The Tango Briefing

The breach of security must have been through Chirac. He wasn't a professional either and Loman had got him airborne again at short notice and he'd had to bring me here from South 6 by road and the area was stiff with surveillance.

'All right,' she said.

She turned away with her eyes getting wet and I suppose, she could stand up to me when I was being a bastard but she didn't know what to do when I stopped.

'Listen,' I said, 'I want to know things. When Loman told Chirac to pull me out of the desert, he must have known the mission wasn't over, right? He was still in signals with London, wasn't he?'

'Yes.'

'Then if the mission was still running and we were meant to keep it quiet, how could London send out a helicopter for me, right into the target area?'

This was something she knew about and her head came up quickly. 'He said that after the massive air search by the Algerians no one in Kaifra would go on thinking that Tango Victor was in the region, so a single flight wouldn't attract much attention. But he told Chirac to gain full ceiling before he set his course, as a precaution.!

'Fair enough.'

Quickly she said: 'Isthat right?'

'It makes complete sense.'

She nodded, feeling better, and I wished to God they'd found someone different to help us on this job, someone I could have ignored or disliked, a girl with glasses and a sniff or a yellow-toothed hell-hag with a barbed wire wig, anyone but this downy-armed child with her courage and innocence who ought not to be here with me now, caught in a trap that could kill her unless I could spring it.

'Not too near,' I said.

'No.'

She turned back, keeping near the instrument trolley, the point farthest from both windows.

'Are we able to phone base?'

'No.' Very emphatic about this. 'Loman said it's possible the telephone exchange has been infiltrated. I imagine he means — '

'Got at.'

I wanted to think and she sensed it and didn't talk for a bit. Proposition: it wasn't the cell that had set up the marksman for meor they'd be in here by now, at least four of them or any number up to sixteen or more, adequately armed and easily capable of taking us or leaving us for dead, the staff of the clinic powerless to stop them. It was the cell that had orders to survey us, find out where we were going, so that when the objective was reached they'd be there too. So far they hadn't donevery welclass="underline" Loman had put me into the target area and pulled me out again and they hadn't been good enough; all they'd done was lose a man in a ravine. Tonight they looked like doing better.

It was a proposition only: not an assumption. Assumptions are dangerous and sometimes lethal. They might be simply holding their fire till we went out there so there wouldn't be any fuss, nothing for the ward-maids here to clean up afterwards. Theycould be that celclass="underline" the one with the marksman, the one with orders to stop me reaching Tango Victor wherever it was, in the whole of the Sahara. They hadn't done very well either: they hadn't stopped me reaching the target and reporting on it and getting out again; all they'd done was mess up a Mercedes and leave it full of shells. Tonight they were better placed.

It didn't matter which cell it was.

'You mean there's someone outside?'

I think she had to ask because she couldn't stand it any more, not knowing.

'Yes.'

She nodded.

Her little nods were expressive: just now it had meant she felt better: this time it was acceptance. Nothing more than that because she didn't know the whole thing, she probably thought there was just one man, just one man watching.

'Where's Chirac?'

'He went back to the Petrocombine South 6 drilling camp. Loman said he must use that as his base.'

Further operations: you don't need a base if you've finished operating.

A spasm came and I wasn't ready and they screeched and their black wings beat at me and I shouted at them without a sound, doing nothing with my hands, repulsing them with my mind, half aware of their unreality, only the psyche sensitized by the thought of Chirac standing by for further operations.

'Are you all right?'

'What?'

'Are you — '

'Yes.'

Sweat running and respiration accelerated, normal symptoms of fear. If Chirac was standing by it could be to fly me out again, drop me back into the nightmare, not ready yet to stand it, even to stand the thought.

She was keeping close to me, watching me, wanting to help. 'You're all right now.'

'Yes. You know it was nerve-gas, don't you, you were there when I — '

'Yes.'

'It's the one that puts the fear of Christ in you.'

'I know.'

I suppose they'd heard me yelling my way out of the freighter. A bit embarrassing but it wasn't my fault: there'd been photographs, a press release at the time when the stuff was invented, picture of a mouse in a cage with a cat and the cat was terrified of it, back arched and ears flat, spitting.

'Listen,' I said and turned away from her, 'what other facilities have been granted?'

When I turned back she was just standing still trying to think what I meant, trying to answer before I lost patience again. So I said: 'The UK's had permission to land a military aircraft here but I mean what else? Did Loman ask for any kind of assistance, police, army, secret service liaison?'

'I didn't hear of anything else. He didn't tell me about anything. I was there all the time while the signals were going through, till he sent me here to brief you.'

'All right.'

Paradox: the Tunisian government was prepared to receive a plane with RAF rondels in Kaifra but I couldn't go down to the reception desk and phone the police and say there are four cars outside please have their drivers arrested on suspicion. But it wasn't quite like that: the Tango mission had been' ultra-sensitive from the start and a visit from the Foreign Office type with a request for immediate military overflying and landing rights could have tightened things to the limit.

We were strictly an our own.

The thing that worried me most was the timing. The plane was down and the crew was expecting me and I was here in a trap and I didn't know how long they'd wait or what they'd do with the consignment I was meant to receive.

'What is this thing, d'you know?'

'Which thing, please?'

'Whatever the RAF are bringing in.'

'I don't know. Loman called it "the device".'

'The what?'

' «Device». It's the word he used for it in signals.'

'You didn't get any clues? Chemical antidote? Some sort of destruct system? Gas-mask?'

She thought back and then said no. This was logical because if Loman had been allowed to tell me what the thing was he would have briefed the girl, instead of which he'd obviously made sure she didn't pick anything up during the signals exchange.

I kept on walking, the mind exercising the organism, wouldn't be possible in this condition to do very much if they came in for us, effort required, keep on walking and do it properly.

'Is there any kind of a deadline on this?'

'He didn't say so.'

Logical too: the military aircraft had landed and I ought to be there to meet it because there'd be no point in letting it hang about the airfield. The deadline was already past.

I stopped by the window, the one at the front of the building, and looked down as I'd done before. It presented them with a model target, a silhouette with back-lighting, but that was all right because if they wanted to pick me off they'd have done it the first time and in any case they wouldn't have sent four vehicles with crews numbering up to sixteen if all they wanted to do was make a small hole in a skull.

It wasn't easy to see things through the reflections on the glass but the white oblong down there had a cross on the side and a pennant mounted on the windscreen pillar, French style. It was parked about halfway between the gates and the front entrance of the clinic and from this angle I couldn't see if it was in sight of the Merc and the 404. They were in the shadow of the palms on the road outside and there was a hedge of desert tamarisk in their general line of vision: if they could see the ambulance at all it would be through the gateway.