The Kobra Manifesto

Chapter Five: FLAME

'Would you like anything to drink?'

A brilliant smile, the eyes by Michelangelo.

'No thank you.'

London tilting away below, its lights hazy with rain.

'Something to read?'

'No.'

Thank you very much, I've read all I want to. He'd been coming out of a bar along the Rue de Lac: there was some kind of disturbance and an "inebriated patron" had fired a gun and the unfortunate British tourist had been hit by accident. Owing to the confusion the police had been unable to make an arrest.

You can bet on that. There's a strict routine and we all use it when we're hot-operating in a red sector. They'd gone for Hunter with the whole thing worked out: timing, topography, escape lanes and mobile pickups and finally a fake brawl to provide the confusion. And Francisco Ventura had vanished into the thin mountain air and left the Bureau's signals network quivering. Quite possibly the man with the niner-niner directive had been ordered to freeze his movements as a preliminary to switching him to Geneva and if that were the case they'd have to get him out there in an RAF interceptor with automatic over-flying rights under the NATO umbrella. They'd do that, if this operation was big enough.

By the way things were shaping, I thought it was.

Gjesk lqoilz piu oma kelasx.

May Hunter rest in peace.

I did some inversions and threw in five alert numerals and transposed them, cupping the thing in my hand and taking a look when I felt a need for reinforcement. The radicals were tricky considering I'd chosen a short flexible pattern, and it took me fifteen minutes before I was confident.

The girl brought me scampi and I put the plastic card into an emptied compartment of the dish and squeezed the lemon over it and watched it destruct; then I got the paper and went through it to see if I could get some kind of a clue as to what operation the opposition was mounting out there. The PLA was active again on the Palestinian border but that happened every week and they didn't seem to be getting anywhere; the Arab People's Delegation was still pressing the U.S. Secretary of State for a voice at Geneva and the U.S. Secretary of State was still turning a deaf ear; and the fourth riot in three weeks in Lisbon had left the Soviet Embassy in flames. None of these events had much interest for the Bureau, but I suppose that loopy Swede in Room 6 was going to use the Lisbon thing for exercising his scout troop along the sidelines, with communication through open channels and all that balls.

I was getting annoyed because Egerton was playing it so close to the chest: he was pushing me out on a pre-mission directive and into a field where Zarkovic and Harrison and Hunter were already eliminated and where he was throwing in reinforcements — Perkins, Whitaker — as if the entire executive staff were expendable: and Egerton was a man who who would go farther than any other controller to bring them home alive. With a thing this size breaking out, there must be a political motivation somewhere big enough to make the headlines and in this paper the headlines were about the dustmen's strike in Norwich.

I didn't like this one.

It was too big, and going too fast.

I think we ought to go back.

Bloody little organism rearing its head; all it could mink about was survival.

Shuddup.

'Will you please fasten your seat belt? We are landing soon.'

'What?'

'Please fasten seat belt now, sir,'

'Oh. Yes.'

I think we ought to go straight back to London when —

Oh for Christ's sake you've got a seat belt on now, what more do you want? Shuddup.

Captain Lorenzo hopes you have enjoyed your trip with us.

Not terribly.

'Non ho nulla da dichiarare.'

They were very slow.

'Sono tutti effetti personali.'

For some reason they were going through everything, looking specially at any books and pamphlets. The new Communist regime on the lookout for subversive literature, perhaps.

'Qui c' e sol vestiario, signore.'

But I wouldn't advise looking inside the razor barrel, signore, because it's meant for blowing locks.

'Ha finito?'

'Si, signore. Grazie.'

'Prego.'

The slightest tactile sensation, right buttock.

I waited till his fingers were well inside the hip pocket and then went for his wrist without any fuss, turning round and checking his face because it could be someone I knew: someone in the opposition. After fifteen missions I've come to know a lot of faces.

I didn't know this one.

He wasn't trying to get away: I think he could feel I wasn't going to let him. His quick dark eyes flicked from my face to the customs officer and back. He looked about fourteen years old.

