Алистер Маклин - Air Force One is Down

The hostages and crew members filed or were carried down the steps, Hemmingsway following the OPEC ministers, with Sabrina Carver behind him. To Sabrina’s bewilderment, there was no sign of McCafferty, and hope sprang in her breast that even now he might still be at liberty, waiting for the right moment to gain the upper hand and free the prisoners. She also calculated that her Air Force One uniform and obvious anonymity would conceal her own identity, but she was wrong.

Smith’s face now wore a smile of clear amusement as she tried to use Hemmingsway as a shield. ‘I must admit,’ he said slowly, ‘that I did not expect to find you on board this aircraft. But why play the shrinking violet, my dear Sabrina? Modesty never suited you, as I recall from our brief sojourn at my château before the ill-fated venture on the Eiffel Tower.

‘Can you conceivably, I wonder, have changed your vocation after – what is it – three and a half years? No longer the international jewel thief extraordinary, but abandoned to the monastic womb of Service life? It seems unlikely. Perhaps you would care to offer an explanation of your presence here.’

Achmed cut in, ‘No need, Mister Smith. I can tell you about her. She’s with UNACO.’

‘Aaah,’ Smith drawled, ‘so … one of Mr Philpott’s eager little beaveresses. Doubtless you were prostituting yourself for him on our previous encounter, too? Yes, your silence and evident shame indicate that to be the case. Well, now, Miss Sabrina Carver, clearly I underestimated you then. Be assured that I shall not make the same mistake again. Achmed, I give her into your personal and special care. Do what you will with her – only make sure that she suffers … Make very sure of that, Achmed.’

Fayeed caught her wrist and pulled her to him, and Sabrina had to restrain herself from retaliation, but now was not the time, she told herself; she had to learn their location and get word to Philpott. And look after the boy, Feisal. Achmed could wait.

Smith continued, ‘And one still not with us? Could he also be suffering from unaccustomed shyness?’

‘No chance, Mister Smith,’ Jagger called from the doorway of the plane.

‘My dear Colonel,’ Smith crowed, ‘join us, please, and complete our pleasure.’

All eyes were on him as he descended the steps – on him, and on the gun which he still carried in his hand.

‘Oh, my God, no,’ Sabrina breathed, ‘not you, Mac. Not you.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Mister Smith sneered. ‘Indeed, I don’t know how we should have managed without Colonel McCafferty’s all-too-willing assistance.’

The US consul in Bahrain was neat, pedantic and obstinate, and called Mackie-Belton. He had been immediately prejudiced against the grimy, blood-streaked figure who had forcibly invaded his privacy and interrupted his dinner with an Arabian lady of enormous discretion but small reserves of patience. Now Mackie-Belton’s own tolerance was approaching the end of its tether.

‘Put yourself in my position,’ he insisted, not for the first time, ‘and give me one reason – not half a dozen or twenty – just one reason why I should believe you. You come bursting in here uninvited, wearing filthy Arab clothing and a USAF shirt, underwear and socks, obviously having fought your way out of some seedy drinking party, and without a shred of either evidence or identification to back you up, you insist you’re someone whom I know from my own experience you cannot possibly be.

‘When I clearly do not accept your story, you insult me, threaten me, bully me, try to cajole me into telephoning the Director of UNACO and the operations room at the Pentagon – and then you are outraged when I propose calling the police. Let me tell you – and do not come any closer, please – let me tell you that the only reason you are still here and the police are not, is that your story is so incredible, so fantastic, that it just might have a grain of truth in it.’

Mac sighed and slumped into a lumpy armchair, his legs outstretched, his fingers plucking disconsolately at the beading on the upholstery. He lifted his eyes wearily to Mackie-Belton, and saw scarcely a chink in the implacable hostility of the plump little man in the white tuxedo, thinning brown hair plastered down to cover his scalp, buck teeth gleaming in the tight mouth. The consul’s bi-focals were suspended by the ear-pieces from a thin gold chain looped around the back of his neck, and falling to rest on his pleated white dinner-shirt like some extravagant Order from a Middle Eastern potentate.

‘So what will you do, Mr Belton?’ he muttered.

‘Mackie-Belton, if you don’t mind. Well, for a start, I will not contact either the Pentagon or UNACO, but I will endeavour to find someone on this island who might know you and could confirm that you bear at least a passing resemblance to Colonel Joseph McCafferty whom we know to be aboard Air Force One – which, by the way, in my opinion, you do not, although I have met the gentleman only once.’

Mac groaned and passed his hand over his face – then snatched it away and sat bolt upright in the chair, his blazing eyes and harsh breathing unsettling Mackie-Belton even more.

‘Of course!’ he hooted triumphantly, and Mackie-Belton winced anew, ‘you’re right, of course! Now shut up and listen, because I’m going to tell you something which you will believe!

‘Ankara, wasn’t it? Don’t interrupt, don’t move, don’t even breathe … Ankara, yeah, three – no, four – years ago. I’d had my wallet stolen and I was strapped for money. I came to you–’ his brow furrowed with the effort of remembrance ‘–I came to you in a little green office …’ (he shut his eyes and clenched his fists) ‘… with a damned great palm tree in the corner. The door was marked “Consulate: Documentation and Credit”, or something like that.

‘You let me have five hundred dollars, didn’t you? Reluctantly, as I recall, but you were able to check my papers and everything figured. I sent it back by money order as soon as I got to London. For Christ’s sake, there were only two of us in the room, Mr Mackie-Belton. No secretary, no aide. I couldn’t possibly know this unless I’d been there. I even remember your last words: you said “Give my respects to Fortnum and Mason,” and I replied that Selfridge’s Food Hall was nearer my mark, which didn’t seem to please you at all.

‘Now then. God damn it – am I right? And if so, who am I?’

Mackie-Belton frowned, lifted the gold-rimmed bi-focals on their slim chain, breathed first on one lens, then the other, extracted a crisply folded white handkerchief from his top pocket and polished the glass with fastidious deliberation, then replied slowly, ‘You are Colonel Joseph McCafferty.’

Mac leaned back in the chair, crossed his legs, grinned and said, ‘ Olé and yippee. So – can we go to work? Because time, Mr Mackie-Belton, is of the essence. It’s Air Force One I’m talking about – a hijack plot, OK? It’s happening, Consul.’ He rose to his feet, towering over his unwilling but benign host. ‘Even now, it could be happening.’

For the next half-hour, McCafferty fretted, fumed and boiled while Mackie-Belton contacted the American embassies in Ankara and London, then Andrews Air Force Base, then his brother at Princeton University and finally, when he was convinced that he had enough personal cover to preserve his own career if Mac turned out to be an extremely gifted lunatic, slotted through a call to Basil Swann – who didn’t believe him.

Mackie-Belton chewed his lip, hummed off-key and raised his plucked eyebrows as he handed the receiver to McCafferty, making a careful note of the duration of each call for the telephone bill which he would inevitably pass to UNACO. But if Mac had found the consul stubborn, the diplomat wasn’t even in the same league as Basil Swann. He struggled in vain against Basil’s adamantine logic, then changed his tack and switched to the form of personal recollection which had eventually persuaded Mackie-Belton.