Quiller Solitaire

Chapter 23: AIRBORNE

01:13.

It was the first thing I looked at, took an interest in, when I opened my eyes: the watch on my wrist. We had been airborne an hour and thirteen minutes.

I had slept. The decision had been made for me by the subconscious when the beta-wave levels had been phased out by shock, by the accumulated shock of the mission that we file under the simple name of mission fatigue. It is not simple.

I felt quite good, felt refreshed, clear-headed again. Thought came easily now, and I was becoming aware of what had happened. But there were certain troubling aspects, because the decision my subconscious had made for me was totally illogical.

I could hear them talking up there on the flight deck through the open door, the two pilots. They were speaking a language I didn't know, presumably Farsi. I couldn't hear any specific words, wouldn't have understood them in any case.

Totally illogical, then, the decision that had been made, that I was stuck with. I could either have stayed where I was on the ground or I could have stayed on board the plane and taken off with it. If I'd stayed on the ground I could have joined the tanker crew or the freighter crew and hitched a flight back to Algiers. They wouldn't have recognised me, had never seen me before, would have accepted me as one of the team. Once in Algiers, communication, immediate communication: telephone Cone and tell him the situation, let him signal London and tell them to alert and inform Pan American Airlines. But there wouldn't have been anything they could do. Flight 907 would by then have been airborne for more than two hours, invisible in the night, untraceable, on its way to the unknown target, Midnight Two. If it hadn't already reached there, if there weren't already headlines running through the press.

It would have been an exercise in total futility, calling up my director in the field and having him signal London and all that tra-la, an exercise in total bloody futility. All it would have done would be to put the matter down in the records: Mission unsuccessful, executive safe.

So there wouldn't have been any point in staying on the ground in the desert. It wouldn't have achieved anything. But there'd been no point in taking off on board this aeroplane either because I was in a strictly shut-ended situation. I had no argument that would persuade the Iranians to put this aircraft down somewhere and call the whole thing off, and if I got control of them I couldn't put it down anywhere myself: I'd had no training on anything half this size and it'd have to be brought in like a feather on the breeze or we'd blow up the airport.

Teddy bear.

The subconscious, then, is not always reliable, is not always so bloody clever. You would do well to remember that, my good friend. It can send you to your bloody doom.

Teddy bear on the floor. Dropped I suppose by one of the children when they'd all been herded through the exits. Or was it perhaps a naughty teddy bear, that would blow my head off if I picked it up, blow the whole plane to bits? But it wasn't worth worrying about: the stuff in these forty-eight cylinders we'd stacked in here was measurable in mega-teddy-bear power.

There were two kinds of labels on them, both in red and white and with the skull-and-crossbones symbol. At least four of the cylinders contained Trinitrotoluene and carried another vignette, an explosive flash in red. There might be more of these in the stack; I didn't know, because the labels weren't all visible. The labels on the other cylinders read Nitrogen Tetraoxide and carried four symbols: the skull-and-crossbones, the explosive flash, a man's head with a gas mask on the face, and a coat on a hanger symbolising protective clothing.

As an explosive, nitrogen tetraoxide is dramatically potent. When Geissler had put me under the strobe in the garage last night I'd repeated the story Samala had told me. An airman dropped a nine-pound socket from a spanner inside a Titan silo, and it punched a hole in the skin of a fuel cell and started a leak. There was a 750-ton steel door on the silo and when that fuel went off it sent it two hundred feet straight up in the air and dropped it a thousand feet away.

It was 1:32 when I checked my watch again. The time was important, because I would very soon have to do something definitive.

The empty cabin made a soundbox for the soft rush of the jets. The lights had been left on in here, turned low on the rheostat. Something was rolling on the floor, pinging against one of the cylinders, and I picked it up. It was a lipstick, and I put it onto the counter of the galley, and bent again to pick up the teddy bear – freeze – but it was all right, nothing happened, and I sat him on the counter too, with a sense, I suppose, of restoring order while I sipped my coffee and thought things out and eventually reached conclusions, deadly conclusions.

Solitaire was in the end-phase, and if all went reasonably well I could bring it home, though only metaphorically. I would remain somewhere in the Atlantic, distributed piecemeal on its surface to be plucked at by fish – and I say this without bitterness, because I'd rather have them than the worms. In the end-phase of a mission when we realise the executive's status is terminal it's rather like drowning, in that we look back over the events that led us here, and at this particular moment I found myself thinking of that clown Thrower and hoping that Shatner would learn from his mistake and not send him out again unless it was to direct a shadow who could work comfortably with a bloody schoolmaster. I also thought of Helen Maitland, and hoped that one day she would shatter the self-image she'd been stuck with, and start fresh again; and as I considered these things I came to know what was happening: I was putting off the moment when I must set in motion the necessary procedures, because they would bring my death, and the sweat was crawling on me and the adrenalin was firing the motor nerves as I drained the cup with the Pan Am crest on it and put it into the sink.

