A Different War

CHAPTER ONE

Business Arrangements "Look, Major—" The FBI agent employed his former rank without respect, as if it was a shrivelled fruit bitter on his tongue.

"It's in your own interest to cooperate with the Bureau…"

There were two of them in the small apartment's main room. Fall sunlight exposed the age of the carpet, the weary furniture. If he craned his neck, he would catch a glimpse of the Washington Monument in the distance, narrow and sharp as a missile against the faded blue of the sky.

"I know nothing about Alan Vance or his business deals," he replied for perhaps the fourth or fifth time. Midmorning traffic three floors below the window protested like animals caught in quicksand with the squeal of horns and brakes.

"For Christ's sake, Major, you were married to his daughter until a couple of years ago!" It was spoken by the senior of the two, his back to the room, his face in half-profile irritated, squinting into the light as if it challenged him.

"What d'you mean, you know nothing? You were family, Major!"

They were short-tempered with frustration, with a kind of righteousness. It was entirely probable that his former father-in-law was as crooked as they came, and their investigation overdue. Vance in trouble with the federal authorities amused him — however much he resisted being drawn back, even at such a tangent, into the morass that his brief marriage had become. The FBI men threatened to reawaken painful memories. He squinted towards the window.

"I wasn't family, Mclntyre never family."

The younger of the two, seated opposite him in a narrow armchair that seemed designed more for interrogation than comfort, appeared embarrassed. Mclntyre remained at the window, his features set in a grimace that expressed a determination to disbelieve. Then he turned to him.

"For Christ's sake, you don't owe the guy a free beer, Major! Why cover for him now?" He came closer, wafting ahead of him the scent of a masculine aftershave and tobacco. And moral outrage. He stood before the sofa, hands clenched at his sides.

"We're going to get Vance, Major for bribery, tax evasion, corruptly obtaining government funding the works. I don't see how you can refuse to help us with your record."

"My record?" he mocked, sensing himself smaller, more compact than the man who bulked over him, the soft hair above his collar haloed by the sunlight.

"Desert Storm, Major you were there. Instructor on Stealth Fighters, you even flew missions. Your other work for the Company, your air force record…" His effort suggested there had to be some button he could push that would activate the human being he confronted.

Trying to wrap me in Old Glory won't do it," he remarked, angering Mclntyre. The younger man's bland, pale features extinguished the beginnings of a smile.

Mclntyre turned on his heel.

"What the hell is it with you, Gant?" he snapped.

"Your file says you're an asshole. I believe the file!"

"Your privilege, Mclntyre. I told you, I know nothing about Vance's aircraft company. I flew his company jet, I married his daughter. I left his company, I left his daughter." With a deliberateness that was designed to anger, he glanced at his watch.

"I'm late for work, Mclntyre you through with me?"

"Not by a long way, Gant not by a long way," Mclntyre threatened.

"What happened to Major! It kind of dropped out of sight—"

"Why are you siding with a guy who screwed up your job and your marriage, Gant?

Tell me what you owe him."

"Nothing you'd understand, Mclntyre." He realised he was leaning forward tensely in the chair, in some vague, reminiscent form imitating the posture of someone refusing to answer an interrogator. His Vietnamese interrogators, KGB questioners… it was of no significance which memory was evoked. It was important only that he was once more confronting the world as something pitted against him, antagonistic and dangerous.

"I don't owe him anything. I just don't know anything."

Mclntyre was leaning forward as he stood, large hands clasping his thighs like a footballer paused for a set play.

The Senate Committee is going to call him to give evidence. We already got a great deal of data against Vance. Don't be a hick from Iowa all your life, Gant.

Wise up. Help us… It ought to be your duty as a Federal employee, for Christ's sake-!" His exasperation was entire, consuming. That helped. This guy," Mclntyre continued, his arm wildly addressing the younger man while he continued to stare with a baffled rage at Gant, 'let me tell you about this guy, Chris. This hero dropped out of high school this hero demonstrated against the war in Vietnam, in Iowa, for

Christ's sake, then he went there himself! He was arrested at the age of fourteen for one of those Peace March things all that Kennedy crap."

Gant made a noise that was almost a growl, and Mclntyre battened on the small betrayal of emotion, grinning.

"Maybe the guy didn't know living out in the boondocks that Jack and Bobby were both dead." Chris, whose surname he had forgotten, looked at him as if watching a father or uncle being humiliated.

"Jack and Bobby," Mclntyre continued, 'neither of them could keep their pissers in their pants, not even on Inauguration Day. Jack and Bobby…" He sighed theatrically.

"Your hero here is just a fucking liberal, like them. And a pain in the ass ever since." Gant remained immobile, passive in his chair.

That Camelot bullshit eh, Gant? Haven't you wised up yet?"

There had been mane-tossing, half-wild horses near his bedroom window in the first heat of the morning, and the unexpected strips of grass gleamed after the ministrations of arching sprays of water.

He had nevertheless felt comfortable, embraced by the stark ranch-style house beneath the high desert air and sharp grey mountains where miners had died following golden illusions. Now, squinting at the gleaming aircraft at the end of the desert runway, as speck like as a stranded gull in the morning heat haze, the high air tickled his agoraphobia, however mildly, and he resented the mood of exposure because it tainted what was to be savoured the tide of his expectations.

He was eager, he realised as eager as he had been at the very beginning of Artemis, his company, when the only aircraft they had had were two old, hired Boeings with which to take on British Airways and the Americans.

As eager, he realised, as he had been at the very beginning of everything, when the figures on the balance sheets had proclaimed that he had made his first million.

This- well, that really, that at the end of the runway, still unmoving was another beginning. The first of his order of six of Vance's aircraft waited to begin its pre delivery flight waited to begin his revenge.

The flight crew were to rehearse the press flight while they tested the systems.

When they returned, reporters and cameramen would be loaded aboard and flown on a sightseeing, publicity-serving junket, awash with champagne and knee-deep with caviar and canapes, over the Grand Canyon and back to Phoenix. Maximum exposure, locally, nationally, internationally, for Artemis Airlines and Vance Aircraft. Sounds good to me, he thought, suppressing a satisfied, anticipatory smile.

Cameras fussed around them. Vance, inexpressive behind sunglasses, had summoned the media as if by magic they had come to see the man being investigated by the Senate and the man who had always been the maverick of the US plane makers the dazzling, flawed boy whose firm jaw was now padded with the jowls of success and power. Beside Vance, his daughter Barbara, Executive VP in charge of Corporate Affairs at Vance Aircraft, was darkly power-suited against the mood and heat of the morning.

Burton tensed as he saw the plane straighten, and the cameras turned towards it as to a new bird seen in an unexpected place. The tension was palpable. The low hangars and factory buildings were crouched around them beneath the desert sky, which diminished the aircraft, and made it more fragile as it began to accelerate. The Vance 494 airliner was no more than a distorted, shimmering image as it rushed towards them through the heat. Burton felt Vance's hand on his arm, but with a questioning touch. Momentary loss of nerve? Success was as important to Vance as to himself… His daughter's features seemed varnished with a glossy anxiety. Other company people were in suits and overalls, or dresses that attempted competition with the hard sunlight. In his own concentrated anxiety, he had forgotten how many people there were, arranged as for an American funeral or graduation ceremony on white chairs in neat rows in front of the hangar from which the airliner had been rolled out an hour earlier. Local politicians and dignitaries, businessmen, faces that habitually adorned the Arizona social and charitable functions and glossy magazines. The delivery of the first of Burton's six ordered planes was important to Arizona, to the whole south-west sunbelt.

The employees and executives had moved into what might have been a protective fence around himself and Vance.

A plume of dust billowed out behind the accelerating plane and its noise was beginning to cannon back at them from the mountains. It was a projectile being fired down the runway. Burton felt his mouth dry and his hands grip at themselves, holding certainty in a fierce grip or suffocating doubt. Then the gleaming metal bullet sailed… moving effortlessly into its natural element above the desert and the roiling dust. A great silver insect against the mountains, then against the sky like a star. There was clapping, but the reflected, magnified engine noise drowned it.

As the noise diminished, he heard Vance's chuckle of celebration and relief.

Barbara held the big man's arm. His jaw was firmer, younger again, and his blue eyes glinted challengingly as he removed his sunglasses. The cameras whirled around them once more like seductive dancers, and Vance was answering the reporters' questions about bribes and misappropriated funds. His manner was confidently dismissive. Burton moved to his other side and shook his hand for the photographers. Above them, high above, the plane circled slowly, a distant, winking speck. Burton's mood was elated, but fierce as a weapon. After all the dirty tricks, the attempts of the big national carriers to keep him out of Heathrow, JFK, O'Hare, Europe's international airports after the vast bank loans, the rescheduling of debts as regularly as bowel movements this was a real beginning.

It had been exhilarating, climbing the mountain against their hostile weather. Then his own country's national carrier, privatised but anticipating monopoly, had attempted to steal passengers, spread black propaganda, question his liquidity, the safety of the huge loans.

They'd settled out of court, eventually, but their actions had declared that now it was a dirty war. One he had taken on with a ruthless alacrity that had surprised him.

Now, with the 494 in service within six months, regularly flying the Atlantic, he would undercut all competition.

He pumped Vance's hand, perhaps his sudden exhilaration surprising the American. Then Vance slapped his shoulder — they slapped each other's shoulders in their released, gratified nervousness; brothers under the suits. Vance had begun in overalls, as he had in bright, even lurid sweaters and with much longer hair.

Now, neither of them could be stopped.

"Let's get a drink!" Vance bawled, his arms embracing the cameras, the guests, his small desert kingdom.

"Or drunk! Come on, Tim-boy it's our day!"

His enthusiasm was tumultuous, enveloping. He dragged Burton to his side like a lover, his arm on his shoulder, and steered him towards the hospitality marquee, its gaudy, flounced sides flapping in the desert breeze.

Vance had begun designing and building executive jets, rich toys for richer boys.

Then he'd copied the Boeing philosophy, stretching and fattening the fuselage until he had the skeleton of the 494. A long-haul workhorse on to which he had bolted the two big Pratt & Whitney engines he had helped design, some fancy avionics he'd bought in and his own design for the fuel management system and the airliner possessed a better load-to-range ratio than any of its rivals. It was the most effective and cheapest transatlantic carrier in existence. Burton knew that as certainly as did Vance… but the people wouldn't buy it. Not yet.

They were waiting patiently in their lightweight suits and silk ties in their boardrooms for him to be their guinea pig.

The big carriers would flock to Vance and stand in admiration with the desert dust blowing over their polished shoes and squinting against the sun once his airline, Artemis, had shown how good and cheap the 494 was. Until then, they would stick with their Airbuses and their Boeings. So, Vance needed him like an addict just as he needed Vance.

He smiled reassuringly as they approached the marquee. He could hear the canvas cracking in the breeze like old wood. Fuck the rules, don't tell me about them… It could have been a pledge between them. Bankers patted Vance on the back as his smile preceded them into the marquee's illusory cool.

Local politicians seemed lit by his confident flame.

The 494's two big engines had faded into the distance beyond Phoenix.

Thanks, Alan, he thought. Oh, thank you, Alan… He had been given the means to shaft the European and British carriers who had tried, for a decade, to ensure his failure.

Barbara Gant or did she call herself Barbara Vance Gant now? No, he remembered, she had remarried and there was a child… She, too, was smiling, glad-handing. He was given a glass of chilled champagne and raised it to her. She returned the salute with a quiet triumph.

"Of course a wonderful aircraft," he offered in reply to someone in a light-grey suit with the distinguished grey coiffure of an American banker or mafioso.

"Local employment?" He remembered. The state senator.

"Employment will be no problem—" he grinned.

"Give me six months on the New York route and they'll be flocking here, Senator. I guarantee!" His confidence embarrassed him, his habitual reserve reminding him of its right to his smiles, his manner.

"I won't let the plane down," he could not avoid adding with a laugh.

"Next spring, at the latest, they'll be falling over themselves to buy Alan's baby!"

He moved further into the undergrowth of the crowded marquee, among species he had forced himself to be able to confront and confound.

Vance was without that English apologetic tic in the forebrain which moderated self-congratulation.

His arms waved above his head in broad, unquestioning gestures. The money-men, the politicians, the executives, the advisers all of them were people from whom he had masked himself behind his money and his most trusted deputies, even behind his dazzling wife. His long hair, his sweaters, his apparent naivety; all had been de fences against intrusion, bolsters of an assurance he found it difficult to maintain.

He sipped more champagne.

Bright chatter, then, or amusing asides. He sensed his path through this forest of money, influence and dependence in the role they forced upon him St. George, riding to Vance's rescue. The sound Englishman.

It must be the pepper-and-salt in his hair that gave him the appearance of maturity over Vance, since the American was ten years older than himself. His hands, too, began to wave, like those of Vance; smaller, politer imitations. The marquee became hot with bodies and success.

The mingling of expensive perfumes and aftershaves was heady. He clipped his glass to the plate on which a helping of salmon and salad had arrived, un requested He pecked at the food, his excitement unable to digest. Nodding as he listened to a Phoenix matron inviting him to her salon.

"A great shame," he murmured, 'but I'll be back in London before Thursday… Of course, on my next visit. Delighted!"

The matron floated away, having tamed if not captured him. He smiled after her.

Charlotte was definitely required on his next visit, if he was to trawl the Phoenix social world… He must ring her and the boys, tell them the plane had flown and he would be home a day early. What time was it in London? He glanced at his watch surreptitiously. Seven hours' difference, was it…? It was — time for tea or G-and-T in Holland Park. He grinned a private pleasure and glanced towards the entrance of the marquee. The desert seemed to smoke with heat rather than dust-Vance? Alan Vance was outside, and a man in shirtsleeves was gesticulating in what might have been anger… No, the anger the baffled fury was all Vance's.

Smiling, nodding, sidling, Burton moved towards the gap of desert between the canvas and flounces. Voices caught at him like gentle hands, but he managed to evade them. Vance's features were thunderous with knowledge and rage.

"What is it Alan? What is it?"

Vance turned to him, his eyes like those of something dangerous, cornered and wounded, but far from finished. Something that wanted to hurt, damage.

"What is it?" he repeated inadequately.

The my plane… it's gone down. Crashed. The crew's not answering.

It's gone down, Tim. My plane crashed—" The image of Her Majesty stepping from the fuselage of the Skyliner into a hot, tropical light and a breeze that ruffled cotton dresses and unsecured hats became that of the news reader then the symbolic portcullis of the House of Commons as the channel returned to its coverage of a Commons Select Committee.

At once, Giles Pyott sat forward in his armchair, to Aubrey's renewed amusement. He sighed with gentle mockery and Pyott, swilling the clinking ice in his glass of gin and tonic, acknowledged the noise with an inclination of his head.

The Chairman of the European Affairs Select Committee was an MP known to both himself and Giles Pyott. He had been an unsuccessful Foreign Office junior minister and later had spent an equally fruitless sojourn at MoD. In the former post he had buckled before Aubrey, in the latter had been implacably opposed by Giles.

But he was rabidly pro-European, of the party of government, and his present eminence was thus fully accounted. Seated next to him was Giles' daughter, his shining girl as only Aubrey, Clive Winterborne and Giles himself were ever allowed to call her. In riposte, they were still to her, even in their collective dotage, the three musketeers. As the sound of her voice was faded up her first words making her father chuckle with indulgent approval, as if he were witnessing some kind of successful training exercise for a violent assault by special forces Marian was haranguing the man giving evidence to the Committee; the CEO of Aerospace UK, Sir Bryan Coulthard. He appeared sullenly resentful, despite the media coaching he must have had over the years and especially just prior to this appearance on the box.

Money, Aubrey thought it was always money. A tropical storm of it, running down the drains of the European Union, disappearing into the sands of corruption, grandiose dreams, bureaucracy. In his retirement, he had found a lofty, indulgent aloofness. Giles, because his daughter was angry at waste, incompetence, corruption. and Europe was angry in his turn. He sipped with a quiet, satisfied savagery at his drink as the industrial knight inadequately fended off the redoubtable Marian.

Aubrey recollected the bloated, gleaming fuselage of the Skyliner from which the monarch was disembarking on the news film. British Airways had two of them, employed for junkets, tourist trips, celebrating Lottery winners and the like. The costs of production had escalated become mountainous — and the airlines jibbed at buying what was yet another pompous, Louis Quatorze-like dream of European glory by France and the UK with the full complicity of the European Commission in Brussels. Indeed, it was a dream more like those of Brussels than his own country for Aerospace UK it had been born of desperation at the end of the Cold War… and it was too damned expensive for anyone to buy, this future of airline travel, as it was usually touted. Even Her Majesty's endorsement on her State Visits would hardly recommend it to realistic, hard-headed airline chairmen around the world.

"Your shining girl's fishing," he murmured, glancing into his malt whisky and catching a scent of the beef Mrs. Grey was preparing for his dinner with Giles.

"She's bluffing."

"Ah, Kenneth but Coulthard doesn't know that," Pyott replied in triumph. No one was as clever as his girl, no one quicker on their feet than his only daughter.

Outside, home-going traffic was muted and the sunlight lay strongly on Regent's Park. Aubrey stirred comfortably in his armchair, enjoying the restrained interrogation.

"Why won't they buy his dream, Giles that Skyliner thing? Cost alone?"

"Probably. Ludicrous situation," Pyott barked.

"As far as I can understand it—" This is Marian's view, is it, to which I'm to be treated?"

Giles Pyott snorted with laughter.

"A hit, I do confess as much… yet, it is. It's the old sad story — overcapacity in the industry and falling revenues. They want cheap, as she puts it, not flashy!

"But they won't buy American planes either."

They'll have to start replacing their fleets soon and it's either American or it's this costly bugger. Brothel with wings, Marian calls it." Aubrey laughed.

"But Coulthard and the Frogs are sweating over Marian's acquaintance, Tim Burton, and his choice of plane. That is cheap relatively… HMG and the French have poured so much money into developing the damned Skyliner they won't bale out the airlines with subsidies to buy. Then we have another Concorde on our hands."

"With this difference BA was the national carrier back then and government could make them buy Concorde. Now they're in the private sector, they think they've done enough by taking two on appro and flying the champagne and gold medallion set on junkets." Pyott tossed his head, still thickly crowned with grey hair. His aquiline profile appeared bleak in expression. Full-face, Giles found it harder to frown effectively. The retired soldier gestured at the screen, absorbed in his daughter's casual, intent duel with Coulthard.

Aubrey had heard as much in the whispering gallery of the Club, and elsewhere where he still encountered men of present or resigned power.

The Skyliner was a luxury, ocean-going liner of the air, a grandiloquent gesture appropriate to a more extravagant age. It was opulently appointed, it attempted to carry too many passengers, its engines were inefficient by comparison with the newest generation of propulsion units, its sumptuousness ruined its payload-to-range-to-price equation. It was an overdraft, negative equity, a spendthrift gesture quite out of tenor with the straitened times.

If one airline bought it, then others might. But the Germans had never joined the project, using the money they had saved on Eurodefender to help efface the cost of rebuilding the industrial horror of the former East Germany. Bonn would never allow Lufthansa to acquire a fleet of Skyliners for the US and Far East routes. Air France couldn't afford it and the Elysee wouldn't afford it on behalf of the national carrier.

The Belgians couldn't even dream of it, like the Dutch, and the British privatised national airline was not prepared to make more than a gesture.

If young Tim Burton succeeded, the Skyliner was sunk without trace… which was what infuriated Marian so much, the billions of ecus the project had cost. Aubrey shook his head.

"You can assure this Committee, Sir Bryan," Marian was saying, 'that when the Skyliners under construction are completed, you will have found buyers for them? Or is the short-time working announced at one of your subcontractors in my constituency the shape of things to come?"

Marian's smile remained dazzlingly innocent as her words worked like acid on the crumbling brickwork of Coulthard's self-confidence.

Marian was wearing her blonde hair drawn back from her face, accentuating her wide blue eyes and the high, prominent cheekbones. The mouth was firm in the generosity of her smile, her neck long. Even seated, she appeared to possess her father's stature, as well as his determination and confidence. To Giles, she was as beautiful as her mother had been. Most men, indeed, found her attractive, desirable then, eventually, too dauntingly intelligent for their entire comfort.

She had, however, discovered two or three men sufficiently up to scratch to partner her in affairs.

Pyott grunted with pleasure at Marian's remarks. Aubrey's mood was complacent. He was an aged senator returned to the Forum from his farm, to find himself little more than amused at antics he had once taken with the deadliest seriousness. He sipped at his whisky, enjoying Giles' pleasure at his daughter, and the scent of the promised meal. A cork popped in the kitchen, sliding seductively from a bottle of very good claret.

There will be buyers there is a great deal of interest, my dear lady," Coulthard replied, his eyes narrowed into creases of fat, his demeanour so ruffled that he had publicly patronised his inquisitor to Marian's intense satisfaction.

"I didn't know our sales and marketing division interested honourable members quite so closely," he added, his anger incapable of restraint except in sarcasm.

"Our interest, Marian…" the chairman began, leaning to her so that his words became a mutter in which was distinguished a tone of ingratiating reprimand.

"You're right, of course, Chairman," Marian murmured. This Committee is simply interested are we not? in seeing some return on the EC subsidies that were made into research and development, here and in France. Hence our interest in the sales prospects—" She paused, as if stung by an insect or a revelation. The camera cut to Coulthard, who appeared ever more uncomfortable before his eyes became hooded and inexpressive. It was no more than a moment, but something had been revealed.

Aubrey's ancient, rusty curiosity was aroused.

"What happened there, Giles? She scored a hit without realising it how?" At once it had become a diversionary game, of course; nothing of real or immediate interest to him. Real interest was confined to dinner and Giles' amicable, comfortable company.

"I saw that, too, Kenneth. Research subsidies, grants — whatever the Black Hole of Brussels calls them these days… we all know they got a bucketful of ecus at Aerospace UK, just like Stendhal-Balzac, to get the project off the ground.

Funny…" He studied the screen, but the camera had passed to an interjecting left wing MP who had taken up Marian's cry concerning jobs. There had, apparently, been redundancies at a subcontractor in his constituency. Why the lay-offs, he asked in broadest Lancashire, if there was the immediate prospect of sales?

Coulthard had recovered his habitual condescension, his corporate arrogance.

Whatever Marian had caught on the wing was gone. A glimpse of her features showed that she, too, had dismissed the moment… as Aubrey did. For, as Giles said, they all knew how much the European Commission, in one of its fits of anti Americanism and Le grand Europe moods, had poured into the initial research programme for the Skyliner.

That was all above board, allowable. Coulthard had looked, for a moment, like a man caught with his hand in the till.

Mrs. Grey appeared in the doorway and mouthed ten minutes to Aubrey, who nodded and turned to Giles.

"Another drink, my dear Giles?"

"Why not? That beef smells wonderful, Mrs. Grey." Aubrey's housekeeper retired to her kitchen suitably recompensed. General Sir Giles was an always welcome guest of Sir Kenneth.

Aubrey shuffled across the green carpet towards the drinks tray on the Victorian credenza near the bay window. The early summer evening gleamed on the grass of the park and from a hundred windows. Traffic murmured like flies. He poured himself another whisky, clinked ice for Giles' gin, and dismissed the nag of curiosity. Remembering with amusement a time when he would, in Marian's place, have worried at Coulthard like a dog at a bone a terrier at a rat, as one of his field agents had always preferred to phrase it. But, in his case, the interrogation would have been of someone unshaven and without sleep and who posed a threat. That had been a kind of war, and this was not. It was merely business… There you are, my dear," he announced brightly, handing Pyott his tumbler.

"Cheers to us, and to our very own St. Joan!" He gestured his glass towards the television. Giles Pyott raised his own almost with reverence towards Marian's image.

He was still awake when the telephone rang in the bedroom of the apartment.

The illuminated dial of the bedside alarm showed him it was two in the morning. The whole apartment was quiet, empty, the traffic outside seeming to pass it furtively, with a sense of uncertainty. When he heard her voice, he wondered for an instant whether some anticipation of her call had been what had kept him awake.

"Mitchell-it's… Barbara."

He had known she would call either her or her father. The TV news had been awash with images of the crashed 494, scorched fuselage lying like an old artillery shell in the sand of the Arizona desert, surrounded by the immobile vehicles of the rescue team, the fire department, the accident investigation.

Speculation, the fall of Vance stock on the Dow, rumours of jumpy nerves among the bigger creditors, the half-dozen banks Vance had charmed money from… it had been like watching a garment unravelling, its designer label mocked by its shoddiness.

"Sure, Barbara," he muttered, sitting up in bed and switching on the table lamp beside him. The room did not seem to warm in its glow; the place expressed his mood, even the memories that he at once entertained. The shabby, bitter last year of their marriage, the months of the divorce.

"What how are you?" he asked, changing the question, drawing back from why she must have called.

There was an exasperated exhalation, a sound he had thought not to hear again, then she said abruptly: "Daddy needs your help, Mitchell. He's in trouble—"

He snapped back: "I watch the news on TV. You can't miss him, Barbara."

"Oh, for Christ's sake-!"

The good Lord isn't why you're calling, Barbara. How is — what's his name? Tom and the baby?" Again the exasperation, even hatred, in her breathing. He felt cheap and satisfied.

"Will you help him?"

"What went wrong?" He was curious, he admitted. There had been nothing but speculation on TV and in the newspapers, and by men whose credentials he either suspected or dismissed. Pilot error… how they loved that old dog. The oldest, most inclusive slur and easiest escape route for guys who shaved safety and quality for profit, extended maintenance schedules, ignored routine checks.

"We he doesn't know…" She sounded doubtful, angry.

"He hasn't told you what he suspects? What about the flight recorder?"

"Nothing to account for the crew died, Mitchell." He wondered, disliking himself at once for the suspicion, whether the lack of information was just another persuasive tactic.

"It was on the news."

The banks are crawling all over him, Mitchell. He could be ruined by this-!" The element of hysteria in her voice was uncalculated, genuine. He knew the tone only too well.

"Did he ask you to call me?"

After a silence: "No…"

"No. He wouldn't. What could I possibly know he didn't know already the guy who flew his personal jet and disappointed his daughter?"

"Please not now…" She sounded wounded, exhausted. Then hard-edged as a flint.

"Will you help, Mitchell? Just a simple yes or no, then we can end this—"

"How badly is he hurt?"

"You've seen the Dow? The banks are panicking. Burton, the man who's agreed to buy the first six planes he's suffering, too." Then her filial outrage overmastered all other feelings.

"He doesn't deserve to fail, Mitchell. Even you'd have to admit that!

They're all waiting for him to fall he's on his own and he's on the edge. For God's sake help him!"

He felt as if he was listening to the sound of a collapsing building.

Her noises were dry sobs, grasps at air and calm. Where her husband was he could not guess or from where she was calling. He owed Barbara precisely nothing except her continued apprehension of the truth that he was responsible for the failure of their marriage. She was entitled to that prop to her confidence, that investment in her new marriage. He owed Vance even less. Headlights slid across the curtains like a searchlight seeking him, then they were gone.

