ADAM HALL - The Kobra Manifesto

I was getting annoyed because Egerton was playing it so close to the chest: he was pushing me out on a pre-mission directive and into a field where Zarkovic and Harrison and Hunter were already eliminated and where he was throwing in reinforcements — Perkins, Whitaker — as if the entire executive staff were expendable: and Egerton was a man who who would go farther than any other controller to bring them home alive. With a thing this size breaking out, there must be a political motivation somewhere big enough to make the headlines and in this paper the headlines were about the dustmen's strike in Norwich.

I didn't like this one.

It was too big, and going too fast.

I think we ought to go back.

Bloody little organism rearing its head; all it could mink about was survival.

Shuddup.

'Will you please fasten your seat belt? We are landing soon.'

'What?'

'Please fasten seat belt now, sir,'

'Oh. Yes.'

I think we ought to go straight back to London when —

Oh for Christ's sake you've got a seat belt on now, what more do you want? Shuddup.

Captain Lorenzo hopes you have enjoyed your trip with us.

Not terribly.

'Non ho nulla da dichiarare.'

They were very slow.

'Sono tutti effetti personali.'

For some reason they were going through everything, looking specially at any books and pamphlets. The new Communist regime on the lookout for subversive literature, perhaps.

'Qui c' e sol vestiario, signore.'

But I wouldn't advise looking inside the razor barrel, signore , because it's meant for blowing locks.

'Ha finito?'

'Si, signore. Grazie.'

'Prego.'

The slightest tactile sensation, right buttock.

I waited till his fingers were well inside the hip pocket and then went for his wrist without any fuss, turning round and checking his face because it could be someone I knew: someone in the opposition. After fifteen missions I've come to know a lot of faces.

I didn't know this one.

He wasn't trying to get away: I think he could feel I wasn't going to let him. His quick dark eyes flicked from my face to the customs officer and back. He looked about fourteen years old.

Get your unworthy person the hell out of here, I told him in gutter Roman, before I pull out your gizzard and tie it in knots.

He slipped through the crowd, rubbing his wrist, and before he was halfway to the barrier I saw him begin on someone else.

I snapped the case shut and took it out to the main hall and looked for Hertz.

Dark blue Fiat 1100. I told them to leave it where it was: I was meeting some journalists on a later flight. Then I told a porter to put the case into the car and bring me the keys. He found me along at the check-in area; I didn't know which airline Fitzalan and Fogel were on, so I memorized the arrival boards from one end of the counter to the other, Moroccan, Iberian, Alitalia, Air France and the transit companies operating across the Mediterranean. The time intervals were close in some instances but there were two fifteen-minute breaks before midnight when I'd be able to slide off for some milk and orange juice at the all-night trattoria.

There was a message for Mr Paul Wexford at Alitalia.

I didn't ask for it right away because he'd been standing by the big Cinzano poster doing nothing ever since I'd come through the arrival gate, so I went along to have a look at him. He was a young Italian and didn't belong to any kind of outfit where they'd heard of training people, because the main background coloration of the poster was white and he was wearing a dark nylon zipped jacket and if he'd had even basic training he would have been standing over there against the black futurist sculpting.

He hadn't looked at me directly and the only reflecting surface was twenty yards away and had a lot of glare across it from the overhead lights because it was set at an angle through the vertical so he'd have to be pretty good on the peep and I didn't think he was, because of the background thing. I was going across to ask him where I could find the telephones when a plump girl in black satin ran up to him. He threw away his cigarette and kissed her and said something that made her give a shrill little laugh as they turned away arm in arm. I tagged them as far as the bus terminal and saw them get into one of the airport coaches. He hadn't looked once in my direction.

He'd been the only suspect: I'd double-checked and made two feints since leaving the exit gate and the whole area was clear. I went back to the check-in counter.

'Paul Wexford.'

I showed him my passport.

'Ecco, signore.'

'Grazie.'

I took the message slip across to the Cielalto office, reading it on the way. Please notify Alitalia if press conference is delayed. Frank Wainwright.

It's the simplest form of code and impossible to read without the key, and we carry the key in our heads. The pattern is very flexible and you can throw in anything you like without affecting the sense. This one could have read: Weather expected to worsen so please number all itineraries according to severity of local conditions , and the message would have been precisely the same. The theme is varied to suit the cover: press conference for Paul Wexford of Europress. (The example with the weather theme would be used for someone ostensibly following the Monte Carlo Rally, so forth.) The trigger word is please and you ignore everything preceding it. The message is contained in the initial letters of the three words following: notify Alitalia if = n-a-i. Everything that appears after the three significant words is also ignored; thus the entire message is contained in the three letters n-a-i. The key comprises a list of twenty-six directives, each of three words: Report on arrival, Liaise with agent-in-place, Abort mission immediately , so forth. These directives are encoded into any number of varied phrases and London could have sent Number all itineraries or nullify any instances or nominate appropriate inspectors , according to the cover-theme.

The key directive for n-a-i is No active involvement.

I was ordered to keep off.

If Fitzalan didn't arrive, I wasn't to make any enquiries. If Heinrich Fogel arrived alone, I wasn't to tag him anywhere. If they both arrived and Fogel was able to raise a cadre of hit-men and capture, interrogate or kill Fitzalan, I wasn't to help him.

I was to keep off.

Blast your eyes, Egerton, what did you send me here for?

There could be a dozen reasons and I didn't think I'd like any one of them and I stood in front of the Cielalto office wondering why I had been such a monumental bloody fool in letting that poor-man's priest con me into an operation that was already running wild and counting its dead while I stood here without a hope in hell of taking the initiative, Keep off.

Blast your eyes.

Speeding down the sunlit slopes with the blue sky above your head, you feel as if you are flying, free as a bird! At night you will look down over the lights of the town, nestled at the foot of the giant Matterhorn.

Rough translation. There wasn't a lot of light on the posters and the reflective power of the window was adequate. Blown-up colour photograph: blinding white snow, dazzling blue sky, the skier in black with dark goggles, poles whirling through a slalom, his smile exhilarated, I checked my watch.

22:44.

The next Moroccan flight was due in at 22:50.

There weren't many people in the main hall: perhaps thirty. A man in a round-brimmed hat approached in reflection and stopped, eyeing the smiling skier for ninety seconds, their figures appearing on the same scale. I moved fractionally to sharpen the image and get the angle into perspective: he was watching one of the closed-circuit television screens at this end of the check-in counter. In another thirty seconds he turned away and walked down the slope of blinding snow, leaving the skier behind. When I turned round I saw him going into the trattoria on the other side of the hall.