The Striker Portfolio

I tried him on limited channel capacity. 'Have you ever felt overloaded in the Striker? Failure to assimilate?'

'Sometimes. We all feel it sometimes.'

That would be true. The input signals and output demands of a sophisticated aircraft put a strain on the pilot and they were working on the problem everywhere.

We talked about environmental stress and he said he was happily married and 'didn't give a damn' about money. He spoke faster as we went on because he wasn't being made to talk about the plane. He hated the plane because it had exposed his weakness.

Wagner cut in to say Dissen's wife was 'quite charming, quite charming' and that she would be so relieved to 'have more of his company' from now on. Wagner had told me on our way here; 'He's finished, of course, as a pilot.', I tried him on isolation stress: 'When the resonance began did you get any sudden feeling of loneliness? Did you feel cut off, lost in the sky, out of touch with help?'

'I had my radio. I reported what was happening.' His tone was hostile again: we were talking about the plane.

Wagner took over for ten minutes, keeping his approach cheerful, his hands moving energetically as he blamed the Striker, all the Strikers, going along with Dissen in his hate of them. Then I harked back to the technical aspect because it was meant to be my job and Wagner knew it.

'You must have been certain that the resonance would turn to actual vibration — fluttering or juddering — before long.'

'Why?'

'I mean if it was loud enough to start you thinking of baling out it must have sounded progressive. Critical.'

'You don't know what it was like.' He was standing up suddenly, his red eyes looking at neither of us, his hands jumping to his pockets and jumping out again to make defensive gestures. 'All right — I panicked. You expect me to stay in a plane that's breaking up under me?'

Wagner pushed his chair back.

'No. That's why we give you an ejection seat. You are expected to use it. And you did.'

I walked back with Wagner to his office.

'He will be okay now.' He had switched to American again. 'But I don't know about your "resonance".'

'All I can do is pass it on.'

'Otherwise it was satisfactory. We induced him to admit he panicked so now it's going to be easier for him. We had one of them shoot themselves, do you understand? Up at Bederkesa. The son of an upright Prussian family — he did what they expected of him, of course. But Paul won't do that. We didn't save the machine but we can save the man. I ask for no more.'

'They should all do that.'

He supervised our table personally, perhaps hoping to bring down the price of the shepherdess.

'You wouldn't have any Luftwaffe left,' I told him.

'Who wants the Luftwaffe? There's no war.' He spread his big hands. 'Let them take all the Strikers up nice and high and come down by parachute. Then they wouldn't get killed any more.'

The noise this morning had upset him.

Benedikt had been here when I came in from the air-base soon after dark and I asked him to eat with me because I wanted to know why he'd searched my room. He sat with his hands folded on the edge of the table, his soft hooded eyes sometimes looking at the other people. Neither of us faced the door from the parking area but we could both see it without turning round too far.

He had dropped the Kasseler-Zeitung on to an empty chair. It was the evening edition. 'They are toppling,' he said, 'in high places.'

It had been decided that Feldmarschall Stockener must have got into a skid because there had been rain. His name was lower down the page, taking second-best to Hermann von Eckern, Minister of the Interior, last night relieved of his post following an incident in a Hamburg night-club, details of which were not yet revealed.

I wondered whether, these two items were anything to do with the 'rather big show' that Ferris had talked about or whether Stockener had just skidded and von Eckern had just taken a boy into the cloakroom.

But Benedikt seemed to think they were connected so I said: 'They'll be pushing them out of windows next.' I ordered liver and carrots because they both have something like four thousand international units of vitamin-A and I like seeing as much as possible in the dark.

'That poor fellow,' he said. 'What was his name?'

'I don't remember.'

He couldn't know I wasn't certain. It would be risky for him not to admit at once that he'd been at the Carlsberg.

'A lot of guests were upset. I left the same night, myself.'

I thought if he'd arranged to have Lovett pushed out of that window I would do something about it very soon. We don't often have a reason for doing a bump; it's usually just because the pressure's on. I said:

'Don't you think he skidded? Stockener?'

A man and a woman came in and we looked round idly. 'I question why the chief of the Bundeswehr should be travelling alone in his car. Surely he would have a military driver.' He was eating very little. He wasn't a man for an appetite: sad-faced, withdrawn, cautious. Or perhaps he wasn't always like that. Perhaps it was his nerves. He might have told them: he's down here at Linsdorf and tonight would be a good opportunity. Because he wouldn't do it himself: he hadn't the build and it would have to be done quietly without too much fuss, which meant at least two operators.

'What about von Eckern?' I said.

It might be his nerves, not letting' him eat. Because of the waiting.

'I also question why a Bundesmtnlster should allow himself to become party to an «incident» of the kind that could lead to his dismissal..!! doesn't seem very discreet.'

'Is everything to your satisfaction?' The manager was back, adjusting things on the table.

'Entirely,' Benedikt said, watching some people come in. The night was cold; they had pinched faces and rubbed their hands.

'Did you sell all of them, in Kassel?'

'No. I have some in my room. Are you still interested?'

'No. I just wondered.' He went away.

I supposed there was a chance that it didn't connect, just as there was a chance that Stockener had simply got into a skid, but it would have to be tested out so I said;

'They don't fit anything, really.'

'I'm sorry?'

'The keys. I just leave them there so as to know if anyone's been poking about. What were you looking for?'

The pale lids rose and for the first time I saw his eyes fully and saw that he was frightened. I hadn't expected that and it threw me and then I understood. He said in a moment:

'We must be careful.'

He'd folded his hands again on the edge of the table to keep them still.

'You weren't very careful before. You got him killed.'

'Yes.' His voice broke on that one word. He could have said:

Indirectly. It would have been true: Lovett had known what he was doing and he should have taken more care but it was this man who had put him in hazard. Now he was doing it again to someone else. To me. I said:

'We'd better not waste any time.'

There is no time. His face was grey and he looked tired suddenly and I knew that collapse was taking place. Inside Benedikt a whole edifice was coming down. All the things that had gone to the making of him as a child and a boy and a man, all the experience of half a lifetime that had brought him at last to a motel in a Weserbergland village to sit here with a stranger, all that had ever meant anything to him was coming down and soon it would be rubble. I didn't know why. I only knew that it was happening because in our trade we see a lot of it and we know the signs when they come into a man's face. They see quite suddenly that it's no go: they've come too far and can't find their way back or they've taken too much on and haven't the strength to see it through or they've started hurting too many people and they realize that their high-flying ideologies don't give them immunity to conscience when it comes to the crunch.