He went on listening to the silence from the other end of the line. Was she waiting for his reply, or did she think she had already heard it in his silence? Perhaps she was clinging to the phone like a life belt What in hell could he do, anyway even if he was a better accident investigator than most, probably than the guys picking the plane to pieces in Vance's hangar outside Phoenix? It had been a pre-delivery, routine flight. Nothing had seemed wrong, everything was registering normal or satisfactory, the status of every working part… Then the pilot had reported sudden engine failure, declared an emergency and felt the plane carrying him drop out of the sky, determined to kill him and everyone on board. It was the pi lot who hadn't deserved it.

"Barbara," he said eventually, his voice level.

"Yes?" Unreasonable hope mingled with self-protective contempt.

"A guy reminded me, two days ago, I was a federal employee. If I come to you if I find anything then the FAA will have to know. I won't cover up for Alan or you. That's the risk. If the plane's guilty, I'll have to say so whatever it does to the stock and however much it frightens the banks." He paused, then murmured: That's the deal."

She was silent for no more than a moment, then she asked abruptly: "Can you be here tomorrow?"

"Maybe. See you—" But the connection had already been broken, as suddenly as if they were lovers and her husband had walked unexpectedly into the room from which she was making the call. He looked at his receiver, then replaced it.

He had expected the call, he decided. It had been that anticipation that had kept him awake. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling. He rested against the headboard, arms folded across his chest. Had he wanted her to call? Maybe… probably. He sensed, from the TV news and the scuttlebutt at the FAA offices, that it was the plane that was at fault, not the pilot. Alan Vance's dream, become a reality, was faulty it didn 't work. And he would prove it. And, because he was a senior accident investigator, he would be able to tell the whole of America on TV.

Good Morning America… He grinned sourly. Barbara hadn't thought it through, hadn't realised how much he still hated Vance and resented his treatment at the man's hands as the marriage accelerated down its slippery slope to its day in court. Vance had lied about him, blackened him made out he was the jerk of all time and violent, too.

He'd told the newspapers, anyone who'd listen and repeat the slurs.

He continued smoking. Now Vance needed him. Better than that, Vance didn't even know he was coming, didn't know that his beloved only daughter had invited him Yes, he had waited, really waited for her call… When she returned to the Holland Park house from the board meeting of one of the unfashionable charities she helped shepherd, Charlotte Burton found her husband in the first-floor drawing room, the younger boy, Jamie, on his lap.

Both of them had, apparently, been lulled to sleep by the book that lay fallen on the Chinese carpet. She paused in the doorway, studying him as he struggled awake. The youth that sleep, however exhausted, had given his features, vanished. Jamie stirred and, looking at her, Tim hugged the child.

"Hi," he said.

"Er we must have fallen asleep…" He grinned apologetically.

She crossed the room and stood behind the sofa, her hands resting on his shoulders. At once, his cheek rubbed against her fingers, intent as the gesture of a small, dependent animal. Jamie had probably been tired out by the grim, dedicated intensity Tim always brought to play with his children when he was deeply worried. It was almost as if he were enjoying them for a final time. His lovemaking at such times was, by contrast, apologetic, tender and guilty, as if he had betrayed her.

"Rough day?" He nodded against her fingers.

"Are you in this evening?" His head shook.

"Sorry, Charley." He stretched his head back and stared up at her.

"You're so beautiful," he announced, and she quailed inwardly. He was ragged, becoming unravelled. It was even obvious in the way he carefully handed Jamie to the carpet, as if he was dealing with something Ming and fragile, bought with a loan he could not repay.

"That bad?" she steeled herself to say, adding: "Has Greta made your tea, Jamie?"

Jamie, pushing tracks of a toy lorry into the thick pile of the carpet, nodded. He was still Daddy's boy, herself and the au pair just females for the moment.

"Yuck. I left it salad. That's all she eats. Yuck!"

Where' sTony "Cricket nets," Jamie replied. There were three years between them, but they still attended the same prep school. Next year, Tony would begin at Winchester, Tim's old school.

"Cricket — yuck."

Burton, stroking her hands with his own as they rested on his shoulders, chuckled.

"Disgraceful slur on the beautiful game."

"Footballers and golfers are richer than cricketers," Jamie observed, idly turning the pages of the book from which Burton had been reading.

Lord of the Rings- of course. It was Tim's idea of literature as well as what children should imbibe with their mother's milk or their au pair's salads.

"Richer than me, too, before very long," Burton murmured, and he flinched as her grip involuntarily tightened on his shoulders.

"Sorry," he added, patting her fingers.

"Who are you wooing this evening?" she asked, staring over his head, across the room to the marble-topped sideboard, the two Louis Seize chairs, one on either side, and at their figures reflected in the French mirror with the trumpeting angel surmounting it. She always and perhaps to her slight, shameful disappointment appeared the more mature of the two, the more purposeful, self-confident. Quite often, especially in mirrors and when unaware, Tim was still the schoolboy who had desperately sought, even bought, his friendships; who had always played amanuensis, second fiddle to boys better at sport, or more intellectually equipped.

Life's eternal straight man, as he said of himself.

"Anyone very important?" She shrugged his shoulders, as if plumping them like cushions.

"Sir Herbert of Bank A, Lord Sisfield of Bank B, Mr. Martin of Bank C, Herr Adler of Bank D… The biggest creditors' biggest guns. Crikey-!"

he added self mockingly Charlotte was forced to answer his ingenuous, open smile. They studied one another in the tall mirror. Burton sighed.

Ten more minutes of this and I'll be able to carry it off," he murmured, then continued: They're giving Alan Vance an even harder time, I gather. Really squeezing Angrily, she snapped: "Never mind Alan Vance! If his aeroplane hadn't fallen out of a clear blue sky you wouldn't be in the midden!"

"I took the lead, Charley, I really did. take the brunt of it, I said to him. He wanted a creeping barrage, like a Great War general some small American carriers, maybe a Far East airline, a few of the holiday charter firms…"

She gripped his shoulders fiercely.

"I know all that, Tim, I know!" she said through clenched teeth.

"But it was the plane that failed, not you. Now—" She was quickly sitting beside him. Jamie had wandered off towards the kitchen and Greta or the housekeeper.

"Now," she repeated, 'how bad are things? Really."

"Cash flow is down. The big carriers are trying to undercut me cut my throat, more likely. They can stand the loss. Maybe I can't. I'm not sure yet. The team's doing some projections for me…" He tried to lean against her but she remained sitting bolt upright, hands folded on the lap of her narrow cream dress. He smiled at the effort of restraint she indulged in order to appear frowningly assertive, inquisitorial. He raised his hands in mock surrender.

"Alright, alright. Seriously, a few months more of it — all the summer traffic across the Pond and my losses could be enormous. Which means the debts will not be serviced properly interest payments and the like and I won't have a cheaper plane to put into service to recover the losses. Unless, my darling girl, I can charm the pinstripe trousers off the men in suits tonight and every other night they demand to have dinner with me—" In spite of her resolve, she smiled for a moment. He grinned back.

"Unless I can, I won't be able to buy new aircraft, I won't be able to fly the Atlantic cheaply. I won't' his features at once became angry, filled with a hateful disappointment 'be able to open the Australian route. The big carriers all the bastards who've been trying to screw me for ten years… they'll have won. I'll go the way of Freddie Laker, Charley. I really will!"

She put her arms around him and pulled his head on to her breast.

"Nice," he murmured.

Not nice, she thought. Not the prospect of financial ruin. She would live in a hut with him, on crusts and love, if necessary — though she wouldn't choose it.

She remembered the grotty flats, the dingy Victorian terraced house in north London they couldn't afford to do up or alter… She did not want to return to them. For there was, naturally, little in her name, not even the house here or in the Cotswolds. Tim daft bugger had always used his money as collateral.

One of those perfectly awful magazine features only two months earlier had named him in the top two hundred wealthiest people in Britain… which, then, was the measure of the value of Artemis and his other interests. Outside the business, he was not independently wealthy.

There was no crock of gold in Switzerland or anywhere else. If the business failed, so did he and she wasn't wealthy either. Tim hadn't cared enough about money, only about achieving, about winning- which he never measured in millions.

"He'd better make that aircraft work, then, hadn't he," she murmured into his thick, greying hair, 'your friend Alan Vance? So he can get you out of the mire and me and the children with you. Oh, you silly bugger, Tim, why didn't you give me a million or two against a rainy day!"

He laughed, quite genuinely.

"I didn't think I needed to," he confessed.

"And you never asked!"

"When do you have to start flying the Vance aircraft? Latest?"

"I should have had it for this summer. The banks have been happy to wait because the two we've got stoogeing around Scandinavia are performing well and bringing in passengers. There's one small airline with two 494s in New Mexico. They're turning in good figures, too. But I don't think they'll wait, not now. You've seen the papers, the TV Christ, you'd think the bloody plane was held together with string and sticky tape and flown by means of a rubber band!"

"What is wrong with it, then?"

He threw up his hands, then sat up on the sofa. He looked at her with such an exaggerated seriousness that she felt he was mocking her. Then he said:

"Vance doesn't know. He doesn't bloody know, Charley. And if he can't find out, we really are in the shite we really, really are! Up to our necks and beyond." He stood up and began pacing the room. Their confidentiality and intimacy were at an end. His mind was already marshalling argument, proposal, charm, fabrication in anticipation of the evening meeting.

"But it must be bloody serious to make an aircraft fall out of the sky without the slightest warning! So serious it might be impossible to remedy. Oh shit!" He tugged his hands through his hair.

"Oh, shit, shit, shit!" He turned to her as if to a stranger, his eyes gleaming.

"I can't see any way out, Charley, I think we've bloody had it. Artemis is going out like a dim bulb, and I can't do anything to save it!"

She towelled her blonde hair in a rough, pummelling motion, as if it had somehow offended her, watching her actions in the mirror above the carved wooden fireplace, positioned to make her sitting room seem larger. Her cheeks were still pinked from the shower. Her eyes, blue and without make-up, stared knowingly back at her, examining the first crow's-feet of her late thirties.

Laughter lines, she pretended, just like those on either side of her mouth.

However, she smiled at her reflection and knew she wasn't doing too badly for her age. She continued to watch herself, almost with that strangest of childhood sensations, seeing the person in the mirror, reflected back, as oneself. Was she really that person? She possessed her mother's high forehead and cheekbones, her full mouth. And Giles' piercing blue gaze, finished off by her grandmother's blonde hair, worn shoulder-length. It wasn't a bad amalgam, she admitted indulgently.

Then, aware of her vanity and the recollection of men's admiration bubbling just below the surface of her thoughts, she moved to the window of the sitting room and studied the fall of the evening sun across the Chelsea Physic Garden which lay behind the mansion block of flats. Hers was on the top floor.

Sipping at her gin and tonic, she grazed the rows of neat, white-painted shelves which housed her books and her collection of records and CDs. Then she scowled suddenly as she recalled herself to the day's last duty and flicked the answer phone to replay the messages she had missed while at the Commons that afternoon. The Prime Minister, to the embarrassment of the greater part of his own side of the House, had stumbled like a three-legged dog through PM's Questions, challenged on Europe, Ulster and sleaze with equal and equally impotent ferocity.

She listened half-heartedly to the voice of her constituency agent detailing the business of her Saturday-morning surgery, then with much more pleasure to her father's voice reminding her of their lunch date the following day. Then two calls from lobbyists one of them a fellow MP which made her long to switch on some music… and, finally, a call from Brussels, from Michael Lloyd. She smiled with anticipation.

Michael was a senior researcher and aide to the EC Commissioner for Transport, a Frenchman but then he spoke four languages fluently and had once been one of her more dazzling undergraduates during her time as a junior Fellow at Oxford. And he was her conduit into the Byzantine politics, gossip and machinations of the European Commission.

"Hi, Marian," she heard.

"Hi, Michael what news?"

He sounded slightly breathless, but it was often his amusement to make much of little, act the role of a conspirator or double agent.

Probably, he would have been recruited by dear Kenneth during the Cold War. Now he was her man in Brussels, an alliance that had sprung as much from mutual amusement at the EC and its bureaucratic labyrinths as from any other motive.

'… whether it's significant, I can't say, Marian but I know my Commissioner has a very big meeting arranged for tomorrow… with, among others, the CEOs of Aero UK and Balzac-Stendhal, and your friend David Winterborne. It's not taking place at the Commission, but one of the big hotels. I'll try to find out more — might be interesting, you never know… It was arranged at the last minute, and my Commissioner looks a little put out, to say the least. Like someone who's had his breakfast stolen from under his nose." The young man laughed. Marian pictured his long fair hair, easy charm, stereotypical good looks. Her mother would have characterised him as perfect for modelling knitting patterns. He had employed all that considerable and effective charm for the purpose of seducing his tutor in modern history — she had been able to resist it, she remembered, smiling at herself in mockery as she continued to watch the streaming sunlight working like fingers among the planted rows of the Physic Garden. Just resist. Michael had forgiven her, with as easy a charm as he had employed in his seduction, and become instead her friend and ideological acolyte.

"I still can't put my finger on anything that suggests the slightest impropriety regarding funding I think, my darling woman, you're barking up the wrong tree there. Even in this hall of mirrors it would be very difficult to hide wholehearted subversion of EU funds and subsidies…

Sorry about that. I'll ring off now talk to you soon."

She finished her drink as the tape rewound in the answer-phone. Working day at an end. Idly, she flicked the remote control for the hi-fi, and the music began. At once, the intense, swelling drama, the celebration of human joy, the rhythmic intoxication of Beethoven. Her lips moved, her fingers tapped around her tumbler, in time to the music.

She was disappointed but, then, the idea had always seemed too brilliant; too unlikely therefore to have any foundation in reality.

She had asked Michael whether there was any evidence of continuing, secret and illegal funding from the Commission to the plane makers the partners in England and France engaged in building the monumentally expensive Skyliner. She knew that the Commissioner for Transport was engaged as deeply as a major shareholder in lobbying the national airlines to buy the plane but she had wondered whether there was more than influence, more than lobbying and arm-wrenching and seduction involved… whether, in fact, money had changed hands. Taxpayers' money going into the pockets of private industry without the knowledge of the Council of Ministers and the House of Commons.

Kenneth Aubrey had somehow encouraged her suspicions… but it wasn't, after all, like one of his Cold War be devilments There was no truth in the suspicion. Aero UK was bleeding from the wound of the Skyliner's costs, its banks were nervous even the sale of its car division to the Germans hadn't made its books much healthier.

However, by her father's best guess, they should be in pole position to acquire the contract for the army's new attack helicopter, which they'd developed in cooperation with the Germans and Italians. It would certainly be less controversial to buy third-British than wholly

American. Anyway, apparently Aero UK was not being kept afloat by secret subsidy.

Too much to hope for, she acknowledged, smiling at her disappointment; it was as if she had lost the matches that would have lit a fierce blaze under the pro Europeans in her own party and the government. It would have been so nice to have been right about large-scale corruption… Gradually, she let herself move into the music, into the hypnotic, intensifying dance of the symphony's allegretto, moving like a dancer around the lounge of the flat in her cream silk robe, her fair hair drying un regarded Then, as the music reached a further height of intoxication and purpose, she caught sight of her flushed, angular features in the mirror behind the French clock. Her hair was making every effort to become a fright-wig, her cheekbones were livid, her full mouth opening in realisation.

Michael had sounded frightened… no, nervous rather, like someone trapped in a small, fragile car, hearing the unavoidable approach of a juggernaut. She switched off the music and hurried to the answer phone accelerating the tape through the mundane in a rush of incomprehensible, birdlike calls, until she heard his voice.

'… taking place at the Commission, but one of the big hotels… it would be very difficult to hide… I'll ring off now talk to you soon."

He was frightened like someone who had woken to a strange noise in the night and remained awake, hardly breathing, waiting to hear it again.

The layers of pleasant assurance were penetrated by a sudden doubt, as if the implications of what he had said had only just struck him, so that the farewell faltered in his throat. Michael had had some insight regarding that meeting in Brussels which had unnerved him.

She replayed his words twice more. It was, she thought, almost as if he were not alone in the room…

CHAPTER TWO

The Needle and the Damage Done The telephone brought Marian quickly awake. The radio alarm showed some minutes after six-thirty, and she groaned with irritation. Light was promisingly bright beyond the heavy, closed curtains.

"Marian Pyott." She cleared her throat.

"Marian it's Bob here." The breathless voice of the young, ambitious

MP with whom she shared an office in the Commons. Formerly in advertising, currently in self-advertisement in the hope of a junior ministerial post.

"What is it, Bob?" She made no attempt to disguise her irritation.

"I thought you'd like to know' he was strangely, childishly disappointed at her apparent indifference 'the papers are full of an

MoD leak about the new helicopter contract. The army's going to award it to the Yanks. The Mamba, or whatever the machine's called."

"What?" she breathed, feeling winded, and weirdly guilty, as if she had committed some obscure betrayal.

"It's still at the level of a rumour, this leak?"

"Looks pretty deliberate to me you know.

"Don't let me catch you leaking this to the press, but here's the editor of The Times' number, just in case you've forgotten it."

"Oh, shit! Aerospace UK will- God, this could absolutely finish the company.

The banks will be circling like sharks. Where's the leak?"

"Fraud the Telegraph but it's already on the radio and TV."

Then it's the minister who's leaking. And the PM's caved in to the Treasury and the Chancellor on the grounds of cost. He said he wouldn't…" She had had a private meeting with the PM — briefed by her father and his group of lobbyists in favour of the Eurocopter only the previous week. And had been assured, really assured, that it would be a decision based solely on quality, not cost.

Into her silence, Bob offered:

"I just thought you'd like to know well, not like, but…"

"Yes. Yes, thanks, Bob."

She put down the telephone loudly, with abstracted clumsiness. Dear God there were thousands of jobs suddenly at risk, hundreds of them in her own constituency. And in all the component and avionic companies who were involved in the helicopter project in the UK, France and Germany. David Winterborne would take a battering, too. David was up to his ears so many of his companies were committed to the project… why did she feel guilty?

She remembered. She had pummelled Bryan Coulthard over Skyliner in the

Select Committee. Now, it seemed she had been kicking someone who was already down. Bloody silly feeling — but real, nevertheless.

She scrabbled for her cigarettes and lit one. Heaved herself out of bed and drew back the curtains. Morning sun gleamed like paint on the Physic Garden. She tapped her fingernail against her teeth as she stood at the window.

Her father had been lobbying hard, together with a group of senior, mostly retired military figures and dozens of MPs like herself who had companies in their constituencies whose future depended on the army buying the British helicopter… Two hundred and fifty million sterling was a conservative estimate of the size of the business. But the Treasury had persuaded MoD that the Mamba, an old airframe with shiny new bolt-on goodies, was good enough. And cheap. And the Chancellor had persuaded the PM, obviously.

What a bloody mess! She puffed furiously at her cigarette. She'd fought for the helicopter just as she'd fought against Sky-liner and its hideous costs. Now, however, there was no good news for Aero UK.

Skyliner was un saleable and the helicopter was grounded. Who'd buy it if the British army wouldn't, for crying out loud?

She flung herself away from the window and out of the bedroom. The newspapers lay on the doormat like lOUs come home to roost. She snatched up the Telegraph and scanned the front page. Yes, there it was… The report estimated the worldwide, total business to be derived from the helicopter it had been chosen by the army — at more than a billion pounds. Later in the piece, sombre rumblings with regard to the future of Aero UK and the even more dire future of the whole British aerospace industry. Angrily, she threw the newspaper along the hall. Its separated pages fluttered like wounded grey birds.

Giles would be apoplectic as she was. The government was getting the decision unpopular as it was bound to be out of the way now just in case the PM called an autumn election. People would have forgotten by October. It was outrageous… hundreds of her constituents faced redundancy. Oh, bugger!

The hangar was the garishly lit stomach of a great marine mammal, ribbed and sparred to support its own size. The scorched wreckage of the aircraft lay on the stomach's floor like a half-digested meal. Gant felt the surge of sadness that was now a part of his professional self for the people who had died as an aircraft changed into this mockery of a machine partially reassembled. The machines which he had always loved and to which he had always felt closest killed people occasionally — sometimes in their hundreds.

Vance was waiting for him, surrounded by his own people and the investigators from the south-west NTSB office. He detached himself from the group with evident reluctance, moving uncertainly towards Gant, who put down his sports bag on the "stained concrete floor, aware of the desert dawn behind him, beyond the open hangar doors. Barbara thankfully was not there.

Vance held out his hand. But his habitual, enveloping charm, his energy, failed to ignite like a cold, sullen engine. He was weary and defeated, baffled for so long and so completely that even the anger at his own impotence had drained away. His blue eyes, bleared with lack of sleep, revealed nothing more than a worn cunning; all the challenging confidence was gone. Yes, he resented Gant's presence, his need for him.

"Mitchell." One big hand gripped at Gant as at a life belt the other was on his shoulder at once. Vance loomed over him, his stature pressing Gant back towards his hated beginnings and his childhood.

Barbara had happened because he had wanted to be an adult, not the perpetually half-formed thing his flying skills had made of him, and which Vance had exploited. His hold over him had never been Barbara, but the fact that he created beautiful flying machines. As such, he had always been the gifted adult, Gant the dazzled child.

"Alan." He returned the man's grip.

"Good flight?"

"OK."

There was an aftershock through his hand of the anger Vance must have felt when Barbara had told him she had called. Then that, too, was gone. He was forced by circumstance to invest Gant with magical, visionary powers.

"What you need to rest up?"

Gant shook his head.

"No."

Vance's relief was audible.

"What do you want to look at? Most of the airplane is here, the flight recorders have been computer-analysed… instrument check is completed, the engines have been…" And he wound down like a child's toy made to talk by a battery which was now spent. Offering that inventory had exhausted not only him but his options, his optimism. The accident investigators had no answer, there were no clues in the flight recorder, the wreckage, the engines.

"I don't know what else…" he faltered, then dried again like a terrified actor.

Gant disliked the empathy he felt for the man. Vance was a chained and beaten dog, that was all, and still capable of savagery.

"Let me look at the fuselage… just look. On my own."

Vance nodded.

"Sure but go easy, OK? These people just handle them right. My people, the team—?"

"Sure. I learned the trick," he added.

"I can work with people just like a grown-up."

As if affording proof, he brusquely greeted others. People he already knew from Vance Aircraft, others whose names or voices he knew from the Accident Inquiry Office in Tucson. They were suspicious of him either because they knew him, or because they knew of him the former fly-guy hero… or because he was Washington and his being there was an implicit criticism. He was free of them in moments, leaving vague reassurances, instructions, and walking towards the wreckage. Their murmuring behind him was a chorus of Vance's own need of him.

He'd talk to them later-walking towards the wreckage as urgently as if there was some faint hope that someone was still alive within the cracked, skeletal fuselage. He passed trestle tables and long benches on which smaller pieces of wreckage lay, and gutted instruments, scattered bolts and fixings; all of it like tumours already excised from a diseased body. There were computer terminals and their leads like those of a life-support system. The flight recorders lay opened and empty, their tapes already futilely analysed. He would come to all of that later.

He stopped close to the cracked tailplane, its markings those of Artemis Airways scorched like a house wall after an explosion. He clambered into the rear section of the fuselage.

The central aisle, down which duty-free perfumes and drink would have been troll eyed and meals delivered, was broken like a road dug up for new conduits.

Wiring dangled, together with oxygen masks and torn fabric. Everything smelt of smoke, scorching, extinguisher foam. The overhead lights of the hangar glared through a gap in the fuselage like sunlight between buildings. The fuselage had snapped in three on impact with the desert. The wings had broken off. Seat after seat as he moved lay torn away, crushed, drunkenly tilted. He shied from them as if a passenger had died in each one.

He glanced through one of the gaps in the fuselage at a huge engine.

Pratt & Whitney people were among the crowd that had gathered again around Vance like uncertain children. That engine hadn't restarted though the pilot's last words, the TV had said over and again, claimed that the instruments were telling him that nothing was wrong.

He jumped across the gap of concrete to the flight deck, aligned like a broken neck with the rest of the fuselage. Fiercer scorching here. The overhead switch panels had dropped to hand like surprised jaws. The control columns were distorted like trees sprouting in a gale, the throttle levers were bent. The instrument displays of all three crew positions were disrupted by damage and removal, so that eye sockets and blank panels looked back at him. There was blackness on the crew seats, of dried blood perhaps. Some plastic had melted on the flight deck in what seemed to have been an intense but very brief fire.

He stored the impression against comparison with other cockpit fires.

How much fuel had there been? There should have been more damage. This fire would only have helped kill Pat Hollis and his co-pilot and flight engineer, if they had even been alive after the impact. He wondered who they had been Lowell, maybe, Hollis' shadow and idolater… and the flight engineer had probably been Paluzzi. Which meant that three women had been widowed, nine no, ten children orphaned. He shuddered, remembering cockpit fires in other places, other times. This crew hadn't had the option to eject as he had done twice in his life with the airplane on fire. They'd had to sit in their seats and burn… like the Vietnamese girl who now, so many years later, hardly ever intruded on his dreams.

Almost every instrument from the pilot's centre panel, which had housed the engine instruments, was missing. What remained was labelled or tagged. Name tapes, neatly computer-typed, fluttered from the overhead panels, from the flight engineer's panel. Each one, he knew from their colour, offered a negative no explanation of the cause of the crash. He turned his head and stared through the flight deck's shattered side window.

Through the cobweb pattern reminiscent of bullet damage, he glowered at the engine that was beached some yards from the broken fragments and spars of the port wing. Its position, in a kind of ominous isolation, suggested guilt. Fuel, fuel computer, booster pumps, fuel flow monitoring, the tanks, the lines, the compressors… Check, check, check, check, the team would tell him, again and again. The Tucson NTSB Inquiry Office had as good a reputation as any other.

He heard a noise behind him and half-turned at once surprised and unsurprised to see Vance heaving his bulk into the cramped, crushed tin can of the flight deck. His breathing was that of an old, asthmatic man as if the accident had aged him, cleaned the dye from his hair and given him instead dark stains beneath the blue eyes.

"Well you cosied up enough to your wreckage?" Vance was impatient. No one interrupted a senior investigator in his or her meditative first exploration of a crash site, or of a reconstructed wreck, or of a single piece of wreckage. They left you alone until you wanted to talk… but Vance was hurting and Vance was an egoist and a bully and Gant had once been his son-in-law. He assumed he still had rights of demand, of appropriation.

"Any feelings?"

"Cold. Melancholy."

"You know what I—" Vance choked the words off.

"Sure. I know," Gant snarled.

"You're hurting in your billfold, Alan, and you need an answer quick!

Don't crowd me, Alan — don't push…" His own words faded. It was obscene, the continuation of their guerrilla war in that confined, damaged space where people they had both known and respected had burned to death.

"Just take it easy," he forced out.

