The Kobra Manifesto

'What? Oh, yes.'

They never got used to their cover names.

'A telephone call for you.'

'Thanks.'

The waiter took him to the foyer and came back to get our trays.

'Vous avez termini, m'sieur?'

'Bien sur. Dites moi, il y a des nouvelles de ce pilote, Hans Strobel, a Monte Carle?'

His waxed eyebrows lifted slightly in a gesture of desolation.

'Il est mort. Dans l'ambulance, vous savez. Eh, oui.' The delicate porcelain tinkled as he stacked the cups, gilt and rosebuds and tea-leaves. 'Je crois que c'est le destin qu'ils cherchent, hein, ces types-la?'

'C'est possible.'

A fireball rolling along the guard rail. Death or glory, make up your mind because you can't have both.

I got up and went over to the line of windows, Cartier, Chanel, and then some Hermes scarves like the one Marianne was wearing, reminding me of the bars of sunlight and shadow thrown by those peeling Venetian blinds across the white carpet, across her gold body. But already she seemed a long time ago and in a distant place, because the moment you know they've sent for you it's like dropping over a brink and into a void, and the memory tends to blank off.

His reflection came against the window glass.

'What about a little stroll along the promenade?'

'All right.'

When we left the hotel I checked and got negative and checked again after we'd crossed the two roads to the sea front and got negative again and felt totally satisfied because anyone trying to tag us across that hellish traffic would never make it alive. He'd probably picked up some ticks in London because the Liaison 9 people can hardly avoid it: their routine travel pattern takes them from one intelligence base to the next and they're fair game, and when they board an aircraft for anywhere abroad they're liable to be overtaken by signals and find someone on the peep for them wherever they land. But he'd obviously flushed them, and I could believe he was clever at it because people like Steadman dislike human contact.

'It's for tomorrow morning,' he said.

'They can't do that.'

'I think they can, old boy.'

There was something wrong and I didn't like it because there just wasn't enough time to set me up overnight: they had to brief me and push me through Clearance and drop me into the target zone and set me running with everything I needed — communications, access channels, escape lines, so forth. And there wasn't enough time for that: I couldn't even make London before midnight unless there were a flight with a delay on it Then I saw I was missing the obvious, too bloody impatient to think straight. This was local.

'This chap's going into Istres,' he said, Local.

'You know where that is?' he asked me.

'Bouches du Rhone.'

'Yes. There's an airfield there. Have you got a Michelin 84 in your car?'

'I've got the whole set.'

'Well I never, they don't do that at Hertz.'

We stood for a minute watching the rollers breaking white across the stones, the spindrift catching the light of the tall Lamp-standards.

'His name is Milos Zarkovic, and he-'

'Name, or cover name?'

'What? I don't know. I'm just repeating what they told me on the phone, so please try not to interrupt, or I might forget something.' He gave a little smile with his chin tucked in. I'm only joking, of course. This chap is using a Pulmeister 101 single seat interceptor, which is apparently the longest-range machine he can pinch without anybody noticing too much.'

'Where's he coming from?'

'One of the satellite air force bases near Zagreb. Ostensibly he'll make for Madrid but the weather's going to take him off course slightly and he's going to run out of fuel and do a belly flop near the airfield at Istres.'

We reached one of the car park kiosks and turned back, walking slowly. He was very good: he'd checked the two men over by the rail and the one sitting on the bench reading Nice Matin and they hadn't made a move, 'How do I get him out of Istres?'

'That's up to you.' He glanced at me sharply. 'If you want any kind of backup laid on you'd better tell London right away. But they're expecting you to handle it solo. Up to you, as I say.'

I thought about it. London knew I didn't want any backup: I work solo or not at all and they know that; but there were things like communications and alternative action and the availability of a safe-house. The area around Istres was nearly all marshland and that made it perfect for the forced-landing cover story but Marseille was close and Marseille is one of the nerve centres for half a dozen major networks with permanent agents-in-place, and this was a daytime operation. It wouldn't be more than ten minutes before the first people showed up to the landing site, but I didn't have to get the aircraft away: all they wanted was Milos Zarkovic, 'All right,' I told him. They want him in London?'

'Yes.'

'How soon?'

'Soonest'

'Will he be carrying papers?'

'Oh yes. Yugoslavian passport. Communist Party membership, everything quite above board — I mean there won't be any trouble from the local police if you can manage to get him out of sight straight away, not till the news gets around that he's wanted in Yugers for pinching the plane. It's the spooks, you see, that you'll have to contend with; Marseille is rather like a fly-paper, as doubtless you're aware.'

We waited by the traffic lights and he pressed the button.

'What time is he coming in?'

'As soon as it's light enough for him to see the ground. The idea is that there won't be a lot of people about at that hour.'

'How far's the landing site from Istres?'

'I'm going to show you.'

The little green man flickered into life and we went across and opened the Lancia and got in and took Section 84 out of the glove compartment. He had a red felt pen in his hand.

'Just here, okay? A kilometre south of St-Martin-de-Crau.'

The place would be visible from the tower at Istres airfield through a pair of 7X50s but that wasn't critical because the minor road ran north and then west behind a low elevation and that was where I could lose people, 'All right,' I said.

'You want to recap?'

'No.' I wanted to find a phone and tell London they could screw the Pulmeister 101 and screw Milos Zarkovic because tins wasn't a mission they were handing me, it was a contact and escort operation and they could have used Coleman or Matthews or Johnson or anyone from the general facilities pooclass="underline" they didn't need a first-line shadow executive for this thing and they knew it. But I was between missions and not far along the coastline from Istres and they thought they'd save the expense of flying someone else out from London and risking the operation through lack of experience so they'd winkled me out and sent this little jerk to local-brief me and sell me the thing about 'handling it solo' to give it the look of a first-line penetration job.

His cologne was rather heavy and I folded the map and put it back with the others and got out of the car and stood watching an Air Force Boeing sliding down to the airport across the bay.

'You don't seem very happy, old boy.'

Screw Steadman too.

'If London wants this character, I'll bring him in.'

Soon after Aix-en-Provence I began hitting the Mistral, touching the wheel to correct the steering as the gusts came broadside-on. The Mistral is a strong and steady wind, blowing down the Rhone Valley and bending the cypresses and unnerving the people in its path; it blows for three, six or nine days and by Napoleonic law if it blows for longer than that, murder is not a capital charge.

I didn't know how long it had been blowing this time. If it hadn't dropped by dawn, Zarkovic would have to make a half circuit to bring his plane up-wind because a belly flop would be tricky enough without dead-air conditions. The Mistral turns eastward when it reaches the coast, and that would be Zarkovic's approach direction.