. He explained that the only practical thing would be a test tube of the anti-bacterium.
'If the girl can complete the analysis,' he started, but Fleming interrupted.
'Shush!' They stared at him. 'Lemka's coming.'
Lemka, who had been keeping watch on the road, came running across the courtyard to the house. They could hear her sandals on the rough paving.
'We're watched all the time,' Dawnay said. 'We thought we'd given them the slip tonight.'
Lemka burst into the room, her eyes large and round with excitement. 'They're coming,' she exclaimed. 'Soldiers. A whole truck load!'
All of them stood motionless for a few seconds. Then Dawnay took the papers she had put in her waistband. 'Hide these,' she said, thrusting them into Lemka's hand. 'Your husband can pick them up later and give them back.'
Lemka took them and turned to Neilson. 'My mother's room,' she said firmly. 'They won't go in there.'