"OK sure. I apologise. What can I tell you? Is there any—?"

The engine. Before I talk to the Pratt & Whitney guy who is going to fire off in defence of his baby."

"The engine was perfect. So far. Your people are almost through with it with both engines."

"Which one stopped first?"

"Port-that one."

"Seconds later, the starboard engine suffered flame-out. Right?"

Vance nodded in a sullen, aggrieved way.

"Right."

"Hollis didn't make a mistake and cut the other engine?" Vance shook his head.

From the pocket of his jacket he produced a small tape recorder.

"You want to hear it? It's on here the fragments that were left of the cockpit voice recorder after the cabin fire." He proffered the machine but Gant shook his head.

"Later," he murmured, as if he had been offered the portfolio of an atrocity.

Vance must have been carrying his copy around, listening to it constantly, tormenting himself with it… or maybe just hoping that Hollis or Lowell or whoever else was on the flight deck had screwed up and he, like everyone else hustling for a buck in the airplane business, could cry pilot error.

"Later," he repeated.

Something…?

"How much of the cockpit record tape survived?"

"Not much. The fire was pretty intense in here…" First to arrive at the scene of an accident was how pilots tried to laugh the prospect of a crash into un importance Intense… IF ire-!

His mind wandered back down the twisted, scorched passenger compartment, between the leaning or lurching seats and the dangling wires and masks… not much fire, not that much. Not as badly damaged as here-glanced to one side, through the starred window, to where the broken wing lay like smashed planking beside the huge engine. Other crashes, other scenes, had a lot of fire damage, but the images on the TV news of the 494 taken from a helicopter… dulled metal, untarnished flaps… didn't show much fire damage not enough fire damage?

He concentrated on the flight deck.

"What else was there?" he asked.

"Before flame-out in both engines?"

"What—? It's hard to tell. Hollis was a tight-ass. You knew him. He was above keeping in radio contact with the ground on a routine flight.

He reported the failure of both engines but nothing before that…"

There was something, though.

"What else, Alan?" His voice was icily calm.

"Instability. There's some exchange about the ship becoming unstable—"

Vance threw up his hands, as if he had been made to admit to minor fraud.

"Look, Gant—"

"Suddenly, I'm Gant what happened to Mitchell?" His eyes held no amusement.

"What happened!"

"OK, so there was some instability difficulty handling the plane, and controlling the trim—" Not enough fire damage. His stare hardened, as if he were dredging Vance's recollection by means of hypnotism, willing the answer.

"It's impossible to say how bad, for how long… The computer realisation of the pilot's instruments shows it must have been pretty violent. I don't know what caused it."

"Fuel?"

"Uh?"

"Fuel flow, fuel management?"

Vance shook his head vehemently.

"All the readings for the fuel flow, the booster pumps, the lines, the management system, the fuel computer they're all normal.

Nothing was happening to the fuel to make the ship unstable. And the weather didn't do it, either. Look we're agreed, all of us, that the instability problem isn't linked to the flame-out in both engines!"

"OK. For now." He had no insight. Hollis may, or may not, have exacerbated the instability by over-correction, by distraction. He'd have to study the computer realisation and judge for himself, as a pilot. He owed that and a great deal more to Hollis, who had listened to him too often, as they had gotten drunk together, on the subjects of Vance and Vance's daughter and the bitter taste of his life after the airforce and the combat and the heroics with the MiG-31 and the operation they had code named Winter Hawk. It wasn't going to be pilot error except as the coldest of cold facts. He owed Hollis' patience with his own self-pity that much at least.

"Did you find anything wrong with the engines?"

"Not with either one. They just didn't restart. There was cactus and sagebrush ground to dust in each one, so they were rotating. But there was nothing burnt so, no flame. Neither engine relit. They tried—"

"Flight engineer's panel?"

"Everything was reading normal and on the central panel. You can hear

Lowell—" It was Lowell, then, who had died in the seat on which Gant's hand rested as he remained squatting on his haunches. Bright-eyed and hero worshipping He had been cruel to Lowell often because the boy had loaded him with his old identity and asked him to relive it, day after day. What had initially flattered had rubbed like salt on raw flesh after a while.

"He and Hollis repeat all the read-outs after the port engine failed, and Paluzzi confirms every call. That's the most un spoilt part of the cockpit tape… There was nothing wrong," he ground out finally, his big hands clenching again and again, as if tearing at something or strangling it.

There was. They died."

'I know that-!"

The airplane killed them, Alan. Either the airframe you designed or the fuel management system you boasted about or the Pratt & Whitney engines you helped modify…" His eyes were glacial and he sensed Vance's anger and confidence quelled, momentarily.

"One way or another, Alan, you let Hollis down."

"He could have made a mistake! He could have un stabilised the ship—"

The instability isn't linked to the flame-out. Your words. You tested other engines on the ground?"

"Of course." The anger was snuffed out like a flickering candle. Gant and Vance faced each other like crouching animals within the crushed metal box of the flight deck. The desert breeze shouldered its way from the hangar doors into the confined, hot space. Vance shrugged his much bigger frame.

"We ran all the checks. Look, I know that engine, the fuel flow monitors, the computer…" He spread his large hands. The fingers were stained with oil. Leaning back against the seat in which Hollis had burned, he said: "Sol Zeissman over at Albuquerque Airways has grounded the two planes he's leasing from me. He'll be asking for a refund before the weekend-! They're libelling my ship in the newspapers, on TV, every day and night! Scare stories. No one is going to buy unless I can prove she's safe." The appeal became more evident as he burst out:

"You were around the early stages of development, Mitchell you know she's a good ship!"

Gant was forced to concede a brief nod. Then he looked away from Vance, from the ageing process of his bewilderment and profound, impotent frustration, through the starred windows of the flight deck.

Like a storyboard for some projected movie, huge blow-up photographs of a desert landscape and the stranded 494 formed a semicircle at one end of the hangar. They were the wall against which Vance's energy and remaining youth had spent itself. It would be a horror movie, about the destruction of dreams. The computers, the group of men, the pieces of the plane were the accoutrements of a funeral scene.

"No bird ingestion, no fuel line blockage, no fuel computer failure

…" he murmured to himself, as if reciting charms that would ward off what he sensed in Vance what the man really wanted from him. Vance shook his head at each item and instrument.

"Fuel starvation…?" Even with the economy forced on the adapted Pratt & Whitney engines to meet Vance's specifications, the calculations for the pre-delivery flight wouldn't have been wrong.

"Were the fuel calculations wrong?" he asked mechanically.

"No: Gant felt suddenly hot, despite the sensation of the breeze on his face and bare forearms. He knew now why Barbara had called, and he knew it had to have been at Vance's instruction. Vance didn't want his current expertise. He wanted the hero to make a comeback, the flyer.

"You're out of your skull, Alan."

"What—?" Gant turned to look at Vance and saw the admission plainly in Vance's face.

"I—"

"You got Barbara to call me, knowing I'd just love to come down here and make some cheap shots at your expense. Fool around with the team from Tucson, then ground the 494 for a while. You took that chance, just to—" Vance clenched his fists.

"I need you to fly that plane—"

"Other people said much the same, a long time ago. The priorities seemed bigger, back then."

"All that out there it could take weeks, even months. You know that. I don't have days and neither does Tim Burton, who has ordered six six.

He's run into his own brick wall. You have to help."

'I don't."

"Christ, Gant-!"

Vance stared at him in challenge, even hatred. He was trying to goad him into acting like a crazy man. Pretending there was no way out for Gant without losing face, running scared. He'd known he would come.

Now he thought he could force him to fly another 494, duplicate the flight plan Hollis had been flying, prove that the accident was a freak, a once-only. It would make the TV news on NEC, CBS, ABC, CNN.

National coverage of the hero giving Vance Aircraft his backing.

Giving the airlines and the public a guarantee of safety… Gant, formerly of the USAF and well connected with the CIA, now of the

National Transportation Safety Board what more could Vance ask or the public receive? It would be like a basketball player like Michael Jordan endorsing sports gear a surefire winner.

"You'll pay me millions for the endorsement, right?" he murmured.

"What—?"

He was expected to underwrite the plane's safety.

"It won't work out. If another airplane goes down, you'll never get out from under.

And I'll be dead "You can't refuse."

"Until we know what went wrong, it could happen again."

"We're not going to find out, down here."

"Not quickly, maybe, but we will find out."

They'll foreclose on me like I was a share-cropper. But maybe that's what you want." Gant shook his head, resting on his haunches, his eyes fixed on the empty eye sockets in the pilot's instrument display. The twisted control column was like a broken catapult.

"All right," Vance announced heavily, his breathing ragged and loud.

"I'm begging you. Isn't that what you want? Save my company. Save the airplane." Gant looked up at him. Alan's eyes remained flinty but his voice was uncertain and aged, that of a very old man waking in a strange and dark place. Yet he knew Gant's answer before he replied.

His features claimed, with utter certainty, that Gant would seize the opportunity to recapture something of his past, that he would risk his life to help a man who despised him, just for the sake of discovering a former self staring back at him from his shaving mirror. Vance knew that he would do anything just for one more fix, because his whole existence was continuous cold turkey and withdrawal symptoms.

The anonymity of his days stretched before him in an unending succession; and Vance, like the devil, now offered him his own version of the kingdoms of the earth his former identity, his sense of himself as the best, as unique.

Eventually, he said: "I can't ask the Tucson team to fly with me. I can't risk that."

"I — er, I can fly as engineer. You need a co-pilot?"

Gant shook his head.

"Kou'll fly?"

"See? You don't have any choice."

Gant rubbed his cheeks.

"Is the simulator available?"

"All set up."

"You're an asshole, Alan a real, made-in-America asshole."

"Sure. Just save my plane, uh? And my ass."

At first for perhaps as much as an hour he was unaware and then uncertain that he was himself under surveillance. Now he was sure of it. Sitting under the sodden, garish umbrella over his table outside the cafe, Michael Lloyd had gradually felt his confidence subside into a fidgety, bemused, unnerved sense of himself.

He thought there were two of them, one in a parked car whose wipers flicked occasionally to give the driver a clear glimpse of him, and a second man inside the cafe, at a steamy window seat, a face half-hidden in fog. There might be others, near him or around the Grand' Place, moving or still among the hurrying flocks of umbrellas and raincoats.

The patience and immobility of the two he was aware of their very lack of distinct or direct threat was more intimidating than action would have been. The summer storm splashed from the umbrella over the table as well as from the awning on to the cobbles.

He could leave now, of course go back to his office in the Commission casually, indifferently, as if he had never noticed the two men. After all, he couldn't barge into whichever conference suite they were using in the Hotel Amigo for their meeting. He'd seen them all arrive, including his own Commissioner, Etienne Rogier, whom he'd followed through the Brussels rush hour. Bryan Coulthard and David Winterborne from Aero UK, their equivalents from the French plane maker Balzac-Stendhal, various functionaries, the Commissioner for Urban Development he was something of a surprise but it probably meant nothing except more lobbying and assorted minions, hurrying under black umbrellas, the skirts of their trench coats or crinoline-full raincoats flapping and flying around their legs.

There had been no secrecy about their arrival… so why was he being watched? He tried to laugh off his mounting nerves as childish pique at the unfairness of it. It had been stupid to come — he'd thought it witty at the time, something to amuse Marian Pyott and to photograph them going into the hotel. That must have been how he had drawn their attention to himself.

The rain drummed on the sodden canvas over his head. A wet raincoat brushed his cheek as someone blundered past into the interior of the cafe, a look of surprise on his face as he saw Lloyd sitting outside in a rainstorm. He tried not to look at the parked car, or towards the windows of the cafe. Caught in the crossfire, he tried to joke. He thought the man in the car was using a mobile phone. He felt frightened, lost in a dark wood. Dante. Why Dante now, for God's sake? The wipers flicked again. Yes, he was using a phone. Summoning others?

And what had he seen, anyway? There was no hidden message, no secret pattern to be discerned. What had been worth attracting the attention of these people, whoever they were? They were not Commission security people, he was certain.

All he'd discovered was that EU Commissioners and a Euro MP for an

English constituency were meeting prominent businessmen. Great! They did it every day feathering their nests, aligning their post-Commission futures on the boards of major companies, creating their grand designs, dreaming their unrealisable dreams… Snouts in the trough or heads in the air, it was all so usual and expected.

His suspicions of the previous day, his sense of his Commissioner's nervous attempts at secrecy and deflection, now seemed ridiculous.

The man in the car, still on the phone, worried him to an unexpected and unnatural extent… '… about to piss himself, poor little sod."

There was a hard, barking laugh in Jessop's ear more like a dismissive cough than amusement.

"What's he up to, anyway?"

He flicked the wipers again and glimpsed Lloyd's slumped, tense figure through the rain. Fraser, talking to him now, was warm and dry in the hotel, unlike that poor pillock who thought he was playing detective or something… What was he taking pictures for? For whom? It hadn't done him much good, he was practically crapping himself with worry now, ever since Fraser had told him and Cobb to show themselves and their interest. Declaring their surveillance had frightened this bloke but not driven him off. So, what was he doing, and who was he doing it for?

The papers? Fraser wouldn't like that.

"What does the great white chief say?" Jessop asked.

"He's thinking."

"He's always doing that."

"Unlike you, Jessop." Fraser was a deeply unpleasant person. But he paid handsomely. At least, his boss did. Mind you, the stupidity of holding a very secret meeting in one of the best hotels in Brussels… not clever. But it was typical of Brussels bureaucrats if they were going to be seduced, they wanted the roses and the candlelit dinner and the best wine before they got into bed with you. They couldn't pass up a free lunch in the plushest surroundings for the life of them.

"Do you want us just to sit here, then?"

"If he moves, you move. Otherwise, sit tight. When he does go, find out who he is and who he represents. And don't bother me again until he does move."

Jessop put down the phone. He'd always disliked Fraser. Most people in the service had done. He was dangerous to be around because he didn't look after you.

In the private sector, Fraser was, if possible, even more dismissive and contemptuous of his subordinates. On the other hand, there was a certain new and definite ruthlessness attached to work in the private sector, after the restraints of the intelligence service. You didn't have prissy old farts like Aubrey running the show, forever worrying about the moral dimension and the weight of one death or more. A facility in the arrangement of untraceable, unsuspicious accidents was much more recognised and rewarded even if the game plan remained as mysterious and remote as ever. Fraser bullshit ted with the best, but he didn't know much, either.

Jessop lit a cigarette and idly flicked the wipers once more. There he still was, poor little bugger. Moving closer every minute to being turned off, he was… They'll follow me the moment I get up to go, Lloyd realised with a numbing fear. He seemed to look down on his hunched, immobile form from a height, seeing the ridiculous loneliness and isolation of his figure under the drenched table umbrella, the rain still lashing down, the parked car, the openness and betraying space of the Grand' Place at the end of the street. They'll follow me back to the office, back home, they'll know who I am… Rain had soaked his raincoat collar, that of his jacket, his shirt. He shivered, the coldness coming from inside him. Oh you idiot, you bloody idiot-!

Why had he thought it so clever to ring Marian Pyott, why had he denied, when she'd called him only hours ago, that there was anything wrong, that this meeting had nothing to do with her suspicions… when he had already begun to suspect that she might be right, after all? Her suspicions had put him here, she had seduced his curiosity and left him between the man in the car and the man in the cafe and at the mercy of whoever was on the other end of the phone.

Oh, shit It didn't happen. Not here, not like this, not that kind of thing… The flick of the wipers. The man had finished on the phone, he was smoking a cigarette. Before rain slid down the windscreen again, he saw a white hand wave. Instinctively, he turned his head.

Beside the clouded face in the cafe window was another waving white hand.

Both of them were waving at him Fraser caught the mood of the meeting as clearly as he would have sensed a threat to himself. His impressions were like listening to a bug that had developed an intermittent fault, but the quiet, suppressed desperation of the people in the conference room was evident. Their features and hunched furtiveness were unmistakable.

The door closed again. Find out, he had been ordered, who he is then find out his interest in this meeting. Fraser stood in the corridor that smelt of new carpet and recently tinted walls. Ten yards or so away, a maid fussed at her trolley of cleaning fluids, fresh towels and linen.

His mobile phone trilled in the pocket of his raincoat.

"Fraser."

"He's on the move." It was Jessop.

"You want us to follow him, right?"

"I want an ID, quick. Photograph, address, background."

"Is he important?"

"You tell me by lunchtime."

He snapped shut the mobile phone and leaned back against the wall. The unexpected surveillance worried him because it was unexpected and from an amateur. Jessop was certain of that. But not newspaper or TV. Yet there had been photographs… Fraser rubbed his smooth, blunt chin.

Whoever he was, he was a rogue, unanticipated element of the situation.

He stared at the closed doors as if watching the meeting taking place behind them. Aero UK's CEO, screaming rape by MoD because the helicopter contract was going to the Yanks and the shiny new airliner they were building with the Frogs, who were in there, wasn't selling… to anyone. The Euro Commissioners, both of them, squealing because of the pressure they were under to arm lock the national carriers and the various aviation authorities into buying and flying and approving routes and slots for the Skyliner… Everyone hanging on for the new Boeing 777 or he smiled the Vance 494, which had just so conveniently fallen out of the sky.

Aero UK might be going to the wall, which meant his employer would lose millions, and limp away wounded from the collapse. Blackmail, bribery, cut rate special offers… none of it was working in favour of the Skyliner. The man was angry… and his anger could turn against Fraser and his minions.

He rubbed his face. Took out the mobile phone and dialled Jessop.

"Where are you?"

"Rue de la Loi, near the Commission—"

"Is that where he's heading?"

"You'll have to wait for an answer I'm not a mind-reader."

"I'll wait."

The line sounded like a tunnel through which a wind blew coldly, then, after perhaps a minute in which Fraser waited as patiently as a machine:

"He's dropping down into one of the underground car parks — must be a fully paid up—"

"IsCobbwithyou?"

"Yes."

Then find out who he is now."

"How?"

"Use your imagination!"

He switched off the phone, the skin of his cheeks and jaw tight with angry suspicion. The European Commission building… He worked there, in some capacity or other, because he had a car park pass, accreditation. He glowered at the conference suite's closed doors.

There were two Commissioners behind them, engaged in confidential talk with prominent businessmen… which was not criminal. But it interested the man who'd photographed them. He'd wanted to know who, why… Why? Why keep people he worked for, or worked alongside, under surveillance? Was he working for the Euros in the meeting? Against them or against the business interests in the room? Working for the Frogs, who were never to be trusted in anything?

He waited, itchy to move, act but one place was as good as another to wait. The maid had drifted out of sight now and the corridor was empty, airlessly warm, desiccated.

"Well?" he demanded when the mobile eventually offered him its peremptory chirping.

"Who is he?"

"His name's Lloyd Michael Lloyd. A researcher for one of the Commissioners.

It's cost Cobb his mobile. Claimed Lloyd had left it in the cafe and he tried to catch him before he drove off… followed him public-spiritedly to return it. Good deed in a naughty—" ' Which Commissioner?"

Transport."

Who was behind those closed doors at that moment… He had been keeping his boss under surveillance.

"He'll be put on his guard getting a phone delivered that isn't his," Fraser observed.

"Never mind. OK, find out everything about this Michael Lloyd. Who there is around him, behind him, in the shadows. He's interested in what's happening here why should he be?"

"Will we—?"

Take measures to prevent his further interest? I should think so, Jessop. I really don't see why not."

"Just a minute, Daddy I want a word with that weasel over there. Sit tight for a moment—" The Commons Terrace was, as yet, un littered with MPs. There were a few early arrivals scattered at the dark wood tables that reminded Marian of nothing so much as garden furniture from a DIY chain store. There had been no morning business in the House, and there'd be nothing more than written answers to questions on the helicopter contract. Neither the PM nor the Minister would appear if they were wise. But the junior procurement minister from Defence was seated at one of the tables, a gin and tonic sparkling in the sunlight clutched in his long-fingered hand, some constituent or contact opposite him, dazzled by the locale, the occasion.

"Hello, Jimmy," she announced portentously, standing close to him so that he was less likely to stand. The junior minister was languidly, gracefully tall, as all former Guards officers seemed to be, and her protest would be more effective if he remained seated. No, she did not recognise the other man. He was not a Member.

"Marian not here, I think," the junior minister warned.

"Perhaps I should let my rebuke leak out, then?" she snapped.

On the slats of the table lay a jumble of the day's papers, their headlines uniformly gloomy. She had already read every newspaper as if cramming for an examination.

Jimmy's guest appeared slightly wary, intensely curious, as if a spectator at some arcane bloodsport. The junior minister uncoiled from his chair, stood up and steered her firmly away from the table.

"Minimum embarrassment factor, Marian," he murmured.

"Jimmy what the hell's going on? You've been issuing the smoothest assurances for weeks—" Sunlight splintered from glass towers across the river. The flanks of the Commons were serenely biscuit-coloured. Small craft on the Thames were like scraps of coloured paper, "It's no more than a leak at this stage, Marian—"

"A creeping barrage, Jimmy! Why, for heaven's sake?"

She confronted him, hands on her hips, the breeze rustling her full cotton skirt around her. The minister smiled condescendingly.

"It's a very good helicopter, the Mamba," he soothed.

"My minister—"

"Has been bought off, Jimmy. It's a bloody disaster for Aero UK, for the subcontractors. It shouldn't have been allowed to happen!"

"Ah, my dear girl, if only we could always do what was most obviously the right thing."

"Your height allows you to patronise me, Jimmy your age and brains don't."

The junior minister flushed, then said: The generals wanted the Mamba.

It makes sense to experts' "I'll be sure to tell my constituents as much, Jimmy. I'm sure it will be a great comfort at the Job Centre."

"By God, she's beautiful when she's angry," he mocked.

A senior Labour backbencher passed, winking at her. She pretended not to notice.

"Angry I am, Jimmy."

"Marian the battle's lost."

"A warning?"

"Just friendly advice from a fervent admirer." He grinned, his early-greying hair distressed by the breeze. He brushed it smooth.

"But you'll no doubt receive the usual encomiums in the press for your stalwart defence of the British aerospace industry…" He was warned by the clouding of her features, and added: "Is that Sir Giles with you? Lunching at the House? I must have a word with him. Excuse me, Marian. Go easy on us poor mortals in government from the moral ramparts of the back benches, won't you?"

He waved a languid hand and returned to his guest. Marian felt her anger tight in her chest. She had hardly begun to discharge it before the conversation was terminated. Reluctantly, she returned to her father, who was engaged with a knight of the shires and senior member of the 1922 Committee. They parted as Marian approached.

"I never cease to be amazed how that man ever rose above the rank of second lieutenant," Giles murmured.

"And you, my girl, look as if you've just suffered a nasty bout of indigestion. No joy?"

She shook her head.

"No hope, Daddy. It's been decided everything's cut and dried. No amount of complaining is going to get us anywhere!"

"Sit down." A Commons waiter had brought their drinks.

"I'm desperately sorry for Aero UK, for the Italians and the Germans

… and your constituents. The problem is there was always very little on paper between the two helicopters, ours and the Americans. In military terms, there isn't a good case to be made in objecting to—"

Her mobile phone trilled and she plunged her hand into her bag to locate it. A lipstick and a handkerchief emerged with it. The tiny folded triangle of cotton flew away on the breeze and Giles followed it, crouching like a hunter.

"Marian?" It was her researcher-secretary, Rose.

"Someone called Egan just rang.

Wonders whether he could snatch a moment with you this afternoon, around three?"

"Egan?"

"Sam Egan. Something to do with the Millennium Project work in the constituency. Egan Construction mean anything?"

"Yes, I know him. Did he say what he wanted?"

"No. Made it sound important."

Marian glanced at her watch.

"Tell him three-thirty. Meet him in Central Lobby, will you, Rose?

Thanks—" Giles had recovered the handkerchief.

"Anything important?"

"Nothing that will interrupt lunch."

"Good."

"Contractor on the fabled Millennium Urban Regeneration thing. Probably wants me to lobby for a bigger EU grant. Nothing unusual." She smiled.

"It won't put people out of work, at least!" Giles was studying her intently as he did habitually, like a doctor for the first signs of disease.

"Daddy," she warned.

"Sorry. Drink up I'm feeling more than a little peckish!"

He had mislaid the number of her mobile phone… mobile phone. He stared again at the phone that had been brought up to his office by one of the commission aires Someone had handed it in one of the men watching him after he had left it on a cafe table. It had terrified him. It was the Black Spot, he had tried — and failed to joke.

Evidently, it had been the excuse to discover his name, his function at the Commission. They knew he worked for the Transport Commissioner, Rogier, and that he had been spying on his own superior. That knowledge would be like a taunt, or the first step in a seduction which would madden and arouse. They would have to know his motive now.

Her home number answered his call, her voice on the answering machine.

This is Marian Pyott, lean't take your call at the moment but if… He waited for the extended, pinging tone, then said breathlessly:

"Sorry, Marian but they're on to me. Some people circling like sharks around that meeting, I don't know who. I'm back at the office now they've taken the trouble to find out who I am…" There seemed nothing he could add, however much he disliked the bleak promise of the facts.

"I–I'll call you again if I learn anything more… "Bye." He put down the receiver quickly.

He sat back from his desk, pushed his chair on its castors to the window. The rain had stopped and the Boulevard Charlemagne gleamed like a mirror. The Schuman station hunched at the end of the boulevard, shiny as a great snail shell. He sat near the window like a mockery of surveillance. How could he pick them out from this high vantage, how possibly?

He was no longer so afraid of them, now that they were again invisible, unidentifiable figures on the crowded streets or on the place in front of the Commission building the curving ugliness of which Marian Pyott had once described as the revenge of concrete on good taste. They were lost to him in the space down there, and he had been able to become calmer, even after the jolt of the phone being delivered to him, masquerading as his own.

Yet he knew no more clearly how to deal with the situation than he had done, stranded beneath the sodden umbrella at the cafe table. Knowledge

… but he had none. There was nothing lying carelessly on his Commissioner's desk, no cryptic indication in his appointments book, nothing that would suggest the need for the men who had had him under surveillance to provide a protective screen around the meeting. Their presence suggested secrecy, an added importance to what he had thought mere bribery, influence-seeking venality.

The men who had taunted him with white, waving hands had altered the construction, even the meaning, of the small drama he had created; they had acquired it, and made its plot cloudier but larger, its action more febrile and mysterious, its figures more sinister. It was as if he had set out to create a mocking little satire upon bureaucracy and they had insisted it become a drama of danger, threat. But he could not, simply could not, comprehend something that would unite the Commission and danger… It was a bad joke. He knew all those people at that meeting, for heaven's sake-!

He picked up the telephone and dialled the number of his flat — before remembering that Marie-Claire was already on her way to Rotterdam to report to Royal Dutch Shell on the lack of success of her lobbying at the Commission.

