The Kobra Manifesto

'I'm not interested in — '

'Oh really?'

But it stopped me.

He knew how to stop me.

The wind blew against our faces.

The lights silvered the palm trees and the roofs of the hangars and then the landing-wheels hit and sent smoke out and hit again and the thing was down, vanishing behind the control tower with the thrust reversing and sending up muted thunder.

'Sorry.'

'Any time.'

Sweat all over me. Because if Egerton had run a priority mission into the ground for the first time it had been my fault: the one single objective remaining under surveillance had been Erich Stern and I'd been warned the opposition was operating because of what they'd done to Chepstow and I'd been warned they were on to me next because the door didn't look right or feel right or smell right and I'd been thrown out of commission for eighteen hours while Erich Stern had quietly got out of the area, taking his time.

My fault.

'We've all been up against it,' Ferris said. He was watching the plane emerging from the far side of the tower. 'You blew the phase over there but you could have had better directives and they could have told you the Phnom Penh objective was all they'd got left. It could have made all the difference. But we can't do anything about that now.' He went on talking, partly to steady me. 'We didn't think you could make this rendezvous with any certainty but we knew you'd have to get out of Cambodia with the Americans or risk being interned, so we called on Washington. I had to switch my flights — I was going Bombay-Hong Kong originally — because the USAF said they'd prefer to drop you in Taiwan.' He turned to look at me. 'You've realized by now that there's a strong American connection.'

The China Airlines plane swung into the parking bay and cut its engines, their soft whine dying away to silence.

'Was the connection there from the beginning?'

I didn't think he'd tell me.

He told me.

'No. One of the objectives we lost was Satynovich Zade. Two days ago he was seen in New York.'

'Where was he lost?'

'Palestine.'

'What happened to Brockley?'

Ferris looked at his watch. 'No one has heard from him. We ought to be going, you know.'

We began walking out of the shadow.

'What's he down as,' I asked him, 'in the report?'

'Brockley? Missing. What else can they put?' He walked a little faster, and his mackintosh began flapping in the wind from the ocean. 'He might have gone to ground, of course: there wouldn't be much point in making signals once the objective was gone.'

'How did London know?'

'From his local director.'

So I shut up.

Harrison, Hunter, Chepstow, now Brockley.

And it was Egerton running this one: a director who prided himself on bringing his ferrets back alive. No wonder he'd pulled Ferris out of Tokyo: he needed the best men he could get.

We crossed the road and went through me main hall to the departure gate and I checked the environs at every yard because somewhere along the line mis appalling sequence of casualties had to stop. The people in Kobra hadn't had to wipe out four men in a row: you can break out of a surveillance situation without doing that They'd been spelling out a message for us, that was all.

Don't get in our way.

Ferris and I were standing a little apart from the other passengers but we kept our voices low.

'What do you know,' he asked me, 'about Satynovich Zade?'

'Only what I was given in Briefing. Undercover agent for Palestinian factions, once mixed up in the Fourth International, price on his head in Holland.'

'Who briefed you?'

'Macklin.'

'Fair enough.' He was studying me again. 'Going to ask you something. Are you fit for operations?'

I looked away.

''Nobody looks their best,' I said, 'under these bloody lights.'

He waited a bit and then said:

'Well?'

He really wanted to know. That was his job and he was good at it and he never let his people get away with anything.

'I could do with some sleep,' I said.

He went on watching me.

'I may put you through a medical in Washington. I want you to-'

'Look, I bad a bit of concussion, that's all. It's a fourteen hour flight so I've got some sleep coining to me. Then I'll be okay.'

He looked away from me, watching the people getting into line by the ropes, lowering his voice until it was lost in (be background of the canned Chinese music.

'I want you to know something. London thinks this operation has got out of hand. Control himself suggested giving m. to Sargent to run as a para-military number if the situation I look that sort of direction. Then the people upstairs decided it's got to be done as a penetration exercise or not at all. Good logic?'

'Yes.'

Because we were still not in the open and jumping frontiers and the situation was too fluid for anything para-military: there were no targets, no bridges to blow up, no airfields to knock out. We had to zero in on the Kobra rendezvous, penetrate it and take whatever terminal action London ordered.

The Egg has a lot of faith in you,' Ferris said softly. 'If this is a penetration job he thinks you can do it. He didn't want anyone else for this one-did he tell you that?'

'He was civil enough to mention it, yes.'

Ferris gave a wintry little smile.

'I don't know about his being civil. He's just backing the only horse who's got a hope in hell of coming in. The thing is, he's rather relying on you to do that for him.' He brought his eyes away from watching the line of passengers and looked at me steadily. 'He's had orders to stop the slaughter, you see. He thinks you can help him do that.'

'By staying alive?'

I thought of the door and the wall and the shock of flame and the murderous blast of its thunder as my body was spun away at the fringe of the explosion..

'I could try a bit harder,' I said.

'The trauma was still there and the light was too bright for my eyes and I wanted to lie down and sleep and go on sleeping.

That's all we're asking,' Ferris said. The current situation a this: three of our people have got Satynovich Zade under surveillance in New York and they believe they can keep him in view till you reach there. Once you reach there and get Zade in your sights we're calling the others off.'

I like working solo and he knew that. And there was another reason: with three of them circulating in the immediate vicinity of the objective, someone was going to get killed. Again.

'Does Control think, the Kobra rendezvous is going to happen in New York?'

'He doesn't know yet. We've got you lined up for a special interview in Washington first. Then he'll know.'

He was watching the departure gate again. The chief stewardess was there with her papers.

'This interview,' I said. 'Can you tell me a bit more about-'

'No.'

Strict hush.

Fair enough: he was here to direct me and he knew what was good for me and what wasn't good for me and I could rely on that because I'd been local-directed by Ferris before and he was first-rate.

I tried again.

'Zade. Is he the last hope?'

'Yes.'

'No one's trying to locate any of the objectives we've lost?'

'No. It's-' he stopped, giving a slight shrug. 'It's Zade we're concentrating on now.'

That wasn't what he'd been going to say. He'd been going to say it was too dangerous. They were worried about the losses.

The line of passengers began moving.

'At this point,' Ferris said, 'Control has instructed me to say that if you're not fit for operations, or if you feel the demands are too high, he would perfectly understand your coming in.'

He pulled our tickets out of his mackintosh and checked them over.

I knew it wasn't a formality: he was waiting for a direct answer. I felt a bit annoyed about it but it wasn't his fault.