ADAM HALL - The Sinkiang Executive

This was probably why Ferris looked so bloody sour.

“Photographs,” I said, “of X and Y at low altitude. The film — ”

“You’ll be given the actual locations at flight briefing,” he said, looking away.

“Thank Christ for that.” I like as much data as I can get as early as possible, so that I’ve got time to feed it in. I hate being thrown a mass of stuff at the last minute when I’m busy working on the access.

“I don’t like this one,” Ferris swung a sharp look at me, ‘any more than you do.”

“Bad luck. Did you volunteer for it, or did they catch you knocking off some bastard in a train?”

We crouched like a couple of half-drowned monkeys in the rain, snapping at each other, while in the background Parkis and his people were completing and perfecting their glorious brainchild that we were expected to take over when they were ready. I wished them luck. They’d come up with an access that was going to be about as safe as a duck shoot with me as the duck, and the target area they’d picked was about the most desolate bit of waste ground on the face of the planet:

Latitude 47 N. by Longitude 82 E. in the middle of winter, work that one out.

“Signals,” Ferris said.

“Through Chechevitsin in Yelingrad for London via Moscow. What about alerts?”

The man was nearer now. I’d been watching him,

“Use your contacts in place.”

“Or cross the border.”

“Or do that’

The man had a waddling gait; I know people by their walk.

“Get out through Sinkiang.”

“If you’re pushed.”

“Otherwise try Pakistan.”

“The end phase,” he said, ‘is likely to be rather fluid.”

I didn’t follow up. It was my belief that while Parkis and his people were completing and perfecting their glorious brainchild they were building into its complexities a small but deliberate flaw designed to cut me off in the final hours of the mission and remove me from the London intelligence field as an expendable embarrassment.

“Bocker,” I said,

“I beg your pardon?”

“Herr Bocker is coming.”

Ferris looked up. “Now what does he want?” We straightened our legs and went on talking while we waited. “You’re finished with the simulator, Thompson says.”

“Yes.”

“I hope you’re feeling more confident.”

“I’ll be all right once I’ve got the bloody thing off the ground.”

“Your flight briefing starts this evening at six o’clock. Why don’t you hop into town today and shake yourself loose a bit? Get rid of the tension.” He sounded terribly casual.

“Fair enough.”

“I am sorry to disturb you, gentlemen!”

“Morning, Hans. Not disturbing.”

“Your embassy in Bonn was on the line. The cultural attache would be obliged if you’d call him back.”

“All right.”

Ferris left us, hurrying through the drizzle with his head down and his mac flapping.

“No one seemed to know where you were, Mr. Nesbitt. I always find that a distinct advantage myself to be difficult to find.” A soundless laugh, his cheeks wobbling with it.

“How right you are. That limousine, by the way.”

We began walking towards the buildings.

“Ah, yes.” He was right on to it. “They are our friends, of course.”

It was a large black Mercedes and I’d seen it standing there at the boundary fence for most of yesterday. There were two men leaning on it, identically dressed and watching the aircraft on the north side of the hangars.

“Are they always there?”

He shrugged amiably. “Nearly always.”

“I don’t think much of their cover.”

He bubbled happily at this. “You are familiar with their thinking, I am sure. In Russia only the nachalstvo drive about in large black limousines, and no one dares to question their movements. They believe it is the same in the West, and therefore station their cars where they please — quite often near airfields and missile sites.” His hand rested for a moment on my arm. “You may be quite sure Squadron-Leader, that when your aircraft leaves its hangar before dawn tomorrow, those two gentlemen will be safely at police headquarters on a minor charge.”

I saw Ferris for a few minutes in the Base Operations Office. He said the embassy call had conveyed a London signal asking for confirmation that Slingshot was ready to go into access phase at first light tomorrow, 07:47 local time.

“Except for flight briefing and clearance,” I said.

“We’re giving you those tonight.”

“Then we can go.”

“That’s what I told them,” he nodded.

“You like that?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Tell me what you like, and what you do not like. Tell me,” she said, taking her mouth away for a moment, “what drives you crazy.”

“You drive me crazy,” I said, “whatever you do.”

She started again and I shut my eyes and stroked her short thick hair, listening to what she was doing. The glare of the wintry light from the window was white against my eyelids, and I kept seeing the red word jump into the screen: HIT.

But we’d beaten that one: the last three had been misses, even with the Foxbat. There wasn’t anything to worry about.

“This is the way?” she asked me.

“Yes. That is the way.”

I wouldn’t have been able to take it much longer if I hadn’t been letting the brain run on. The thoughts in the brain weren’t very sexy. If they were going to cut me off in the end phase and leave me hanging on the wire then I would do what I could to confound their bloody enterprise: get out and go to ground somewhere, and if possible leave evidence of death.

“You do not touch me,” she said, and took her mouth away to get her breath back. So I touched her and she jerked her thighs as if I’d released a spring. She’d come into the car park outside the hotel just after me, and we’d noticed each other and that was that. She was young, pretty, blonde and suntanned, with nothing very interesting about her; but I agreed we should go up to her room because that was what I was here for. She said she would speak English, because it was very bad and she would like me to correct her as often as possible so that she could improve.

“Oh God,” she said on her breath, ‘you are fantastic… I have never known a man like you…”

It was a strictly sales-training compliment and I’d realized by now that she was practised to the point of pretending she was virginal and inexperienced: “ You like this ?” and so forth.

I didn’t think she was run by the hotel but she may have been free-lancing with a pitch here, on commission.

“ Halt, bitte! Ich kann nicht mehr! ”

She was forgetting her English now. At first I’d thought she was a lesbian and professional enough not to let it show; but now she was getting involved and her honey-brown shoulders had slid to the floor and she was arched upside-down across the edge of the bed, so I buried my mouth in the thick triangle of hair that reached almost to her navel, and she began thrashing about and saying things in German again.

“ Noch einmal mach’ es noch einmal! ”

At some time I thought I heard a knock at the door but I let it go because I’d checked for security on my way here and it was satisfactory; the only trouble I’d had was in flushing the man Docker had obviously sent along on my tail when I’d left the airfield; it was good of him but I don’t like being mothered.

“ Du bist so schon she was gasping, and the choice of the word was lesbian so I assumed she was a bi, which was why she’d been able to get involved. We started all over again and I stopped thinking about the screen and the silhouette and about the high degree of risk on take-off and about the fact that for the first time in my life I was considered expendable.