Brent Spar still floated on the company's horizon like a ship flying the skull and-crossbones, endangering image and sales alike. The Commission was sympathetic only in strict privacy, and was the colour of chlorophyll in all its public pronouncements. Lack of success was slowly driving his delectable partner up the proverbial wall.

He put down the receiver, then once more picked it up. The Commissioner's secretary answered.

"Michael," he said.

"M'selle Fouquet sorry about this, but the Commissioner asked me to research some background for' he hesitated momentarily, before reminding himself that they were already only too well aware of his un authorised interest "Aero UK, the British plane maker and and Mr. David Winterborne's companies." He lightened his voice.

"I think the Commissioner thinks they're lobbying too hard, m'selle. Do you have any idea how urgent it is?"

"A moment, M'sieur Lloyd." His charm was like thinly spread margarine when applied to Mile Fouquet. He heard her riffling pages.

"M'sieur Rogier is to be the guest of yes, David Winterborne at the family home this weekend. He did not tell you this? I presume he requires your work on his desk before he leaves on Friday. At midday."

As he replaced the receiver, he could not but laugh, even though the noise merely became the exhalation of nerves after a moment of amusement.

Rogier was meeting Winterborne again, in a few days' time. In England.

And he hadn't asked for a background briefing from his senior researcher, something the Frenchman was habitually punctilious about.

They joked among the Commission's junior ranks that Rogier required a detailed briefing before he used the toilet or took his next meal.

Secrecy again… David Winterborne. Was he the reason for the security screen? Why? As Chairman and CEO of Winterborne Holdings, a Singapore-based conglomerate, he was a major shareholder in Aero UK, in some of the subcontractors working on Skyliner — and on the helicopter and a prompt and determined lobbyist for EC funds on each and every possible occasion. And he was a friend of Marian's they'd practically grown up together. He was just another businessman.

Once more, he picked up the telephone. Her answer phone offered its assistance.

"Marian? Is there—?" No, that's not the question. Try again, Lloyd.

"Rogier is staying with David Winterborne this weekend. Mean anything?

Doesn't to me…"

He hesitated, then added: There's no reason for security, unless there's a hidden agenda and this isn't the usual bribery and corruption. Marian is David Winterborne a likely candidate? Your friend Winterborne, that is? Call me—" He put down the receiver, nerved by a sense of activity and insight. He was intrigued; curiosity masked fear, for the moment, and offered him a return of confidence.

Marian's question returned to his mind, together with the sensation that when he had left that message for her the previous day, he had almost believed the supposition that lay behind it. Perhaps this…? The actors in the scene at the hotel were, indeed, the necessary cast for such a play. He scribbled their names on his legal pad. Rogier Transport, he underlined. Laxton Urban Development, a former Cabinet middleweight now punching above his talents in Brussels. The Euro MP, Campbell, Winterborne, Coulthard, Bressier from Balzac-Stendhal, his deputy… which meant Skyliner had to be the subject under discussion… Urban Development, funds for rundown regions, for grandiose renewal projects those in Italy and Spain notoriously corrupt, acting like desert sand on EC funds. Marian had asked speculated — whether funds could be diverted, moved by disguise to the Sky-liner project… The cast for the proposed play stared back at him in his large, untidy handwriting.

It would require secrecy… surveillance-He glanced out of the window.

The streets were drying. Fugitive sunlight glanced from thinning cloud, making blinding squares of windows and car windscreens. The pace of pedestrians seemed slower, less urgent. The scene had recaptured its innocence. It was if it was corruption; just worse than usual and more secret. It was within his province, familiar to him…

The sense of threat receded, the men who had been watching him were stripped of their stature in his fears. The names on the pad were familiar, after all, they remained fragments of the ordinary, the expected politicians, businessmen, functionaries. The men who provided their security screen were images of their guilt and paranoia, nothing more.

He breathed deeply, regularly for some moments, in imitation of a half remembered Buddhist exercise of meditation, the name of which he could not recall. That had been a passing college thing… He did feel more calm, he realised, more in control, even when he glanced at the names on the pad and delved into the shadows at the back of his mind where Marian's suspicions had become his own.

Then he grinned.

He would send the undeveloped film he had taken, and the handwritten sheet from the legal pad, and post them to Marian. She could ring him, for a change she could make the next move.

"Well?"

Jessop shut the door of the Peugeot behind him and grinned at Fraser, whose morose, demanding expression did not alter.

"Easy."

The old house, eighteenth century for the most part and floridly bourgeois in its external decoration, was fifteen minutes' drive from the Commission. Trees in full leaf lined either side of the quiet street. Children in bright clothes played on front lawns, sprinklers making screaming games and rainbows in the afternoon sunlight.

"Well?"

There's a woman living there, with him." Jessop loosened the buttoned overalls.

A reported smell of gas never failed.

"She's away overnight, so the inevitable nosy concierge told me. He's usually back around six."

"Find anything?"

"No, funnily enough. Looks like he's just begun this new job of his, watching us and ours. No tapes, no film, nothing in writing.

Last-number redial on the phone was interesting, so was the answer phone British MP Marian Pyott.

Asking him questions—" He held up his tape recorder.

"Played it back, got it on here. She's quite nosy—" Fraser stared through the windscreen at the passage of an estate car, then a 4WD.

Collecting-the-kids-from-school time was almost over, gin-and-tonic time almost here.

Fraser nodded, Jessop switched on the tape. Two messages from Marian Pyott one to warn him to be careful, but to try to get good photographs of anyone he thought might be attending the meeting… timed earlier that morning… second message just telling him she would be out that evening and to leave anything he had on the answer phone The woman's voice contained a residue of anger, frustration. Her interest did not seem urgent or precise, but it wasn't merely casual, either.

"Well?"

"Pat on the head, Jessop," Fraser offered sarcastically. I'll buy you an ice-cream for being such a good boy."

"What do we do?"

"I don't think there's much to worry about. Not yet."

"Oh, I found some coke a social amount, nothing heavy."

Tut, these fashionable young men and their thrill-seeking," Fraser mocked.

"Doesn't it disappoint you that their lives are so empty of meaning that they pursue such courses?"

"What course are we going to pursue?"

"I shall consult our employer, Jessop, like the dutiful subordinate I am. I shall recommend that the obstruction be cleared while it's still a stone rather than a rock in the road. I wonder why she, of the six-hundred-odd self-seeking bastards in the House of Commons, is interested in us…?"

"How?" Jessop asked with the intent and innocent malice of a child.

"You mentioned cocaine, Jessop. These trendy people, they don't stop at sniffing cocaine, you know. No, indeed. Very soon, it's the needle and the hard stuff stuff you have to know just how to handle, if you're not to do yourself a great deal of damage."

Jessop sat back in the passenger seat, his eyes closed, a beatific smile on his face.

"I suppose this drug habit of his is nothing new?" he murmured, seduced by the detail.

"I'm sure the Brussels police will find plenty of corroborative evidence in the young man's apartment," Fraser replied with a smile, his expression that of a gourmet consulting a titillating menu.

CHAPTER THREE

On-Site Analysis The desert already shimmered in the heat of the early morning, and the mountains surrounding Vance Aircraft moved in and out of focus, gained and lost weight and massiveness, like an army of giant shadows repositioning for some final assault.

Gant squinted even behind the filtering of his sunglasses. Heat struck through the soles of his boots and the stifling warmth of the hangar seemed cool the moment he left its shade. Vance, beside him, had begun to sweat freely. The airliner glared in the sun. Dust devils whirled like conjuror's handkerchiefs in the chokingly hot breeze.

Around the 494, the ground crew fussed and then stilled as they saw the two men approach. The plane was adorned with the livery of Artemis Airways, red and blinding white; the image of the virgin-goddess as huntress on the high tailplane, hair flying with two sleek hounds at her heels. The heavy tug had towed it from the hangar to the edge of the taxiway, and the walk round inspection had been done by the ground engineer. Both Gant and Vance could make straight for the flight deck.

Pausing while Vance spoke to his ground engineer, Gant looked back at the buildings of Vance Aircraft. The faces that would be at countless windows were obscured by the sun dazzling back from tinted glass, but there were small knots of workers at the open doors of the two main assembly hangars, others straddling a line of shadow and light at the entrance to the service hangar. The Superstition Mountains already seemed to seep into the drained blue sky, as if their mass and colour were being leached away. His mouth felt dry.

Vance was listening and nodding, then reluctantly took the engineer's outstretched hand. Barbara must have been dissuaded from accompanying them out to the 494.

"OK," Vance muttered throatily, and followed Gant up the passenger steps into the main embarkation door situated just aft of the flight deck.

Shadow, coolness. The air-conditioning was already operating from the APU.

There was the shadow of a technician at the door to the flight deck. He merely nodded at Gant and then swiftly glanced aside, as if he had seen warning or disease on his features. Vance closed the main door behind him and locked it.

Slowly, aware of the brightness of metal, the cleanness of plastic, the clarity of glass, Gant settled into the pilot's chair. Nothing was burned in there, no one had died there… The flight deck smelt new, as aseptic as the flight simulator in the boxlike confines of which he had spent most of the previous day. The flight engineer's chair behind him creaked as Vance lowered himself into it. Vance would have to act as co-pilot on take-off, and double as flight engineer during the rest of the flight. He heard the man's stentorous breathing. Gant touched the control column and released it almost at once as it became instantly slippery with sweat from his palms.

After the simulator had come the analysis of the cockpit voice recorder and the computer-realised record of Hollis' last flight. The instability of the aircraft had been progressive, frightening. Just prior to flame-out of both engines and the inability to restart them, the oscillation had been as violent as if they had been flying through a hurricane. The plane had lurched and swayed, dipped and threatened to roll like a ship in great waves. He had known that it would have had to have been that bad for Hollis not to have gotten it under control… which was why he had committed himself to the simulator, prepared himself for the flight, before he had looked at the images of the aircraft on the VDU, behind the superimposed instruments which looked like searching gun sights and the 494 like a fighter plane trying to evade a pursuer.

The voice recording was fragmentary Vance had admitted that in the burned-out fuselage and provided no clues. Hollis, Lowell and Paluzzi didn't know what was happening to them, it was as simple as that. And neither did the flight recorder.

There was nothing to account for what had happened, either the instability or the engine failure… and now he was going to repeat the precise pattern of the flight Hollis and his crew had made and wait until it happened to him, until the 494's twin sister killed him, too.

Because it couldn't be a freak there was no weather, no pilot error, no mechanical, hydraulic, electrical or manual failure to account for what had happened… no system had failed.

It was, he realised, as if that ground-to-air missile was on the Phantom's tail again, over "Nam, and even though the instruments told him it was closing, he couldn't out manoeuvre or outrun it. It would hit his craft and the plane would catch fire… He found himself gripping the control column and hearing Vance ask:

"Pre-flight checks?"

"What?"

"You ready?"

He did not even half-turn to Vance, merely muttered:

"Sure." Then, with a greater emphasis that even to himself sounded like defensive anger, he repeated: "Sure."

The technician had already switched the three INS sets to align and inserted the plane's exact present position. The INS gyros had spun up and he could begin the instrument checks; all their displayed failure flags had retracted. He felt a bead of cold sweat slip down his cheek, over his jaw, into the collar of his denim shirt. He began his scan check at the top right of the overhead display panel, his eyes moving up and down through each piece of equipment, then down across the autopilot and the auto throttle and zigzag across the centre panel; finally, the centre console. Vance he turned now, knowing the man would be absorbed in his own work was making a similar scan check of his instrument panels… fire warning, engine instrument displays, the fuel system, fuel contents, fuel computer, booster pumps.

Somewhere there…? The instruments had shown that all of the systems had been functioning. The engines hadn't relit but there was no reason they shouldn't have.

He knew the passenger less weight of the plane plus the two of them and the fuel, and set the markers on the airspeed indicator for the take-off speeds at VI, V2 and VR. Hollis' engines hadn't failed at take-off… He put the thought aside and stopped himself staring through the glare shield at the vanishing length of runway and the desert. He tuned the VOR. Clamped on his headset, which at once made him aware of how much he was sweating. There was dampness, chill against his ears, then heat. The seat and the rudder pedals had already been adjusted to suit his height and frame.

"Engine start check?" he heard Vance ask.

"Engine start check."

Circuit breakers… INS… oxygen… radios, altimeters… boost pumps… start pressure… start engines… Gant swallowed.

"Let's go," he heard Vance breathe in his ear. The man's hand was heavy on his shoulder, then it was gone again. Its weight had seemed filled with a gambler's desperation.

"Starting number two," he heard Vance announce over the intercom to the ground engineer. The ignition switch was selected to ground start to turn the engine.

Gant heard the ground engineer's voice.

"N-One." The fan was beginning to turn.

"N-Two rotation and engine oil pressure rising," Vance murmured. Then:

Twentytwo per cent."

Gant moved the start lever to idle and started the stopwatch. Twenty seconds to completion of start-up. Fuel was now being pumped into the engine and the igniters were firing.

"Fuel flow normal," Vance called. Gant's instruments confirmed. The exhaust gas temperature began rising steadily. The engine had lit.

"Fifty per cent."

The engine was now self-sustaining and Vance would have released the ignition switch.

"Starting number one…" The process was quicker, it seemed, as if the engine start was being hurried in order that he would be placed in control of the airplane… "Fifty per cent."

He swallowed. His mouth was dry.

"Ground?"

"All cleared away—" There was the slightest hesitation, then: "Good luck, sir."

Gant checked the start levers were at idle, the stabiliser trim, power hydraulics.

Over the VHP, he contacted the huddled buildings and the toylike, glass-topped control tower at the far end of the runway.

"Request taxi."

"Clear to taxi."

Gant released the brakes and moved the thrust levers with his right hand, his left on the control column to steer the 494. There was no more than a momentary sense of the bulk of the airliner being drawn behind the tiny flight deck. He could hear the engine whine as the two huge Pratt & Whitneys spooled up. Vance began reading the take-off checks. Flaps at ten per cent, speed brakes checked, flight controls check, trim set check, annunciator panels check, pressurisation check

… Travelling down the taxiway… threshold."

He turned the airplane like some lumbering marine mammal stranded on a desert beach on to the end of the runway. Then the plane was still, massive. The desert air made the runway melt, re-form, melt again. It was hallucinatory, unnerving.

The mountains seemed starker now, crowding around the dwarfed, distant buildings and the tiny, isolated plane. The sky was almost colourless, utterly cloudless.

"Boost pumps on, fuel system set, hydraulics, brakes… ignition switches to flight start…" In case the engines flamed out on take-off, he could restart them… Hollis hadn't been able to relight the engines… forget that.

"Body gearing switched to off instruments, flaps set, trim set…"

He waited. Behind him, Vance waited on him. He was aware of the man's presence like a weight pressing at his back; felt the man's almost lunatic desperation, the madness of his enraged frustration and his fear.

The voice from the control tower startled him.

'494 cleared for take-off," it repeated.

"Let's go…" he heard Vance mutter, his voice as small as that of someone mumbling prayers.

Gant placed his hand on the throttles, tensing his right foot on the rudder. The 494 began to strain against the brakes. Vance took up his flight engineer's position between and just behind the two pilots' seats in order to monitor power. He was leaning forward, precisely adjusting the engine pressure ratios of each of the thrust levers. Gant had to rely on him to scan the instruments as any co-pilot would have done.

"OK, Alan here we go," he murmured, his throat tight and the sweat in rivulets on either side of his taut neck. He moved the throttle levers to vertical, then forward to just below the required power setting. The centre line of the runway stretched ahead, quivering in the desert heat or his imagination. The grey, dusty runway itself continued to melt, re-form, melt again in the haze.

"Here we go," he repeated quietly through clenched teeth.

He released the brakes and the plane leapt forward as if released from a chain.

There was no sense of its size behind him as it skimmed the runway, reaching eighty knots. Gant felt the rudder become effective. The airspeed indicator needles flicked upwards. A bird flashed across and beneath the nose of the 494.

The centre line wavered for a moment and Gant steered delicately on the rudder pedals, his right hand hovering over the throttles. If the engines failed now, he could close them down… Without reverse thrust, they'd plough into the desert at the end of the runway.

"V-One," he heard Vance call. Committed now. He moved his right hand to the control column as Vance assumed control of the engines.

One-fifty knots, one fifty-three, four, five eight.

"Rotate."

Gant pulled back on the column and the nose of the aircraft lifted towards the blinding, leached sky. Ten per cent, fifteen on the attitude indicator. He felt the undercarriage leave the runway.

"V-Two," he muttered to Vance.

"Gear up."

The undercarriage bay doors opened and he felt the slight increase in drag, then the bogies clunked home and the doors shut. He turned the aircraft into the wind.

Altitude five hundred feet, the mountains diminishing in bulk, becoming manageable, dismissible. Twelve hundred feet… He was sweating as Vance eased back the throttles to climb power. He dropped the nose to allow for the reduction. The miniature buildings of Vance Aircraft disappeared beneath the port wing and the mountains seemed to slip aside, leaving the emptiness of the air ahead and the architect's model that was Phoenix glittering on the desert floor, surrounded by reservoirs with mirror surfaces.

He was repeating the flight that had killed Hollis in every detail.

Vance's presence behind him made the hair on his neck itch. Farther behind him were the two huge engines that had failed, and for which failure there was no answer… The voice at the other end of the telephone, that of Michael Lloyd's only relative, an aunt in Crewkerne, seeped coldly into her ear like an ointment. Lloyd's untidy handwriting on the single sheet of A4 paper lay on her desk, reminding her of his undergraduate essays when she had been his tutor in modern history. She sensed that even those memories were an escape route, one unplanned but quickly taken.

"Yes," she murmured.

The aunt had fostered Lloyd as a difficult teenager, abandoned by a philandering father and a mother comatosed by her husband's desertion.

'… I never suspected, you see, Miss Pyott, that Michael was — that he took…" A gobbling, breathy silence. The intimacy of tragedy pressed against her, insinuating itself. It was as if the aunt were trying to catch her breath beneath a waterfall or facing a fierce, choking wind.

"Never once in my life…" Marian felt vile, like an eavesdropper.

An overdose of heroin at least, of heroin that had been badly cut, insufficiently diluted. She had guessed, at certain times, from the heightened, dizzy manner of some of his phone calls, that there was the likelihood that he indulged some occasional cocaine habit. But heroin?

'… such a loving boy, when you loved him," Marian heard.

"Yes, yes," she replied eagerly, desperate to offer the aunt some sense of a shared sorrow.

"It was late last night a friend of Michael's called at his flat, but couldn't get an answer, you see, and looked through the letter box… saw Michael just lying on the floor, not moving."

"Yes…"

The what do they call it? The the people he worked with, anyway… they're making the arrangements. For the body to be returned. I thought here…?"

"Yes." There was nowhere, no one else.

"Yes, I think that would be right. I please let me know if there's anything I can do and of course, the funeral. The date—" There's some delay, because of the way you know, the way…"

"Yes." She felt her temples pressed by a drying thong, the sense of her clothes wrapped tight as a straitjacket around her, the heat of her body. The unfolded sheet of paper, the letter beside it, the little tub of undeveloped film, all were bold accusations on her desk. She could not understand why… then, of course, she did, feeling nausea rise in her throat. She had obviously forged some causal link between what he had done those were the results lying there and what had happened to him. And at once felt icily cold, perspiration chilly on her forehead.

"Yes…" she breathed.

"I'm sorry to have brought you bad news, Miss Pyott. I thought you would wish to know." The aunt had moved on from sobs to the clarity of arrangements, of other calls, of the immediate future.

"Yes, thank you. I'll will ring, perhaps tomorrow. Just in case there's anything you feel I can do. Thank you for letting me know…

I'm so sorry—"

"Yes. Goodbye, Miss Pyott."

Marian put down the receiver with a clatter, then gripped the back of her chair, lowering herself into it with the awkwardness she sometimes saw in her father's movements. Her elbows hurt as they took the weight of her head. The desk's surface was very hard, resisting her, as accusing as the items that littered it. She rubbed a hand through her hair, pushing it back on her head. It flopped back at once, blinkering her view of the items on the desk. She did not brush it away from her face again.

Eventually, she sniffed loudly and sat upright, shaking her head, shaking away the numb mood. Michael's letter offered itself at once to her new composure. It was a hasty note, no more, filled with anxiety and a heightened amusement, a sense of boyish adventure. He had been followed back to the Commission and they had practised a deception to discover who he was. I think I may have exaggerated everything… security people are notoriously paranoid, aren't they? Whistling in the dark? She could not now decide. Except that she did not believe in the heroin addiction, not even in a clumsy and tragic early attempt at the drug. Michael had bought a new car recently, and moved to a bigger, more expensive apartment. He had no money worries, no drain on his resources… guilt nudged, constantly returning her thoughts to her father's oldest friend, one of her oldest friends… Kenneth Aubrey. The undeveloped tub of film, the names on the page. There was no real surprise the Euro MP whose constituency at Strasbourg included her own, the two EU Commissioners, the two plane makers It was obviously Skyliner, and the urgency of the meeting and its secrecy had been demanded by the collapse of the Aero UK helicopter bid. There were no names attached to the people who had frightened Michael and followed him and who… She excised the thought. Sunlight streamed across her hands as they lay resting on the desk. Her diary was open; her notes for the Commons' afternoon business and the details faxed to her in preparation for her Saturday-morning surgery lay near it.

She snatched up the telephone and dialled. Eventually, she heard Mrs.

Grey's carefully modulated, slightly pretentious tones.

"Mrs. Grey is Sir Kenneth free this morning? It's Marian Pyott here, I'd like his advice—"

"I'm sure Sir Kenneth will be delighted to see you, Miss Pyott. He is lunching at his club with your father and Sir Clive but he will be here until twelve-thirty.

What time shall I tell him you'd like to call?"

She glanced at her watch. Twelve. I can make it by twelve."

I'll tell him."

Marian continued to study the receiver after she had replaced it.

Somehow, having called Kenneth, invoking the spirit of his professional self, the names on Michael's sheet of paper seemed less innocent. Their contiguity troubled. Her own suspicions returned regarding the illegal diversion of EU funds for the development of the Skyliner project. The Transport Commissioner and the Urban Development chief… her attention underlined the title as Lloyd's pen had done.

His was the wrong name, the broken bone sticking through the skin of innocence that clothed the meeting. There was no reason none whatsoever for his appearance at that hotel. He was British, there were other Brits there, including David and Coulthard… but he was not a Commissioner of influence, he was a broken-backed former Cabinet dogs body who was enjoying his ride on the gravy train and his frequent appearances on TV. He enjoyed doling out largesse and that was about the sum of it. And he never joined causes, especially lost ones… He wouldn't, of his own volition, offer to mop up the blood after Aero UK committed hara-kiri, let alone lend himself to lobbying.

Otherwise, all appeared quite normal, innocent. Would it to Kenneth?

She must have the film developed-Michael. A friend's view of him, through the slit of a letter box, lying unmoving on the new carpet of the new apartment, dead of heroin poisoning. The Brussels Police Judiciare were confident that it was death by misadventure, nothing more.

The needle and the damage done… but, unlike the ageing rock singer who had coined that song title, Michael hadn't survived. Had someone not wanted him to?

They were definitely professional, his letter said. Not the sort of people the Commission employed and not just bodyguards, either… Then who were they? And would Kenneth have immediately asked that question or was she simply caricaturing the attitude of an intelligence officer?

Had Michael just messed up the dose? Or had someone decided on his eternal silence?

The sunlight ridiculed, but she could not entirely abandon the idea that Michael had set off an alarm somewhere and had, splashing carelessly and without heed in the shallows, summoned sharks.

The Grand Canyon swung beneath the 494 like a gaping wound, and he wanted to be able to study it with the impartiality of a surgeon. The repetition of Hollis' flight, minute after slow minute, had begun to unnerve him. He could find no detachment; assurance had seeped away, and his dead friend's voice kept on returning, like a phone call. It demanded things of him — answers, the airplane's safety, his own survival but the increasing challenge of Hollis' recollected voice found him unprepared. He had no answers… He imagined he could see the mules taking tourists from the top to the bottom of the canyon, pick out trailers and campers, even rafts on the Colorado's silver dribble. The vivacity of his imagination, the way it made the canyon rush at him, grow too close to the 494, unsettled. Behind his seat, Vance remained at the flight engineer's panels, his own bafflement as pungent and tangible as the sour smell of defeat. There was nothing wrong — nothing had occurred.

The short-duration flight that Hollis had undertaken had been a rehearsal for the full press flight. Views of the Grand Canyon, a river of champagne, small hillocks of canapes… and press acclamation in the following day's newspapers and on that evening's TV network and local news.

Hollis and his crew had fallen out of the sky less than another half-hour into the flight, making a final approach to Vance Aircraft they had had no warning and he would have just as little. There had been nothing wrong. Gant had listened to the cockpit voice recorder again and again, at least as much of it as had survived the crash, and he'd read the drafts and readouts taken from the flight recorders.

And learned nothing new, found no clue. The small clock in the centre of the main panel in front of him ticked on… twenty-eight minutes to the point of impact, and the 494 continued innocently above the Canyon.

Vance had arranged that each of the centres, Phoenix, LA, Peach Springs, Flagstaff, that Hollis had contacted during his flight would respond as they had previously done. Just as he would fly every mile of the flight, perform every action of the dead man'Vance

494 LA Centre. After leaving Peach Springs we understand you wish to head for thirty-point-five North, one-one-three-point-two West for some sightseeing, then rejoin at the GCN for Flagstaff and Phoenix at flight level three-zero-zero."

"Centre Vance 494," Gant replied, 'that is affirmative."

'494 Centre. Do you want to maintain your present level?"

"Centre 494…" His mouth was suddenly dry. Gant sucked his cheeks.

"We would like to descend to level six or seven thousand and make two or three orbits before climbing to level three hundred for rejoin."

Behind him, he sensed Vance listening as anxiously as a possessive, vain parent to a child's performance in a Nativity play.

Brace, brace, brace-Hollis from the cockpit voice recorder. From the grave.

'494 this is Centre. Your request approved. Don't descend below seven thousand feet on a QFE twenty-nine-ninety-three — we have local Canyon traffic below that altitude. We will advise local control of your intentions. QSY their frequency on one-eight-point-zero-five."

Thank you, Centre. 494 leaving level three-two-zero this time on a heading of three-two zero until clear of the airway."

Gant eased back the power levers, cancelled the autopilot and manually flew the slow, controlled descent. The airplane slid through the flight levels. Speed, two hundred and eighty knots. The Canyon was below the 494, at the centre of his orbit. He was aware of the silence of the aircraft's passenger cabin behind him. Only the crew had died.

Vance's dream hadn't caused a massacre of press and TV people We gone from near stall to ouerspeed, godammitHollis' voice again as the airplane betrayed him. What in hell did it mean? The 494 had fought him and won, caught him off-guard and killed him in minutes.

How?

Gant eased back the power and dropped thirty degrees of flap. Watched the airspeed slow towards a hundred and ninety knots.

"Prescott Centre 494 is with you at seven thousand feet. Starting our left-hand orbits."