Get your unworthy person the hell out of here, I told him in gutter Roman, before I pull out your gizzard and tie it in knots.

He slipped through the crowd, rubbing his wrist, and before he was halfway to the barrier I saw him begin on someone else.

I snapped the case shut and took it out to the main hall and looked for Hertz.

Dark blue Fiat 1100. I told them to leave it where it was: I was meeting some journalists on a later flight. Then I told a porter to put the case into the car and bring me the keys. He found me along at the check-in area; I didn't know which airline Fitzalan and Fogel were on, so I memorized the arrival boards from one end of the counter to the other, Moroccan, Iberian, Alitalia, Air France and the transit companies operating across the Mediterranean. The time intervals were close in some instances but there were two fifteen-minute breaks before midnight when I'd be able to slide off for some milk and orange juice at the all-night trattoria.

There was a message for Mr Paul Wexford at Alitalia.

I didn't ask for it right away because he'd been standing by the big Cinzano poster doing nothing ever since I'd come through the arrival gate, so I went along to have a look at him. He was a young Italian and didn't belong to any kind of outfit where they'd heard of training people, because the main background coloration of the poster was white and he was wearing a dark nylon zipped jacket and if he'd had even basic training he would have been standing over there against the black futurist sculpting.

He hadn't looked at me directly and the only reflecting surface was twenty yards away and had a lot of glare across it from the overhead lights because it was set at an angle through the vertical so he'd have to be pretty good on the peep and I didn't think he was, because of the background thing. I was going across to ask him where I could find the telephones when a plump girl in black satin ran up to him. He threw away his cigarette and kissed her and said something that made her give a shrill little laugh as they turned away arm in arm. I tagged them as far as the bus terminal and saw them get into one of the airport coaches. He hadn't looked once in my direction.

He'd been the only suspect: I'd double-checked and made two feints since leaving the exit gate and the whole area was clear. I went back to the check-in counter.

'Paul Wexford.'

I showed him my passport.

'Ecco, signore.'

'Grazie.'

I took the message slip across to the Cielalto office, reading it on the way. Please notify Alitalia if press conference is delayed. Frank Wainwright.

It's the simplest form of code and impossible to read without the key, and we carry the key in our heads. The pattern is very flexible and you can throw in anything you like without affecting the sense. This one could have read: Weather expected to worsen so please number all itineraries according to severity of local conditions, and the message would have been precisely the same. The theme is varied to suit the cover: press conference for Paul Wexford of Europress. (The example with the weather theme would be used for someone ostensibly following the Monte Carlo Rally, so forth.) The trigger word is please and you ignore everything preceding it. The message is contained in the initial letters of the three words following: notify Alitalia if = n-a-i. Everything that appears after the three significant words is also ignored; thus the entire message is contained in the three letters n-a-i. The key comprises a list of twenty-six directives, each of three words: Report on arrival, Liaise with agent-in-place, Abort mission immediately, so forth. These directives are encoded into any number of varied phrases and London could have sent Number all itineraries or nullify any instances or nominate appropriate inspectors, according to the cover-theme.

The key directive for n-a-i is No active involvement.

I was ordered to keep off.

If Fitzalan didn't arrive, I wasn't to make any enquiries. If Heinrich Fogel arrived alone, I wasn't to tag him anywhere. If they both arrived and Fogel was able to raise a cadre of hit-men and capture, interrogate or kill Fitzalan, I wasn't to help him.

I was to keep off.

Blast your eyes, Egerton, what did you send me here for?

There could be a dozen reasons and I didn't think I'd like any one of them and I stood in front of the Cielalto office wondering why I had been such a monumental bloody fool in letting that poor-man's priest con me into an operation that was already running wild and counting its dead while I stood here without a hope in hell of taking the initiative, Keep off.

Blast your eyes.

Speeding down the sunlit slopes with the blue sky above your head, you feel as if you are flying, free as a bird! At night you will look down over the lights of the town, nestled at the foot of the giant Matterhorn.

