ADAM HALL - The Kobra Manifesto

Conclusion 2: This meant that I could in fact get a message to the girl, to the effect that if she could escape, her father would be safe. But there was a risk and London hadn't told me to do that. Ignore.

Conclusion 3: The Defence Secretary was in constant touch with London and would know that London had someone penetrating the Kobra operation and had obviously asked for his daughter's life to be spared if that were possible. But I believed that even if the Defence Secretary were not involved, the Bureau might have set up the Kobra mission in any case.

Corollary to Conclusion 3: Regardless of the Burdick involvement, London wanted Kobra and they wanted Kobra with that brand of calculated desperation that would keep a human computer like Egerton at the signals console in Whitehall till he dropped dead of fatigue, the brand of desperation that had knocked out one agent after another in Milan and Geneva and Cambodia and New York in order to leave one man alive in the end-phase to do the job.

'That is why my mail order business is successful, you see.' De Jong slit open a papaya with his knife. 'I give them the real thing, and they know it. The jewellery is crude but it is genuine . Look at this!'

He began throwing small objects on to the woven cloth.

I heard the telephone at the desk begin ringing.

'Dyed bones and teeth, fish scales, caiman scales, seed pods, stones. Aren't they attractive? Wouldn't you be tempted to buy this kind of thing if you saw examples in your own mail box?'

Said I would.

I had looked across at the woman several times during the past half an hour and she had twice found my eyes on her. She was young and sexually aware and would expect the distant attention of any man in the room and I was duly giving her mine. The second time she didn't look away and I'd finally turned my head to hear what de Jong was saying.

'I suppose you know what this is? It's a blowgun dart. And I suppose you know what they put on the tip when they mean to kill. Every schoolboy knows.' He pushed the pointed sliver of bone across the cloth towards me.

The telephone had stopped ringing.

'Curare,' said de Jong. 'Of course when I sell these things through the mail there is nothing on their tips — I need live clients, not dead ones!' He laughed loudly and got an echo from the group of steadily-drinking trappers near the bar.

One of the boys was on his way across to the table in the corner.

'You know something? The CIA is in trouble right now for stocking these gadgets, can you imagine? But they use sodium cyanide. You know what they call the gun? A "nondiscernible microbionoculator". Where is progress, my friend?' He raised his glass of rum.

Zade and Kuznetski were leaving the corner table and taking Pat Burdick with mem to the lobby, the boy leading the way. It looked pre-arranged. The three others remained at the table with Shadia. I would have given a lot to follow them out after thirty seconds' interval but that would be fatal.

There was a brief exchange of voices in the lobby and then I beard footsteps on the stairs, hurrying. They were taking the call in one of their rooms. My watch read 21:17 but that didn't mean the call hadn't been arranged to be made precisely on the hour: in a remote village on the Amazon a delay of seventeen minutes would be routine.

In Pat Burdick's frightened eyes there had been the light of hope as she had passed our table. She might not know the terms of the deal but in any case they wouldn't mean anything to her because she was young and she didn't want to die and she wouldn't care if these people were asking an entire squadron of nuclear bombers in exchange for her life. But even if she had enough pride to tell her father he must expend her if that was the only way, she wouldn't be allowed to say it. Zade would have rehearsed her and he'd be there beside her.

Daddy, you must do whatever they tell you.

Van der Jong pushed another artifact across the table.

'Now look at this. Isn't it charming?'

Nobody else had left the dining-room.

Ventura, Ramirez and Sassine were looking casually around them, their glances passing across our table and moving on. Shadia sat watching me, perfectly still.

'I get them from the garimpeiros , when they come down from the goldfields across the Xingu River. I don't know where they get them, but I would say it was from the prostitutes up there. Don't you think this one is charming?'

I looked down at it, away from Shadia's light blue gaze.

It looked like some kind of nutshell, with apertures carved I into it, after the fashion of Chinese trinkets. It appeared to be I filed with coarse, springy hair.

Daddy, they won't hurt me until midnight. Then they say they're going to start hurting me. Can't you do something?

'Of course I don't sell these to my regular clients.'

He gave a confidential laugh, showing his gold tooth.

Shadia watched me.

I looked down again.

The shell was painted gaudily on the outside, in bright childish colours.

'There was quite a demand in Copenhagen, until they got bored with them. Now I sell through the adult bookstores, in Canada.'

Will you still love me. Daddy, please do what they tell you… Please.

Question: what would James Burdick not be prepared to do?

'It's amusing,' I nodded to de Jong.

'One thing I guarantee.' He leaned towards me and the beads of sweat on his pink face gleamed in the light of the oil lamp. 'It comes from a woman. The men are too proud of themselves!'

I assumed that Pat Burdick was the go-between. In most cases of hostage-and-demand the captor handles the communications but in cases where he knows his business he will leave the hostage to make the appeal directly, usually over a telephone or sometimes on tape. This is logical because the demands are usually made to a man-almost always the victim's father — and if he receives threats from another man his male aggressiveness comes into play and he considers himself challenged and will sometimes try to brave it out and urge the police to go in fighting on his behalf.

I had sufficient respect for Satynovich Zade to believe he was handling this operation professionally.

Daddy, they say I won't ever see you again .

In my trade we don't take things personally or if you want to put it another way we take things about as personally as a pilot does when he drops his bombs. But when I killed Zade it would be with a sense of satisfaction.

'Take it. I give you the damned thing!' said de Jong, He threw up his pink hands, laughing generously.

Shadia turned her head a degree to look at him, then looked at me again. It occurred to me that the cell had been making enquiries into the guests here: there were probably fifteen or twenty in the hotel. Their first question to the staff would concern the time of arrival here of each guest. I had arrived on the same day as Zade and there'd been nothing I could do about that.

'Thank you. It's a charming souvenir.'

I put the thing into my pocket to please him.

There were voices upstairs suddenly, and the men near the bar stopped talking and looked at the ceiling. For a moment the whole dining-room was quiet, then people began talking again. In five minutes Zade and Kuznetski came down again with the girl and crossed over to their table. She had been crying, but was making an effort to appear normal, and I don't think anyone would have noticed it unless they'd been watching her closely.

Flat white light came against the windows and a few people turned their heads and looked away again. In a moment distant thunder rolled.

'Have you been here when there is a storm?' asked de Jong.

'Yes.'

He wiped his pink face dry.