"Roger, 494," he heard in his headphones.

"No known conflicting traffic. Be advised there is some local helicopter traffic in the Canyon. Quark seven-seven-four-six and keep me informed of your intentions."

The Canyon rotated like a map being turned on a desk as he rolled the aircraft gently into its orbit. The shadows of the coaming and roof eased across the instrument panel in unison. Gant selected autopilot to maintain the turn at his present altitude, imitating the pattern designed to most appeal to the press and the cameras that would have been in the passenger cabin. The slow orbit was so gentle no champagne would have been spilt, no canapes would have fallen on the thick carpet along the aisle.

He glanced behind him at Vance. The man's expression was unsettled. It was as if he had come across its desperate fervency in a gloomy church, stumbling across someone in a kind of despair who wanted to snatch a fragment of hope from the incensed air, from the altar, the candles.

The expression evoked memories of his mother and he thrust them aside.

Vance discovered his surveillance and shrugged angrily.

"Nothing you want some coffee?" Gant nodded. I'll go get it…"

Vance's voice seemed aware of time, as if each word he spoke marked off a second. They were maybe twenty-five minutes away fromVance opened the door of the flight deck, then his bulk hesitated. Gant smelt the sweetness of kerosene faintly on the air that flowed in from the empty passenger cabin.

Brace, brace, brace-near stall to over speed… "You smell it, too?"

Vance asked hoarsely.

"Yes."

"I–I'll take a look. Was there some mention…?" He closed the door behind him on the remainder of the question.

"Prescott Centre 494. Now leaving seven thousand for Flagstaff.

Request an altitude for rejoining the airway."

'494 Prescott. Rejoin at flight level three-ten."

Gant put the 494 into auto climb and checked the power management system as it adjusted automatically to optimal power settings. He heard the cabin door open and Vance slid into the co-pilot's seat, shaking his head.

"It's gone now," he murmured. His relief was as evident as his puzzlement. There's something I ought to remember about the smell of kerosene in the passenger—"

"Cockpit voice recorder. Check the transcript. Hollis referred to it somewhere—"

"Where?"

"Maybe around five pages in where they go into the hold just prior to… descent back to Vance Aircraft. He wasn't concerned about it," he added. It could have been something as simple as a faulty or badly cleaned filter in the cabin environment system.

Vance flicked through the typewritten pages. The Canyon slipped like a brown and silver snake away from beneath the airplane's belly.

"Is this what you want? Lowell had been in the passenger cabin and reported a smell of kerosene. Then it disappeared…" He flicked the pages dismissively.

"Just like now. Here and gone. It can't mean anything can it?"

"Maybe not… There's a lot of detail missing from the recording.

Maybe it wasn't the first time?"

"He doesn't say here that he smelt it earlier something like that smell's back again. Maybe it hadn't happened earlier in the flight—"

Gant turned to Vance. There was a tension that enclosed them like an electric fence.

"It was there while we were in the left-hand orbit, over the Canyon… then it disappeared. Let's try to get it back—" He keyed the microphone.

"LA Centre 494.

We would like to stop our climb at flight level one-six-zero and make two left hand orbits before resuming on track to Flagstaff at—" He glanced at the clock on the panel. It seemed to be the only clock now, on the flight deck. The only one that mattered.

"At six minutes past the hour."

"Roger, 494 you're cleared to do that. Contact AlbuK Centre at the boundary."

As the 494 climbed, the landscape around the Canyon shrank like a memory.

"We're coming up to one-six-zero. I'll put the ship into a left-hand orbit." Gant cancelled the climb mode. The aircraft swung lazily into its orbit, like a bird adapting to a changed thermal. The Canyon came into view.

"Can you hold her in this orbit while I check?" Vance nodded.

"OK take control. I won't be long—" Gant slipped out of the pilot's seat and opened the passenger door. The scent of kerosene was palpable, though faint. The empty passenger cabin seemed somehow ominously deserted. Sunlight filled it, the landscape beneath the aircraft was visible through the windows. Yet there was something cold, even oppressive about the cabin as he moved along the aisle. He glanced to either side at the wings and the bulk of the two huge engines jutting from beneath them. Sensed the normal tremors of an aircraft in flight. The plane continued to swing through its orbit.

The passenger cabin tapered towards the aircraft's tail. The smell of kerosene remained constant, from the flight deck door to the door of the rear galley. He opened the door.

Squeezed into the narrow space, he ducked his body in order to look through the tiny window, craning to stare behind the aircraft, then back along the fuselage towards the wing, off which the sunlight gleamed.

Nothing… He turned his head. Nothing… something? In the turbulence of the engine exhaust, he thought, but clearer behind the aircraft. What looked like a narrow, brief vapour trail, grey-white, easy to ignore or miss… He looked back again towards the engine. It was invisible, that close to the engine, it was only behind the aircraft that it condensed in the airflow into an unnerving pretence of a vapour trail.

Gant heard his breathing, louder than the engine note, louder than the tumult of the air passing over the fuselage. If Hollis or anyone else had even looked, they might never have noticed. It was fuel… being dumped from the starboard wing inner tank and condensing behind the plane. Fuel… He closed the galley door behind him and hurried along the passenger cabin. He could see nothing as he paused at the window that looked out over the wing. He entered the flight deck and at once began reading the flight engineer's instrument panels. Fuel content as expected, fuel pressure OK… dump valves closed, the transfer valves and pumps reassuringly normal. There was nothing wrong… there was.

Gant slipped back into the pilot's seat and put on his headset.

"Find anything?"

"We're dumping fuel from the starboard wing tank I think…" He shook his head.

"We're dumping fuel." He regained the controls and Vance, releasing his control column, squeezed out of his seat and settled himself in front of the flight engineer's panel.

Twenty-one minutes to the crash point… There's nothing here!" Vance exploded.

"Everything's reading normal what the hell is happening? Every gauge is telling me we're not dumping fuel are you sure, Mitchell?"

Hollis had made left-hand turns in the holding pattern… they had made left-hand orbits over the Canyon and now again. Each time, there had been the smell of kerosene… He'd seen it, streaming from the wing tank. And the engineer's panel, the whole fuel management system, was lying to them… as it had lied to Hollis.

"We don't know how much fuel we have left," he murmured.

"And there's no way of knowing."

'494 Albuquerque Centre. Report your present position."

The voice in his headset alarmed him. Nerves ached in his wrists, his fingers seemed numb on the control column.

"What do you want to do?" Vance asked.

"Centre, this is 494. Just by Flagstaff Victor three-two-seven. Flight level three ten Estimate Phoenix and Vance Centre at — twenty…" He felt his mouth dry and his throat constrict, then made himself announce: "We have a slight distraction here."

"Roger, 494. Do you require assistance?" The unemotional, machine-like voice of Albuquerque Centre failed to calm. Instead, it seemed to distance the offer of assistance, make it impotent.

"Negative at present," he forced himself to say.

"We'll be looking for descent clearance in maybe nine minutes from now."

He glanced down at knee level at the repeater dials. Aileron, elevator and rudder indicated normal, where he expected the settings to be. He turned his attention to the manual wheels, low down on the centre console where their readouts were difficult to see.

"Jesus…" he breathed.

There was no correlation between the two sets of instruments. The airplane was badly out of trim possibly with stalled trim motors, an unknown fuel amount, and a monitoring system that was lying to them.

They had no way of knowing even where the fuel was. The fuel management system moved the fuel around the tanks to keep the fuselage balanced about a constant centre of gravity… Otherwise, it would become uncontrollable and fall out of the sky. Cold perspiration ran down beneath his arms, dampened the shirt across his back.

"Vance we have problems. Call the company, get Ron Blakey on the horn.

Tell him what's happening and ask him what we can do."

In another moment, Vance was talking animatedly to his chief research engineer.

Near stall to over speed… Brace, brace, brace. There was almost nothing else, now, that he could recall of the cockpit voice recorder's transcript. It was all he needed to remember, he told himself.

He felt or thought he felt a tremor in the control column, as if what was being registered was the struggle of the autopilot systems against a violent, increasing instability in the airframe. Flagstaff looked like a tiny, gleaming clearing in the stain of the Coconino National Forest far below the airplane. The mountains that reared up ahead along their flight path, and which surrounded Phoenix, seemed to press against the flight deck's windows.

"Ron Blakey says all we can do is come out of autopilot, sort the trim on manuals, and he said good luck…"

Gant's hand paused over the autopilot switch. Again, he sensed the unbalanced weight of the aircraft, the loss of fuel, the alien secretiveness of the 494. He was walking in a dead man's shoes down a road that a dead man had taken. His only advantage was that he knew the plane was losing fuel… Some advantage.

He cancelled the autopilot. Immediately, the 494 banked violently to the left and the nose reared like a wild horse's head. Vance slid into the co-pilot's seat and slowly Gant felt his supporting effort on the control column. Gant was able to reach for the elevator trim and adjust the nose of the aircraft… In moments, before he and Vance had regained control of the 494, it had turned almost three hundred and sixty degrees and climbed two thousand feet. Sweat ran from his forehead down his cheeks.

Slowly, as if coaxing a fierce and unpredictable animal into a cage, he brought the aircraft round on to its previous course. Phoenix glinted like fragments of a broken window ahead of them. The grey and brown flanks of mountains were unsoftened by heat haze or distance.

He called Albuquerque.

"Centre 494. We're just coming round on to one-eight-six radial. This is part of the distraction notified earlier."

"Roger, 494. We will clear a block of airspace, flight levels two-five-zero to three-two-zero in case you have further problems."

"It has to be more than a spurious cross feed right? More than just fuel transferring from one of the fuller tanks to the port wing tanks.

We're losing maybe most of all our fuel from the starboard wing tanks—"

"It feels like that?"

"I can't tell, dammit! The port wing's getting heavy, that's all feel tells me. Your fucking airplane has gotten a mind of its own from somewhere, Vance. You built it, you tell me what's wrong!"

"You want to die telling me I'm an asshole?" Vance snapped.

"Is that the extent of your ambition, Gant?"

"OK, OK!" Gant snarled. Tell me how we can cut the engines off from the fuel management computer."

"It's in the computer?"

"It's the computer that's lying to us, Vance the computer, your baby, that's dumping our fuel! Now, tell me how I can override it, cut it out before the tanks are drained!"

Vance's features adopted a strain of concentration, his eyes expressionlessly focused inward. Then he said:

The only way is to close down the electrical systems." Vance hesitated for a moment, then added: "You have to shut down all the non-essential electrics and fly her—"

"Manually? On hydraulics and air pressure?

Then glide home — right?"

There's no other way. I can't isolate the fuel management system from the rest of the electrics. It has to be this way…"

"And when we get to where we've glided, I'll have to make a dead-stick landing," Gant responded. Vance merely nodded.

"You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Vance you really, really do!"

Non-essential electrics… It sounded simple, almost innocuous.

Nothing dangerous in being without all the electronic displays and readouts and relying only on the air-driven primary instruments All the radio and navcom ms except the VHP box, would also be out… the radar, the VORs, the ADFs… He'd be dropping in altitude with every second, navigating by means of features on the ground, sliding across the landscape, looking for the Vance Aircraft runway, a sliver of grey concrete in the dazzling miles of desert. Non-essential electrics…

The 494 would go from a state-of-the-art airliner to a primitive glider in seconds once he took the decision. He had no need to climb any higher in altitude to allow him to reach Phoenix, he already had enough height to trade off against distance in the glide.

He must make the decision now. Airliner to glider. Gant shivered… there wasn't a choice, just as there was no time-out for a debate with himself.

There was only the one play he could make.

He contacted Albuquerque Centre. When he had finished informing them of the problem and his proposed course of action, the machine-like voice, still remotely calm, said:

"Roger, 494 we understand your problem. Do you want to declare a Mayday?

We'll patch through to Phoenix Approach meanwhile, clear conflicting traffic. We have you positively identified over the Verde River, range forty nautical miles due north of Phoenix."

"Roger, AlbuK. We don't wish to declare a Mayday at this time. Out."

The 494 was holding its altitude at thirty thousand feet. Airspeed, one hundred and ninety knots. His glide range when the engines stopped at that height was fifty nautical miles. He had ten to spare before the airplane ploughed into the Arizona desert.

He glanced at Vance, who seemed to be studying him.

"You ready?" he asked.

"You?" Gant replied.

The mountains ringed the city like huge, impenetrable ramparts. Phoenix gleamed like a spilt droplet of water in the brown desert. The Verde River twisted beneath them like a blue cord someone had dropped and forgotten. The control column strained against his fierce grip and Vance's supporting strength. Behind him, he sensed the empty plane like an assailant.

The airframe lurched in the air, weary and unpredictable as a drunk unable to support his own weight.

"Go for it!" Vance snapped."

Tim Burton and David Winterborne surprised each other in the grand foyer of the Club and were immediately affable, shaking hands firmly and without apparent reserve. Burton, taller than Winterborne, stooped habitually to the stature of other men, and did so now, even though

Winterborne's Eurasian features always seemed at odds with his height.

There was little else except the narrow eyes and sallow complexion of his Chinese mother in him. His slimness was maintained without recourse to athletic exercise of any kind. Burton played squash and indulged in desultory bouts with shining bars and suspended weights. He brushed a hand through his long hair, summoning a cautious, uncertain grin.

"I — um, heard about your problems, but didn't gloat," Winterborne offered. He and Aero UK had tried to press Sky-liner on Burton and Artemis Airways, with great force.

Thanks for that, anyway." Burton's grin seemed again to have difficulty in precisely displaying itself, then at once it was entirely genuine.

"I don't mind telling you "You wish you'd offered for some other aircraft?" The jibe was sharp.

They were standing before the grey marble fireplace, their images reflected in the Italian mirror above it. A Joseph Knibb bracket clock of ebonised wood and much gilding occupied the mantelpiece. Above them, the ceiling of the vestibule and foyer was wreathed with plaster vines and hanging bunches of pale fruit against an eggshell blue.

Burton shook his head ruefully.

"I still can't afford your monster, David I told you and Coulthard that a year ago, when you were holding me down in my chair and practically forcing me to sign.

No way, Jose—"

"And yet you can't afford to wait for the new Boeing, either,"

She'd been able to carry it off like a model on a catwalk. He, however, quailed at the atmosphere of the Club at that moment. It was as if he still only aspired to the world of power, influence and success that it symbolised, rather than truly belonged. David's father and Pyott had been members for perhaps forty years apiece. He felt like a parvenu.

A youngish barrister with political ambitions and the ability to trim like a racing yacht passed him with a confident nod in the company of an advertising executive.

They mounted the steps like schoolboys… David in school, he remembered again.

Carrying his hurt, his ruthlessness, his ambition inside a carapace of ingratiation and acquiescence. He'd paltered and shifted, tried to be inconspicuous and, like a chrysalis, had turned into the iron butterfly he now was.

A judge and a Cabinet minister, a group of City people, a novelist past his sell-by date in company with a publisher. He felt them all as an admonishing, even mocking parade as they passed into the Club.

Where were the bloody Japs? He felt nervous now, as if he would forget all his carefully rehearsed arguments, the brochure-like confidence he must bring to the meeting. Come on, I'm drowning, not waving… And behind everything, there was Vance. Come on, Alan, save my neck Ahead and to port of the airplane, the Theodore Roosevelt Lake gleamed, as if flashing him a signal, one that was unable to distract him from the barrier of the Superstition Mountains directly ahead. Twenty miles to run, barely six minutes before he attempted to put the airplane down on the runway at Vance Aircraft.

Airspeed one-ninety knots, altitude sixteen thousand feet and falling but only slowly, deceptively, as if the airframe would stay in the air for hours yet.

Instability tremored through the plane like the first symptoms of a return of malarial fever. Gant's hands and wrists, his forearms and shoulders, ached with the effort of keeping the unpowered airliner on course, in the glide.

The engine noise was missing. Air-driven pumps were maintaining hydraulic pressure in the flying control circuits. Once more, he nudged the nose up to maintain his airspeed for as long as possible. When he and Vance had made it, it had been a simple calculation. Altitude equals distance in a glide. They had enough altitude to make the runway at Vance Aircraft, more than enough

… But he could not restart the engines in order to make the slightest adjustment in speed, height, direction. He and Vance had switched off all the non-essential electrics, to the point where they were wearing their headsets with one ear uncovered, so that they could hear one another. The fuel had been stop cocked Cutting off all fuel flow had stabilised the airframe in its slow glide. The slightest alteration of course might unbalance the plane. He did not even know how much fuel if any was sloshing around in the tanks.

'494 this is Vance Centre." It was Ron Blakey on the horn, his tension palpable.

"QDM one-eight-six. You need to turn left five degrees to position for a straight-in.

Inform us when you have the runway in visual range."

The channel remained open for a second or two, as if they expected him to reply.

Barbara was there somewhere. He sensed her presence concerned more for her father and the future of the company than for him. The pettiness of the thought made him wince. It revealed the strained, worn state of his nerves. It wasn't the slim, tiny form of a jet fighter behind his seat, it was the huge bulk of a long-haul airliner. He almost felt its great weight, its sluggish, resistant inertia through his hands and feet.

The runway at Vance was more than long enough, he reminded himself, unable even to glance across at Alan in the copilot's seat. It had to be, in case they lost the brakes. There would be no deceleration available from reverse thrust from the dead, unusable engines. It would be all brake work His body tensed, as if the struggle with the aircraft's bulk had already begun. His forehead was sheened with sweat. The electrics for the air-conditioning had been switched off.

Phoenix's sprawling conurbation lay like a sand-coloured lizard, curled on the desert, surrounded by its silver reservoirs. The airflow seemed louder, poised to buffet at the plane in its helpless glide. He was flying on the trims alone, nudging the aircraft constantly to maintain its course, and saving the hydraulic power to the control column until he had to use the column to maintain the 494 on the narrow strip of the runway, which would blur beneath the rush of the airliner which wouldn't slow enough in tim eStop… Ten miles out, altitude nine thousand feet. His hands shivered at the impression of them dropping like a stone towards the mountains. He still couldn't see the runway at Vance Aircraft, even though the city was bigger, its glass towers winking in the morning sun. Phoenix seemed to be rushing towards them, its ring of mountains suddenly like a huge, opening mouth that of a shark.

Ron Blakey again. Gant was grateful that Vance maintained his grim silence beside him.

'494 — Vance Centre. Turn on to runway heading now." A pause, then, almost apologetically: "Emergency services are on full alert and standing by. Wind light and variable, QFE two-niner-niner-four. Call when visual with the field."

The technical instructions were added in a rush of words, as if Blakey had become conscious that he had revealed his own fearful doubt and now wished to mask it.

"Vance Centre 494. The field is not yet—" A dusty strip, thin as a pencil line in the desert, the tiny boxes of buildings nearby. His relief was huge.

"Correction, we have the field in visual. Two-niner niner-four it is."

Six miles out. A line narrower than the highways he could make out linking the suburbs of Phoenix. He looked at the altimeter. They were too high. He'd trimmed too safely, too well.

"Dump the gear!" he shouted at Vance, who was startled by his tone and urgency.

"Gear down?"

"Gear down?

Two muffled thumps as the undercarriage entered the streaming airflow.

The aircraft wobbled, tilted as if about to plummet, and he fought it back to level flight.

A third, softer noise, less disturbance to the airframe. The lights confirmed all three sets of wheels were down and locked. The sudden extra drag pushed the plane's nose down and he struggled to trim again as the speed dropped. He had nudged the 494 on to the runway heading.

Mountains seemed to brush like claws at the plane's belly, just hundreds of feet below them. The buildings of Vance Aircraft were thrown-away toys in the desert, shining in the sun amid hard, grey mountains. The runway was no more than a sliver of plastic placed on the desert floor, narrow and short as a slide rule.

Dragged back by the undercarriage, the plane wobbled in the airflow.

He eased up the nose, further cutting the speed. Hollis' voice, which had followed him through the flight like someone saying the Kaddish, had vanished in the back of his mind.

Two miles out, he judged. Vance's hands reached for the copilot's column, in anticipation. Gant shook his head angrily.

"On my order!"

He dropped the leading edge slats and the main flaps. The 494 seemed to rear back from the approaching runway like a terrified horse. The hydraulic pressure reading dropped. Would the air-driven pumps replenish it before he needed to use the brakes?

The threshold lights flashed beneath the belly of the aircraft. The mountains reared up around them, the great mouth they had seemed to form reaching to enclose them. The six-thousand-yard markers were beneath them in another second, the impression of the plane's speed numbing Gant, overriding every other sensation.

He saw the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles as they raced along either edge of the runway, throwing up dust in clouds. The runway rushed at them.

Gant hauled back on the column, wrists bulging with the effort, as if he were dragging it out of concrete.

"Now-!" he shouted, but Vance was already heaving on the copilot's column, his face squeezed and reddened with the strain.

No reverse thrust, no reverse- Brace, brace, brace- Get out of my head, Hollis He continued to heave at the control column and it began to creep back towards him. Vance's eyes were bulging with fear and effort, his teeth set in a grimace. The runway was a blur beneath the nose, so close beneath only the brakes-Wheels touched concrete. The airliner bounced back into the air. Then the main undercarriage touched a second time and the nose butted down like the head of a charging ram and the nose-wheels thudded on to the runway.

"Feet clear of the brakes!" Gant ordered Vance as the airliner raced to overtake the nearest of the emergency vehicles, its flashing lights and red flank lost in a moment.

He couldn't burst any of the tyres and he needed maximum braking. No reverse thrust. The tyres howled on the concrete, the rushing air seemed to deafen. He hit the toe brakes. The nose of the aircraft shuddered as the nose wheels shimmied on the concrete. The landscape shivered like something reflected in a mirror the moment it was shattered.

Groundspeed one-forty-five knots. No reverse thrust Three thousand feet to run!" Vance called above the din.

He could see the end of the runway. The airplane seemed to be accelerating… It was worse than making an emergency stop in a car…

The hydraulic pressure faded and he felt the brakes slacken, become spongey. They were going to plough off the end of the runway into the overrun area-at sixty knots, he was flung against his restraints as the

494 hit the end of the runway and rushed on, throwing gravel and debris against the underside of the fuselage. The mirrors filled with dust.

Thirty knots, ten Their speed died and the aircraft came to a shuddering, drunken stop. Dust boiled up around the flight deck windows, obscuring everything… Gant choked back sickness. Vance seemed to be yelling a stream of obscenities, somewhere at a great distance… Quiet. For a moment, until the noise of sirens filled it.

Gant dragged off his headset and then once more slumped gratefully, dazedly aganist the restrain of his straps.

The nose of the 494 dropped as the nose undercarriage leg slowly collapsed, as if he had ridden it like a horse to exhaustion.

The sirens began to wind down. The vehicles, like a pack of small wild dogs surrounding a wounded buffalo, appeared in front of them as the dust cleared from the windows. At once, he made out Barbara's slight form climbing out of the

4WD.

"Shit," Vance murmured, his voice thick with saliva.

"Shit- shit!"

Gant rubbed his cheeks with his hands as Vance pounded him on the shoulder. He inspected the quivering in his fingers. Remembered Hollis. He shook his head slowly, repeatedly.

Thanks," Vance murmured.

"Sure." He looked across at him. The man's features were shining with relief, with the vivacity of hope rescued from desperation.

"Sure…"

The fuel management system. The assholes they must have cut corners, shaved the costs, failed to check the circuitry… something." He loosened his restraints, almost as if he were just awakening and about to stretch luxuriously.

Gant had done enough, apparently. Survived, unlike Hollis and his crew, and thrown Vance a lifeline. He'd be on the midday news, the networks by evening There was a TV camera, perched like a black parrot on someone's shoulder, pointing at them, then panning along the fuselage. A hurriedly poised, power suited female reporter was already preparing to interview Barbara beneath the nose of the aircraft, amid the scenery of the emergency vehicles.

He turned to Vance and glowered at him. Vance shrugged and said:

"I knew you could do it, Gant I just knew it." He grinned, waggling his hand.

"I couldn't pass up the chance to make headlines. All or nothing at all—"

"You're a Class A asshole, Vance."

"Sure. Now, smile you're on Candid Camera? he pointed through the dusty windows.

"When they ask you questions, just keep it simple. A technical fault, but the airplane's fundamentally safe. OK?"

"And you get a Federal seal of approval, right? The NTSB speaks through me."

That's the way the game is played, Gant. Don't be a party-pooper. Hero saves Vance Aircraft. Don't you like the sound of tomorrow's headlines?" He waved towards the inquisitive camera, which had been joined by a second, then a third.

"Don't screw it up. I save my company, you get to be a celebrity all over again. Let's just play it as it lays, uh?" He paused, and a more vulnerable, grateful man looked out from behind the blunt planes and angles of his face.

"And, thanks. I mean it, Mitchell. Thanks."

Eventually, as his relief and anger both subsided, Gant murmured:

"Yeah. Any time…"

"Am I being stupid, Kenneth? Tell me if you think I am."

"My dear, you only ever ask that question when you're all but certain you're right."

"And you only ever employ that patrician tone with me when your curiosity has been aroused."

Marian blew cigarette smoke through the sunlight that blazed in Aubrey's drawing room. The green carpet and walls gave the room a dell-like privacy and invitation.

Mrs. Grey, who spent her time attempting to woo Kenneth from his occasional cigarettes, would disapprove of the scent of the smoke after she was gone, however privileged she was as a former don, present MP and always Giles Pyott's daughter.

Aubrey lifted his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. Their faded blue appeared childishly mischievous. He smiled at her.

"Am I curious?" he asked.

"I suspect you might be." Then, as if brushing the banter aside like the last billow of smoke with her hand, she leaned forward and said:

"You know my suspicions amount to paranoia, Kenneth. At least, I know you think so. I just can't believe he overdosed on heroin."

"Why not?" he asked, not unkindly.

"Many respectable young people do. It doesn't always happen in filthy public lavatories or on run-down housing estates."

"I grant you that but unless he had his hand in the till… Oh, I don't know! Perhaps he could afford a new apartment, a new girlfriend, a new car and a mainline habit… And perhaps I'm old-fashioned enough not to want it to be true. But it seems too coincidental to me. The very day—"

"Ah. Well, perhaps." He replaced his spectacles, which had been catching the sunlight as he waved his hand airily, the thin wrist bony and skeletal, the flesh almost transparent. The dust motes slowed as he returned his attention to the sheet of A4. These names, you say, are not unexpected?" She shook her head emphatically.

"Well, apart from Laxton."

"Laxton Not-so-Superb as he was known to Cabinet colleagues old enough to remember real apples," Aubrey reminisced drily.

"He was always a denizen of the meaner realms of the body politic, I grant you. Why should his presence surprise?"

"Urban Development his EU brief as Commissioner. He has no possible connection with Aero UK or Balzac-Stendhal. And before you ask, he is not a director nor has ever been. They were companies he must have missed out of his ample portfolio." She smiled, brushing at the stray blonde hair at her temples. Her mane was pulled back from her face and held in a slide. She was soberly dressed in a cream suit.

