– but this cloud moves invisibly, at speed, silently. Panic would be total. What response can government make?'
Precious little – it would come out of a clear blue sky. The explosion, the panic would tumble from that sky, probably without warning. And the lead to the identity of such a man who carried a suitcase, that also would come out of the same cloudless sky The good old clear blue sky was both the hell and the heaven of counter-intelligence officers.
'The clean-up after the spill of one fistful of radioactive material in a Brazilian city, not scattered by explosives and not riding on the wind, necessitated the removal of three and a half thousand cubic metres of earth and rubble. My scenario is a bomb in the heart of a city, and the impossibility of stripping out buildings, tunnels, gardens and parks. It would take years, not months – and where then do you dump this Himalayan heap of dirtied material? The cost would be prohibitive. I venture that the answer is mass evacuation, then the abandonment of an inner city… The panic caused would initiate a new Dark Age. I can offer only one fractionally small area of comfort to you.'
Lovejoy decided on the answer to one across.
'If the man who carried the suitcase into that crowded city centre never opened it, never touched the caesium chloride, and was well clear when it exploded, he would survive. I cannot say the same for the bomb-maker. I would estimate that the bomb-maker's un-avoidable contact with the powder would limit his life to a few weeks after the completion of the device. He would die a slow and most unpleasant death. That is the only comfort I can offer you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your attention.'
There was 110 titter of relieved laughter at the fate of a bomb architect, and no applause when the scientist stepped back from the lectern. No chair moved. Lovejoy wrote: Ambition. 'A woman who strives to be like a man lacks ambition'. It would give him a start for three, five and six down. For a moment, the crossword was protection for Michael Lovejoy against the awfulness of the message.
When he reached his office, and his sandwich, there was a note on his desk from his Branch director.
Mikey,
Arriving tomorrow, American Airlines 061, from Florida, is Jed Dietrich (Defense Intelligence Agency). His people coy/shy about reason for his travel to UK, but they request co-operation. You, please, meet, escort and wet-nurse.
Boris.
A clear blue sky – not bloody likely. He looked from his window, out over the Thames. The cloud was low, ashen and carried rain.
The voice was quiet, calm, and eased into Marty's headphones. 'This is Oscar Golf. We appreciate that conditions are adverse, but we think we – you, sorry – are doing well. You have good control and we like what you're doing.'
He acknowledged curtly.
'Unless there is a major deterioration in upper-air wind strength, we believe that we – sorry again – you should keep the bird up.
That's the bottom line. We have complete confidence in you, Marty, but if you get too tired, need to rest, then we will take over. We are monitoring all output while Lizzy-Jo sleeps, everything is A number one. This is quality flying in that wind strength, and we go to the range limit. Oscar Golf, out.'
Lizzy-Jo had all the floor space behind him. She had brought in her sleeping-bag, used it as a mattress. Her head was close to a wall and her feet were by the door. George had been in during the afternoon and had driven them both insane with the banging of his hammer and the scrape of his spanner, but he hadn't succeeded in getting the air-conditioning motor going. She wore short shorts and had her blouse unbuttoned, right down. His mother, back in California, would have turned up her lip and said it wasn't decent. If he turned, Marty could see a deep brown birthmark on the white skin of her lower stomach, Lizzy-Jo's breasts and the squashed-down nipples. Back in Langley, where Oscar Golf was, they did Lizzy-Jo's work and monitored the real-time camera images. He wasn't happy with her sleeping. Oscar Golf, and his crowd, were not tuned to the desert – not like she was. Ten more minutes, he'd give her. He sat very still in his chair, only his fingers moving with the joystick. He wondered whether she dreamed of her daughter, and of her husband who sold insurance in North Carolina. The few times he looked at her, Marty thought Lizzy-Jo looked good.
But he didn't look often.
It was hard flying. If it had not been for the order from Langley, Carnival Girl would not have been up. He was pressured. Refusal was not an option. In good weather conditions, without upper-air wind speeds that were at the limit or beyond, Oscar Golf and his people could have had control. In good weather, with what the instrumentation told them, Carnival Girl could have been flown from Langley, all commands transmitted from – whatever it was – six thousand miles' distance. But the weather was miserable.
And because the weather was miserable, with the high winds, Marty had done that rare thing, had imposed his will on George.
Carnival Girl would fly, not First Lady. The clapped-out, raddled Predator would be up, not the better aircraft. First Lady was too valuable to go down, hit by those winds, a dragonfly with broken wings. He thought that since they'd moved from Bagram he had learned more about adverse-weather flying in a week, or ten days, than he had known in years of piloting before. His hands ached on the little joystick, but he held her steady and she ate the ground and beamed the pictures. Soon the night would come, then they'd go from the real-time camera to the infra-red images… No fucking way would he permit Oscar Golf to take over control of Carnival Girl. She was his, if she went down it would be his fault, no other asshole's.
He flew her over the emptiness of the sand.
She woke. He heard the floor creak. He felt her hands on his rigid shoulders, on the tightness of the muscles.
She had the sleep still in her voice. 'How is it up there?'
'Like shit,' Marty said.
'Wind still bad?'
'Getting worse – moved to south-south-west, forty knots.'
'What's acceptable?'
'Gone beyond acceptable, the manual says we're grounded…
We're on the edge.'
She slipped back into her seat. She told Oscar Golf that she was 'on station'. Her blouse still hung open, like that wasn't important. There was a line of sweat dribbling from between her breasts and down to her navel. He could feel, through his fingers on the joystick, the force of the gale winds that hit Carnival Girl… Then the Predator bounced, and fell. The dial needles jerked in slashed movements.
Lights winked. There was a warning howl. She plunged. Lizzy-Jo stayed quiet. Marty had to let her go. She seemed to plummet and the real-time camera's image brought the desert sand leaping up at them. It was what they trained for in the simulator at Nellis, the air pocket – low-air density. He felt, through his fingers, the strain on the wings, already burdened by the Hellfires. She fell for a minute and twelve seconds, and all the time Marty kept the nose cone down and prayed she would not go to tail down and corkscrew. She seemed to hit a floor of air, then he had control. For three land miles he took her on level flight and checked every piece of instrumentation for damage, then climbed her back up and returned into the high thermal winds. Marty sighed. Lizzy-Jo's hand was on his arm, and she squeezed, like that was the way to tell him he'd done well. He was calculating how much fuel had been used in the engine thrust to hold her as she was going down, and how much more had gone with the climb to cruise altitude, and how much flight time had been lost.
She said, face set and jaw jutted, 'We'll get them – whoever they are and wherever – I have the feeling that we'll get them.'
Lizzy-Jo had not done up her blouse and he didn't think she was going to.
The light was failing.
Bart had no alternative. A braver man would have walked away long ago – he was not brave and accepted it. Never had been, never would be – had never stood up to his father, or to his wife. He sat that evening in the outer office of the real-estate rental company, and waited for the little prig inside to be so kind as to see him. He had been punctual for the appointment, the prig wasn't.