Polaris had been high on the starboard side when I'd checked our heading through one of the windows and the time was now 1:46, so we were somewhere west of Morocco and over the Atlantic.

Procedures.

Three of the nitrogen tetraoxide cylinders were stowed vertically just aft of the galley and secured with straps, and I loosened a buckle by one notch and pulled a cylinder away from the others and let it fall back. It had the deep musical sound of a. bell.

Did it again.

Remember the orders, don't knock these things around. He'd been the leader of the work group, the jeep's driver. Knock two of these together a bit too hard and we're goners, kerbooom, so for Christ's sake be careful.

Did it again.

Boom…

This was all right, I wasn't knocking them about.

There was a shipping label on the loose cylinder, half torn away, printed in French. It had been shipped – they had all, then, presumably, been shipped – out of Libya.

It's believed that Dieter Klaus has the substantial backing of Col. Moammar Gadhafi. It had been in my Berlin briefing.

Boom…

The voice of one of the pilots cut through the rushing of the jets. He was telling his friend, I would have thought, that he was going to take a look: there was some cargo shifting, so forth.

Boom…

I saw his shadow now, moving across the wall of the cabin on the other side. I let the cylinder fall back again and backed away, staying close to the galley bulkhead. The Iranian reached the three cylinders, and saw what the trouble was.

I searched him and found a gun and emptied the chamber and dropped the bullets into the trash container in the galley and put the gun into the refrigerator. The edge of my right hand was throbbing but that was normal: the strike had needed great speed and great force so that he didn't have time to cry out. He'd started falling towards the cylinders and I'd steered him away and let his body down gently, then dragged it behind the galley bulkhead.

Then I straightened up and tightened the buckle on the strap securing the cylinders and went forward onto the flight deck.

The pilot said something, asking what the problem was, I suppose, and I didn't answer so he looked up and his face opened in surprise and he brought his right arm across his body and I waited until the gun was in his hand and then broke his wrist and worked on the gun and threw the bullets into the cabin and shoved the gun into my coat, bugger was throwing up for Christ's sake, the bugger was lolling over the control column with his face white, all right, there's a lot of pain with a broken wrist but you don't have to go into histrionics, do you, and I told him in French:

'Get that control column, watch what you're fucking well doing!'

A lot of anger coming out, it had been suppressed for a long time now, and there was some fear in it, I knew that, because the chances of getting out of this thing alive were so terribly thin.

I pulled him upright, slapped his face, got him more or less conscious again, I suppose he'd got a low pain threshold, some of us are like that, it's a matter of sensitive nerves, but I didn't want him messing about when he was meant to be flying a jumbo load of explosives through the dark.

I said in English: 'What's our destination?'

He looked at me with his eyes trying to focus. 'Come on, for Christ's sake! What's your target?'

There was 15° north of west on the compass but that didn't tell me enough.

He shook his head.

It looked all right. I was going to use a lot of English in a minute or two when I hit the radio, and I didn't want him to understand.

In French: 'Where are we heading? Wipe your mouth, for God's sake, get a handkerchief. What is our destination?'

He wasn't quite with me yet, kept looking behind him into the cabin. 'Where is Hassan?' he asked me.

I reached and slid the door shut without taking my eyes off him. If I told him I'd killed his friend he'd go crazy and try something and I didn't want any milling about, we could break an instrument, kick a control out of whack. I wanted, in any case, his cooperation.

I didn't think I'd get it.

'What is our destination?'

He glanced down and across, wasn't fast enough mentally yet to stop himself, and I saw the briefcase on the co-pilot's seat and picked it up. Then I looked into his eyes and said quietly, 'Khatami, if you give me any trouble,- I'm going to kill you. Do you understand that?'

He watched me, some anger of his own coming into him now as he thought of his friend.

'Did you kill Hassan? he asked me.

'As long as you understand, Khatami.'

'You are a pilot?'

'Yes.'

'You fly these planes?'

'Yes.'

Otherwise I couldn't kill him and he knew that.

He wasn't a small man; he looked strong, fit, probably did a lot of aerobics, athletics, to keep in shape doing a sedentary job. But he was an airline pilot, and hadn't undergone any special training, or he wouldn't have let me take his gun away. And the difference between any given athlete, however strong, and an agent who has been trained for years at Norfolk and by exhaustive experience in the field is immeasurable, when it comes to effective close-combat techniques. This man was also in a lot of pain, his face still bloodless, and I didn't think I'd have to work on him again until he started feeling better.

He began wiping himself down with his handkerchief and I moved behind him and sank onto my haunches, facing his seat with my back to the bulkhead, where a cup of coffee had been spilled, splashing against the vinyl, the empty cup smashed on the floor, this was when the two hijackers had pushed their way onto the flight deck past the stewardess, she'd been bringing a fresh cup for one of the crew.