Rough translation. There wasn't a lot of light on the posters and the reflective power of the window was adequate. Blown-up colour photograph: blinding white snow, dazzling blue sky, the skier in black with dark goggles, poles whirling through a slalom, his smile exhilarated, I checked my watch.

22:44.

The next Moroccan flight was due in at 22:50.

There weren't many people in the main hall: perhaps thirty. A man in a round-brimmed hat approached in reflection and stopped, eyeing the smiling skier for ninety seconds, their figures appearing on the same scale. I moved fractionally to sharpen the image and get the angle into perspective: he was watching one of the closed-circuit television screens at this end of the check-in counter. In another thirty seconds he turned away and walked down the slope of blinding snow, leaving the skier behind. When I turned round I saw him going into the trattoria on the other side of the hall.

22:59.

The first of the passengers off the Moroccan flight was just reaching the exit gate and I stood facing in that direction as the rest of them began coming through, spreading out into groups and individuals, many of them in robes, the fez much in evidence.

I would recognize Fitzalan because we saw each other sometimes along the corridors of that mildewed mausoleum in London, and a month ago we'd shared a table in the Caff for a salt beef sandwich because I needed information on the Helsinki airport explosion and he'd been there.

I would recognize Fogel because I'd questioned him for three hours in Budapest while they were getting the bullet out by the light of one 40-watt bulb and with no anaesthetic, studying the hawklike face as the scream of the sirens rose and fell among the distant streets.

He wasn't on the Moroccan flight, Nor was Fitzalan, 23:12. Iberian.

Blank.

23:25.

Alitalia, Blank.

Then there was a longer interval and I went across to the trattoria for some milk, suggest supplementary intake of 100 mg Calcium, so forth. An Air France transit flight was due to land at midnight and I went back to the Cielalto office and checked the new arrivals in the main hall. There were only three or four and none looked suspect. A few Greeks left over from the last Alitalia flight were still hanging around Hertz and Avis and a dozen or so people were now coming in to meet the Air France plane. A group of porters moved slowly back to the baggage claim area, one of them singing quietly. A huge woman in black heaved past me, her face streaming with tears, and a small boy was throwing an aerodynamic disc high across the porters' heads.

I went over to check for a message and came back, doing a systematic sweep of the hall and noting people's movements. If one contact in any given rendezvous is blown, the other is left totally ignorant of the fact that he is moving straight into a trap. It happened on a dockside in Reykjavik two years ago when I had a rendezvous with Tremayne and they caught up with him and trod on his face and put a few questions and when I walked into the shadow of the crane they were there with icepicks, three of them. I got out fast but they began using some kind of repeater rifle and it was only the moonlight that saved me but oh God that water was cold.

That is why my index finger, left hand, is missing: I caught it between two planks at the edge of the dockside as I went over. And that is why I watched the two men coming across from the main doors, and the group of students waiting at the far end of the check-in counter, and others. By moving around I altered their lines of sight and they didn't respond; but the two men in dark suits were also moving, their eyes covertly observing as mine were. ' They had checked me twice but made no follow-up: no movement away, no sign to a distant contact. Within the next three minutes they hadn't looked at me again and there was no reflective surface where they could watch me. I put them down provisionally as Italian police, detective branch, because of their shoes, their spits, their hats, the way they stood. They weren't out of an intelligence cell: I've seen hundreds of intelligence men and I've seen hundreds of police-men, detective branch, and on one point alone I was willing to lay my bet: you are as liable to see an intelligence man wearing those neat, cheap tailor's-dummy clothes as you are liable to see him wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and a piss pot on his head.

In one minute I checked Alitalia again for any message for Paul Wexford. Negative. If Fitzalan had come unstuck in Tangier at any time up to the departure of the plane Fogel had taken, the Bureau's man-in-place would have flashed London and London would have flashed me in Rome and that was why I had to make regular visits to Alitalia. If Fitzalan had in fact boarded Fogel's plane and been recognized as a surveillance hazard there was nothing Fogel could do about it unless by a thousand-to-one chance he was able to have the pilot radio the tower here with a message in code for a specific contact, in which case I was blown wide open as I stood here but I went on standing here because the odds of a thousand to one are acceptable.

