Jack Higgins - Exocet

‘Just off Belgrave Square,’ Fox said helpfully.

‘This evening?’ she said. ‘Impossible. I’m going to the theatre.’

‘This one’s important, Gabrielle.’ Ferguson nodded and Fox got the file, opened it and took out a black and white photo which he put on the table in front of her.

Gabrielle picked it up. The man who stared out at her wore a military flying suit of the kind used by jet pilots. He carried a flying helmet in his right hand and there was a scarf at his throat. He was not young, at least forty, and like most pilots he was not particularly tall. He had dark wavy hair, greying a little at the temples, calm eyes and there was a scar on his right cheek, running up into the eye.

‘Colonel Raul Carlos Montera,’ Fox said. ‘Special Air Attaché at the Embassy at the present time.’

Gabrielle stared down at the photo. It was like looking at an old friend, someone she knew well, and yet she had never seen this man before in her life.

‘Tell me about him.’

‘Age forty-five,’ Fox said. ‘An aristocrat. His mother, Donna Elena, is very much a leader of society in Buenos Aires. His father died last year. Family owns God knows how much land and all the cows in the world. Very rich.’

‘And he’s a pilot?’

‘Oh, yes, of the obsessional kind. Soloed at sixteen. He did a languages degree at Harvard, then joined the Argentine airforce. Trained with the RAF at Cranwell. Has also trained with the South Africans and Israelis.’

‘Important point,’ Ferguson said, moving to the window. ‘Not your usual South American fascist. In 1967 he resigned his commission. Flew Dakotas for the Biafrans during the Nigerian civil war. Night flights from Fernando Po to Port Harcourt. Rather a bad scene.’

‘Then he joined up with a Swedish aristocrat, Count Carl Gustaf von Rosen. The Biafrans bought five Swedish training planes called Minicons. Had them fixed up with machine guns and so on. Montera was one of those crazy enough to fly them against Russian MIG fighters flown by Egyptian and East German pilots.’ Fox passed her another photo. ‘Taken in Port Harcourt, just before the end of the war.’

He wore an old World War Two leather flying jacket, his hair was tousled, the eyes shadowed, the face drawn with fatigue. The scar on the cheek looked raised and angry as if fresh. She wanted to reach out and comfort him, this man she didn’t even know. When she put the photo down, her hand shook slightly.

‘What exactly am I supposed to do?’

‘He’ll be there tonight,’ Ferguson said. ‘Let’s face it, Gabrielle, few men can resist you at the best of times, but when you take special pains …’

The sentence hung in mid-air unfinished. She said, ‘I see. I’m to take him to bed, lie back, think of England and hope he says something worth hearing about the Falklands?’

‘Put rather starkly, but close enough.’

‘What a bastard you are, Charles.’ She got up and picked up her riding crop.

‘Will you do it?’ he asked.

‘I think so,’ she answered. ‘I’d seen the play before anyway, and to be honest, this Raul Montera of yours looks much more interesting.’

The door closed behind her and Fox poured himself more tea. ‘You think she’ll do it, sir?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Ferguson said. ‘She loves to take part in the theatre of life, our Gabrielle. How much do you know about her background, Harry?’

‘Well, she and Tony were married for what, five years?’

‘That’s right. French father and English mother. They were divorced when she was quite young. She read politics and economics at the Sorbonne, then did a year at St Hugh’s at Oxford. Married Villiers after meeting him at a Cambridge May Ball. Should have known better than attend a function at a second-rate university. How many times has she worked for us, Harry?’

‘Only once where I’ve had direct contact, sir. Four other occasions through you.’

‘Yes,’ Ferguson said. ‘A truly brilliant linguist. No good where the rough stuff is concerned, either physical or anything else. A genuine moralist, our Gabrielle. What family has she got living now?’

‘Father in Marseilles. Her mother, sir, and step-father. He’s English. They live in the Isle of Wight. She has a half-brother, Richard, aged twenty-two, serving as a helicopter pilot in the Royal Navy.’

Ferguson lit a cigar and sat behind the desk. ‘I’ve met women, Harry, and so have you, of beauty and considerable distinction, but Gabrielle is something special. For a woman like that, only a special man will do.’

‘I think we’re fresh out of those this year, sir,’ Fox said.

‘We usually are, Harry. We usually are. Now let’s go through the Foreign Office tray.’ Ferguson put on his half-moon spectacles.

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