Алистер Маклин - Air Force One is Down

‘Geneva?’ Sonya nodded.

‘Well, we’ve taken every precaution,’ Philpott contended. ‘McCafferty’s been instructed to exercise special care right from the very instant of the approach to touch-down. The Swiss, like good little UNACO members, have been exceptionally co-operative, both in allowing our people access and giving them effective back-up – the airport, the drive to town, the hotel, the private dinnerparty – everything’s covered.

‘Every inch of the way has been vetted and will be under surveillance. Anyone scheduled to come into contact with our guests at any level has been scrutinised and passed – or otherwise; in which case they’ve been replaced. I honestly believe we have Geneva wrapped up,’ he ended, a complacent smile on his lips. He raised his glass again and toasted her impishly.

‘Always provided,’ Sonya said, ‘that Air Force One ever gets to Geneva.’

Philpott chuckled.

‘God damn it, Kolchinsky,’ he exclaimed, ‘I was just about feeling good on this one, and now you go and spoil things.’

He helped himself to another long gin, and flashed her a broad wink.

In the Boeing’s stateroom, Stewardess Carver made clear notes on her pad of the precise form of drink requested by each passenger. She ended up with Scotch narrowly winning over vodka, plus a pair of Jack Daniels and a genuine tea without milk or sugar. This would normally have represented another Jack Daniels, but Sheikh Zeidan ordered it for the twelve-year-old Feisal, so it really had to be tea.

‘OK,’ she said, smiling at the boy. As an afterthought she fished from her pocket a bar of chocolate which she offered to Feisal. ‘Helps to pass the time,’ she said brightly.

The slim brown fingers of the solemn-faced little Arab boy remained daintily laced in his lap, and he looked neither at her nor at the chocolate. Then he said, ‘I regret that my medical advisers do not permit me to eat such things. But you could not have known that. You may leave.’ He spoke in perfect Southern Standard English, like a candidate for a job as a BBC announcer.

His grandfather, who was playing chess with Hemmingsway, leaned over and spoke softly to the boy in Arabic. Then he smiled apologetically at Sabrina.

‘At his age, young lady,’ he said in his rich, dark voice, ‘life is earnest indeed, not to be frittered away in mere living. Dignity is all when you are twelve. Nonetheless, what he said is true, though I cannot defend the way he said it. But my grandson does have a diabetic condition and so, naturally, cannot enjoy chocolate as other children do. It is a cross – if you’ll forgive the Christian allusion – which he has to bear.’

Sabrina flushed, momentarily unsettled.

‘I – I’m so sorry,’ she stammered. ‘Naturally I wouldn’t have suggested–’

Zeidan waved his hand in a gesture of tolerance and forgiveness, spiced with a soupçon of deprecation.

‘Please, of course not. But as Feisal said, you could not have been aware of his condition.’ He hesitated, and then ventured, ‘There is something, however, that you might be able to do for me.’

Sabrina assured him of her willingness, and Zeidan inquired if the aircraft carried a physician. Sabrina shook her head.

‘When the President’s on board, his doctor would normally travel with him, but this is a relatively short flight – so … Anyway, don’t worry about it. I am a qualified paramedic. If Feisal should need something, I’ll be glad to help.’

Zeidan smiled his thanks and said, ‘Perhaps, then, you would care to take charge of this.’

He picked up from the table before him a small tooled leather case and handed it to her. Sabrina opened its clasp, and saw the hypodermic syringes and insulin capsules.

‘I’ll be glad to, sir,’ she replied.

The ‘tea’ was served from genuine Chinese teapots – for appearances, as Wynanski explained – which were part of a set taken on at Bahrain. The ministers, Hemmingsway included, drank from delicate, paper-thin china cups, rattling now with unaccustomed chunks of ice, which had been diced into smaller, more manageable lumps by the acute Chief Steward.

The moguls, supplied with acceptable snacks by Airman Fenstermaker, whose superstructure earned admiring glances, settled down to talk oil. Jagger walked through the stateroom on one of his seemingly compulsive tours of the plane, and Sabrina gazed thoughtfully after him.

Unlike her colleague, she had not been wholly convinced by the attempts of the man whom she unhesitatingly accepted as Joe McCafferty to cover up his memory lapse in the rear passenger area. His explanation – the tension of the flight, the pressures of security – might excuse the faulty recognition, but Sabrina did not altogether accept it. She was not extraordinarily vain but, try as she might, she could not for the life of her see how anyone could confuse Jeanie Fenstermaker with Sabrina Carver.

She had casually quizzed Wynanski about McCafferty, asking if the security chief was normally moody at take-off times.

‘No more than most,’ Wynanski replied, ‘but one thing’s for sure: when he’s on duty, Mac’s all business. No time for women – even one like you, the sap.’

Sabrina stood in a corner of the stateroom, a puzzled frown still clouding her face. She did not hear the soft step on the carpeted floor. Then a hand fell upon her shoulder. She jumped and wheeled round.

‘Penny for them,’ Cooligan said.

She stammered an apology and confessed that she had been miles away.

Bert looked at her curiously, rubbing his chin.

‘Yeah,’ he drawled, ‘there’s a lot of it around. Seems to be an occupational hazard on this trip especially.’

‘What on earth d’you mean?’ Sabrina asked.

Cooligan gave an embarrassed chuckle, ‘It was nothing really,’ he muttered, trying to play it down.

Sabrina persisted, sensing something that could be important to her.

Finally Bert confessed, ‘It’s just that I had much the same sort of trouble with my boss, Colonel McCafferty, on the telephone back in Manama.’

Sabrina felt the skin of her cheeks and forehead tighten.

‘On the phone? What – eh – what kind of trouble?’

Cooligan replied that it had not been anything serious.

‘I feel kind of silly talking about it now, but at the time it seemed, well, strange. He was so immersed in his thoughts that I might just as well have been talking to a brick wall.’

Sabrina weighed her words carefully.

‘Did he, by any chance, not quite – sort of – recognise you?’

Cooligan looked at her in surprise, then nodded.

‘That’s right. For a moment, it was like he didn’t know who he was talking to …’

On the flight deck, Colonel Fairman sat back in his seat and ordered Latimer to radio Naples for a position. The pilot spoke into his microphone. ‘Naples Control. Air Force One calling Naples Control. We are crossing 24 degrees East at flight-level 280 and estimating 22 degrees East at 31.’

The voice of the controller at the Naples base came cradling back to them in measured, stilted English.

‘Roger, Air Force One, I have you on my screen. Call at 22 degrees East.’

A few hundred miles away, another aeroplane sat at the furthest edge of a runway which pointed like a finger at the Adriatic Sea.

All was dark around the unlit bulk of the plane, made darker by lowering clouds. The aircraft was little more than the suggestion of a shadow on the ground.

Suddenly the lights of a dozen motor-vehicles – cars, jeeps and a small pick-up lorry – flooded the scarred runway with radiance, picking out the gravel and dust motes dancing lightly among the weeds in the stiff breeze.

The aircraft’s engines boomed into life, and the Boeing taxied out into the pool of illumination.