Fogel was a wildcat operator without any kind of network behind him and I was virtually certain that even if he could call upon active support in Rome he couldn't do it before his plane was on the ground and he could reach a telephone.

From here I could see the telephones.

I could also see why Egerton had been so sure that Fitzalan would be able to keep his rdv with me and maintain surveillance on Fogel at the same time: the Cielalto office had been chosen because it was within sight of the exit gates where Fogel must arrive.

The faint whine of jets came through the walls of the building, then the roaring of reversed thrust. Eight minutes overdue at 00:08. Possibly slight headwinds, or traffic congestion.

For the last time I went to check Alitalia for a message and there wasn't one.

00:21.

The porters began moving across to the customs area.

The two plain-clothes men had now taken up overt station. They were interested in the Air France flight but only in general terms: if they were here to pick anyone up they would either have gone out to the plane or moved across to the exit gates. They had forgotten my existence.

'He'll be coming through in a few minutes.'

'All right,' I said, We stood close together, watching the smiling skier.

'So far, I've got him cold.'

Fitzalan sounded rather pleased with himself and I suppose it was understandable because a surveillance situation gets very sensitive in confined spaces.

He was still breathing a little fast: he'd obviously shown his Interpol facilities pass to the chief stewardess and the immigration officer and got through the tube before the rest of them had been released and from then on he'd hurried. I'd seen him coming across from the exit gates and the two plain-clothes men had checked him and lost interest. Fitzalan himself had given me no signal as he'd approached the rendezvous and it couldn't have been because it's a difficult thing to do: you can look up at the ceiling for an instant or turn your head or drop something or make any one of a dozen signals. The one we use as a routine in the absence of a specific change by directive is the slight trip. He hadn't tripped.

But he would have done it if he'd been blown in Tangier or on board the aircraft, because if you go down and the opposition starts running you and you can't help yourself until there's been time to get out from under, you can at least let your contact know in the final half-minute that the rendezvous had become a death-trap, and if he's quick he can save himself.

There'd been no signal. At this precise moment the situation was contained and even encouraging: Heinrich Fogel and two of the Bureau's executives were now together in Fiumicino Airport, Rome, their formation as orderly as if Control in London had moved three pieces across an operations board.

I watched the exit gates.

'Is he alone?'

'Yes.' There was still a note of slight elation in Fitzalan's voice: the Bureau had only been running him for eighteen months and he'd blown a minor radio-snatch assignment in Brussels and was immediately pushed through Norfolk again for a refresher course, and this time he was out to prove his colours and so far he was getting it right. A surveillance operation is low key but in this case the objective was Fogel and the overall situation was massive in terms of deployment in the field, 'You know what you're here for,' he said quietly. It was a statement.

'No.'

He swung his head and looked at me and I noticed the Mack dye was running slightly at his temples. Fitzalan has bright red hair and is obliged to keep it permanently dyed.

'My God,' he said, 'things are going so fast.' He turned back to watch the gates with his faded blue eyes. 'You're here to identify Fogel.'

I waited five seconds but he wasn't going to add anything.

'Is that all?'

'Apparently it's very important.'

I suppose Macklin had started this: our people in Tangier had only thought it was Fogel they'd got hold of, and London wanted him identified with certainty as soon as he left cover.

'You were on opposite sides, weren't you,' Fitzalan asked without turning his head, 'on some job or other?'

I watched the two plain-clothes men.

'Yes.'

They hadn't actually moved but their heads were now angled back half an inch as they stared towards the exit gates. A man and two women were now coming through, and there were people behind them.

'You think you'll be able to identify him?' Fitzalan asked me.

He was rather full of questions. Eighteen months isn't long.

'Yes.'

An Air France stewardess came past us, hurrying a little with her high heels on the point of buckling. She was making for the check-in counter.

A hint of Madame Rochas on the air.

'Any minute,' Fitzalan said.

He was getting worried.