"And I wouldn't gauge him to possess the clout to lobby effectively either at Westminster or in Brussels. Urban Development was the booby prize or a slight to the new British Commissioner."

"Otherwise, nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Well, let me look at the photographs." He flicked through the prints she had had rush-developed.

"Mm, I would not have employed that unfortunate young man on surveillance without an extensive course in the arts of photography.

These are very poor, even allowing for the weather…" He studied the prints carefully, holding his glasses at slightly differing distances from his eyes, squinting.

"I recognise most of these faces, including dear David. But then, I presume you're not suspicious of David Winterborne in this, are you?"

"Don't be silly. Just because he was always pulling my pigtails, tying me to trees and leaving me for hours, putting frogs down my best frocks

…?" She tossed her head, laughing.

"No, I don't want to pay him back for his childhood cruelties to a mere girl five years younger than himself—"

"Who repeatedly invaded his boyish games, offered probity where there was inevitable cheating, and who accused him at every possible turn of unkindness to his younger brother, your playmate?"

There was a momentary silence as both of them remembered David Winterborne's long-dead younger brother. Then she said:

"I was going to describe a young girl, an only child, so loved that she had no sense of the cruelty children are capable of. But, Dr. Freud, I'm sure you're right."

Aubrey snorted with amusement, then continued to study the photographs, murmuring:

"A great pity he did not have the presence of mind to take some pictures of the men who so frightened him… Although, on the other hand—"

"What is it?" she asked eagerly, almost rising from her armchair.

"Patience is a virtue," Aubrey remarked with mock primness.

"A face here, passing into the hotel. Afof coincidentally present, I think. Here this man." She was already at his shoulder, leaning over the back of his chair. He smelt the slight, oldfashioned scent of her perfume and remembered that her mother had often worn the same. He patted her hand on his shoulder and she did not resent the touch, though he was certain she understood its motive.

"Who is he?" she asked, straightening.

"Bring me my magnifying glass. In the drawer of the desk there." His request was almost reluctant, as if he had been forced to admit his age. She held it out to him.

The faces in the photograph, through the rain and the slightly wrong focus, enlarged and distorted as if in fairground mirrors.

"Yes. Definitely," Aubrey concluded.

"You know him I don't."

"My world, not yours, dear girl. My world." His voice had an edge of asperity, even distaste. She took the photograph back to her chair and studied the face Aubrey had indicated. Rain-pallid, slightly blurred by the extra flesh of good living and poor camera work A tough, alert face; pale, dead eyes, set above large cheekbones, a long jaw, a shock of greying hair.

"His name is Fraser," Aubrey was saying.

"He is a former field agent quite a senior and experienced one of my service. An erstwhile intelligence officer of particular, even peculiar skills."

"You don't like him? He worked for you?"

"As little as possible. Others quite liked his somewhat direct methods. Many agents wouldn't work with him, if they could possibly avoid it. You see, his survival instinct was capable of overriding all other priorities including the lives of his colleagues." Despite the chilliness of his account and the evident distaste of his tone, there was a dreamy, reminiscing pleasure on Aubrey's features.

"Patrick Hyde, of whom you may have heard me speak—"

"Endlessly. How is your long-lost son, by the way?"

Aubrey all but pouted, then smiled.

"I gather he prospers in the Penal Colony of Australia. Free of me at last, perhaps… But Fraser is our concern. Hyde would never, on any account, work with him."

"Why not?"

"Fraser was a psychopath. Is."

"In SIS?"

"Many of his skills were just what was required. He was also successful, efficient. Not all agents possessed the same abilities, nor the same personalities.

Fraser was one of the truly bad apples we could turn to some account on behalf of Her Britannic Majesty's Government and in the further defence of the realm.

Despite your disapproval!"

Then…?" she asked, still as shocked as a child might have been.

Then it is possible that your friend did not acquire his heroin addiction until yesterday." He shuffled in his chair, as if eager for activity, plagued by restlessness. I'll make some enquiries, Marian.

I'll try to discover what the appalling Fraser has been doing in the way of gainful employment since he left the service."

"When would that have been?"

Two or three years even as many as four. I must check."

"And you think—?" She paused. Michael Lloyd's body, lying on his new carpet, seen through the letter box's slit, as if a scene from some wide-screen movie shown on television. She felt tears, and anger, equally.

"Do I think? Mm perhaps I do. If Fraser's employers, whoever they are at present, felt that your young friend's presence was a threat… then Fraser would take just such a direct means to close the door with as much finality as he could. Yes… Fraser is certainly capable of killing your friend."

CHAPTER FOUR

Ghosts in the Machines His office was, for the moment, a dusty, cramped space in need of repainting close under the roof of the Commerce Department. The perspective from its one small window, jammed shut and wire-netted against the pigeons, was bounded by the Washington Monument and the White House. Since he was not a political animal, it had come as a surprise to Gant that he had been given the view. The office itself was much more indicative of his lowly status as a Federal employee.

Hands still in his pockets, he turned from the window and the morning sunlight falling across the Ellipse and its acres of grass, which made the Monument a dazzling and unreal white. There were reports on his desk that needed his attention, though none of them was urgent. Mostly they were filed copies of accident reports that had been forwarded to the headquarters of the Accident Investigation Office by the various state investigatory units which were only loosely linked to the National Transportation Safety Board. He rubbed his hands through his cropped hair, his sense of frustration childishly acute, unreasonable.

He had returned to a kind of sense-deprivation the flotation tank of his daily existence after the flight and the crash landing. He disregarded the newspaper and TV coverage, which Vance had milked and ignited in turn; that had all been Vance's prize.

The two 494s of Albuquerque Airlines were flying again, half-full, though the two planes Burton had in Europe were slower to be trusted

… even though they were not fitted with the fuel computer system that had failed. Vance had, on TV, publicly changed the subcontractor, reverting to an older fuel computer system which would be marginally less efficient but which had a track record. Also, he was very publicly suing the errant manufacturer for millions of dollars. The media had gone along for the ride; Vance was crowing again, like some overpaid sports star, and they liked that.

He didn't savour the exploitation of his own role, the images of "Nam and himself in uniform and the scrappy accounts of his Cold War career.

The MiG-31, the Firefox, sitting in the Skunk Works at Burbank, stripped down, its pieces of fuselage lying about its skeleton like the ripped-off shards of a giant beetle. Other images of MiL gunships, references to Winter Hawk.

He had turned off the set and gotten another beer from the icebox, regretting that he was being used by Vance; regretting more, perhaps, that he had broken open his new self only to find it the wrapping on a mummy's corpse and nothing more… Underneath the veneer of this office, his job, the secretary in the even smaller room next door, his pay cheque everything had crumbled into dust as soon as he had been exposed to flying, danger, his supreme skill with machines that flew.

He could taste the dust in his dry mouth now. It had been stupid, so stupid, to have gone back, to have put himself The intercom blurted.

When you sold the farm, he thought bitterly, and moved on, you didn't return to it on Sundays and the Fourth of July. You forgot it.

"Yes?"

"Agent Mclntyre from the FBI is here to see you, sir."

Gant grimaced, then said: "Show him in, Mrs. Garcia."

He took up his position at the window once more, hands in his pockets, shirtsleeves rolled, shoulders slightly hunched as if in anticipation of an assault from behind. There were grey squirrels on the lawn in front of the Commerce Department. He heard the door shut behind Mclntyre, and sensed the enthusiasm of enmity that the FBI man brought with him into the cramped office.

"You're really appreciated by the NTSB, uh, Gant?" he heard.

The FBI Building faced the Department of Justice across Pennsylvania Avenue.

They called that one of the ironies of good government.

"What do you want, Mclntyre? I'm busy."

"Sure, I can see that."

A chair scraped on linoleum and Mclntyre's weight made its ricketiness creak in protest as he sat down. A lighter clicked and he smelt cigarette smoke.

"No, I don't mind if you smoke," he murmured.

"Gant, you're a real cure."

Gant turned to face Mclntyre. The man's features, blunt and square, shone with the heat of the room and with some undisclosed satisfaction.

The nose was too small for the size of the face, perched like a sculptor's first, unsuccessful attempt at proportion below narrowed eyes and amid hard, un impressible lines. Gant sat behind his littered desk.

"OK what does the Bureau want? You'd like to pick over my service career, my voting record what?"

Mclntyre shook his head.

"Something more recent, Gant. Something between you and Vance. Vance the crook."

"I was doing my job."

Mclntyre waggled the hand that held the cigarette.

"And got well paid for it."

Gant frowned.

"I didn't seek publicity. I just found out why an airplane crashed, Mclntyre. As a public servant."

Mclntyre removed a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket and smoothed it on the desk before turning it so Gant could study it. It was a bank statement.

"See what I mean about well paid? The latest entry…? Drawn on the Vance Aircraft account at First Arizonan. A hundred thousand dollars.

Paid to you, as a public servant."

Gant looked up bleakly.

"You mother."

Again, Mclntyre shook his head.

"It's no frame, Gant. Vance sent you a transfer for a hundred thousand yesterday.

You didn't know? For getting him off the hook with his bankers or is it your cut of the Federal funding we talked about earlier?" He was openly grinning now.

"Jeez, I wouldn't want to have to explain this on TV! You'd be even more coy than you were after you got that plane down." He leaned forward. The Bureau can make a case out of this, Gant one that ties you in with Vance. We'll begin by serving you with a subpoena the Senate Committee will serve you with one, requiring you to give evidence at the hearing into Vance's affairs… while the Bureau keeps on digging. Your grave," he added.

His eyes gloated. Gant knew his own posture was one of defeated truculence, that of the farm boy watching a storm flatten corn defiant only out of complete lack of expectation. Vance always had to prove he had offered you his thanks and you understood he had. The hundred thousand was just that, done without thought of consequence or propriety; a thank you that enabled you to buy things that would remind you of his gratitude.

Barbara's attempt to show concern for him, enquire into his present life, had been just as intrusive, but less damaging. It didn't look criminal. The payment did.

"What can I say?" he bluffed.

"Maybe I've got the lottery ticket somewhere in the apartment?"

"A real cure, like I said." Mclntyre's satisfaction was complete; he could, for once, adopt a moral superiority. Gant had screwed up with a bribe. The man could taste his pleasure. He shook his head.

"It's a long way to fall, hero to cheapskate. To being on the take."

He stood up.

"You can keep the statement. It's a Xerox. Oh, am I going to enjoy watching you fall, Gant!" he announced, his voice like his chest expanding with a kind of perverse pride.

"You'll land harder than you did two days ago and you won't walk away from the wreckage, boy you surely won't!"

He paused at the door, but there were no more words. His triumph was complete enough to ensure a grand exit. Gant watched the door close behind him, then slowly, gently lowered his head into his cupped, waiting hands. Between his resting elbows, the bank statement stared back at him.

"You stupid, stupid bastard," he murmured.

"You made-in-America, top-of-the-heap asshole, Vance…"

The remains of Mclntyre's cigarette smouldered in the tin ashtray which advertised Budweiser Lite, the smoke ascending in the still air of the room like a distress signal from a distant ship. Suddenly, the mummy's corpse of his present was not to be despised like a welfare cheque that would keep him going; help him subsist, together with the food stamps of football games and weekends in the mountains… They would even strip him of the remnants of this life; the job, the pay cheque the remaining reputation. It would all go. There would be nothing to hang on to, nothing… "Yes, I understand. No, it couldn't have been anticipated," David Winterborne concurred, the cordless phone against his cheek, Eaton Square below the balcony.

The French windows were open and the air was still fresh after the early-morning rain.

"Absolutely. No, I don't think the suit has much chance of success, but you'd better talk to the lawyers. Thank you, Al. Keep me informed."

He dropped the receiver on to the chaise-longue, richly carved and brocaded, against the back of which he was resting as he watched the traffic move through the square. One of his more elderly neighbours, the widow of a stockbroker, was walking her ridiculously small dog in the gardens; moving in and out of dappled shadow from the trees. He plucked at his smooth chin with one hand, the other arm folded across the chest of his dressing gown.

Des Moines Instruments, in which Winterborne Holdings was a majority stockholder and which had supplied the fuel computer system for Vance's aircraft, had been calling with angering frequency for the past two days and nights. The untraceable fault in the fuel computer's chips had been found. His eyes narrowed in contemptuous dislike. Vance's former son-in-law had just happened to be a remarkable pilot. Once Vance had survived the crash landing and they had discovered that the fuel was being jettisoned on the computer's command, even though the instruments revealed nothing, Vance had removed Des Moines Instruments from the board, gone to another supplier, exercised his considerable charm and air of authority through the national media and saved his company.

For the moment, at least.

Winterborne glanced at the maid who had brought his breakfast into the drawing room on a tray and was laying it on a table near the second pair of French windows. Beyond her was the door to the library and the fax machines and the VDUs on which, at the press of a few buttons on the keyboard, he could play the newest, the ultimate video game. He could sit before the screen and watch his fortune vanish. Stock in Des

Moines Instruments was down so far it might never recover. Shares in Aero UK were almost worthless and shares in Winterborne Holdings, his conglomerate, had been affected. Not merely scratched, but perhaps even fatally wounded. In forty-eight hours, the conglomerate's total worth had been diminished by seventy million, perhaps as much as a hundred million… and rising.

His aerospace interests in the UK, the US and Europe had, without exception, been damaged, perhaps beyond repair. Like some computer virus the doubts and the rumours had spread to contaminate the parent company and his other industrial and construction interests.

His hand shivered on his chin, but he stilled it through an effort of will.

Tim Burton's two 494s were still almost empty, shuttling around Scandinavia, but that was pitifully small comfort. His prospects were, albeit slowly, brightening.

The 494 was a largely rehabilitated aircraft and a cheap one, unlike Sky liner.

He recovered the telephone and dialled a number as he walked to the table. Fraser answered almost immediately.

"You'll need to speak to our man again," Winterborne announced.

"What he did for us with the fuel computer system was clever, but not clever enough."

"Agreed. Couldn't have anticipated—"

"Perhaps not. It's still not good enough. I think our man should be on site on the next occasion."

"Next? How-what?"

There are two aircraft of the same type still flying in Scandinavia."

They don't have the same system on board—"

"I don't want the same, Fraser. Rather, something that is in truth undetectable. Talk to our man."

"How long do I have? What kind of budget?"

Two days. And what it costs within reason."

"OK. I'll be in a position to report this evening."

Winterborne put down the telephone, already examining the exhilaration that had buoyed him as he spoke to Fraser. He was habitually nervous of the instinctual, as if such responses were immature or dangerous to himself. And yet there seemed he buttered a triangle of toast no other immediate solution. Another 494 had to fall from the sky, Vance had to be driven to bankruptcy… The shares he had recently acquired in two of the largest charter-flight companies would give him the necessary leverage to insist on their leasing a small fleet of Skyliners. Once the aircraft were in service, once the word-of-mouth spread, then Skyliner might yet be salvaged. If there was competition only with Boeing's new aircraft, due in another year or eighteen months, market share might mean something real, by then. If Vance's big, cheap plane had been removed from the board.

He crunched his teeth against the pleasant bitterness of thick marmalade as he sat himself before his kedgeree. The Chinky playing at English gentleman again… Another school taunt. They returned in his dreams, usually when he was stretched, uncertain, struggling.

He began the kedgeree the housekeeper had prepared. Opened the newspaper's pink, restrained pages. Prices had dipped further in Aero UK, Winterborne Holdings, a dozen other companies in which he had a heavy investment and a major influence. Events were a series of detonations under his fortifications ones to which he had reacted too slowly and indecisively. He should have bought into the charter market much earlier, to protect the Skyliner. He should not have believed the protestations of politicians regarding the MoD's choice of helicopter.

He had left himself dangerously exposed to the virus of lost confidence in the City and among the institutions.

Until now. Fraser must buy him the man who would buy him the time. And remove the 494, Vance and Burton from the game.

"Well?" She was as eager as a child, as he held up his hand in a mocking plea for patience." Come on, Kenneth what have you got for me on our Mr. Fraser?"

"My dear girl how your father ever coped with your impatience I shall never know!" Then, mischievously: "More coffee, Marian?"

"Hand it over! Nottiie coffee pot."

"Ah." He lit the first of the half-dozen cigarettes he allowed himself each day and the first of the absolute maximum that Mrs. Grey would tolerate in competition with the summer air through open windows and the constantly renewed cut flowers then he opened a buff folder on his knees.

"Here we are. Everything to him who waits or her."

They were seated in two armchairs near the open French windows. Traffic noise was muted and there was, in reality or imagination, the scent of roses from the Park. Despite her impatience, she luxuriated in his company, in the room's familiarity and security.

"Our Mr. Fraser has been quite busy since he left the service just a little more than three years ago. Just before the redundancy notice

…" He ran his finger down the page.

"His positions have been among the usual ones," he continued, shaking his head. The Gulf States, body guarding and pandering to the paranoia of unelected sheiks swimming in oil… Cambodia… the expected kind of godless association with the Khmer Rouge and other unmentionables the Foreign Office has sometimes sanctioned, or at least ignored." His old features wrinkled more heavily in distaste.

"Were you always so moral?" she asked with some asperity.

"No. An old man's luxury with a lifetime's witness that immorality doesn't begin to solve the problem."

' Touche- a hit, a palpable hit."

"Anyway, seven or eight months in Cambodia and neighbouring Thailand, then a stretch in Singapore. Living a very sybaritic lifestyle while apparently spending his ill-gotten Cambodian gains. Then a return to Europe perhaps a year ago." He looked up, adjusting his glasses.

To do what, exactly?"

The usual. Contact or middleman for rather suspect arms deals, some industrial espionage…" He sighed.

"A man must go where the work is," he added acidly.

"Even if he is going to the bad by the same road."

"So, on the whole you're glad that Hyde's girlfriend came into money and saved him from this kind of thing?"

"On the whole, yes."

"Who employs Fraser at present? The Commission?"

"Not as far as I can tell." He smiled. Though it may be only a matter of time… No one seems to know. Obviously someone at that meeting. He is a director of a ne wish company, here in London Complete Security.

Industrial espionage, no doubt, and bodyguards to the rich, the crooked, the paranoid. Probably arms, too.

However, that is speculation. His sphere of operations seems to be the UK and Europe. At present."

"Who owns Complete Security?"

Aubrey shook his head.

"No one seems to know. In the main, it employs others of a like mind with Fraser." He paused, then said: These are not very pleasant people, Marian. I warn you to be careful. Very careful if, indeed, Fraser was responsible for your young man's death."

There aren't many people to suspect, are there?" Again, Aubrey shook his head, flicking the ash from his cigarette. The net curtains moved gently in the soft breeze from the Park. The illusion of flower scents again.

"So—? I ought to be able to discover which one it was without going anywhere near Fraser, shouldn't I?"

"Are you determined on this?"

"He was helping me."

"You did not cause his death."

"It's not that easy to dismiss. My theory got him killed, I think. Is that reasonable to you?"

"No. Fraser does not require a weighty reason before choosing to eliminate someone." She shivered.

"I'm sorry, my dear, but my past is my past the country's past in a small way. Things were done… Young Lloyd was merely there, that was enough—"

"But they must have had something very suspicious to hide — whoever employed him. Why not my version of what they're up to…?"

She paused, her mouth open.

"Exactly," Aubrey said coldly.

"A British company, a childhood friend of yours, a powerful French plane maker two senior European bureaucrats. One of them or more than one ordered a killing more ruthlessly than I ever would have done.

Now, perhaps, you see your dilemma, and your possible danger. The police report says accidental death, as do the newspapers. The incident is closed. You have no reason to make enquiries of any kind.

If you do, you will inform Eraser's employer that you possess information dangerous to him. Do I make myself clear?" He was leaning forward in his chair, his clawlike old hand gripping her wrist as fiercely as the talons of a hawk.

"I have no powers no people to watch out for your safety.

Because of that, I warn you not to give Eraser or his employer the slightest hint of your suspicions. Because, my dear, if you are right and there is massive corruption and misdirection of EU funds, then all the people at that meeting may be involved, including David Winterbornef He released her wrist. As she rubbed it soothingly, she nodded and said: "I'd already thought of that. But how can I stop?"

"I think you must, Marian. I really think you must. If it has been happening, it will soon end. The project is complete, even if a failure. This morning's Times expects Aero UK to collapse or be taken over—" That's no reason to stop!" she burst out.

"Not if they're crooks — surely?"

"Fraser is an actor in the drama. Stay away from Eraser, I beg you.

Whatever you do do nothing!"

It was late afternoon when Fraser halted the hired car a few hundred yards from the French farmhouse. He got out of the air-conditioned interior of the Renault into a balmy warmth that seemed to emanate from the small orchard, the slope of the land, the hills and dark, massed trees behind the house. There was no sign of Strickland.

"He is here, isn't he?" Fraser asked his companion.

The Frenchman nodded.

"I called him as soon as I finished speaking to you. He said he would be here all day."

"He's probably watching us through a telescopic rifle sight," Fraser muttered.

The youngish Frenchman brushed back his flopping, dark hair with one hand and laughed.

"Should he be quite as nervous as you suggest?"

"No. Come on, let's go and see him."

They opened the gate in the wooden post-and-rail fence that surrounded the two or so acres that belonged to the property. Fraser was still stiff from the flight to Bordeaux and the hour's car journey that followed. Resentful, too, of the imperious, dismissive manner in which Winterborne had issued his orders, demanded success. The Frenchman, Roussillon, had been waiting for him at Merignac airport, having flown down from Paris. In effect, both of them were simply obeying Winterborne's command. Even though Roussillon was employed by French counter-intelligence.

Around the property, the Dordogne stretched and heaped away abruptly.

The hills rose and pressed, the land fell away from them towards the thin streaks of meandering rivers. A litter of tiny villages was scattered across the landscape, nestling beneath hills crowded with dark trees, or hunched beside the rivers. There was the sense of gorges, of wilderness, too.

Then Strickland was in the doorway of the farmhouse, removing a pair of wire rimmed spectacles and squinting in the late-afternoon sunshine.

He was weaponless but alert, until his myopic eyes recognised Fraser.

The man's bulk was oddly at contrast with his patient silence and his mannerism of rubbing his eyes, head on one side, in a display of mild, innocuous curiosity. Then he stood aside, servant-like, gesturing them inside the house. The Frenchman's expensive leather shoes made clicking noises on the cool flagstones of the floor.

The scents of blossom, wood, polish. Strickland kept the farmhouse as neatly as any house proud woman might have done. He followed them in, again gesturing without words to tall-backed chairs in a stripped, plain wood around the heavy table. The kitchen area flowed smoothly into a sitting room lined with bookshelves and prints. A heavy, fringed carpet covered the flagstones; the windows, tall and narrow, looked towards the closest village perched on a hillside. Fraser sat down and Roussillon, his dark features still amused, sat opposite him.

"Coffee something stronger?" Strickland asked, already fussing to fill a cordless kettle on the kitchen work top His accent remained American, slightly southern in intonation, his voice as smooth and polite as a Mormon.

"Coffee for me," the Frenchman volunteered.

"Beer."

"Surely." Strickland bent his tall, muscular frame to the fridge. He poured the beer into a glass as the kettle began to bubble. When he turned back to his guests, he said half-apologetically: "I read the newspaper reports." His smile was boyish, selfdeprecating.

"I didn't take into account a pilot with that kind of insight. Well, truthfully, I didn't think of Gant at all."

He made coffee for himself and Roussillon and joined them at the table.

Fraser watched Strickland intently as if he might miss some sudden metamorphosis in the man. Yet Strickland continued to shrug apologetically, smile ingratiatingly.

Fraser's various meetings with the American had all, without exception, left him more puzzled than before. The man killed people but behaved like a pastor and there seemed no evident hypocrisy. Perhaps the explanation lay in the fact that Strickland always killed long-distance, removed people he had never even seen.

"What can I do for you?" he asked eventually, though not with any suggestion that he had tired of waiting for them to speak.

"A repeat performance," Fraser announced, finishing his beer.

"Another?"

Thanks." When Strickland returned with a second can, he said: "My employer needs another tragic accident."

"How soon does he need it?"

"Quickly."

"I don't usually follow the stock market, except as regards my own portfolio," Strickland explained, 'but your phone call didn't take me off-guard. The price is two hundred thousand. Non-negotiable."

"It has to be done on site."

Strickland appeared alarmed. A large black-and-white cat appeared through the open kitchen window and lowered its forelegs into the sink in order to drink, its back feet still on the windowsill.

That isn't the way I work."

"Not normally, no. But two hundred thousand isn't a normal fee, either. And there's the pressure of time, my friend." Even to himself, he sensed his accent thicken as his voice darkened. Strickland seemed unimpressed by implicit threat.

"Why the rush? OK, don't answer that. Stocks and shares. Loss of blood, internal haemorrhage, even. Yes, there would be a desire to hurry… but I don't work in that way. It's too messy."

Roussillon murmured: There could be more money perhaps as much as another fifty thousand."

Strickland glanced swiftly at Fraser and realised that the two men were not engaging in some negotiating ploy. Fraser was surprised.

"Out of the petty cash, Michel?" he sneered.

"I didn't realise the DST were chipping in to bale my employer out or I'd have kept something back for myself." He laughed. The French Intelligence officer smiled and shrugged.

"I wish Mr. Strickland to feel we value him, Robert. Merely I that'

"And Balzac-Stendhal will, in any case, pay the price. You I won't be left short."

Strickland left his chair and walked to the window. He began absently stroking the cat, who was still half-immersed in the sink, licking at the drops of water the tap had spilt. While it licked, it purred.

Fraser thought there was something reluctant about the man's posture, something like the merest suggestion of an internal argument, violent and intense. Then he turned to face them.

Three hundred thousand. For an on-site operation and one that is untraceable, even by someone as clever as Gant."

That was the pilot Vance used, right?"

Strickland nodded.

"Yes. An accident investigator, too. He could appear in the play again. I'll bear it in mind, this time."

"You know him? Was he CIA, too?"

"From time to time. When things needed to be flown."

"Oh, yes. I remember him now. Another of Aubrey's cowboy operators. I was working for Far East desk in those days. I wondered where I'd heard the name before."

"You should try reading newspapers with information rather than bosoms," Roussillon commented.

"One learns such things from such newspapers."

"When must this operation be completed?"

Two days three at the outside."

That quickly?" Strickland pondered, his large hands knuckled on the knotted, scratched wood of the scrubbed table. After some moments, he announced: "I've been working on some refinements to that fuel computer malfunction."

The copyright remained with you, according to the contract."

"As always. I've had one or two other ideas since I got back. Perhaps you could make yourself comfortable? Give me an hour or two and I'll give you a definite answer. If I can do it, then I'll accept for three hundred thousand. But I'd like to make certain. Help yourselves to coffee, beer, anything else. You'll stay to dinner?"

He walked to the door, then added: The work you bring is always

Challenging. I like that. I won't keep you long—" Fraser watched his large frame disappear from the doorway. The early-evening sunlight spilt innocently into the kitchen, haloing the cat's fur as it followed Strickland towards a large converted barn behind the house.

