A figure was moving across the tarmac to our right, towards the buildings. "Put those goddamned lights out."
"The thing is," I told the girl beside me, "that the people I work for happen to use human beings as machines. They're not terribly concerned that in twenty minutes from now there could be two dead bodies hanging from parachutes over the Korean mountains. I just want to make sure they didn't sell you short."
The man was shouting again. This time someone called an answer.
"If there's a chance for you," she said, "there's a chance for me."
"It's not a big one; but I've got my reasons."
"And so have I."
Then the lights over the dispersal bay went out, and we followed Newcomb's flashlight towards the plane.
17: Dance
Newcomb was using the omni stations at Seoul and Sogcho and at 04:07 he came back from the flight deck as we felt the airspeed slackening off.
"Five minutes," he said. "Everything okay?"
"What's our altitude?" de Haven asked him.
"We're coming down from seven thousand now and we'll be running in at three five." He crouched in the aisle between the seats, looking at us in turn. "The moon's at one o'clock, seventy degrees. I'm going to put you down to the west of the target point by an estimated mile. You won't be silhouetted against the moon to anyone watching from the monastery."
The pale blur of de Haven's face was turned towards me in the gloom; the interior lights were out, so that our eyes could accommodate for moonlight. "All right, Clive?"
"Except for the altitude."
"Except for the altitude," she said, "all right?"
I looked at Newcomb. "What's the estimated ground wind?"
"Up here we're in still air. It should be the same on the ground."
I twisted over on the twin seats and looked down through the cabin window and saw only patches of dark and light: the mountains and the mist between them. Where we were going in was mountainside but not steep. The slope was ridged, narrow terraces across loose rock slope. Newcomb straightened up and went forward to the flight deck.
We were gradually losing height, and the airframe sent panels creaking as it flexed. Newcomb had forgotten to shut the door to the flight deck and its low-key illumination was in our eyes. I got up to go forward just as he remembered.
"Sorry.
"That's all right."
The panel of light narrowed and went out.
"Did you see that cartoon?" de Haven asked me.
"Which one?"
"It was in a flight magazine at the base. A picture of a sky-diving team: they'd just linked hands together after free fall, in a nice neat circle, and one of them was talking to the man next to him, you know, in the caption. He was saying: 'You should have thought of that before we jumped!' Is that your kind of funny?"
"Yes." I laughed for her, but it sounded false. The only caption I'd seen at the base just gave the name under the photograph: Soong Li-fei.
If they had made her talk, there'd be a night watch mounted at the monastery and it wouldn't matter if we went down on the blind side of the moon or not.
A crack of light came, forward.
"Two minutes."
Still losing speed and altitude; it felt more like an approach. Lewes had told us we could cut the engine sound by almost half, this way.
De Haven got to her feet, clumsy under the weight of the parachute. "The captain would like to thank you for travelling USAF, and we hope you'll join us again on your next trip.
"Not if you serve that chocolate mousse again. You know what I thought it really was?"
She gave a quick dry laugh and the door of the flight deck opened and I went first down the aisle.
"One minute."
We checked our harnesses, settling the webbing.
Slight pressure under our feet: Lewes was levelling out.
"Thanks for everything," de Haven said; her voice sounded forced, a fraction too loud.
"You're very welcome," I heard Newcomb say; then he swung the door lever and suddenly there was the empty night sky and I went out first as we'd agreed.
No sensation of falling, just the slam of the air and then the diminishing sound of the plane.
One.
The body turning. Moonlight against the retinae.
Two.
Turning and tilting now. Two dark shapes in the dome of night, the plane and a small blob, de Haven.
Three. And pull.
Pilot chute crackling, and the hiss of the lines.
In Seoul I'd been a hundred miles away from Tung Kuo-feng. Now, if it were daylight and I used the field-glasses, I'd be close enough to see him, to see his face.
Access.
Main canopy deploying, black nylon against the black sky and the harness jolting and the windrush gone off. Falling through the dark, knees and feet swinging straight up into the moonlight, and then down. Even in the dark, if he used his field-glasses, he would see me now, a cloud drifting against the wink of stars, no bigger than a man's hand.
He would have all the time he needed. Things would be easier for him than at a shooting gallery.
Li fei, what did they ask you?
Everything slow now, and no wind. Night and silence, and the wink of moonlight on the metal grip of the toggle above me and to the left with the girl sixty feet away above my left shoulder.
What did you tell them?
The cold pressed at my face. When I looked down I could see mist shrouding the mountains in white. A blind landing could be a killer, but we'd known that.
Anything?
May you rest, anyway, in peace, with your cinnamon eyes so modest under their smoky lashes, touched there by the artist with a stub of charcoal as his signature to perfection.
Hanging in the sky, like something caught up on a web and powerless to move in any direction. Loss of identity: neither fish nor fowl, with arms but nothing to hold, no ground to tread. A target, perhaps if you must have a name.
A white sea below, flooding from horizon to horizon, with dark islands of rock, and suddenly close. I reached up to the toggles, rehearsing. There was no sign of the girl; she must be directly above the black spread of my canopy.
The mist smelled wet, and had the bitter taint of woodsmoke in it; there were three villages below, on the periphery of our main target area.
The mist rushed white, swirling as I turned, with the dark peaks thrusting upwards and tearing the vapours into shreds along the valleys; I pulled the toggles and started a swinging action, turning slowly to face the moon and then looking down; if there were lights burning at the monastery I should see them by this time unless the mist were too thick; it was patchy now and breaking up, and I saw a mountain peak at eye level and watched its dark cone rising against the stars, blotting them out one by one.
At any second now I was going to hit rock.
Dropping through mist, under the milky light of the moon.
I spat twice, trying to find the wind's direction so that I could turn my back to it for the landing; but Newcomb had been right: there was no wind.
Falling fast now: I could see crags and a dark cliff face through a gap in the mist as it swirled around me and filled the canopy, spilling away in the moonlight; falling faster and faster but at the same speed: it was just that I could see more of the environment and could orientate visually. Turning slowly away from the moon's white haze, the moon itself hidden by the canopy, turning and swinging and looking downwards now, watching for the ground, if there were any ground and not just a cliff or a crag or an outcrop waiting to break my back; falling, falling fast with the mist clouding white and then suddenly dissolving, clouding again, the ground rushing up, then a great rockface sliding against the sky and the lines trembling as the canopy caught against something, tugging and swinging me full circle and back again, dizzying, look down, keep on looking down, everything