London had in fact used the tag as a disinformation tool.
The girl with the limpid brown eyes was showing us how to put on the oxygen mask when it dropped out of the panel.
At the diner I'd signalled Ferris I was locked on to the objective. The tag in the dark blue Pinto was still working but Ferris couldn't call him off because the only way to do that would be by asking me to tell him and I couldn't do it: there was to be no contact. So the Pinto had been with us to the airport and when the man had reported location Ferris had called him off and I'd watched him go.
The field was at that time clear.
But except for the Pinto tag it had been clear since we'd left the diner and it shouldn't have been.
Somewhere in the area where the executive isn't concerned. Control or Ferris or our man in Washington had rigged a bug or bust a code or in one of a dozen ways had found out that Kobra were getting worried and were ready to snatch and interrogate if the chance came: and the chance was given them. The disinformation had been pushed across to the Kobra intelligence and they'd believed the field to be clear and they'd dispensed with any protection cell for Zade at some time between his leaving the hotel and reaching the diner.
A disinfo tool doesn't always survive. Statistics at the Bureau put it at fifty-fifty. But it's no good thinking about that sort of thing or you'll jar the nerves and finish up making mistakes.
The jets screamed and the brakes came off.
London must be getting bloody-minded about mis one. But that tag hadn't been sacrificed out of hand: Egerton was controlling the mission and his work was always calculated. He'd pushed the opposition to the point where they'd started counteracting in Milan and Geneva and Cambodia and then he'd pushed them to the point where they were so worried that they were ready for disinformation and he gave it to them, despite the cost.
The No Smoking light went off.
'May I get you something to drink?'
A lock of dark hair swinging as she leaned over.
'Some milk.'
Suggest 100 mg daily.
From New York and into Brazil the single remaining executive was to have a clear field and open access to the Kobra rendezvous and Control had provided them. The rest was up to the executive.
I began drinking my glass of milk.
Chapter Twelve: LAGOFONDO
'Where are you from?'
'London.'
'London England?'
'Yes.'
'Never bin there.'
He took out a cheroot and bit the end off.
'Wanna smoke?'
'No.'
'Keeps the bugs out.' He gave a sudden loud laugh, for no reason, and lit the cigar.
'Your first time out here?'
'Yes,' I said.
I was thinking about Satynovich Zade.
'You ain't no tourist, I guess,'
'Shipping agent.'
'With Booth Line?'
'A subsidiary.'
The last time I saw Satynovich Zade was at Belem Airport and if I didn't see him again then the whole thing was wiped out. Extended surveillance is always nerve-racking but when you have to do it during the end-phase it induces a kind of numbness. Extended surveillance is when you're tagging a man and find out he's got a fixed destination, and instead of keeping him in view you decide to jump ahead of him into his destination and wait for him there. He's still technically under surveillance but it's extended, not constant.
There are a lot of advantages: you avoid the risk of his discovering you in his immediate area and you give yourself time to signal base or change your image, or simply catch up on sleep. The obvious disadvantage is that you're relying on his going to that fixed destination and he can change his mind and you've lost him for good.
'You get anything to eat down there?'
'Yes, I had time for a hamburger.'
'At that joint? Then you got the ears and eyeballs thrown in for free!' He gave another loud laugh.
I watched the two King KX 175 Navcoms.
This was the end-phase and normally I wouldn't have let Zade out of my sight but I'd had to: the authorities at Belem threw me straight into quarantine for twenty-four hours while the objective walked away. Ferris knew it might happen and he got at the local police through Interpol and they put a tag on Zade and that was how we knew he'd booked out on Panair do Brasil Flight 540 in two days' time. The destination was Manaus, on the Amazon. We'd missed the Loide Aereo flight by three hours because of radio trouble and there are only three flights a week from Belem to Manaus at this time of the year.
So we were running the objective on extended surveillance and it had a numbing effect and I wished Chuck Lazenby would stop talking.
'You know something? That jungle's goin' to eat up that whole damn place one day an' all you'll see is the trees, like it was before.'
There was a blinding flash and the windscreen went opaque as we hit the wall of rain.
'Okay,' Chuck shouted, 'here it comes!'
He pulled a knob and the windscreen wipers started waving around but the force of water was too strong and they stopped halfway.
The instrument panel blacked out as the next flash came and then started glowing again and I took a few readings. This was a Twin Beech and the avionics were basic but adequate — the two King Navcoms, an ADF, a Narco transponder, Century III autopilot, a DME and a ten-year-old RCA radar unit — and they were behaving normally and stayed illuminated when the next flash lit up the cockpit. The altimeter was at a steady ten thousand feet 'It's okay when it's kinda yellow-coloured, Chuck called out. 'When it turns white it means it's real close.'
He blew out cigar smoke and adjusted the throttles.
Ferris had found him for me. Ferris had worked non-stop for thirty-six hours and I don't think anyone but a first-class director in the field could have done it and that was why Control had pulled him in from Tokyo for the Kobra mission. He brought my forged papers with him from New York and spent half an hour talking icily to the Immigration officers, hinting at 'obstruction' and 'incompetence' and using the Interpol connection until they got the message and let me through.
He also switched my cover because of the Burdick situation: the journalist image was no longer appropriate and I was now a shipping agent's representative looking for small-boat charter franchise along the Amazon between Manaus and Itacoatiara.
'Gonna ship a little water,' said Chuck. 'She always does. You know what they stuck this windshield in with? Horse shit!'
A trickle was beginning along the left edge of the panel and I kept my legs out of the way. The windscreen wipers were now on the move again and we could see patches of cloud whipping past.
The Burdick situation was now very interesting.
Ferris had seen the same report in the New York Times as I had, and Satynovich Zade had probably been on the look-out for it when he'd brought a paper from the box outside the Varig Airlines area at Kennedy.
Yesterday Pat Burdick, daughter of the Defence Secretary, left Washington for the isolated river-village of Lagofondo near the Amazon in Brazil, with a small party of fellow-adventurers and two experienced guides. 'It's to be an entomological field study,' she told reporters before she left, 'and I guess the bugs out there in the jungle ought to be pretty impressive. It's also to get me away from the intense political atmosphere here in Washington for a while, because I've been finding it very confining and — you know-claustrophobic.' There was no truth whatsoever, she added, that there was any rift between herself and her family. For security reasons the names of her companions are not presently being revealed.