Алистер Маклин - Air Force One is Down

‘You won’t find it, Brigadier. It can’t be camouflaged, so Smith will have hidden it, and removed any possibility of tracing it with heat sensors by cooling it down, or something like that. If I know him, the plane’ll be under cover and wrapped in tarpaulins by now.’

Tomlin nodded.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll call off the hounds. Incidentally,’ he added, ‘there’s something else that’s been bothering me.’ He waited for an encouraging inclination of the head from the UNACO man, then said, ‘It’s just that Trieste is well outside our radius. Why do you suppose Smith sent the ransom demand there?’

Philpott considered the question.

‘You have a point there, Brigadier; a good point.’ Tomlin flushed with gratification. ‘I can only assume,’ Philpott went on, ‘that it was intended to throw us off the scent. Now that you mention it, I’m inclined more and more to the opinion that Dubrovnik is nearer to our presumed centre of activity, so Zagreb will be a good place to start from. Keep thinking. You’re actually very good at it, Brigadier.’

With that, Philpott leaned over to kiss Sonya, causing Tomlin’s blush to deepen, and left the room trailing a covey of uniformed acolytes.

Three minutes after his flight was airborne, the telephone rang on Sonya Kolchinsky’s desk, and a breathless voice said, ‘Is the Chief there, Sonya? I’ve got to speak to him. It’s Joe McCafferty. I’ve found Smith.’

Sonya crooked her finger at the red-haired major, who bounced over and skidded to a halt in front of her chair.

‘I don’t care what it costs or how difficult it is,’ she said, ‘but I want the call on this line–’ she pointed at the receiver in her hand ‘–patched through to Mr Philpott’s plane. And I want it done now .’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ the major replied, ‘oh yes, ma’am.’

He shot off to the communications room as though preventing World War Three depended on it …

Sabrina and Feisal had refused breakfast, but Feisal had to have food at stated times, so they started toying with a mid-morning snack that Smith sent up to the attic room. It was a gruel of some kind, larded with greasy croutons, and they quickly found it unpalatable.

‘I had no idea Yugoslav food was so bad,’ Sabrina began, regretting it when Feisal launched into a dissertation on Central European culinary traditions.

Feisal dropped the subject when she raised her eyes to heaven in mock horror; and he followed her gaze when it stayed up, instead of coming back down. She had spotted something they had not noticed before – a small opening in the ceiling where it joined the bare rock of the mountain wall. Sabrina crossed to the corner and squinted into the hole.

‘Hey,’ she exclaimed, ‘I can see daylight, Feisal.’

The Arab boy joined her and they ran their fingers over the rock wall. The junction was in fact a shallow fissure, going beyond the ceiling and showing, as Sabrina had remarked, a small chink of light at its very top.

‘I don’t think it’s wide enough for me,’ Sabrina said doubtfully, measuring the fissure against her body.

‘All right for me, though,’ Feisal insisted. ‘We Arabs look after our bodies. It’s our diet, you see.’

‘Yeah, I get it,’ Sabrina said hurriedly. ‘Look, I know you mean well, Feisal, but I’m not sure I ought to let you take risks like going up that hole. Your grandfather would be furious with me if–’

‘And he would be furious with me if I did not go,’ Feisal bristled, ‘so that is settled. Now, if you would be so kind as to hoist me up there …’

As Sabrina stooped for him to climb on her back, they heard the scrape of the iron key in the lock. They were seated at the table when the door was flung open and Bert Cooligan stumbled into the room.

‘He was foolish enough to make a run for it,’ Achmed Fayeed, who appeared behind the agent, said. ‘As you must all be aware, escape from the castle of Windischgraetz is not possible. For his pains, Mr Cooligan will join you up here.’

Cooligan sat on the bed and rubbed his bruised limbs. He had slipped his guard on a toilet visit, he told them, and managed to get as far as the courtyard, but Fayeed had raised the drawbridge in his face.

‘It was brave of you, Bert,’ Sabrina consoled him, ‘but I think it really is useless, like that man said.’

Cooligan looked at them slyly.

‘Don’t you believe it, honey,’ he whispered. ‘Having tried to escape once and been recaptured, I’m the last guy they’d expect to try again. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do: try again.’

‘Well done,’ Feisal commended him, ‘be assured that I shall offer you every assistance.’

Cooligan goggled at the boy and gasped, ‘You don’t say.’

Sabrina grinned. ‘He does say, I’m afraid,’ she remarked, ‘over and over again, all the time. But he has a point.’ And she indicated the gap in the corner of the room.

The agent joined them, nodding approvingly and picking up Feisal all in one movement. At the full extent of his reach, he pushed the boy up into the hole.

‘Room enough?’ he called out.

‘More than sufficient,’ Feisal called back, and squirmed up the fissure until he blotted out the tiny patch of light …

Mac sheered off and gave the castle a wide berth. He flew on down the valley, noting the rough, unmade track which served as a road. There didn’t seem to be any other inhabited area, as the valley, deceptively small from the air, wound through a gorge and meandered out into a flat plain. From his new high altitude, the American could see as far as the Adriatic, with its shoals of tiny islands swimming off the coast.

His plan of action was comfortably clear: he must land the aircraft and make contact with Philpott, for he had no doubt whatsoever that he had located Smith’s headquarters and the hostages’ prison. The frying-pan-shaped area, Mac realised, was the valley’s mouth, and he spotted just the sort of situation he had been seeking: a ruined house, the traces of its once fine and spacious formal gardens still visible from the air. Sheep and goats grazed where the great lawn had been, but it would suit his purpose, for it looked reasonably flat and smooth, and was all of three hundred yards long.

Mac completed his descent and made one quick pass at low level to check the surface and frighten the animals up to one end of the pasture. Then he turned tightly and prepared to land. The UTVA slipped over the crumbling stone boundary-wall at exactly forty-five knots, and the pilot made a perfect three-point touch-down, braking gently to a halt after using only two-thirds of the available space.

Seeing a large open barn next to a clump of tall trees near the ruin of the house, the American opened his throttle again and taxied towards it. The barn, though it looked dilapidated and sported a few holes in its roof, swallowed the little aeroplane without difficulty.

Moments later McCafferty, who had seen a village which, from the air, looked to be not too far away, was strolling along the rudimentary path, looking like a purposeful tourist off the beaten track. He wore the back-pack, his anorak was slung over his shoulder and he whistled, rather selfconsciously, The Happy Wanderer .

He traded dollars for dinars from Mackie-Belton’s pile at a huge loss, tossed back a couple of beers at a café, and bribed his way into the village post office which, as far as he could ascertain, housed the only telephone for miles around.

A fairly agonising twenty minutes later, using the postman’s sixteen-year-old daughter as an interpreter, Mac found himself magically connected with Philpott, cruising five miles overhead.

He gave the UNACO director the location of the castle – which he had learned from his new friends was called Castle Windischgraetz – and supplied directions to his village of Luka. Philpott set the time for their rendezvous in the early evening.