Three Moroccans came by in flowing robes, their hands gesturing gracefully as if in some kind of prayer as they talked. A party of Europeans broke from the main stream of passengers and headed for the trattoria, and one of the aircrew, a two-ringer, was making for a door on the far side, marked Private.

'Any minute now,' Fitzalan said.

Poor little bastard: if he dropped this one he'd be out on his neck. We're only allowed two mistakes running, during the probation phase.

'Where was he sitting?'

He turned his dyed head slightly towards me but didn't take his eyes off the gates.

'Fifth row back, port side, first class.'

He was trying to sound confident, 'He'll be through,' I said.

'Oh sure. Any minute.'

It wasn't of course certain. Fogel could have turned off at a dozen points after leaving Immigration and Customs, or they could be holding him up in there. I gave it another two minutes and said:

'What do you want to do?'

It was up to him, not me.

No active involvement.

Fitzalan looked at me now.

'You think we ought to go in there?'

After a bit I said: 'He's your pigeon.'

Theoretically I should be local-controlling the man because I was his senior within the executive echelon and it was my responsibility to see that he didn't lose his objective but I wasn't interested in theory: the Bureau is a secret operations service and not the bloody Army and I only ever use my rank if it's to save my neck. I wasn't out here in the field to baby-sit for Fitzalan or anyone else; he'd sewn up his objective and if he'd done it the wrong way he'd be slung out and the rest of us would go on working in more safety.

More people came through: Customs were getting them cleared a damned sight faster than when the London flight had come in.

'I'm going to give him another couple of minutes,' Fitzalan said.

His tone was shaky now, 'Fair enough.'

'Of course,' he said, 'I'm absolutely certain he was on the aircraft when I — '

'Hold on,' I said.

A square of faint light had swung across the black surrealist sculpting: a glass door had opened somewhere behind us and I looked first at the two plain-clothes men but they didn't react. They were watching the exit gates, their heads perfectly still. It wasn't just the swinging light that had alerted me: there'd been the thump of the doors too, and a slight increase in the noise of the traffic outside. There was also a change in the actual character of the noise and when I looked round the first thing I saw was the flashing of an emergency light on top of the police van that was now standing opposite the main doors with its engine running and the driver still at the wheel.

The party of six carabinieri were coming at a steady pace and looking straight in front of them: two officers, a sergeant and two rankers led by a captain. They weren't actually in step but they seemed to be, because they walked so steadily.

'Watch the gates,' I told Fitzalan. 'Don't look at anything else.'

He didn't answer.

The two plain-clothes men had heard the carabinieri coming but didn't give them more than a glance because there were a lot of passengers spreading out from the exit gates now and they didn't want to miss anyone. I was watching the carabinieri most of the time and relying on Fitzalan to alert me if he saw Fogel coming through. I had quite a few questions in my mind because the data was beginning to form logical patterns for analysis, but there were too many gaps: the plain-clothes police could be here for their own reasons and those reasons could have nothing to do with the carabinieri; the carabinieri looked as though they were in a hurry and trying not to show it, but they were obviously hoping to meet someone off the Air France flight from Morocco and they looked quite serious about it but I didn't know why they hadn't come a bit earlier and driven their transport up to the aircraft and made sure of a contact.

It would be dangerous to assume that either they or the plain-clothes men were here to intercept Heinrich Fogel. It is dangerous to assume anything at all during this kind of active situation because if the action speeds up you can find yourself making a wrong move precipitately and a wrong move can be fatal.

Of course the one answer to every question in my head could be that the situation was precisely as it appeared to be: the plain-clothes men had been sent here to watch for a certain passenger or certain passengers coming off the Air France plane, and the carabinieri had been sent here in response to information received so late that they hadn't had time to intercept the passengers at an earlier stage.

They walked steadily past us.

'He's here,' Fitzalan said.

'Fogel?'

'Yes.'

It took me a couple of seconds.

