The Kobra Manifesto

Chapter Fourteen: MANTIS

In extreme danger the senses are very alert and I could hear the whine of the mosquito loudening, either because it was coming closer to my face or because the muffled explosion of the first shot had left the eardrum desensitized and hearing was now coming back.

Phutt

Two.

The muzzle of the gun scarcely wavered.

I watched her shadow.

If her shadow moved, I must move, and faster.

Phutt

Three.

The mosquito net shook again, and was still.

This was why excitement had sounded in her breathing.

She held the gun with great steadiness.

Phutt

Four.

Her shadow was misshapen on the floorboards: her arm looked grotesquely thin, reminding me of a praying mantis.

This was what she hadn't been able to do when she was with me. It was what she'd never been able to do, with any man.

Phutt

Five.

Orgasm, The mantis devours its mate, following copulation.

My spine crept.

In my trade we are frequently a target, and when we are quick or lucky we live to remember, and learn to be even quicker next time and to hope for more luck. But our very proximity to the bullet and to death lends an almost banal reality: there's nothing for the spirit to dream on, in the potential smashing open of a skull by a hurtling object.

This was different I wasn't there.

I was some distance away from the target of murderous intent, even though that target was myself. As if removed from my real body by some altered state of consciousness, I was a mere observer, a witness to my own dying; and it occurred to me, as the bullets went regularly into the mosquito net, that this was the mechanism of the voodoo killer who sticks pins in the effigy of his victim.

By small degrees I felt drained of life as each bullet smashed into the bed.

Phutt

'I hate you'

Six.

I know.

The reek of cordite was on the humid air.

In the silence her breath was trembling.

The mosquito whined faintly in the room.

In a moment she went away, closing the door.

'Information,' he said.

I listened for bugs.

'We're blown,' I told him.

There was another silence.

Ferris thought fast but he never spoke fast I waited. 'Where are you?'

His tone was under a lot of control: I'd told him the mission was blown and he knew I wouldn't say a thing like that for a giggle.

'Manaus Airport.'

I could see the plane as I talked to him. It was a DC-6, one of the three listed in the Amazonas Airlines flight schedules, and the departure board had it down for 04:20 today, My watch read 04:07.

It was a four-engined propeller aircraft: Amazonas Air' lines was a shoestring outfit flying animal trappers, gold mine-; and Indian jute farmers from Manaus to Belem and back One of the engines was now being started up.

'All right,' Ferris said.

He meant talk.

'The girl has a fever. They're flying her out in thirteen minutes from now.'

'Where to?'

'Somewhere in the United States, as far as I could learn.'

'Washington?'

'I heard it mentioned but I don't know in what connection.'

The four-bladed prop of the second engine, port side, began turning.

'Do you think they're moving to the exchange point?'

'Yes.'

He was listening carefully and I watched what I said: if I'd known they were moving to the exchange point I would have said so and he understood that.

This looked like being the final signal of a blown mission and if there were anything to be rescued we didn't intend throwing it away on sloppy communications, 'How did you get to the airport?'

'I took the hotel jeep.'

'Did they know about that?'

'No. Listen, for Christ's sake, I can't-'

'Don't worry-'

'If London thinks I'm going to waste time-.'

'Relax.'

But he said it like a whiplash.

Sweat ran down my sides and I looked across the tarmac again at the DC-6. The second engine was running now, pouring out a stream of unburnt oil towards the group of passengers.

London's terribly fussy about private property and if you're stuck for transport you're meant to call a cab or Avis or someone and hang around while the objective slips the hook and leaves you with a blown operation and I do not know why those bloody idiots can't see the problem of the executive in the field when-all right, relax, he's right.

Sweat it out.

Third engine running.

Eleven minutes to go.

And all Ferris could do was worry about letting the hotel know where to find their bloody jeep. I'd left two hundred-cruzeiro notes in the glove pocket and a scribbled note so what more did anyone expect me to-

'Would they recognize you if they saw you?'

'Of course they'd-'

'Easy,' he said.

I shut up.

This wasn't very good. If that aeroplane took off in ten minutes from now the Kobra cell and their hostage would be on board and there wasn't anything I could do about it. I couldn't believe I'd blown the whole operation so easily as this, but I'd better start getting used to it. They were going to walk away and I was going to watch them do it.