"Shall I be mother?" Fraser asked, waggling the kettle at Roussillon.

"Merci, mon ami." Roussillon stretched luxuriously.

"I feel so comfortable here," he observed, yawning and linking his hands together at arm's-length above his head.

"As if the place belonged to my grandmother."

"Instead of a psychopath with a genius for sabotage? I know what you mean—" The kettle began to steam.

"It was the good fortune of the private sector that the CIA could never prove he blew up his own Head of Station with a car bomb. I wonder what the guy had done to annoy him?"

"Probably the man did not like cats?"

"It would be enough," Fraser agreed.

"I always feel around Strickland that I'm around a polite cobra." He laughed.

"D'you think he'd be offended if we checked under the car when we leave?" He handed Roussillon his coffee, sipped at his own.

"Cheers. Here's to him and to us. And to the private sector. Free enterprise."

"Ah, Fraser how could I join such a toast? I am a servant of the state."

"First, last and always?"

"Of course."

"If I'd worked for a service like the DST, I think I might have stayed in and waited for the pension." He sipped again at his coffee.

"It's so much easier when defence of the realm the territoire-and the national interest coincide exactly with what every businessman wants.

When the security service can do anything it likes, just so long as another Froggie benefits!" Roussillon scowled.

"We had Protestantism, though," Fraser continued.

"Puritanism, conscience, guilt. And however much you try to keep them out of intelligence work, they always turn up to spoil the party… unlike your lot. If you want to blow up the Greenpeace boat, you just go ahead and do it, for example—" That was the DGSE, not DST.

Intelligence, not Security."

"Sorry," Fraser mocked. Then he asked: "D'you think Strick-land's a good cook?

Worth staying for dinner, would it be?"

She paused in the Close and looked up at the three spires of the small market town's cathedral. The darkening air above seemed filled with wheeling swallows. Marian breathed deeply, unaffected by the meaning of the building, touched only by the swallows. One skimmed near her head. The choirmaster, whom she recognised, smiled in her direction as he hurried towards the west door. She walked on after a few moments, hands thrust into the deep pockets of her flared yellow skirt, her head bent as if to study her flat slippers or the uneven cobbles.

She left the Close and walked beside the minster pool. Children were being encouraged to feed ducks; the sullen, empty noises of early drunks echoed across the water. A winding street of medieval houses, mostly craft shops and cramped coffee houses, meandered towards the market square containing the banks, building societies, the cheap shoe shops and the church that had become a craft and visitor centre. She turned beside the pool, beneath darkening trees, her mood almost tranquil. Michael Lloyd's funeral was the middle of the following week and she could not attend. It had been awkward and guilty, the act of telling the aunt in Crewkerne that she would not be there.

The market town that was also a cathedral city in a polite, impoverished imitation of one of the cathedral cities of southern England was on the eastern edge of the constituency. Recently bloated by a small industrial estate and new executive housing — street upon street of declamatory triple garages and barbecue patios it had become a commuter suburb for the raw, sprawling industrial conurbation to its west and south. Some of the poorer council estates and tower block encampments of the conurbation fell within the boundaries of her constituency, as did rural pockets of north Warwickshire.

Marian had won the constituency during a general election, inheriting it from a knight of the shire who had succumbed — they said either to complete inertia or to an apoplectic fit brought on by the thought of the sheer physical and mental effort of continuing the Thatcherite revolution. She smiled at the recollected joke, first relayed to her by her party agent, Bill.

She had spoken to Bill before leaving the small flat she rented, in a building that clung like ivy to the cathedral close but which a local builder had bought up, knocked about and recreated as three executive apartments… that word again. She was on her way to meet that builder at one of the town's new, anonymous wine bars which catered for the influx of executives to the town's new estates.

The man had left a message on her answer phone He seemed both angry and hesitant, secretive and outraged. She had agreed that, since he could not possibly, under any circumstances, be in the town the following morning and attend her regular surgery, she would give him an hour that evening. After all, she quite liked the flat and the rent was not exploitative. His workmen came quickly to effect minor repairs. She only vaguely wondered whether, since he was a minor contractor on the Urban Regeneration Project, it was something to do with that Venice of the Midlands grandiosity.

Gnats rose in slow, smoky columns above the still water of the pool. A duck followed her desultorily for a few yards along the bank on the other side of the low iron railings that fenced the water. Then she mounted steps and turned into a pedestrianised street of narrow, tall houses whose upper storeys seemed to rest uncertainly on a video hire shop, restaurants, an electrical retailer and the wine bar.

Ray Banks waved to her from a window seat, climbing immediately to his feet, his stomach brushing the table, his florid tie almost draping itself into his glass of house white. He seemed eager and dubious as he took her hand.

"A glass of white would be fine," she murmured, seating herself.

There's only a trace of antifreeze in the bouquet." Her smile was not returned. Banks seemed inordinately mortified, as if he had committed some serious social gaffe.

"Cheers," she offered when he returned with the glass.

"Cheers," he replied gloomily. There was the self-consciousness of a man seeking her good offices, even influence, about him.

Marian lit a cigarette and considerately waved the smoke away from Banks.

Empty laughter from the street outside and the bark of a dog.

"Your phone call sounded urgent," she prompted.

"Sorry I couldn't make it tomorrow didn't want to put you out…

Marian." He always approached the familiarity of her name as he might have done an explosive device. His hobby was war-gaming; her father's military career rendered him deferential towards her together with his lack of assurance when in the company of successful women. His wife and two teenage daughters seemed to Marian to have remained, mentally, in the back-to-back where the Bankses' married life had begun, when Ray had been a jobbing building with one workman, a decrepit truck and an overdraft. 'I — er…"

"Yes?" She tried to sound casually interested. Now, Ray had a dozen vans and small trucks, a building supply business, a successful industrial contracting company.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" She was reluctant to make the offer, but intrigued by his hesitancy.

"Dunno I, well… I'm in trouble. The company, that is. I just don't know what's going on…"

Marian was careful to exclude all expression from her features. A youth stared at her through the window, then, probably assessing her age beneath her good looks, passed on with a shrug. The conversation of the wine bar revolved around money, football, barbecues, sun beds step aerobics and sex. Ray Banks wanted her intercession in some matter; a favour.

Her thoughts wandered to her conversation with her agent.

The local party chairman had been badgered again by Central Office with regard to her profound Euroscepticism. The PM was endlessly and yet again calling for unity; which meant silence from all who disagreed.

There was a women's coffee morning after surgery, an encounter with the remnants of blue rinse loyalty and the fanatical devotion to whatever leadership was in place of the bottle-blonde, sun bed new generation of local committee-women who were the inheritors and perhaps even the daughters of the blue-rinse matrons.

'… bankrupt," she heard, startled into attention. His features indicated that he understood she was inappropriately unheeding.

"I'm sorry, Ray, but I don't understand," she recovered. Things have been bad in the construction industry, I know, but—" 'I didn't come for the party line," he replied sourly, then immediately altered his expression to one of apology. There's work, but there's no bloody money for it.

That's what's wrong — Marian."

"Cash flow, is that it?"

"Cash flow? There's not a bloody trickle, I can tell you!"

"But you've work?"

He nodded vehemently.

"If you can call it that. I've got contracts is more like the truth."

He sipped viciously at his wine and drops spattered the florid tie and the lapels of his grey suit. She blew smoke at the ceiling. He continued: "It's this bloody Millennium Project the Venice of the Midlands crap! I won supply contracts, grants, contracts for construction… it all looked bloody marvelous on paper which is where most of it stayed, on paper!"

"Money from Brussels hasn't materialised?"

"It did, at first. Trickle-down economics at its best money trickling down from the main contractors, handed out to them by the appropriate officials and departments. Wonderful artists' impressions and architects' models, great site clearance lots of hype… We were all over the bloody moon, for months!" He paused, staring into his empty glass.

"You ready for another?" She shook her head.

"Won't be a mo—" The Millennium Project was vast and crucial to the conurbation. Only a tiny fragment of the huge urban redevelopment fell within the boundaries of her constituency some canal side prettifying, some executive apartment buildings from resurrected waterside factories and warehouses, a small part of the huge leisure complex around the canal basin. The rest of the development the symphony hall, the conference centre, the office blocks and living and playing acreage, the new roads, the airport expansion… all lay outside the constituency. Thankfully, she had always thought, taking into account her own Euro-sceptic credentials and the hundreds of millions that Brussels was pouring into the entire project. Wise old birds with long experience of Whitehall and Westminster murmured, out of the hearing of Whips and Permanent Secretaries, that it was simply a way of bribing the most sceptical electorate in Europe that the EU was a good thing, a source of endless bounty.

She was not disinclined to believe such judgements. Now — unfortunately, she considered one of her constituents had brought the problem to her doorstep.

What problem—?

Banks returned to the table, making it scrape on the flag-stoned floor of the wine bar as he clumsily, angrily sat down. This time, he had bought a bottle of the house white. He drank greedily and refilled his glass at once, waggling the bottle at her. She nodded, out of insinuation, and he topped up her glass. Marian lit another cigarette.

"What precisely is wrong, Ray?" she soothed.

"Bloody everything!" he announced in a hoarse whisper, leaning across the table at her almost in challenge.

"Look, I raised this matter' his Midlands accent had become more pronounced, as if he was consciously reinventing a former self, the rough, pushy, relatively honest jobbing building from the Black Country

'at the last meeting with the main contractors. Fat lot of bloody use that was!" He seemed to become distracted by his anger.

"I could have sold the business five years ago for over two million you know that? I didn't. Bloody my business and it stays my business, I thought. Wish I bloody had, now!"

"What's wrong?" she insisted. The undisguised emotion, the sense of a long perspective of bitterness, intrigued her further.

"The main contractors asked me to be patient! The grants or whatever from Brussels had been delayed, they were in the bloody post or something!" Despite himself, he grinned.

"I told 'em I thought they were hanging on to the money and us small fry could get stuffed, just so long as the flash projects were on schedule! They didn't like that!"

"Neither would I," she murmured, 'if I had a knighthood and an income of three quarters of a million a year and sat on the boards of four other companies." He returned the smile.

"No, not Sir Desmond only the whole bloody gang of 'em. Banks, the local politicians, the main contractors, the architects. Yes, the bloody symphony hall's on schedule, and the most pricey apartments, the office blocks. That's the facade.

There's bugger all being done on other parts of the project. Piles of bricks and mountains of conduits lying around. Bloody scandal! And us poor buggers not getting paid, not even being allowed to get on with the first stages. So I'm left hanging on by my balls with the bank manager trying to climb up my backside to pull my teeth out!" His features were crimson, then suddenly abashed.

"Sorry…"

"Could you really become bankrupt?"

Two months at most." He refilled his glass.

"Two bloody months before they wipe out twenty bloody years. And I'm not on my own. There's dozens of chippies and sparks, all small firms, suppliers and fitters, carpet, lighting, double-glazing… I was speaking for them as well as myself."

"How much isn't being done to time?"

"About twenty-five per cent, maybe more… half a billion? A third, anyway. There's local money, from the councils, not up front yet. But that's normal for those tightfisted buggers. And the Brussels money.

Fifty, sixty million that's not appeared monthslale."

"You want me to make a fuss, is that it?" His eyes glowed, as if he had somehow encountered a movie actress long admired.

"Questions in the House, see the Minister, invite someone in front of the Select Committee…?" He was nodding as eagerly as if she were proposing a series of increasingly bizarre erotic fantasies.

"Could you? I mean would you?"

"I don't see why not. I'd like more information before I do, though and no, not this evening. I have a lot of preparation for my surgery tomorrow. Can I ring you next week?" It was as if she had whisked away the prospect of sexual gratification, and with it his wallet. His lugubrious disappointment amused Marian.

"I will ring you, Ray don't worry."

Reluctantly, he acquiesced, then burst out:

"You could try asking them to stop putting the frighteners on, too, while you're at it!" His voice was barely above a fierce whisper, his face close to hers, his breath rancid with cheap wine. His sincerity was not in doubt, nor was his sudden, unnerved fear.

"I don't like it—"

"What's happening? What sort of thing?" There was a momentary image, no more than a single, subliminal frame of film, of Lloyd's body. There was the same impression of endangerment about Banks' words, the sweat on his damp brow, his high colour.

Two small companies a sparks and an air-conditioning contractor.

They've both had recent fires at their premises. Yobbos, the police say. Vandals." He breathed noisily.

"A car followed my Sandra home from school the other day. She couldn't get the number because it was covered up with mud, she said. I believe her!"

Until that moment, the room their conversation had inhabited had been familiar, and furnished as she would have expected, with all the glossy appurtenances of graft, fraud, bribery. Banks seemed to have pushed her through a door into another, unfamiliar room, where arson had occurred and a schoolgirl had been terrified on her way home.

"Should I believe her?" she asked carefully.

"The car was there the next day, too!"

"When exactly was this?"

"After I ballocked the board meeting. After I threatened to write to the papers, talk to you." His breathing was louder than his voice.

She pushed her hair away from her face. The place seemed suddenly hot and noisy with empty conversations. Yet it was the wine bar that should have seemed normal, Banks' accusations wild and improbable.

Except for Michael Lloyd's body on the carpet, seen through his letter box, and a girl followed twice by a strange, anonymous car, and two cases of arson.

"When were the fires?"

"Afterwards."

After I threatened to… talk to you, she remembered, her stomach fluttery.

Whatever you do, do nothing, Kenneth Aubrey had pleaded.

Kenneth's world had been very real for forty-five years, for the duration of the Cold War. It had been her father's world in part, too.

It had never impinged on her until that moment. Now, the sense of threat was palpable, as if she had become one of Kenneth's agents, and had placed herself in some vague but immediate danger.

"You bloody come and see what a pig's ear the whole bloody project is behind the fancy facade!" Banks challenged.

"Come and see for yourself then tell me where all the bloody money's gone!"

The office of the deputy director of the NTSB, Jack Pierstone, was on one of the middle floors of the Federal Aviation Administration building on Independence Avenue. Its windows looked towards the Smithsonian, then across to the Mall, the Washington Monument and the Ellipse. The view was like an enhanced, wide screen version of that from his own cramped office. The Washington Monument was bathed in a reddish-gold glow and the part of the Reflection Pool he could see looked like the strip on the reverse of a credit card.

Gant stood stiffly to attention, as if before a military hearing of braided and bemedalled senior officers. He'd done that, too, more than once. Jack Pierstone was having more problems than those senior officers, floundering and blustering as he tried to find the words with which to fire a hero.

'… didn't need this kind of publicity-seeking, this idea we offer insurance and backing to failing airline manufacturers," Pier-stone was saying as Gant continued to stare over his head at Washington.

He offered no assistance, no mitigation, but stood as unmoving as when, all those years ago, a general had hung the Medal of Honor around his neck. He was waiting until whatever was to happen to him was over. His eyes were narrowed against the low sun, not against the situation.

Vance had screwed up his life once more. The thought was as quick as the spurt of blood from a fresh wound. Then, almost at once, the cynicism of the thought What Ye stilled any sensation of pain.

"You took totally unreasonable and unsanctioned risks. You played personalities with this thing." Pierstone's voice was becoming stronger with the outrage of embarrassment and self-justification.

"The TV business it was like an endorsement. You had no authorisation to interfere with a South-Western accident investigation or to wilfully disobey standard procedures. Allot which come before the FBI's allegations…" Once again, the engine of his indignation was on the point of stalling. Gant realised that Pierstone had looked at him and seen again the uniform and the medal, maybe even the flying suit.

"I have to suspend you, Mitchell. These are serious charges, especially the FBI investigation. I can't do anything less."

Gant allowed the silence to continue, to build like the approach of a storm.

Eventually, he said quietly: I'll resign, Jack. It's easier all around." He did not look at Pierstone's small, coiled frame behind the desk, preferring the images of the Smithsonian and the spike of the Monument and the reddish glow of the sun. The thin clouds above the city had moved away like slow fish during the minutes of the interview.

Pierstone cleared his throat, fidgeted with papers on his desk.

"I don't know—"

"Yes, you do, Jack. If this had been for Boeing or McDonnell, maybe a blind eye would have been turned. For an airplane-maker important enough to the economy, we'd have been there like locusts. And hell, why not? It's all for the country and we can wrap ourselves in the flag. It's our job, our patriotic duty, to help out.

Unless it's someone like Vance, maybe—" That's unfair and you know it!"

"Maybe it is. Besides, Jack, you can't be expected to override the Bureau. The FBI could be waiting on Independence Avenue right now to make an arrest. Nobody in Federal employment needs that kind of publicity."

Gant looked down at the desk for the first time. Tiny images of the sun, the museum and the Monument were superimposed for a moment on Pierstone's forehead and cheeks like tattoos.

"I resign, Jack. I'll put it in writing and take my chances with Mclntyre. He's not too bright maybe he'll screw up the investigation, who knows?" His smile was wintry.

"He's just motivated by his own failings, after all. The only reason he didn't get to "Nam was for medical reasons, otherwise he'd have been the first to volunteer. You know how the song goes, Jack."

Pierstone himself had flown in "Nam earlier in the undeclared war than Gant himself, flying bombing missions from offshore carriers. Before the US had gotten into defoliation and bombing Cambodia and the Ho Chi Minh trail. Pierstone, as if the past were some kind of bond between them, grinned sourly and nodded.

"Sure."

I'll go draft a letter."

"OK, Mitchell. I'm — er, sorry…"

"I know."

Gant turned away from the windows and the desk and the man behind it.

At the door, he heard Pierstone murmur:

"You take care, you hear."

Gant waved his hand without turning round.

"Sure."

Even before the door closed behind him, he felt the awareness of another failure surround him like a sudden, thick mist. Another screw-up in a life with more past than future. He passed through the outer office and into the corridor with quick, somehow leaden footsteps.

As he waited for the elevator to the foyer, he felt he wanted to silently scream. He could not be certain whether its cause was Mclntyre's malice, Vance's ox-dumb stupidity in paying money into his bank account, or the sensation of the empty apartment that waited for him. That, and the sense of the aimless days he would be spending there.

CHAPTER FIVE

Social and Anti-Social The effect of money had worn away as easily as that of a sedative. Strickland once more confronted his fear of hurry.

Because of urgency, he had had to fly into Oslo's Fornebu airport direct, rather than to Stockholm or Copenhagen, or even Bergen, where he could have approached the target obliquely and anonymously.

He had disguised his departure from France by flying from Bordeaux to

Geneva, then by changing flights and airlines again at Frankfurt before the journey to Oslo.

But, somewhere, for someone who might look, there was the record of his arrival at Fornebu, the scene of his sabotage. Even with a false passport and identity, a stooping walk and greyed hair and a moustache that aged him a decade, he had arrived in Oslo.

He sat in the arrivals lounge, sweating in his crumpled linen suit, his cabin bag beside him, regretting with venomous bitterness the greed so it seemed to him now that had swept aside his habitual, talismanic caution, his profound resolve that he did not work on site, he must be always hands-off. It was his only, but his adamantine, rule of engagement; his code of professional conduct. It had been forged in the aftermath of a debacle when not only had his own bomb almost killed him but the opposition had been waiting for him. Since then, he had always created while others placed his devices in position. He should not have broken his own code…

His nerves jangled, his body temperature fluctuated as if he were passing through the rooms of a bath-house, from sauna to cold dip to sauna again. He glimpsed, like an arachnophobe might have seen in a shadowy corner a large and poisonous spider, his fear of Winterborne and his gofer, Fraser. It was the same fear that had broken in upon him after Fraser and Roussillon had left the farmhouse.

He'd cooked them a Dordogne peasant stew, served them wine and coffee, signed the contract, received the down payment, seen them from the premises. With the washing-up done and the cat on his lap, he had suddenly sat bolt upright in his chair as the last of the daylight darkened outside. The cat had scratched his thighs in surprise.

Strickland had realised that he had been afraid not to agree, afraid not to take the money. Winterborne, using Fraser as his mouthpiece, had effectively insinuated that they would kill him without hesitation if he did not assist them… despite their knowledge that he stored, in a safety deposit box in Rome, meticulous and incriminating records of every assignment he had carried out.

Against Winter-borne, he was certain that evidence no longer offered a guarantee of his safety.

So, he had agreed. The price-hike had been a mere formality.

He glanced up. The long northern evening lay like a golden cloud over Oslo and the sloping land with the narrow Oslof jord beyond it. The panoramic windows of the passenger lounge let in too much landscape and seemed to expose him as the only still, fixed figure in the lounge's terrain.

Simple job… your own cleverness… The fragments of his self-assurance glinted like a window shattered by an explosion, but would not cohere. An airliner lifted into the evening, turning orange-red then golden then silver as it rose into the rays of the low sun, navigation lights winking. Beyond the main runway were the airport's maintenance hangars, liveried planes dotted around them.

Simple job… The replacement fuel computer system circuitry lay innocuously inside his PC, in the cabin bag. Simple job… your cleverness… The papers that described him as an engineer with Vance Aircraft were in his pocket. One of the two Vance 494 airplanes was in a maintenance hangar for overnight checks before resuming its schedule of shuttle flights around the Scandinavian capitals… Simple job, then, to appear overalled beside it, to replace the fuel computer board with his own, which contained the redoctored chip which would jettison the fuel while the instruments continued to read normally… and which would now reconfigure itself on impact or engine-stop, declaring itself to be harmless, fully operative. This time there would be no trace, no ability to outguess him and recognise sabotage… simple.

He breathed a little more easily, his chest less asthmatic ally tight with the tension that Winterborne, his location, his immediate future all generated. It was that simple. One more appalling crash and the

494 would be consigned to aviation notoriety and history. Gant could not this time interpose nimble-mindedness and experience between his design and execution. It would all happen with the functional reliability of an electronic component. Perhaps two dozen people would die, since passengers were reluctant still to trust the 494. The carnage would be minimal stand-by tourists and commuters but sufficient. The 494 would be grounded, Vance Aircraft would collapse, imploding under the pressure of the banks, the NTSB, the European politicians.

He admired Winterborne's ruthlessness. However, after this, he would walk away.

Disappear for a time. One of his other bolt holes rather than the Dordogne farmhouse whose tranquillity he so much valued.

Strickland glanced at his watch. Eight in the evening. They'd be working on the 494 for most of the night. He had time for a meal. Yes

… his stomach seemed much less unsettled since he had refused the plastic tray of food on the flight from Frankfurt. He stood up, picked up his bag, and began searching the overhead signs for the location of the restaurant. Simple job… The long Georgian facade of Uffingham was floodlit against an orange sunset as her constituency agent's Land Rover came out of the avenue of oaks and the house surprised her, as it always did, with memories and its own beauty. It was, in Pevsner, the most beautiful house in Warwickshire, perhaps the entire Midlands, and to her it was utterly precious.

She had spent many of her childhood holidays there, with or without her parents, depending on Daddy's postings and Mummy's eagerness or reluctance to accompany him. She had, in an important sense, grown up there, perhaps even more so than David Winterborne and his brother.

Clive Winterborne's family had owned the house for six generations someone in their military, clerical and political ancestry had been in trade, she often reminded Clive, to have afforded such a house and estate in the middle of the last century; its building and inhabitation having bankrupted the gentrified Whig family who had created Uffingham.

Clive had inherited the house from a bachelor uncle, having refused all interest except his massive shareholding in the Winterborne commercial empire, founded and web-centred in Singapore in the heyday of political empire. Instead, he had fallen into the role that nature, looks and habit seemed to have designed him for, that of paternalistic country gentleman. His Eurasian wife, whom Marian always had difficulty remembering which saddened her had returned to England with him after the army in Malaya and elsewhere. Just as he had wanted nothing to do with Winterborne Holdings, so he had disdained MoD, even against her father's blandishments. Instead, he had given himself, increasingly and with a seeming urgency after the death of his beloved wife, to good works… one of which had been to persuade her, so he always maintained, to first stand for the constituency.

Is it in your gift? she had asked. Laughing, he had replied, Probably.

She smiled now, remembering, as the Land Rover climbed the curving drive up to the house. A long stone balustrade, like a fortress' ramparts, contained the forecourt and the house as it looked southwards over farmland. The vehicle passed a huge urn sprouting a profusion of summer colour, and began threading its way across the gravel between the litter of Rolls Royces, Porsches, BMWs, Volvos and four-wheel drive executive weekend vehicles. Chauffeurs lounged against dark limousines.

Marian was grateful to breathe in the fresh evening air.

Swallows swooped about the house and she heard the screams of mobbing swifts.

She caught a glimpse of them flicking amid the forest of chimneys. The

Vanbrugh facade, cream in memory, was garish in the floodlighting. The doors beneath the portico were wide and lights spilled out. She could hear faint music, fainter than the rustle of Bill's wife's acres of taffeta and silk as she climbed from the high front passenger seat. The gorgeous redundancy of material in the gown, and its ladybird colours of red and black, rendered her own costume more mannish than ever. She had decided on her close impersonation of a man's dinner jacket and trousers, her hair tied back in a brief, bushed tail, her waistcoat shimmering like petrol in a pool of water.

"OK, Pat?" she asked as the central locking bleeped to Bill's satisfaction. His wife glanced up, as if the creases of travel in her gown were a matter of reproof from Marian, then she continued smoothing the taffeta and silk into pre-inspection satisfaction. She evidently felt Marian's outfit the next most obvious declaration of sexual orientation to dungarees.

"Good!" Marian announced brightly, wishing for a cigarette. She had not smoked in the Land Rover out of deference to Pat's intense hatred of tobacco… but perhaps the mannish suit might relieve her jealous suspicions of Bill's relationship with her. Poor Bill… "You look gorgeous," he dutifully informed Pat, who visibly brightened. Then they were crunching over the gravel towards the house, mincing between Jaguars, a pair of matching Ferraris, down the tall alleyways of off-road vehicles clustered as thickly as at some large agricultural show. More thickly, she observed.

Bill appeared nervous, Pat suppressed like a water main on the point of bursting.

Two compliments at her gown, a peck or two on the cheek from the moneyed or notable, and she would become a swan, having been a self-conscious duckling.

Then Marian saw Clive, hovering beneath the portico as if he was unsure whether or not he had an invitation to his own house. Once he recognised her the smile at her outfit was immediate and gently sardonic, his widened eyes registering Pat's confection he seemed enlivened, certain.

She kissed his drawn, leathery cheeks as she had so often done, then he was shaking hands with Bill and Pat. David Winterborne, his features less patrician than those of his father, his eyes less welcoming, stood just behind Clive. Yet he, too, seemed to brighten, even if only at the memory of an old antagonism, as he saw her.

"Hi, Davey." The diminutive had always irritated him.

"Hi, Squirt."

They embraced almost by instinct, warily and briefly, yet with the warmth of the long-familiar. Then Clive was fussing them into the cavernous main hall, which extended from the front to the rear of the house. The columns, niches, statuary, the matching pair of Daniel Quare long case clocks were all so familiar to her that she almost turned off to the closed doors of the library or the drawing room.

