The Striker Portfolio

'Not really,' he said.

I tried an oblique level. 'You wanted confirmation.'

'We have to put someone on it.'

'Waring.'

'Yes.' 'Why him?' Nobody likes Waring because he can't work without a closed-circuit transmitting system and a bullet-proof jock-strap: he's got a 'low threshold of psychological stress', which is Bureau terminology for being shit-scared. 'Because he's due back from leave and sufficiently refreshed.' 'I've never been fitter.'

He looked down from the Lowry. 'Why are you so upset, Quiller?'

'I want the mission.' 'Yes, I can see that. Why?' 'I was there.'

'Ah.' He waited, and I knew I'd have to give him more than that.

But it was personal. The fly in the lens. His loneliness up there eleven miles away from the nearest human being: myself. The silence in the sky and then the long scream and the crater and the shadow I'd lurched against in the weird white light of the chalk-cloud. Personal.

'And I'm interested,' I said, 'in aeroplanes.' 'Ah.'

I wanted to hit him. Everyone does. 'Look, is it something I could be good at?' 'Something…?' The mission. Is it my cup of tea?'

He turned slightly and stared at the wall-clock. 'It isn't really a question of that. It's a question of time. I've already assigned a director.'

'That doesn't affect me. I can start getting my clearance straight away, then he can brief me.' 'We might have to change him.' 'Why?'

'You might not want to work with him.'

'Who is it?'

'Ferris.'

'I'll work with Ferris.'

He looked at the clock again. 'It's an overseas area.' 'You can jump me in.'

He smiled. It was the fixed smile of a ventriloquist's doll. 'You really want this one, don't you?'

I knew then that I'd sold it to him. It hadn't been difficult. Later I knew why it hadn't been difficult.

There was a flap on when I went through the departments for clearance and it took longer than usual because everyone was under pressure. I went through Accounts, Codes and Ciphers, Credentials, Firearms, Field-briefing and Travel. Accounts made me go through the motions of examining my last will and testament — did I want to make any changes? There was nothing to change: the wording had stood like this for years Nothing of value, no dependents, next-of-kin unknown'.

When I left the building there was one of the Federal Republic Embassy cars outside but it might not have been anything to do with the flap.

They drove me to the airport alone and I didn't see Ferris until I was weighing in. We didn't say anything before we got on to the plan.

Ferris was a thin man with hollow cheeks and horn-rimmed glasses and the remains of some straw-coloured hair that blew about when he walked. He looked like a clever young electronics engineer on the verge of a nervous breakdown, except for his steady eyes.

'How much did Parkis tell you?'

The power was easing off and we slipped our belts.

'Nothing much. Someone tipped them off that another SK-6 was due to hit the deck and I was sent there to confirm.' I watched the lamps of London dimming away below.

'Have you had anything to eat?'

'No.'

'Eat while I talk.'

The girl was wedging the trays in and we helped her. The seats behind and in front of us were empty; a woman with two small children was across the aisle. I knew Ferris had checked this; he was good on security. When I began on the mutton he said:

'You'll know some of this because it's in the papers. West Germany's got five hundred Devon Aviation Striker SK-6 swing-wing aircraft in service with the Luftwaffe as part of NATO's nuclear and conventional air force. It's a good machine, adaptable, versatile, got a flexible performance although it's sophisticated, and it can cope with reconnaissance, interception, ground support and bombing. The German Defence Ministry's cost estimates were too optimistic and the development outlay escalated the production bill to six hundred million pounds sterling, but it's a firstclass strike plane and everyone was happy with it until it started falling out of the sky. In the last twelve months they've lost thirty-six of them in high-impact crashes and the pilots can't tell them what happened because they're dead. The pattern's always the same as the one you saw.'

I wondered where Ferris had been when I was on top of the chalk quarry. 'When were you called in?'

'They had to brief me before I could brief you.'

That was all I'd get as an answer. I'd worked with him before and he only told you what he thought you needed to know.

'I had to persuade Parkis,' I said.

'Did you?'

'It wasn't difficult.'

'How's the chop?'

So I shut up and he said: 'Nobody's at all happy now. Devon Aviation are bothered and they've sent out some of their people to work with the Accident Investigation Branch of the Ministry. They've had a permanent A.I.B. team of wreckage-analysts over there since the tenth pattern crash. They've got bits at Farnborough and they've rebuilt most of one Striker from a few thousand fragments. The aviation physiologists are trying to be busy but they haven't got much to work on — you saw that crash so you can imagine what the pilot looks like afterwards. So far no one's turned anything up. Everyone's miserable. West Germany's worried because it's their plane and the U.K's worried because we built it and NATO's worried because the Luftwaffe squadrons are part of their striking-force. You want some more of that?' He edged his dish of French beans on to my tray. He'd let the girl give him a tray in case I needed seconds.

'When do I eat next?'

'It depends how busy you get.'

'What's a «pattern» crash?'

The ones that go straight in, like the one you saw. They've been getting normal accidents as well — control-locking, power-failure, bird-strikes — but they've only lost four planes and one pilot from those. Without the pattern crashes the SK-6 would have a comfortably low accident rate. Of course they've had a few cases of the pilot baling out in a muck-sweat from sheer panic. The Striker's a rogue aircraft and they've only got to notice the clock's a minute slow and they're hitting the ejection tit'

'Are these things crashing anywhere else?'

'Not on that scale. The U.K. and French accident rates are normal-low.'

'It's particular to Germany.'

That's why they say someone must be getting at the planes.'

It was Peach Melba again. I took his as well.

'Why are we interested?'

'We're not.'

He was trying to be cagey again so I said: 'Then what the bloody hell are we doing in this aeroplane?'

'We're not interested in helping Devon Aviation or the Luftwaffe or NATO. It only happens to be Strikers crashing: it could be cruisers sinking or reactors blowing up.'

This agreed with what Parkis had told me: 'It's not really about aeroplanes.'

I said: 'We're interested in why somebody's trying systematically to knock out a cold-war weapon.'

'Why,' Ferris said, 'and who.'

That's not all.'

'All for the moment.'

I sulked for a bit and he didn't break the silence. I don't like being used as a hooded falcon. I couldn't do anything about it, of course. You're cleared, briefed and sent in, and if you ask any questions outside the prescribed limits of the briefing they think you're nosey or windy and they're usually right. The man in the field isn't given the overall picture because there are always background factors that might worry him if he knew what they were. It works all right but on the other hand we always go into a mission knowing there's an awful lot going on in the background on any level from the Foreign Office to the hot-line and we tend to worry about it because we don't know what it is.

When the girl came for the trays I pulled out the stuff they'd given me in Credentials. My name was Martin and I was an aviation psychologist attached to the A.I.B. team operating at the Luftwaffe base at Linsdorf where two of the pattern crashes had happened. I assumed they'd picked on Martin because it could be either English or German according to which I wanted to be at any given time. There was nothing special in this lot and it looked a bit thin on the face of it but that might be because I'd pushed them into dropping Waring at the last minute.