He was the lean man with the sunken cheeks and the thinning hair. I thought I could see the pink crescent-shaped scar on his right temple even at this distance but the brain tends to present visual data that the eye doesn't see: I knew there was a scar there, because I'd watched them pull the bullet out in Budapest.

'How close do you want him?' Fitzalan murmured.

'That's not your problem.'

I would need to see Fogel from a distance of a few yards and I would need to see him in circumstances where he couldn't see me and that wouldn't be easy and it could take till morning. I wasn't going to hurry it because I hadn't needed a specific directive to tell me that if Fogel saw me, just for a second, the Rome phase would be blown.

Egerton hadn't sent me here to blow anything.

Fitzalan was standing perfectly still.

The plain-clothes men had seen Fogel and were immediately interested in him but were not approaching him. The captain of the carabinieri had seen him and was leading his unit steadily on.

'Fitzalan.'

'Yes?'

'We use the window now.'

He turned round and we looked at the skier.

'You know the form,' I said, 'Yes.'

'Let's recap.'

I didn't know what briefing he'd received.

'You'll stay with him till you've got close enough to identify him. I'll follow up. If you lose him, I'll keep him.'

'All right.'

The rest of the situation was covered by routine procedures:' from the moment we left this rendezvous we wouldn't acknowledge each other; there would be no obligation to make any signal at any given phase; if we felt the need for a further rdv it would be made in the house of the Bureau's agent-in-place, Rome: the Villa Marco Polo in the Piazza Piccola. Finally, Fitzalan was aware that he could expect no support from me if he got into any kind of trouble because each of us was in effect operating solo with a common objective: Fogel.

The figures moved against the slope of dazzling snow: Fogel coming alone from the exit gates, the carabinieri walking steadily towards him. The plain-clothes men stood perfectly still. A few of the other passengers were looking at the carabinieri, wondering what they were doing here.

The captain halted his men.

It was then that I decided to turn round because it looked as if Fogel was the passenger they had come for and he wouldn't have time to check for surveillance before they met aim. He wouldn't see me, and he wouldn't see Fitzalan. He would see only the officers.

At this instant he was isolated, with the nearest passenger ten or twelve feet away. They were spreading out and he was one of the few people without a companion. He had seen the carabinieri but was not reacting.

The captain took a sidestep to block his path, and his white-gloved hand came up in a salute.

Fogel stopped.

The captain was saying something to him.

Fogel listened. His expression and attitude were those of a law-abiding passenger arriving in Rome by air. The captain appeared to be asking for his passport.

Fogel used his right hand to double the officer, pushing the blow upwards into the diaphragm while his left hand went for the captain's holster and wrenched the gun out. He worked very fast and he was armed and ready to fire before any of the party could reach for their own weapons.

The first shot smashed the glass of a show-case a few feet from where Fitzalan and I were standing and I couldn't tell if Fogel had aimed at the carabinieri and the shell had passed between them, or if it had been meant as a warning shot. They were diverted for a second or two and the captain was still doubled up on the ground as Fogel broke away and began running, colliding with a group of passengers and leaving one of them sprawling as the carabinieri began shouting for him to stop. He saw the flash of the emergency light through the glass doors and swerved to his left, running fast and steadily and thinking his way out of the building and past the obstacles that threatened him: mostly the groups of people in the check-in area.

At this moment the carabinieri began firing as they ran: their officer had given the order. I saw plaster chipping away from the wall beyond where Fogel ran, at a height of some ten feet: there were too many people about for them to try 'hitting the fugitive and I assumed the purpose was to warn him to stop and at the same time to alert the driver of the emergency vehicle outside.

As Fogel reached the glass doors at the end of the check-in area I was a dozen yards behind him, running at the same speed and ready to swerve the instant he began turning round to fire into his pursuers. I could hear Fitzalan's shoes thudding behind me and slightly to the left. The situation worried me because I believed Fogel would fire back into the carabinieri before he went through the doors: it would be logical and of course feasible, costing him something less than two seconds and gaining him anything up to five or six as the soldiers scattered. The thing that worried me was that there was no close cover for me or Fitzalan: the people in this area were now frozen into immobility and there were no central stands or pillars and I would 'have to rely mostly on speed as I hurled myself obliquely at the row of glass doors and smashed one open before his gun fired.

