Алистер Маклин: Air Force One is Down

Doctor Richard Stein looked old for his years. He was an acknowledged front-runner in the treatment of rheumatoid-arthritic complaints among the elderly and rich, as well as a gifted psychiatrist. He was also (but less acknowledged) probably the most skillful plastic surgeon in Switzerland. It was a fortunate aptitude to possess in a land where a secret access of fortune often demanded a consequential change in appearance.

Richard Stein oiled rusting joints, cleared cobwebbed minds, and restructured dangerous faces with the same impartial expertise. He was small, dark and frail-seeming, with a prominent aquiline nose. His shoulders were bent, and Dunkels, who towered over him, saw the permanently crooked upper half of his body swivel from the waist as Stein extended a bony hand in greeting.

‘Physician, heal thyself,’ Dunkels murmured indelicately.

‘Mr Dunkels, I presume,’ Stein said in German.

Dunkels ran his tongue along his strong, square teeth and grinned.

‘There’s an answer to that, I believe,’ he replied in English, ‘though I never learned what it was. Doctor Stein: it’s good to meet you at last.’

He gripped Stein’s hand with careless strength, but released it when the Swiss grimaced in pain.

‘Sorry,’ Dunkels said, ‘I wouldn’t hurt your hands for all the money in Zurich.’

‘Even with all the money in Zurich, I doubt that you’d be able to buy their equal,’ Stein remarked, in excellent, though accented, English. He rubbed his abused fingers ruefully and added, ‘I’ll lead the way, then,’ turning as fluidly as a man afflicted with apparent arthritic curvature of the spine can rotate.

The Mercedes slid away, and Dunkels followed the little Swiss doctor along two uniformly pristine corridors until they came to an oak-panelled door bearing the single word ‘Director’. Stein’s office was functional G-plan, with a picture-window framing the valley and mountains like an adjustable holiday-snap. Stein settled himself behind the desk and seemed to grow in stature now that he was exercising his own territorial imperative. He waved Dunkels into a comfortable low hide chair.

‘You have the photographs and the anatomically detailed descriptions?’ Stein asked, breaking the silence.

Dunkels nodded. ‘You have the candidate?’

Stein nodded. Dunkels waited for the exposition, but none came. Finally he sniffed loudly and said, ‘Name?’

Stein linked his fingers and laid them on the desk, leaning forward and gazing intently at Dunkels as if he were on the point of revealing a state secret.

‘Jagger. Cody Jagger.’

Dunkels pursed his lips. ‘It has a somewhat theatrical ring,’ he mused.

‘It’s his real name,’ Stein supplied confidentially.

Dunkels sat up and leaned in towards Stein. ‘He’s here now?’

Stein inclined his impressive head. ‘Would you like to see his picture?’

Dunkels indicated that he would.

It was an ordinary enough face gazing out at him from the first page of the manilla folder which Stein shot across the polished mahogany desk. The ordinariness, Dunkels knew, was a bonus. It was also a strangely pliable-looking face … no highlights or promontories, no points of interest or focus; it could have been moulded from plasticine for all the definition it carried. Another bonus. Dunkels stared hard at the face, then closed his eyes and tried to visualise its contours; and failed. He grinned, and smacked his lips approvingly.

Stein smiled too. ‘I knew you’d like him. Good basic building-material. There are, additionally, certain similarities already between Jagger and the subject, and for total conversion … well, at the very least Jagger’s physiognomy creates no obstacles, as you can see. The colouring, incidentally, is identical, and his height and weight match the subject’s almost exactly.’

‘Almost?’

‘Each man is six feet two inches tall, but Jagger is eight pounds heavier than the subject. This is not a problem, since my clinic specialises in reducing-diets.’

‘Among other things.’

‘As you say,’ Stein acknowledged, ‘among other things.’

Dunkels flipped through the remaining pages of the Jagger file, and grunted in amusement. Stein regarded him questioningly. Dunkels snapped the file shut and remarked, ‘Not exactly a model citizen, our Cody, is he?’

Stein replied, ‘You didn’t tell me you wanted a circuit preacher.’

Dunkels grinned. ‘It makes no difference what he is,’ he conceded, ‘as long as he is the man he claims to be. If he checks out, he’ll do.’

‘He will.’

‘He’ll have to,’ Dunkels said, leaving the implicit warning unstated.

Stein unlaced his fingers and spread them wide in apparent consternation.

‘I’ve never let Smith down before, have I?’ he demanded.

‘ Mister Smith,’ Dunkels corrected icily.

‘ Mister Smith, I’m sorry,’ Stein apologised. ‘But all the same, I’ve always delivered. Even when it was Mister Smith’s own face. I made him Javanese, if you recall. And Swedish – and Peruvian. No complaints? No.’

Stein’s fingertips agitated like the hands of a blue-rinse matron drying a full house of painted nails.

‘I gave him his present face,’ he protested, ‘the aristocratic look, that’s what he wanted – top-drawer English. And that’s what he got. He could pass for a Duke at Buckingham Palace.’

‘He did,’ Dunkels interposed drily.

‘There you are, then,’ Stein exclaimed, ‘though of course Mister Smith’s face is marvellously – eh – malleable. And unmemorable, too. He tells me he’s quite forgotten what he originally looked like.’

That, Dunkels admitted, rising from the hide chair, was true.

‘OK, Stein,’ he said brusquely, ‘I’ll put Jagger through the mincer, and if he comes out kosher, he’s it.’ Dunkels prided himself on his idiomatic English.

They lunched expansively in Stein’s penthouse, which afforded an even more staggering panorama of Switzerland’s greatest natural asset. When they had finished eating, Stein inquired tentatively whether Dunkels really thought they could get away with the impersonation.

‘What do you think?’ Dunkels replied. ‘You’re doing the important part.’

Stein explained that the assumption of the subject’s physical identity was not difficult. He had made people into other people before.

‘Naturally,’ he went on, ‘I’ll be able to offer a more qualified opinion on Jagger’s chances when you tell me a little more about our subject. At present, all you’ve given me is his face in six different poses, for which I’m grateful, plus the information that he’s connected with the American forces, though which branch I don’t know.’

Dunkels cracked his knuckles and drew a baleful glance from Stein.

‘His name is Joe McCafferty,’ Dunkels said slowly, as if grudging every word. ‘He’s on secondment from the United Nations Anti-Crime Organisation – UNACO – to the elite Secret Service Corps forming the American President’s bodyguard. Currently, McCafferty has been reseconded to head the security force aboard Air Force One, which is, as you know–’

‘Yes,’ Stein interrupted, ‘I know what Air Force One is. The Boeing – 707, isn’t it? – used by the President as a sort of aerial White House. So …’ he dragged the conjunction out admiringly, and whistled, ‘so McCafferty’s an important man.’

‘He is.’

‘Then you’d better come along and see him,’ Stein twinkled. ‘I mean, of course, his potential doppelgänger , his look-alike, his – other self.’ Stein paused and added, half to himself, ‘How unpleasant it will be for McCafferty to discover that he has suddenly become two people.’