I thought seven miles.
If Loman got the precise bearing from the RAF we might work out the chancesbut they were almost niclass="underline" from this morning's trek the immediate reckoning was a minimum of fourteen hours by day, leaving out the factor of diminishing energy in terms of progressive fatigue. And the thing was self-cancelling because the more water I carried the more I'd use up.
North to camp.
My hand reached for the beaker and I stopped it and led it to the transceiver switch.
Tango.
Tango receiving.
Pencil ready?
Yes.
Overall shape: oblong. Elongation 14°- 194°. Direction clockwise. Five paces. Right-angle to left. Seven paces. Right-angle to right.
Pauses while he drew the shape.
Couldyou, mon ami, have made an error of seven miles?
Twenty-one paces. Oblique angle right: one-four-oh degrees. Six paces.
Two bastions of rock seven miles apart. Near one of them, a crashed plane.
Oblique angle right: one-two-oh degrees. Sixteen paces. Angle eight-oh. Fourteen paces.
A crashed plane confidently assumed to be visible at a distance of four hundred and eighty-five yards in a direction precisely established by air photograph.
Angle left: one-six-oh. Ten paces. Angle right: one-five-oh. Six paces.
Question: why is the plane not visible?
Make a straight-line return to the starting-point.
Bit of-bad luck,mon ami. We not only missed the target by seven miles but we made the drop so close to the wrong group of rocks that I naturally thought they -
Six paces?
What? I made it seven.
All right. The join isn't precise but no matter.
He loved things on paper. Loman loved things on paper. Also he loved things being precise. He loved to get things exact and it tended to blind him to reality and he didn't even give a thought to the fact that if you have to pace out a rock configuration with your boots kicking through rubble and the heat trying to knock you down and the sand giving way when you need to measure your paces correctly you won't finish up exactly where you started. You'd do it here, all right, but you wouldn't necessarily do it on paper. And that was where it really counted. Bloody Loman would tell you that.
Steady. Anger — heat — sweat — thirst. Don't forget where you are.
Not his fault. I was having to wait, that was all. He was looking at the photograph now, looking at the sketch and then at the photograph. Taking his time.
Christ I can't go seven miles.
Fourteen hours' minimum through that blinding furnace and finish up delirious and the last drop gone.
The definition on the air photograph wasn't too clear because they'd blown it up to the point where the grain would start fogging so he probably wouldn't be able to match the narrow end of the formation where the pacing went six and six and five, all short runs, but the overall shape ought to give him an answer.
Sweat in my eyes. In the shade here it wasn't evaporating so fast. Pronounced heart-beat: quite regular and perfectly normal in these conditions. Thud-thud-thud.
Looking at the photograph, then at the sketch. The girl watching him. I didn't know if he'd got juxtaposed stills of the terrain surrounding the target area and I wasn't going to ask him because that'd be another nasty one if both outcrops had much the same shape at this degree of blow-up. The girl watching him.
You there, Diane?
Yes.
How's tricks?
All right.
Lovely day, isn't it?
Yes.
Tried to say it with a smile, couldn't make it. Nerves in her voice, nothing explicit, just a tenseness. I suppose she knew the score, worked out what we were doing, didn't like it, none of us did. Rotten having to wait.
He said
Those are the right ones.
Shut my eyes and said:
Oh that's good.
I'm going to ask those people to confirm everything for us, the scale, orientation, and particularly the distance and bearing of Tango Victor from the rocks. Someone might have made a slip.
Just what we need.
It's a possibility we have to consider.
How long will it take, Loman?
Perhaps thirty minutes.
Kaifra — Tunis — Crowborough — London. No delay at all from Kaifra to the Embassy because he'd use the radio and the signals room in Tunis would use their own. Crowborough — London was the slow bit, by normal telephone.
I want to be out there longer than that.
He still hadn't told me to get moving and I didn't like it: he sounded too bloody relaxed. The panic had gone because we knew now that we were at least in the target area but he still ought to be worried because the aeroplane had disappeared.
You're camped in the shade at present?
Yes.
I want you to stay there for the moment. I'm in signals and London is monitoring.
Didn't like it all and the sweat was running into my eyes, what was he in signals for at this phase?
For Christ sake fill me in, Loman.
I just want you to stay at your base so that I can call you immediately if I need to. I take it you'd prefer not to carry the transceiver about in the full sun.
I know that bit.
Five-second pause.
Chirac has reported.
He all right?
Oh yes. But he didn't find the wind he needed, so he had to circle for several hours to gain enough height to make a final run-in through dead air. He came down in agassitwenty kilometres from South 5 and they picked him up in a half-track.
Oh Christ, there'd been some kind of security leak, smell it a mile off. He wasn't relaxed at all, he was just over-correcting again.
Did he report by phone?
Yes. He hadn't been able to begin his final run-in until shortly after dawn, and he says he was observed by an aircraft at considerably higher altitude.
Worse than I'd thought.
What area, Loman?
Quite a long pause. Didn't want to worry his executive. All the worrying was meant to be done at Local Control.
Not far from the point of drop. He puts it at something like fifteen kilometres from there. He was flying in the dark for most of the time and couldn't even see the No. 1 Philips tower or the Roches Brunes derrick.
I couldn't see why Loman had to get into signals with Control. And I was beginning to think I didn't want to know. You don't bring in London on a local security leak unless the whole thing's been bust wide open.
What was the aircraft registration?
He couldn't read it.
Too high?
Yes.
I had to think how exactly to say it.
Loman, have we still got a mission?
It was a bloody awful thing to ask your director in the field and I knew that but I wanted the answer.
Let us hope so.
There was a faint crackling noise somewhere. Not from the set. I looked past the edge of the canopy.
Quiller.