The whole set-up was impromptu and I didn't like that either: a penetration agent gets into comfortable habits and he likes premeditated action, preferring to set a trap rather than run a man down, preferring the dark to the light. It's rather like assembling a small but intricate bomb, step by step, dovetailing the components until they become potent, then setting it ticking. This was a totally undisciplined situation where anything could happen and I was uneasy because Fogel would see me as his most immediate threat and would possibly fire at me instead of into the soldiers. I believed I could be quick enough to get out of the way but a certain amount was going to depend on chance and that made the situation dangerous and untidy, Fogel reached the doors.

I was watching him the whole time.

Fitzalan had dropped back or was taking cover across the check-in counter: I couldn't hear him any more. The check-in counter was no use to me because it would waste a lot of time: Fogel was getting clear of the building and I had to be out there with him to see where he went. No active involvement wasn't a finite directive: it had been in part countermanded by the last order,which was to identify Heinrich' Fogel. Ideally I would stay with him, get close enough to identify, and withdraw. It could be done, even now, but I was going to need luck and that was the thing I didn't like, because my job is to arrange for certainties.

Fogel's weight hit the glass door and I saw his right shoulder begin turning and that was all I waited for because this was the time when he was most likely to fire. There were two shots with almost no interval and I heard fane of the shells ricochet, whining to silence as I smashed into the nearest door and pitched through the gap as it swung open while part of the forebrain registered an item of data: Three shells fired, three left.

The situation now became dangerous: he would have seen me and taken me to be a passenger trying to help the forces of law and order and he would drop me without a thought if I looked like stopping him. We were both on the pavement now and the driver of the emergency vehicle was liable to open fire on Fogel and hit me instead if I began running again. This kind of thing had happened to Harrison in Milan and to Hunter in Geneva and the action was now in Rome and it didn't look any more promising, so I went down head-long and rolled over with the soles of my shoes towards Fogel and lay without moving.

Three shots banged out of a repeater rifle from the opposite direction and I assumed it was the driver. I could hear Fogel running again.

Someone screamed.

I had a key in my hand.

In very fast action a lot of the work is done on the sub-conscious level, with a certain amount of reasoning responsible for decision-making: Fogel had knocked into a group of people and a woman among them had screamed as he dragged at the door of their car; they saw his gun and held back. He was still working fast and very efficiently but any physical action is slower than thought and the key in my hand was the one they'd given me at Hertz. I knew where the dark blue Fiat 1100 was: they'd shown me.

The Alfa-Romeo had drawn in to the kerb half a minute ago and the people had got out and were standing in a group on the pavement when Fogel had knocked into them and pulled the door open. Part of his thinking must have been that he would find the ignition key in place, because this was a no-waiting area and the driver would have to stay near the car and wouldn't remove the key. Fogel had been very good in Budapest, stalking me with his telescopic rifle and placing three shots in two days, all of the beautifully worked out and unsuccessful only because I'd operated with cat's nerves and used every defensive trick in the business to stay alive. Now on the defensive himself he was still very good, working steadily and fast and relying to a certain extent on surprise manoeuvres.

A heavy thudding began as the party of carabinieri came through the glass doors and I waited for the first shot and then got onto my feet and made for the Fiat on the other side of the road. There was only a medium volley because they hadn't seen him get into the Alfa-Romeo but it gave me cover and I reached the Fiat with all the momentum necessary: I needed the key for the ignition but not for the door because that way would take too much time. My heel struck the glass edge on and the stuff was still falling away as I reached inside and opened the door and got in and used the key and gunned up.

Fogel was turning across my bows and I didn't think he had any particular route in his mind: if he drove straight off alongside the pavement he would run through a curtain of bullets because the carabinieri were strung out and already taking deliberate aim instead of firing wild and his only chance was to make a fast U-turn and try for distance. He was doing that and at the same time I was forced to make a decision because the situation was now mobile and I didn't stand a chance of tagging him without his knowing. The thing was beginning to look shut-ended because my orders were to identify without being recognised and I couldn't do that without tagging him and I couldn't tag him without being seen. Unless I could run him to ground and put the whole thing into a long-term surveillance phase I couldn't hope to get close enough to identify.

