'Just before 03.00 hours.'
I didn't think he'd actually lie about a thing like that. I didn't think he'd lost his reason: I just thought reason was now being subjugated to the point where he might have me killed off for nothing.
'Have they been given total intelligence on the disposition of those listening-posts?'
Then he saw what I meant.
'I'm sorry, Quiller. The objective has to be destroyed. London insists.'
'For what reason?'
Because you can ask questions if you think your life is being moved into a specific hazard: they don't bind your hands behind you and drive you blindfold against the cannon.
'There are two reasons,' Loman said. He sounded perfectly calm and I thought this is how they sound when their fantasies have had to take control of them to save them from the reality they can't any longer face. 'It requires several days of exposure to the ultra-violet rays in sunlight to alter the atomic structure of Zylon-K-Gamma and render it harmless. If anyone attempted to move the cargo in that aeroplane, not knowing what it was, enough gas could be spilled to wipe out the population of Kaifra, particularly since theGhibli is a south wind. The United Kingdom would be responsible. Secondly a nuclear explosion would not only change the atomic structure of the gas instantaneously, but would obliterate the aeroplane: and this is essential. It will be known that a new BCW weapon was being manufactured in the UK long after the banning of such weapons by the Geneva Convention, and even though it was done clandestinely it can only be embarrassing and the Government will have to explain how it was allowed to occur. This is bad enough. It would be disastrous at this moment when Israel and the Arab world confront each other if it were also known that a consignment of chemical warfare gas had been flown from the UK to North Africa. Allow meto borrow the old cliche of a spark in a powder barrel.'
I watched his reflection in the glass of the black-dialled chronometer. He was looking at me, waiting. His face was as calm as his speech had been: reaction-concealment was second nature to him and that was why I was worried when he'd suddenly sagged a few minutes ago.
He would remain perfectly calm, I assumed, after his mind had slipped its focus. He would give careful and cogent reasons for driving his executive headlong against the cannon.
Decision necessary: stay with the mission or get out. Trust this efficient and merciless little bastard all the way or take a step back and see him for what he might be: an intelligence director turned psychopath.
Chirac, a dark figure against the pale flank of the dune,waiting. The chronometer ticking in the quietness, the face of Loman reflected on the dial, waiting.
Do what he says and do it even if you know it's likely to kill you, even if you know he'll never grieve. Or save yourself, tell him no.
The scream of a ferret in the dark.
Or refusal.
19: EPITAPH
The slam of the wind and the known world gone, the sky on the ground and the sand overhead, spinning. Sink rate rising.
Tumbling now and a lot of noise and the collar of his flying-suit flapping because the zip had pulled open when I'd jumped. Chirac had lent it to me. helping me on with it in the pre-dawn cold. A good man, Chirac, a man I'd like to see again and probably never would.Adieu, mon ami.
It was a low level drop at low speed and the conditions were different from the first time: he'd only given me two hundred feet to do it and that wasn't much, even over sand, but he said there was rising ground towards the north-east, the remains of an eroded escarpment, and it could conceivably bounce our acoustic irradiation and fox the scanners, you never know your luck. You've got to try everything when you haven't got a hope in hell, everything.
Blood pooling in the head, the eyes swollen, the air noise very loud and the terminal velocity coming up close to a hundred knots so pull the thing, lying awkwardly face up but there's not much room left sopull it.
Canopy deployed.
Pendulous oscillation setting in and I tried to control it with the shroud lines but couldn't, hadn't the strength, because the opening shock had jerked me upright like a puppet and the harness webbing had bitten into old bruises and all I could do was hang in the air getting my breath, nausea threatening because of the oscillation, fight it.
Swing, swing, swing.
Cheer up, the worst is over, so forth.
Very queasy and I got hold of a line, two lines, pulled on them, an improvement, going almost straight down like a shuttle-cock. Don't think about the ground: it's not going to be comfortable so we'll just settle for that and shut up about it.
I caught sight of the supply 'chute three times during the drop, lower than I was because I'd shoved it overboard before I'd jumped, and not bad timing: it was nearer the rock outcrop, almost on top of it.
It would have been nice, yes, if Chirac could have landed me in his Alouette and waited for the estimated forty minutes while I fiddled with the thing and then taken me away before the bang went off, a civilized approach to the end-phase of a mission, a taxi for the executive in the field. But the listening-posts were going to pick us up on their scanners unless the rising ground to the north-east diffused our sound-wake enough to fox them, and there was a chance they'd take us for a prospecting crew or one of the Algerian desert-reconnaissance machines.
But if Chirac put her down they'd get an immediate fix on our position and I wouldn't have time to set up the bang before we got smothered in ticks. No go.
Sand coming up fast don't think about it.
The first light of the day was spilling across the horizon, touching the tips of the rocks with rose and colouring the crests of the dunes and leaving the last of the night pooled in the hollows. Chirac had done his homework and the timing had been precise. With the opposition cells alerted by the Marauder's switch to South 6 we couldn't hope to repeat a night approach by sailplane: this time we had to go right into the target area with a zero margin of error so that I could set up the device as soon as I landed, trigger it and leave an escape-delay on the detonator sufficient to get me clear.
Nor could we night-fly the mission all the way because dead-reckoning was out of the question: it would demanda margin of error and we couldn't afford one. Chirac had to see the rock outcrop, home in on it and overfly, and do itwithout altering speed so that the doppler factor would remainconstant on the scanners. Nor could we fly by daylight all theway without being seen, even if we flew at dune level the south.
So Chirac had flown through the last of the dark with an ETA of dawn plus one over the target area and he'd got it spot on.
I could still hear him, heading south-west for Ghadamis on a decoy run before he turned back to Kaifra.
Estimate five seconds to go, relax or you'll break a joint.
I tried to turn bodily but it set up the first swing of an oscillation and I didn't want to land at an angle so I stopped. In any case there was no problem: the supply 'chute had been close to the rocks when I'd last sighted it.
The decision had been made rather formally. He is like that, Loman. Even when the chances of a successful end-phase are almost nil and he's staring straight into the brick dust as the mission collapses he remains rather formal.
The situation, Quiller, is simply this. Even if we have only a one per cent chance of completing our mission, London would appreciate our making the attempt.
Then he'd got out of the observer's seat and dropped on to the sand and walked away in the direction opposite from Chirac's, to stand there with his back to me. His gesture was symbolic, accurate and characteristic: he couldn't go far from the helicopter because if I accepted the end-phase we'd have to take off in three minutes, so he went as far as he could and indicated by turning his back that he was to all intents and purposes out of sight. The final decision was to be my own and no pressure was to be put on me by my director in the field, even by his presence.