Алистер Маклин - Air Force One is Down

Dunkels chuckled again. ‘Normally I’d agree,’ he countered, ‘because normally you’d be right.’

‘Not this time?’

The German shook his leonine head. ‘No, somebody else wants you alive. They’d like a chat with you too. In fact, they asked me to tell you.’

‘Did they? And afterwards? After they’ve finished their – chat?’

Dunkels shrugged again. ‘Who knows? You’re obviously valuable to them. They might get to like you.’

McCafferty looked long and hard at the sentries. He had been covertly observing them during his exchange with the German. He thought Dunkels might be telling the truth; they appeared to follow nothing that was being said. True, they had both laughed at times – but only when Dunkels laughed; and, comparatively speaking, a long time after they should have.

He returned his gaze to Dunkels. ‘So who are my newfound friends,’ he inquired acidly, ‘the ones who want so badly to chat to me?’

The German smirked. ‘Would you believe – the Soviets?’

Mac blinked and raised an eyebrow. Dunkels nodded enthusiastically.

‘Does Smith know?’ Mac asked.

Dunkels smiled, very slowly. Obviously not, Mac thought.

‘And what’s in it for you?’ he pressed.

Dunkels opened a hand and made scratching motions across the palm with his fingernails.

‘So you deliver me to them and cheat on Smith and they pay you lots of lovely dough?’

Dunkels nodded again. ‘You catch on, buddy,’ he grinned. He explained that, totally unexpectedly, the Russians had contacted him through an emissary at his hotel. He had already been paid sufficient money – in dollars – to persuade him that the Soviet offer was genuine.

‘It’s they who want to interrogate you, not me or Smith,’ he stressed. ‘You want to stay alive – play ball. You don’t have a choice, McCafferty. Get wise.’

He spun on his heel and left the room, the two armed men backing out after him. As the door was re-locked, Mac reflected on the two pieces of important knowledge he had gained … one of them horrifying in its implications.

If the false McCafferty was now controlled not by Smith but by the KGB, were they planning to use the ringer to double-cross Smith? And if so, could they then afford to leave the hostages alive?

McCafferty bit his lip and shook his head angrily at the sheer impotence of his position. He had priceless information within his grasp – yet he was locked up as tight as he would be if he’d been court-martialled and pulled five to ten in Fort Leavenworth.

That brought him to consideration of the second piece of intelligence Dunkels had unwittingly shown him. Not only could his guards speak no English; but, like the man he had seen outside his window, they were not Arabs.

What nationality were they, then? Mac wondered. And if he found out where they came from, could he use the knowledge?

Once again Jagger was helped by a twist of fate which he had first diagnosed as malign: yet the fact that he had encountered both stewardesses together, so forcing his hand, had actually saved him. They were standing close to each other, and as soon as the words were out and he saw Jeanie Fenstermaker’s generous mouth start to open in perplexity, Jagger switched his gaze to Sabrina Carver and repeated the injunction, ‘As I said, don’t forget our dinner-date, Airman.’

Now it was Sabrina’s turn to look bewildered. ‘You may have said it to me,’ she pointed out, ‘but you were looking at Jeanie. At least, the first time you were.’

Jagger stared at her. ‘I was?’ he queried incredulously. ‘Are you sure? Gee, I’m sorry – eh – Airman. It’s the tension of the job – you know? The spy business gets to you in funny ways. Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to be straightforward.’

Sabrina gave him a doubtful look and asked him if he would be fully recovered by the evening; just so that she could be sure she was still supposed to be going out with him. Jagger grinned easily and affirmed that he would be his old self again by the time they got to Geneva. He smiled even more broadly as he appreciated what he had said.

‘See you both later, then,’ he added, ending the encounter as speedily as politeness would permit.

He walked quickly towards the front of the plane, still in something of a quandary. Since meeting Sabrina, he had rerun the McCafferty amours through his finely trained mind, and he was certain that her face had not appeared among the thumbnail sketches. So she must be someone McCafferty had literally only just met – and for whom he had formed an instant attraction. The trouble with that was that Jagger didn’t even know her name.

He reached the flight deck and casually leafed through his own security files until he came to the copy of Wynanski’s crew and passengers manifest. If the big blonde, whom the other had referred to as ‘Jeanie’, was Airman First Class Fenstermaker, Jean, then his date – less desirable because more inaccessible – must be Airman First Class Carver, Sabrina. Problem solved.

Not that it mattered, Jagger thought with a fleeting sneer. Neither of the girls would reach Geneva alive. Pity to waste Fenstermaker, though, he grinned to himself. She showed promise.

‘Private joke, chief?’ Cooligan inquired, spotting the sly smile.

Jagger pulled himself together. ‘Sorry again, Bert,’ he said, ‘I was looking forward to my date tonight.’

‘Ah, la belle Carver,’ Cooligan replied with relish. ‘You’ll give me a full report, of course.’

‘If you don’t see me at breakfast,’ he rejoined, ‘you won’t need a report. You can just use your imagination.’

Sabrina and Fenstermaker passed through to the stateroom at the exact moment that Sonya Kolchinsky, in the UNACO control room, saw the green dot of Air Force One shoot out a hesitant tendril on the wall map.

‘She’s away, sir,’ Sonya sang out to Philpott, nudging him gently.

Philpott raised his eyes and heaved a huge sigh of relief.

‘Then drinks are in order, Sonya, my dear,’ he declared, ‘because for the moment we’re safe. Smith didn’t make his strike on the ground, where I expected him to, and if he’s going to do it while she’s airborne it’ll have to be some plan to beat the team we’ve got on board. So, for a while – let’s relax, shall we?’

He stood up and led the way into his office, turning only to remind Basil Swann that the inertial navigation system trace on the Boeing must be monitored at all times.

‘And keep in touch with General Morwood at the Pentagon,’ Philpott continued. ‘He’s cued into the actual radar-track through the radio link to Naples. That’s our double-check. Call me the moment you have even the slightest feeling of unease about anything. I don’t care if it turns out to be wrong. We have to watch this one like the proverbial hawk; there’s a great deal riding on it for UNACO.’

He and Sonya sank into deep armchairs, hers in the far corner of the room by the window, Philpott’s midway along the wall facing his desk. He sipped a Plymouth gin, with ice and water and a tiny white cocktail onion bobbing on the surface; it was an affectation he had borrowed from a very senior British sailor. Sonya drank a dry martini.

‘I wonder if we’ve been worrying too much about this one,’ Philpott mused.

Sonya wrinkled her brow and made a fetching moue .

‘No,’ she decided, and took a longish pull at her drink. ‘As we agreed at the beginning, it’s got all the hallmarks of the big one for Smith. Unlike you, though, I didn’t favour a strike at Bahrain.’

Philpott stretched out his legs, regarded his gleaming black toecaps, and saluted her with his glass.