The Tango Briefing

'Why is it diffused like that?'

'It is a sandstorm over there.'

'Will it affect your mission?'

'Pas du tout.It is two hundred miles away and moving to the west. I have been watching it and there will not be any trouble.'

Loman drew the spigots and freed the clamp and boxed the device into its separate containers. I decided not to look at my watch so frequently: it was becoming a habit and it was a sign of nerves. If we took off at the appointed time we would do it in eleven minutes from now.

'So what does London say?'

Loman didn't look at me. He doesn't like briefing you until there's precisely time enough left to give you the whole story without leaving an interval before the go, and he's perfectly right because it allows a psychological sag and you'll start mulling over the things and asking silly questions but I couldn't help that. There were things I wanted to know and he was going to tell me.

'London?' he said blandly.

'That place with the clock.'

'The end-phase has been approved.'

'Oh come on, Loman, give me the bloody information.'

Voice rather sharp and Chirac flicked a look at me and I was very annoyed because my nerves were more touchy than I'd thought and that's always dangerous and I'd have to do something about it. It was the snivelling little organism, that was all, saying we don't want to go back there with all those horrid birds and that nasty gas, always worrying about its skin instead of the job in hand.

Loman went on sulking for half a minute and then said:

'The objective has to be obliterated.'

He meant I'd got to go and blow up the freighter.

'Why?'

There was no technical problem: he wasn't obliged to say anything that couldn't be said in front of Chirac and I could do what I liked about that.

'It's the only way of dispersing the gas.' He checked his watch and looked back at the diffused glow on the horizon. 'The heat of a nuclear reaction is required.'

I finishedthe cous-cous in the bowl and Chirac went to dish me out some more but I shook my head.

'Is there any protein?'

Loman fished in the box and gave me a square packet and I peeled the skin off and ate it slowly: by the taste, it was mainly processed soya. I said:

'You know some Arabs found that aeroplane, don't you?'

'Of course they didn't.' Still upset because I'd spoken to him like that in front of Chirac.

'What did they die of then, those Arabs in the clinic?'

'Nerve-gas.'

He wanted me to ask him how they could have been exposed to the gas without finding the freighter and I wasn't going to: Loman had the knack of making you as petty-minded as he was. I said:

'Some of the drillers think it was ergot. There's a medical unit testing the bread supplies. The nurses at the clinic say it was a magnetic storm.'

He waited long enough to let Chirac see that I didn't know what the hell I was talking about.

'The properties of Zylon-4-Gamma are peculiar. By its nature it is humid and — as you discovered — heavier than air; and in addition it is given pronounced surface-adhesive characteristics by the manufacturing laboratory, enhancing its effectiveness as a weapon of war. When Tango Victor came down and a gas cylinder was damaged on impact, some of the gas remained in the aircraft, but some was evidently released by overspill and formed the characteristic bubble. This was invisible, freely afloat at ground level and of course subject to the influence of winds. It seemingly was blown across the caravan track between Ghadamis and Kaifra, since within twenty kilometres of Kaifra there were fourteen Arabs found dead, also their camels, also sundry birds of prey that had flown down to feed. The Arabs who died in the clinic had inhaled considerably less than their companions, and were able to reach Kaifra.'

So that was why I was still here.

Their situation had been different from mine: they'd been caught in the open desert and couldn't escape but I'd been caught in a confined space, and could. They hadn't known where the gas was and they could have run deeper into it when they'd tried to run clear; inside the freighter I'd known where the stuff was and I'd known where to run to get away from it. There'd been other factors in play: moving slowly under the open sky, as they'd been doing all their lives, they'd been taken utterly by surprise and must have thought in terms of a visitation by fiends at the behest of a disapproving Allah, their fear transfixing them. My mind had already been conditioned to think in terms of a toxic gas, and inhalation had been blocked immediately by reflex as I'd started to get clear.

"Isn't there any kind of gas-mask available?'

'You would have been given one, in that event. So would the crew of the aeroplane.'

Their situation had been different from mine and from the Arabs': they'd been conditioned to the risk of a toxic gas leak but the crash landing had slowed their escape, either because they'd been partly stunned or the door had become jammed, possibly both.

'Who's been making this bloody stuff?'

Loman said nothing so I left it. There wasn't anything new he could tell me about that gas: when I went back inside Tango Victor I'd know what to expect.

'Where was it being delivered?'

'This is not the time to discuss — '

'I will go away,mes amis.' Chirac opened the starboard door and swung his feet through the gap.

'There is no need, Chirac There's nothing to discuss in any case.'

'Comme meme,Ishall stretch the legs.'

He dropped through and I watched his dark compact figure moving away against the starlit flank of the dune.

'Algeria,' I said, 'or Egypt.'

Quickly: 'You've identified a cell of the UAR network?'

'Yes.'

It'd be a signal for London.

'There are probably more than one.'

'More than one Egyptian cell?'

'Yes.'

I finished the protein and screwed up the paper and flicked it through the doorway. 'This gas was made in Britain, was it?'

'Clandestinely, of course.'

'By private initiative?'

'Certain members of an otherwise reputable laboratory have been interviewed by Special Branch. Unfortunately the laboratory had been placed under government contract, and although the production of this gas was made in secret by criminal elements, you can imagine what would happen to the reputation of the UK itself if Tango Victor were found by — shall we say — an ill-wisher.'

'And what's going to happen to the reputation of the United Arab Republic when we tell everyone they've been buying BCW material within six months of the Geneva banning?'

He turned slowly to look at me.

'What reputation? The difference is there. In any case it won't occur. The UK will tell nobody, since the gas was unfortunately made in England and any accusation would of course boomerang.'

'There'll be a public trial for the people who made the stuff.'

'Unavoidably. The image of the UK will receive a certain degree of damage. Regrettably, a criminal element has been manufacturing and selling a deadly chemical warfare material. Nothing more. We shall hope to avoid the disastrous outcome of much more serious revelations.'

'You mean those poor bastards in the clinic have officially died of ergot in the bread supplies.'

'You would oblige me by remembering that.'

'And the outbreak in Mali? What was the death roll?'

'Three hundred.'

'Jesus. An outsize bubble on the move. Was it lobbed there?'

'There's an Algerian missile site in the south Sahara and the gas was being tested for the United Arab Republic.'

'In vivo.'

'How otherwise would its precise effect be known? But in fact the Mali batch was too powerfuclass="underline" the intention was to induce an incapacitating state of anxiety for a period of a few days. The batch in Tango Victor is less lethal but still too strong. What Egypt would be seeking is of course the convenient dilution providing this effect, enabling her to take over control in Tel Aviv without casualties and therefore without too great an international motion of censure.'