The Tango Briefing

'How many are there?'

I shortened focus and looked at her reflection in the glass. At this distance I couldn't see her eyes but her voice had sounded steady enough, just a degree strident as if she'd made herself say it. She was young and inexperienced and would make the worst possible agent material and if they ever pushed her into a mission where she had to operate solo for five minutes that'd be as long as she'd live, but she looked as though she had guts and I thought the safest thing would be to tell her what the actual situation was so that she'd have a chance of saving herself if I forgot to duck.

'There are at least four cars.'

Her reflection gave a little nod. She didn't say anything.

I looked through the glass again. Conditions outside were the same as last night when I'd walked out of the Royal Sahara to the Mercedes: bright starlight, still leaves, moonless and windless. Low natural visibility without haze, acoustic irradiation conditions somewhere near a hundred per cent with the hygrometer down towards zero and the air totally static. I would have preferred low cloud and a moist wind, the dark to hide in, the wind to take sound away.

I turned and began walking again.

'What's the code-intro?'

She was watching me with very bright, very alert young eyes: she didn't understand what I meant and was trying hard to think and get it right and not look stupid.

'What's the code-introduction when I meet these RAF types? Password. What do I — '

'Oh yes — Firefly. They'll be carrying photographs of you and you'll be asked to show them the scar on your left arm. You must destroy the photographs immediately.'

'My Christ, is that all?'

She just shut her eyes and stood there hunched up but I wasn't even thinking about her because London had covered the code-intro with actual pictures and a physical feature so it wasn't just a gas-mask they were handing over: it was something so classified that the Air Ministry wouldn't deliver it before they'd forced the Bureau into providing treble-check identification. They couldn't be standard aircrew on that plane: they were seconded from D16 or Liaison Branch, or the Bureau wouldn't have let those photographs out of the files.

I suppose she thought she'd got it wrong again because of the way I'd said was that all. She only knew half of what was going on and whenever I asked her anything she'd only got a fifty-fifty hope of coming up with the right answer and it was wearing her down.

'What car did you come in?'

She opened her eyes.

'The Chrysler.'

'Loman's?'

'Yes.'

'You came from base direct?

'Yes.'

'You know the way back?'

'Past the mosque.'

'That's right.'

It was a three-minute trip.

If I could get her out of here she could be back in cover within three minutes but three minutes wouldn't give her anything like enough time to flush a tag and she hadn't been trained to overshoot base and take him on to neutral ground and do what I'd done to Mohamed. With four vehicles waiting out there I thought they'd probably just take her somewhere for interrogation and she wasn't trained to cope with that kind of thing either.

I'd have to leave her here and tell the staff to look after her while I drew off the opposition.

'What are your orders?'

'Orders?'

'What were you told to do, once you'd briefed me?

'Get back to base.'

She'd already briefed me: FO involvement, Tactical Command sortie, rdv, code-intro, there wouldn't be anything else; it was a simple pick-up job. So now Loman wanted her back at the Yasmina to man our communications and leave him free to make neutral-ground contact with Chirac and perhaps others soI couldn't leave her here and ask the staff to look after her while I tried to break out.

I'd have to take her with me.

'Are you frightened?'

'Yes,' she said, 'very.'

'That's good.'

She wasn't exactly shivering: there was a tension in her body that was making her contract, hunching herself into the windcheater as if she were cold. It was the classic animal posture in the face of a predator, the body drawn in on itself to protect the vital organs and present a smaller form, the limbs at the same time contracted in readiness to strike or spring if defence were changed to attack.

'Why is it good?'

'You're producing everything you need: adrenalin, muscletone, sensory alertness. No one else can do it, for you and you can't get it out of a bottle.'

She nodded.

I took another walk and passed the window and glanced out and went on. There wasn't any sign of life down there: the Mercedes and the Peugeot 404 made blocks of shadow among the trees and the ambulance showed up as a blur of white against the tamarisk hedge. In the building here I could make out voices but they were distant; twice since I'd regained consciousness I'd heard the lift working just outside this room.

'Has the thing got a full clip?'

'What thing?'

'That gun. Hasit got a full magazine?'

'Yes.'

'Is the safety-catch on?'

She had to look, tugging the thing out of her pocket as if someone had said give me that bag of toffees, I've told you before. Then she nodded.

'Yes. It's on.'

She was pleased because she'd got her lessons right and I thought oh you bastards if you rope in a child again to help us in the kind of work we do I'll have your thumbs off first and then mind your eyes.

'Do you want it?'

She was holding it out to me.

'No. Put it away.'

'All right.' She got it back into her pocket and looked up at me again and the fear was still in her eyes, I suppose because I'd made her think we were getting ready for some kind of trouble. I'd only wanted to check on the safety-catch because she might have to run and if she tripped and the thing fired it'd blow her leg off. I would have taken it away from her altogether and dropped it into a waste-bin before we left but it was just possible she could save herself with it if things got rough.

'Diane.'

'Yes?'

'We're going.'

'All right.'

'There won't be much trouble.'

'I see.'

Light eyes and a firm mouth and her bright hair in a bandeau and out there in the night a bunch of thugs who'd do what their orders were to do, shoot her down or take her somewhere and put her through forced interrogation, anything they were told to do, anything they wanted to do. I'd say her chances were fifty-fifty, the same as my own.

But the alternatives I'd come up with were riskier still and I wanted to try the break-out before the opposition control decided to send them in for us. We'd be better off in the open, with room to move.

So I told her to find a couple of white coats, the linen things the doctors used, and she drew blank in the cupboards here and had to go out and across the landing and try her luck over there. I could still hear voices from somewhere below in the building but they weren't loud. It was almost midnight and activity in the clinic was at a low level.

She came back.

'Will these do?'

'Yes. Leave them here for a minute. We're going to walk across the room, past that window. Just slowly, talking.'

'All right.'

'No, this side of me.' I took her arm. 'I want them to see you closely. But don't look out of the window.'

We got moving and before we reached the window she'd begun trembling.

'Do I do all of the talking?'

'No. We're just in conversation. The main thing is not to look out of the window. This wayabit, a few inches this way.'

If she passed too near the window she'd only present an almost black silhouette and if she were too far from it the reflected light from the walls would strike her face. I didn't want them to see her face but only the pale blue windcheater.