During a mission a lot of your thinking is done for you by Control and the moves are sketched out for you through Signals, but sometimes the executive has to get into his controller's mind and make his decision accordingly and in this case the controller was Egerton and I didn't think he'd want me to abort the Rome assignment. There was also of course the other consideration: if I wanted him to give me the Kobra mission I'd have to give him a bit of an incentive and the best way of doing that was to tie up this Rome phase the way he wanted it.

So I wouldn't abort.

The Fiat was slithering a little because of wheelspin and I eased off and got the tyres biting and then gunned up again, closing the gap on the Alfa-Romeo and holding it as another volley of shots came from behind us and picked some paint off Fogel's car and smashed the rear window. The siren of the emergency vehicle had started howling and I could see its red flashing light in the mirror. There was some traffic coming the other way because a Pan American Jumbo was due in at 00:55 and the line of cars began slowing when they saw the emergency vehicle coming up behind us. A stray shot came from somewhere but it didn't seem to hit anything.

Fogel was trying for the main exit gate but his brake lights came on and the tyres began smoking because a police car had appeared from the other direction to cut him off: with that siren howling it wouldn't be long before every patrol on the airport zeroed in on the Alfa and at this point I began thinking he wasn't going to make it because they were taking him very seriously: I still didn't know what the two plainclothesmen had been waiting for but they could have been noncombatant surveillance men scouting for the carabinieri, but even if I was wrong on that point the fact remained that the carabinieri had been sent specifically to meet Fogel so they wanted him pretty badly.

A single shot and my windscreen shattered and I hit the snow away with the flat of my left hand: I think it was Fogel himself, holding the gun across his shoulder and letting fly at random to cool of the pursuit.

Two shells left.

The Alfa-Romeo was now in a long curving slide as he took evasive action against the police car and I clouted the right offside wing of the Fiat as I went through the gap between the police car and a traffic island, driving into a blaze of light and out again and seeing the Alfa straightening up ahead of me. The only way he could go now was through the open gates to the tarmac and I followed him and saw the guard drawing his gun as I passed him. He fired three steady shots and two of them went into the Alfa, smashing a rear light and picking some bits of glass off the broken rear window. The car swerved and corrected and swerved again and I hit the brakes and pulled out a bit towards the airport building to give him room if he was going to turn over.

I couldn't see what was happening but it looked as if the guard's second shot had hit Fogel but hadn't quite knocked him out. He'd got control again but was veering towards the Air France plane that was now being checked and refuelled in the parking bay. This could either be typical thinking on his part or pure chance and I couldn't make out which: if he kept on his present course he could drive under the tail of the aircraft with a few inches to spare and give himself some excellent visual and tactical cover and force anyone behind him to hold their fire.

I swung the wheel and brought the Fiat into a wide curve that would take me past the tail of of the aircraft and keep the Alfa in sight. The sirens were now a permanent background and I could see some lights flashing somewhere beyond the Air France plane and to the right. Fogel was still on course but there was something wrong with him because the Alfa swerved again and tried to correct and couldn't make it: on this course he wouldn't clear the tail of the plane with anything like the room he needed. Some of the maintenance crew had stopped work and I thought I saw one of them running for cover behind the fuel tanker.

Headlights blinded me for a moment and I hit the mirror. Either the police car or the emergency vehicle had been gaining on us and I pulled over slightly to the left again to give them a clear run if they wanted to go past: the Fiat was flat out and smelling hot and I wasn't certain I could keep up with the Alfa-Romeo if Fogel decided to head for the open runways; but this thought was academic because he swerved again and couldn't correct this time and hit the fuel tanker head-on and I was already putting the Fiat into a controlled slide when the whole thing went up and I was driving into a wall of flame.