The band is on the terrace, and the tent is on the lawn," Clive offered brightly, and she patted his arm. He, her father and dear Kenneth ranged themselves always in her imagination like great ancestral portraits, dwarfing the other men she had known, making them invidious by comparison.

"Kenneth's hovering somewhere near the musicians perhaps one day he may learn to enjoy Mozart!" Clive added, shaking his head mischievously.

Then: "I'm displeased with that father of yours, my dear why he needs to have a regimental reunion tonight of all nights, I do not understand!" Smiling, he shooed her onwards down the hall, towards the already apparent, slight and stooping figure of Kenneth Aubrey. Marian was struck, with a piercing sadness, by the age of the two old men, their decrepitude, as if it had been suddenly exposed by a bright, merciless light.

Almost in apology, she grabbed at Aubrey's arm and floridly introduced him to Bill and Pat the latter returning her attention from the portraits, busts and ornate plaster work Aubrey's knighthood seemed to work on her like rough liquor, quickly animating. Then the cool air of the terrace at the rear of the house and a glass of chilled champagne in her hand from a subtly, silently offered tray. A chamber orchestra, to one end of the terrace, was playing one of Mozart's serenades. Some more elderly guests were seated on folding chairs, attentive. On the great lawn below the terrace, a huge marquee festooned with lights seemed to swallow eager guests. She heard ducks from the lake, disturbed by the people making last-minute checks on the firework display. She remembered from her childhood how the explosions would frighten the ducks, as the lights and flares and colours reflected in the lake. Beyond, where darkness gathered, Warwickshire fell away from the rise on which Uffingham sat proprietorially in rolling farmland, the first few hundred acres of which belonged to Clive.

The Millennium Children's Fund, Clive's anti-Lottery inspiration, had brought out the great and good of the West Midlands in force, she acknowledged, nodding to two businessmen of her acquaintance and a matron recently ennobled for charitable works. A hundred and fifty pounds per head, food and fireworks and a tantalising glimpse of the kind of property old money still inhabited cheap at the price. There was even to be a disco after the fireworks, to the further perturbation of the wildfowl.

She gestured towards the marquee, squeezing Aubrey's arm and bending her head to whisper.

"You won't find the Tory party at prayer in the C of E any longer more likely in one of those."

"Mm there did seem to be a great many sports cars arriving earlier, I have to admit. Margaret's real children, I imagine?" He glanced at her, his faded eyes alight with mischief.

They're not in the Ferraris and the Porsches. Greed is still good only if it wears green wellies and drives an off-road vehicle," she responded. Wo politics. I warn you, Kenneth—" He pressed her arm against his side.

"Like all pensioners, I'm already hungry and inordinately interested in what is on offer," he said.

"You may help me down the steps."

"Very well. I shall wear you like a crucifix, it might help ward off the vampires—" She waved to someone, then her hand remained aloft as she said: "I've just seen the EU Commissioner for Urban Development the old apple himself."

"Laxton? Yes. I'm Clive's house guest, along with one or two other old decrepits.

He arrived this afternoon, as a guest of David. Along with his fellow Commissioner Rogier, your Euro MP counterpart, Ben Campbell, and a few other specimens. My room overlooks the front of the house. I saw them arriving what is it?"

These same people keep cropping up—" '-and always in connection with David. Quite."

A group passed them, the women tottering on the highest, narrowest heels on to the steps down to the lawn, the men busily engaged with the first champagne and the rear elevation of Uffingham.

"I think I might have a word with Ben Campbell, if I can find him in the crush. He may be indiscreet, drop a few hints…" She paused and swallowed, then added: "As to why the same men who were at the meeting observed by Michael Lloyd are meeting again. Mm?" Aubrey's face darkened with warning. Marian added brightly: "Come on, I'll get you a bun and a glass of milk before I set off in search of him!"

Why, she thought, as they descended the steps, are they here? The men who met in Brussels. Her suspicions altered her mood and seemed to change the familiar terrace and the lawn more than the erection of the marquee and the presence of the chamber orchestra. Gales of noise rose from the marquee and she heard the futile little protests of the wildfowl. The barking of dogs.

"Did you discover who owns Complete Security?" His manner seemed suddenly, inexplicably furtive.

"Kenneth?" she demanded. Aubrey shrugged.

"It um, it's a subsidiary of Winterborne Holdings, I'm afraid."

"I don't believe in coincidence do you?"

"I'd much rather you did, Marian," the old man warned.

She ignored him, her eyes alight.

"I wonder…" she breathed. But at once they were amid the distraction of a scrum of guests. The Lord-Lieutenant of the county and his large-bosomed wife, a scattering of local politicians and gentry like attendant lords swelling the scene. Small, louder-laughing groups of younger people, in gowns like modernist daubs that rustled of new money. The lights, candle like though they were, seemed to affect her; they or the noise, so that she paused until she regained her equilibrium. No… She must not wonder anything of the kind, for that would mean making connections between Michael Lloyd's death and people she knew, had grown up with… Unforgivable; impossible.

Gales of laughter like contrary winds blowing between the kind of reddened, inflated faces that used to feature in the corners of old maps. Here be monsters such warnings were imprinted for those who strayed out of the known seaways, the familiar trading routes. Here be… She craned her neck, trying to catch sight of Campbell. That would be somewhere to begin.

"I warned you, my dear," Aubrey whispered, clinging to her like a child might have done, but anciently aware of her thoughts, like a sibyl.

"You wouldn't have listened to you," she retorted. More laughter, callow and momentary, but now it seemed cruel, unfeeling.

"Should I?"

Acting was a skill at anonymity. He had always enjoyed the role-playing element of his intelligence career the cover stories, the false identities, the disguise of himself. Standing in the great open doorway of the cathedral of the maintenance hangar, that sense of satisfaction returned, like the rediscovery of an old pastime.

"Sure," he found himself easily announcing, 'girls in offices, they screw up. Alan Vance put me on a flight over here, and here I am. He's just making double sure, I guess." Then he waited patiently, the smile retained like a credential, as the chief engineer subcontracted by Artemis Airways once more studied his papers. A few moments later, he offered: "Call the number — make the check." Even that invitation to be unmasked seemed to come easily, with hardly any constriction in his throat.

The Norwegian engineer looked up at him, and nodded.

"Your guy was lucky, j'a?" he grinned. The Seventh Cavalry came to the rescue, and no mistake!"

"Sure." Understanding that he was accepted as the deputy chief engineer of Vance Aircraft in Phoenix, he moved forward, nudging the Norwegian into turning with him. They began walking.

"The system we used on these two, this one and its twin—" As the Norwegian compliantly kept pace with him, he gestured towards the 494, the engine cowling bared like a striptease artiste's shoulder. The plane was surrounded by the metal cages of gantries and inspection hoists, fussed at by perhaps half a dozen overalled figures as ceremoniously as women arranging flowers in a church, '-not the same as the one in the accident. But Al Vance wants me to make sure- there's too much to lose if anything goes wrong." He clapped his large hand on the man's shoulder.

"I won't get in your way. It's just the fuel computer I need to check over. Maybe an hour, maybe even less before I'm out of your hair."

"You want coffee?"

"Great."

I'll organise it. You just go ahead—" He waved towards the aircraft.

Strickland grinned at the man's retreating back, then stretched small nerves out of his frame. He was now dressed in a check shirt, denims, high-heeled boots, a leather jacket. Maybe they would expect to see a stetson, but his sense of understatement had refused the notion. Idly, he walked towards the four-storey dock which was positioned halfway along the fuselage of the 494. Metal ladders, metal handrails, making the aircraft appear imprisoned. He watched it move on its rails, the motors whining, creeping like the shadow of an elaborate gallows along the liveried fuselage. For Strickland, there was the satisfaction of machines, the smell of oils, of metals, the single-mindedness of the service engineers.

It was eleven-thirty by his watch. After his meal, he had hired a car in the name under which he had flown in. He would be away from Fornebu by twelve thirty claiming that he was booked into one of the airport hotels until his return flight to the US the following afternoon. Then he would drive to Larvik and catch the ferry for Copenhagen. He could fly direct to Paris, then on to Bordeaux… then he would disappear for a while.

The huge flanged wheels of the dock ground along their rails and men moved purposefully around the aircraft. He clambered up the steps to the open mouth of the electrics bay of the 494, swinging his cabin bag into the hard-lit space, his head and shoulders following. An electrical engineer turned to him, at first surprised then rendered docile and accepting by Strickland's confidence and the voice of the chief engineer from the foot of the steps.

"You want your coffee up there you ready to start right away?"

Strickland looked down from the hatch.

"Up here and thanks. I'll get right on to it. It was a long flight and the movie was terrible!" He grinned confidentially.

"I don't blame you Europeans complaining about American culture — man, that movie!"

"We pretty much enjoy American movies," the Norwegian replied, handing him the plastic cup. It burned his fingers and he set it down on the floor of the bay which lay beneath the first-class compartment. That's Jorgensen," he continued.

"You need his help?"

Strickland smiled at Jorgensen, then shook his head.

"It's just a coupla panels no trouble, nothing heavy to lift. Thanks, anyway—"

"Sure. I'll leave you to get on with it."

As soon as his head disappeared from the open hatch, Strickland held out his hand to the Norwegian electrical engineer.

"Cal Massey," he announced.

"Vance Aircraft."

"Sure."

Jorgensen took his hand briefly, then at once returned to his inspection of the auxiliary power unit. He whistled between his teeth, some low, crooning Norwegian dirge. Strickland sipped his coffee too much sugar, but then he hadn't specified as he sat cross-legged in the narrow, racked, luggage-compartment-like electrics bay. Thick bundles of wiring passed overhead and along the metal walls, ropy and multicoloured like the old diagrams in a school science lab of the human body's muscles, arteries and veins. Banks of switches, backup systems, relays, batteries in racked order, like a library of electronics. The slow, submarine growl of flanged wheels on rails came to him from the hangar as he sat, patient and absorbed as a boy brought there by some adult as a birthday treat.

Eventually, Jorgensen muttered: That's me finished." He stood up in the cramped space and stretched. That's what the manual calls for," he added, seeming to resent Strickland's silence, even his presence.

Of course, he was from Vance Aircraft… "It's just a five-hundred-hour overnighter I know that," he soothed.

"I'm not here to watch you, fella. I'm here because of what happened back in Phoenix."

"You know how that happened?"

"We do now thanks to that pilot. He worked it out. I'm just here to check there's nothing wrong with the fuel computer system on this baby."

Now that he was assured he was under no kind of examination, Jorgensen's thin features lost all interest. He yawned extravagantly.

"Maybe I'll catch the wife with her lover," he muttered, looking at his watch. He seemed possessed of the kind of gloomy northern temperament that expected such surprises. As if to confirm Strickland's impression, he added: "If the damn car starts. I had trouble with it this morning…" He was already descending the steps, then his shoulders and thin, narrow features disappeared through the hatch.

Strickland tossed his head in dismissive mockery, then swallowed the last of his coffee. He put down the plastic cup and dragged his cabin bag behind him as he crabbed on his haunches along the racks of boxes, batteries, wiring. He paused before the labelled rack holding the fuel management system.

Kneeling, he opened a small toolkit and began unscrewing the panel of the fuel computer, the twin of the model in his barn in the Dordogne.

Familiar as an often possessed body, supple and known under his touch.

He, too, began whistling through his teeth as he studied the relays, chips and circuitry.

Simple job… She was penned near one idly flapping wall of the huge marquee by the chairman of the local party, who conveyed to her with overbearing gravity and at great length the displeasure of Central Office. He had been rung at home by a party deputy chairman who was a former advertising executive. The chairman's wife, with fussy grace, was attempting to moderate her husband's effective impression of a patronising sexual chauvinist. Marian nodded and smiled and held herself erect with the intent vacuity of a mannequin, her wine warming in her grip, her plate of salmon and salad untouched. It would be rude to stuff one's face while being lectured. She forced the laughter from her eyes and made a vast effort to control her features.

"Absolutely, George," she agreed, nodding vigorously.

"Absolutely." The chairman was convinced that loyalty was something genetic, a measurement of the evolution of the species. The pressure of Central Office was mounting with each passing week of the summer, in anticipation of an autumn election. No one had decided a date, of course except perhaps that political manipulist, Events.

"Of course, I entirely agree not without proper consultation, not even when we're still thirty points behind in the polls." Her election agent's features sagged at the jibe. Pat, beside Bill and slightly in awe of the chairman's wife hers was older money and she was far better educated — was engaged in a pretence of interest in matters political.

The chairman was angry at an article Marian had written for the Telegraph on the European issue. His features were suffused with more than wine and food and the heat of the marquee.

"Just so, George," she offered into another long, slow pause in his harangue.

George was running out of steam. Not long now… There was already a general drift from the marquee to the lawns in anticipation of the fireworks.

Suddenly, as if his wife had decided that Marian's patience had been put to a sufficient test, she took the chairman's arm and murmured:

"Come on, dear I'd like a good view of the fireworks."

George seemed reluctant to let Marian slip, then patted his wife's hand and nodded.

"Goodbye, my dear. Think about—" But his wife was already drawing him away, a smile of genuine affection, even admiration for Marian on her lips.

The marquee continued to empty, the long trestles of food and the copious drink temporarily abandoned for the lawns and the lake. The ducks and wildfowl had, with the wisdom of foresight, long since retired to more distant water. Marian swigged at her Chablis.

"Phew crikey!" she said mockingly, smiling at Bill. Pat seemed puzzled, Bill irritated.

"I listened, Bill," she soothed, forcing a nod of admission from her agent.

Ben Campbell, the Euro MP for the constituency that contained her own, was approaching, shepherding a group which included Bryan Coulthard, the CEO of Aero UK. Another of the conspirators, she thought, the notion changing from amusement to chill in an instant. She waved at Ben Campbell over Bill's head, but he seemed intent on ignoring her and his party passed out of the marquee. She had seen the two EU Commissioners, too, from time to time, glimpsing them across the crowded marquee. Pleasure did not seem their pursuit, but she may have been mistaken.

"Hello, Marian!" she heard, as Pat was attempting to move Bill out on to the lawn.

She looked down. Pat seized the opportunity to distance herself from Marian.

"Hello, Sam." They shook hands.

"Sorry to mess you about cancelling our meeting, after ringing your office." Egan almost purred.

"It wasn't important then?"

"No. Forget it." He winked. Thought you could put in a word about… but the matter sorted itself out just after I called you." His smile was eager.

Sam Egan was short, plump, apparently jolly. A great many of his business rivals had been disarmed by his appearance and been taken up the garden path at the same time by the shrewd brain behind the innocent, slightly myopic eyes. His wife was sun bed-browned to a crisp, and there was too much middle-aged flesh revealed by her voluminous frock. She disliked Marian, seeming to distrust her husband's association with her. Egan's lump of a gold watch and his gold bracelets caught the subdued lights of the marquee. His face was shining.

She remembered, Sam Egan's company, Egan Construction, was heavily involved with the Urban Regeneration Project — mostly beyond the constituency, though he and his wife lived just outside the cathedral city. Had he experienced difficulties with cash-flow, like Ray Banks?

What had he wanted to see her about?

The remainder of Egan's party had already disappeared. One or two of the men, sleeked and coiffured, had glanced at her stature, her features, then seemed somehow disappointed at her mannish suit.

"Sam," she murmured, taking his arm and bending her lips to his ear, to Mrs. Egan's evident irritation, 'a little bird told me that there are funding problems on the Regeneration Project… Anything in it?"

His reaction surprised. A natural and comfortable assurance, a sense of his having eaten and drunk well but not to excess, was removed like a disguise. He was at once possessed of a suspicious, drunk like aggression towards her.

' Who told you?" It was as if someone had initiated a damaging rumour about his company or his sexual capacity. His hand gripped her arm, champagne spilling from his flute on to the sleeve of her suit.

"You don't want to listen to bloody rumours, Marian there's always a couple of whingeing buggers in the construction trade…" The words seemed like a mantra, recited to recapture calm, confidence, repose.

His smile faltered like a neon strip light then came on. There remained, however, an edge of warning in his voice.

"You don't want to listen to gossip, Marian. I'm surprised. You want to see it, some time. It's going to be a bloody marvel… We don't need people running it down — sounds like a London attitude to the Midlands to me!" The smile remained like that of the Cheshire Cat, but around it Egan's features hardened rather than disappeared. His eyes studied her flintily.

"Well, that's good news, anyway," Marian soothed and disarmed.

"Just what I was hoping to hear."

"Who's been bending your ear, Marian?"

' "The isle is full of noises"," she quoted, smiling.

"Just something I heard cash flow, late payments—" Egan's features distorted in a grimace of anger, then he masked it by raising his champagne flute to his lips.

The moment was tense, filled with suspicion, until it was defused by Egan's wife, who spotted a woman with a small role in a regional TV soap with whom she shared a hairdresser. Waving, she dragged Egan reluctantly away with her other hand. Little sparks of suspicion, even anger, played around his features like a dull St. Elmo's Fire as he departed.

The marquee was all but empty. It was no more than a moment or two before she replenished her plate with prawns and more salad, had her glass refilled. The encounter with Sam Egan clung about her like a chill mist. There had been knowledge, and the attempt to disguise it, in his eyes; the sense of secrecy.

Marian wandered out of the marquee into cooler air and the anticipatory noises of the guests. A smile slowly spread across her face as she walked towards the house. She knew exactly where she needed to be to watch the firework display, a window from which she had watched such events as a child.

Had Clive's Silver Wedding been one such occasion? The playroom window on the top floor of the house the idea amused and attracted her. She'd watched the domestic rituals of the gardens, the loves and quarrels and hoeing and planting, from that window. In the company of David and his long-dead brother… She climbed the steps to the rear terrace, pausing to look back at the floodlit guests like a corralled horde of peacocks and blackbirds. Then she entered the house. The housekeeper smiled at her with an old, affectionate familiarity, shrugging at the litter of abandoned glasses and plates obscuring the polish and inlay of eighteenthcentury tables. Marian shook her head in sympathy.

The long hall was deserted, silent after the babble outside. Then she heard a voice she recognised, and another so recently familiar, raised in quarrel. She hovered, feeling exposed and foolish in the middle of the hall, standing on a faded Persian carpet that covered the marble floor. She had no real sense why she had paused to listen. She had heard no distinct words, only David's raised voice and that of Sam Egan. Where—?

In the shadow of the staircase, only yards from her… It cantilevered over her head towards the gallery on her right, its other branch, like some great upended railway junction, leading to the rooms of the west wing. She moved stealthily, startled by the sound of her own name.

Except for the three of them, the hall was empty. She shivered as the first of the fireworks exploded to dutiful noises of acclaim and surprise. She pressed into the alcove on the opposite side of the staircase, hearing her name again.

'… Marian knows nothing!" That was David, the contempt clear in his tone.

"Whatever she's heard, or thinks she's heard, she knows nothing!"

"She's suspicious, I tell you," Egan persisted.

"I know when someone's trying to dig up information. She thinks there's something in the rumours—"

"Who's been speaking to her?"

"Could be anyone—"

"Keep your voice down!" David hissed.

Marian felt heated She had blundered into the conversation with Egan, disarmed by the occasion, and her own self-confidence.

"All right, all right. I just thought I'd better let you know."

"Because you panicked, Sam?" David mocked.

"Panic was why you called her the other day, wasn't it?"

"I thought—" '-she could or would help. Marian? A blessing I stopped you before you went bleating to her! Listen to me find out who may have talked to her. You know all the local subcontractors. It must have been one of them. Find out and let me know."

I'll do that," Egan reassured.

"Good. Now, go and see the fireworks before that wife of yours thinks you've sneaked up to a bedroom with one of the catering staff!"

Immediate footsteps. Then David added with contemptuous venom: The fireworks cost my father a small fortune. Try to enjoy them."

Marian pressed back into the alcove and the shadow of the staircase.

Egan passed her hiding-place without glancing in her direction, attracted by another explosion and a flash of multicoloured light that seemed to blow into the house like a stream of confetti. Weak-legged from tension, Marian sank on to a hard Caroline chair in the alcove and sipped furiously at her wine. More fireworks exploded.

Kenneth Aubrey tottered in from the rear terrace, his stick making severe tapping noises on the marble. He passed Egan in the doorway.

"Kenneth!" she whispered hoarsely, jumping from the chair, spilling the last drops of her wine.

Aubrey turned, half-startled, half-preoccupied. He was opposite the door of the library which she heard close with a heavy, comfortable sound. More fireworks, more exhaled wonder.

"Marian… What is it, my dear?" He glanced towards the library."

"In close recess and secret conclave"," he murmured.

"What?" Her nerves made her voice sharp.

"Oh, Milton. Your friends are all fore gathered in there. I glimpsed them as the door closed. A tight little group portrait. Laxton, Rogier, the Transport Commissioner, Bryan Coulthard, David, of course… and that Euro MP, what's his name—?"

"Ben Campbell. He is forgettable," she smiled.

"You look shaken in attentively so."

They were talking about me David and a builder who lives in the constituency.

I'd been talking to him a few minutes' before… What's going on, Kenneth?"

"What were they saying?" Aubrey asked heavily.

"About you?"

"Egan thought I was too suspicious about the possibility of fraud in the—"

"I warned you, Marian!" Aubrey snapped.

"You revealed your hand?"

"I didn't think-!"

Then do so now." He patted her arm as they leant together.

"Egan, the builder, thought I was trying to open a can of worms, that much was obvious. I asked him about cash flow, late payments. Things I'd heard doesn't matter from where. He jumped to everyone's defence then rushed to tell David I was asking awkward questions."

There was something more alert and hound like about Aubrey as he listened.

Concern for her, expressed as irritated anxiety, faded and was replaced by a voracious curiosity. He continually glanced towards the closed door of the library.

There is knowledge they are afraid you may possess. Concerning—"

"My fraud theory? You don't believe me at last?"

"Something, anyway and it involves money. Probably a very great deal of it."

The firework explosions were more frequent now, as if heralding some climax.

Flashes of coloured light were caught by mirrors, polished surfaces.

"Michael Lloyd…?" she remembered. Then, clearing her throat as Aubrey glanced anxiously at her, she said: "I spoke to a subcontractor yesterday, working on the Urban Regeneration Project. He believes he's being threatened, along with his family, because he complained. The money's dried up for the smaller fish. He wasn't getting paid by Euro-Construction—" '-which is wholly owned by Winterborne Holdings, who are principal contractors for—"

'-as much as thirty per cent of the whole project. European funds are pouring in.

Brussels thinks of it as a model for the future of the EU, price no object…"

"And the funds appear not to be flowing out again." Aubrey took her arm.

"Come on, my girl, I think another drink is called for. Clive's best whisky, I fancy. He'll not mind."

"Where is Clive?"

"Rattling the tin under the noses of the richest guests by this time, I should think."

A cacophony of explosions; cheering and clapping after a momentary, stunned silence.

"We need to talk. Come!"

Twelve-sixteen. He looked up from the flight engineer's panel on the flight deck of the 494 as the Norwegian chief engineer's slight form appeared in the doorway.

"All finished," Strickland announced.

"Good you want more coffee? How is she?"

"Fine. No problems. Yes to coffee. I'll come out. The fuel computer's OK, so are the instrument readouts."

"What did happen the crash?"

"It's still being analysed, all the data. It looks like a rogue chip — not the one used in this baby gave the command to jettison the fuel but there were no readouts that didn't say everything was normal… It was lucky the pilot spotted it. It won't happen again."

Strickland closed the door of the flight deck behind him and followed the Norwegian to the main passenger door. The routine servicing of the

494 all such effort soon to be wasted — continued at its unhurried pace.

"We've had no problems over the past six months," the Norwegian offered.

"She's a good plane."

"At Vance Aircraft we like to think so. And do we need the world to think like you!"

"Come in the office, have your coffee there."

"Sure. Thanks."

He turned to look back at the 494. The huge dock had been moved back, away from the aircraft, and it sat in the hangar like some fabulous sea mammal thought extinct but utterly real, alive. He could regret what he had arranged for the fate of the airplane, even if the lives of its crew and passengers failed to impinge. It was, like all aircraft, proof of the beauty of machines.

There was a sardonic amusement in his situation. The chief engineer obviously wanted to grill him on the Phoenix crash. Professional curiosity. Who better than himself to explain in detail, after all…

?

There was bright morning light coming through the heavy drapes of the bedroom windows. Almost ten. The bed beside him was empty, cool.

Charley had got up without disturbing him.

He fumbled for the telephone which had woken him. He hadn't slept well, endlessly rehearsing his meeting with yet more bankers and institutional shareholders, as if recollecting each move in a game of chess… a game which he feared, last night, he might have lost, despite his bravado and Vance's good news from Phoenix. That pilot, Gant his ex-son-in-law amazing… But the men in suits were cautious; soaked by a sudden shower, they seemed to expect another at any moment.

TV in America, images of Gant and Vance and the plane, the initial explanations of a rogue chip in the fuel computer system, Vance's lawsuit against the manufacturer… none of it seemed to have borne them along. He decided, before he finally fell asleep beside an anxiously wakeful Charley, that his exhilaration, fed by champagne and a few necessary pills, had failed to convince them.

"Burton."

Tim-!" It was Stuart, his MD.

"Christ, Tim, it's happened again!"

"What?" He struggled upright in the suddenly heavy bedclothes, the entwining sheets and duvet.

"Fifty miles from Helsinki, no more. It went down, Tim it went down!"

"One of our—?" He could not, could not, ask.

"Oslo to Helsinki, early-morning flight. She was fucking serviced last fucking night, Tim—"

"How—?"

"Nothing on that yet. Oh, Jesus Christ, Tim we're done for!"

"How how many died?"

"Everyone. Seven crew, forty-four passengers. She was running almost empty…"

"Yes… there's that, at least," Burton replied, watching himself in a cheval mirror in one corner of the bedroom as carefully as if studying his performance on a television monitor. He would be doing that endlessly, later… "Forty-four passengers, you said?"

"Yes."

"God, it's awful. I mean it's really appalling." He felt shaken, made nauseous, by the sense of lives lost. It overpowered all other sensations, even those that already dragged at him concerning the immediate future. Forty-four. And the crew. And the plane had been almost empty… God, it was dreadful.

"What do you want me to do immediately, Tim?"

"What—? Oh, yes. A bland press release but emphasise the tragedy, our sorrow.

We know nothing more at the moment. Get us both on a flight to

Helsinki early tomorrow. I'll have to be here to field all the interviews today. God—" he breathed as the nausea and shock gripped him once more.

"It's not possible not another…"

An immediate future of hysterical accusations, tirades that damned himself, Vance and the plane. Experts dragged into studios all over the world to pronounce judgement. The fall of the share price, the panic of the lenders… Forty-four people. And the crew. It was.

She threw aside the telephone and rushed from the bed towards the bathroom, the nausea overwhelming him, already bitter in his throat.