'Can you delay the take-off?'

'Of course. But it wouldn't do any good.'

You can always stop a plane taking off at the last minute and there's a dozen ways of doing it-start a fire, call up and say there's a bomb on board, so forth — but in normal circumstances it's an extreme measure and too clumsy to give you more than a few minutes' advantage. In the present circumstances it would blow the mission sky-high instead of letting it die a natural death because this was a group of international terrorists we were handling and at the first sign of anything unusual they'd close up and start using their guns on the first target they could see and from that point onwards the situation could explode into fatal dimensions and the first one to die could be Pat Burdick.

The only way to control Kobra was to do it quietly, without their even knowing.

'The next plane out,' Ferris said on the phone, 'is at noon tomorrow.'

I knew that.

I didn't say anything.

They'd got number 4 running and the slipstream blew a sheet of newspaper across the tarmac and I watched it, and didn't see it.

All I saw was Egerton picking up the yellow telephone.

'Yes?'

'Signal from Ferris, sir'

'Well?'

'They've blown Kobra.'

The newspaper drifted upwards again in the rush of air, and caught against the railings by the emergency bay.

And Tilson, sipping his tea in the Caff.

'Who was operating that one?'

'Quiller.'

'Good grief, I've never known him miss'

'We all do, old boy, in the end.'

Exhaust gas blew past me from the DC-6.

The next plane out was at noon tomorrow and the night plane had already taken off for the coast: I'd heard it when I was with Shadia.

'By the way,' I said, 'they think I'm dead,'

'Oh do they?'

But it was shut-ended.

It was the perfect cover, and she'd handed it to me when she'd stood there in the lamplight pumping six slow shots into the shape of the rolled-up rug on the bed, firing blind through the mosquito net but making sure, taking her time, working from the head and down along the spine to the coccyx. The perfect cover.

But I couldn't use it.

'There's no way,' Ferris asked rather tightly, 'of going aboard with them?'

'No way.'

I could see them from where I stood, waiting at the departure gate and checking everyone in sight. They thought I was dead but they'd recognize- me and realize there was a mistake and they'd rectify it and this time they'd make sure.

'Can you think of anything,' Ferris asked me, 'that I could do?'

'No.'

I'd already thought about it and there was nothing. I'd thought of a hundred things, and there was nothing.

Ferris couldn't get here before take-off in nine minutes and even if he could get here it'd be no go because he'd come into Manaus from Belem on the same flight as Satynovich Zade and Zade would recognize him and if he tried to follow the Kobra group they'd know it and deal with him. Ferris was in any case the director in the field and his function was totally different from the executive's: he was here to run me from phase to phase and keep me in signals with Control and provide me with access and cover and directives, and if the opposition wrote me off or I became missing or overdue on a rendezvous then Ferris would remain in the field where London could find him. In any mission me end-phase can blow wide open and the director can go through half a dozen executives and finally bring in a hit for Control, regardless of cost.

The executive is dispensable; the director is not.

I looked at my watch.

04:12.

'What about Interpol?' I asked him.

'No,' he said. 'Not twice.'

The rules are quite explicit on this: London can use Interpol at its own discretion but the director in the field can only make one appeal to its services unless a signal permits it. The Bureau doesn't exist and if too much contact is made with other services the involvement deepens and becomes dangerous: Ferris had asked for Interpol's help when I was holed up in quarantine and the local police had co-operated; but if we asked them again they'd start taking an interest and they'd want to know who this group of Europeans were and finally they'd want to know who we were and we couldn't tell them. And there was only a hairline between that point and a breach of security.

Further: the United States Secretary of Defence had called on the Bureau for an ultra-secret operation, exclusive of the FBI and me CIA and therefore exclusive, by definition, of the Brazilian police.

The four engines of the DC-6 gunned up a degree and then fell to idling. Movement came towards my right and I looked in that direction and saw the passengers being led across the tarmac to the plane.

04:13.

One of the major functions of the local director is to think for his agent.

'Ferris.'

'Yes?'

He knew what I was going to ask.

'Have you got a directive for me?'

At this moment the Kobra mission was still running.

'No.'

Then it stopped.