A teddy bear on the floor, a lipstick and a smashed cup, the small signs of great crisis, of the process of an act of inhumanity.

If Khatami moved, I would see it in the periphery of my vision field.

I took out the first sheet from the briefcase and let my eyes make leaps across the paragraphs to get the gist. The first of them were in French and one pulled me up short.

… You will insist that you have a fire in the cabin and that you cannot risk going on to Dulles International. Remind Air Traffic Control that you have a full complement of passengers and that you must get them onto the ground as soon as possible and regardless of all other considerations…

There were three more paragraphs in Farsi and some figures that looked like radio call signs. I took out the second sheet.

It was a map for airline pilots: Washington DC (VA). Washington National, River Visual Approach for Runway 18.

I began taking slow breaths. The image of Khatami's seat had moved, the whole silhouette had moved against the lights of the instrument panel. I didn't want any more of that bloody dizziness at a time like this, I couldn't afford the luxury, nobody could afford it, the President of the United States couldn't afford it, I knew that now.

You will make your approach to Runway 18 from the north-west, following the lights and landmarks of the Potomac River. You should pick up the river just after passing through 10 DME 6 at 3000 feet. The American Legion Memorial Bridge will be on your right. You will pick up the lights of the Chain Bridge just after 10 DME 6 and you should now be down to 1800 feet.

I felt the vibration of the bulkhead against my shoulder-blades, could smell the stale coffee that had been spilled, and Khatami's vomit. The lights and the LEDs shimmered below the darkness of the windscreen, some of them steady, some of them flashing red, green, amber, white. I had to look away from them; they were starting to swing a little in front of my eyes.

Never neglect concussion. It was in the medical section of the Manual at the Bureau, and Doc Dibenidetto can be trusted to know whereof he speaks. It had happened in the underground garage at Tegel Airport, and pitching out of the limousine in Algiers had aggravated things.

Slow breaths.

And make haste, great haste now.

The Georgetown Reservoir will be coming up on your left and you should now be down to 1200 feet. At this point you should request confirmation of your permission to make an emergency landing from ATC, so as to reassure them that your situation is genuine. You should be through the 3 DME 6 and over Key Bridge at 900 feet. Continue your approach above Roosevelt Bridge and Arlington Memorial Bridge as scheduled, with the Washington Monument now on your left. At this point you will break off your approach path and make a 70 ° turn to line up with the White House and complete your run in to the target.

The lights swinging at the edge of the vision field, around the edges of the map, the rush of the jets diminishing a little.

I waited, had to wait, until I thought I could get onto my feet and stay there. I think it took only a few seconds, and when I finally managed it I had the feeling I should have waited longer, not rushed it.

'Khatami,' I said, 'get on the floor.'

He looked up at me, down at the map in my hand.

There wasn't any point in talking to him about this. I hadn't got a gun that I could have pressed to the back of his neck while I told him where to fly this thing, where not to fly it, but I had enough stamina left to kill him if I had to. But he was beyond threats to his life: he'd already surrendered it to Allah, and nothing could touch him now. This is the strongest weapon of the kamikaze: he's got nothing to lose, nothing you can threaten to take away from him.

He was still looking up at me, Khatami.

'You killed Hassan,' he said.

'Down on the floor! Face down on the floor – move!'

He held my eyes for a moment and then dropped from his seat and lay prone, I think because he'd seen I was ready to kill him if he didn't obey, and that would mean he'd have no chances left of overcoming me if he could. That was all he wanted to live for: my death and his final run in to the target.

I put my foot on his neck so that I'd feel any movement, any attempt to get up. Then I hit the speaker switch of the radio so that I wouldn't have to reach for the head-set, and raised the board for Solitaire in the Signals room in London.

'Can you hear me?'

Yes-yes.

The voice-activated tapes would be starting to roll.

'I am on board Pan American Flight 907.'

Croder would be there, Chief of Signals. During the end-phase of a mission he will never leave the Signals room. Sometimes a camp bed is brought in there for him.

We have that.

I felt a chill: I'd paused longer than I'd thought, and they were having to prompt me.

The radio display was blurring, clearing again, blurring. I'd got up too soon, off the floor too soon, pushing it, this was pushing things, no good, this was dangerous.

Said, I said: My position is west of the Moroccan coast and south – south-east of the Azores.

We have that.

Oh Jesus Christ, this wasn't – I wasn't doing this fast enough 'Listen – this aircraft must not be allowed -must not be allowed -'

Lights went out, the lights of the display went out, dark now, not the lights, my eyelids closing, that was it, have to open them, open them – This aircraft must not be allowed -'

The lights swung in an arc and a flash of pain shot into my right shoulder as I crashed down on it.