The Tango Briefing

1: BIRDSEYE

I came in over the Pole and we were stacked up for nearly twenty minutes in a holding circuit round London before they could find us a runway and then we had to wait for a bottleneck on the ground to get itself sorted out and all we could do was stare through the windows at the downpour and that didn't help.

Sayonara, yes, very comfortable thank you.

There was a long queue in No. 3 Passenger Building and I was starting to sweat because the wire had said fully urgent and London never uses that phrase just for a laugh; then a quietly high-powered type in sharp blue civvies came up and asked who I was and I told him and he whipped me straight past Immigration and Customs without touching the sides and gold me there was a police car waiting and was it nice weather inTokyo.

'Better than here.'

'Where do we send the luggage?'

'This is all I've got.'

He took me through a fire exit and there was the rain slamming down again and the porters were trudging about in oilskins.

The radio operator had the rear door open for me and I ducked in and the driver hooked his head round to see who I was, not that he'd know.

'You want us to go as fast as we can?'

'That's what it's all about.'

Sometimes along the open stretches where the deluge was flooding the hollows we worked up quite a bow-wave and I could see the flash of our emergency light reflected on it.

'Bit of a summer storm.'

'You can keep it.'

They were using their sirens before we'd got halfway along Waterloo Road and after that they just kept their thumb on it because the restaurants and cinemas were turning out and every taxi was rolling.

Big Ben was sounding eleven when we did a nicely controlled slide into Whitehall across the front of a bus and he put the two nearside wheels up on the pavement so that I could get out without blocking the traffic.

'Best I could do.'

'You did all right'

Most of the lights were on in the building but the place sounded dead as if they'd made up their minds at last that the only thing to do was run. I used the stairs and went straight into Walford's room but he wasn't there and I had to barge into Field Briefing before I could find anyone.

'Where's Walford?'

'Sprained a ball.'

'Oh for Christ's sake.' I pulled off my trenchcoat and shook the rain off the collar, throwing it on a chair. They've never done anything about the environment at the Bureau: it's a fridge or an oven according to the season and this was August. 'Walford told me to get here, fully urgent.'

'That's right.'

Tilson was always like this: try blasting his eyes and he'd ask if you'd care for some tea.

'You mean he's not in the building?'

'All that matters to me, old horse, is that you are.' He picked up a phone, not hurrying. 'Quiller's come in. Cancel those last two cables, revamp the board and warn Clearance for tomorrow morning.'

He put the thing down and eyed me amiably. 'How were the geishas?'

'Listen, if Walford's not here, who do I see? Who's my director?'

'Director?'

'It is a job, isn't it?'

'As far as I know, old horse.'

'Then I want some orders.'

'What's the rush?'

I turned away so I wouldn't have to look at his pink amiable face. He wasn't doing it deliberately; this was just his character and maybe they'd put him in charge of Field Briefing because that's when your nerves tighten up a whole octave higher, right on the brink of a mission. Maybe they thought his sleepy-eyed approach to the thing would calm us down. It was driving me up the wall.

'Look, they whipped me over the North Pole and spat me out of the airport and we screamed the place down getting here in a squad car and now you ask me what's the rush, so for God's sake get on the blower and find out.'

He rocked gently on his swivel chair.

'Care for a spot of tea?'

'Is Carslake in the building?'

'He's running the Irish thing.'

'Well, get me some orders.'

It's the routine reaction: most of the shadow executives get it the minute they know there's a mission lined up with their name on it. We call it the shakes, the blues, the doom-clangers, but it's the same thing, a kind of sudden love-hate relationship with the job that's been giving you the kicks you asked for all along the line, the same job that's going to kill you off one day when your guard's down or your luck's out or you've finally lost that fine degree of judgment that has so far kept you alive.

So when you know there's a mission you get an urge to run the other way and you can't do that because you're committed, so you run to meet it instead, head down and blood up but with that little cold knot in the stomach.

'The only orders I know, old horse, is that you're to piddle off home.'

'What did they get me here for, then, so bloody fast?'

'We just wanted to know you were physically available for this one, and wecouldn't be sure of that if you were mooning around Tokyo.'

It made sense and the speed went out of me and I crossed to the open window and stood with my back to the rain, watching his face now because I wanted all the info I could get without asking too much.

'What were the signals you just cancelled?'

'We were going to warn Smythe and Bickersteth to stand by. One's in Bucharest and the other's hanging around in reserve on the Pakistan show.'

'You were going to pull them out for this job?'

'If you couldn't make it.' He flattened his pink hand and tilted it, watching the light flash across his nails. 'And now you have. Or have you?'

'What the hell does that mean?'

'Well, you might not like this one.' He gave a shy smile.

The knot in my stomach got colder.

'Why? Is it a bastard?'

'Oh I don't mean that, old horse. Anyway, the thing is you're here physically and all you have to do now is go home and get a good night's zizz.' He leaned forward to look at a pad on his desk. 'Tomorrow they're running a film show for you at — '

It would've been quicker to pull out Smythe and Bickersteth, wouldn't it?'

'Much.'

'Someone wants me particularly for this one.'

He smiled boyishly.

'That's right.'

'Who?'

'Not absolutely sure. Tell you in the morning.'

'Is there a director lined up?'

'Sort of.'

'Who?'

'They haven't told me. Honestly. Or I'd tell you, wouldn't I?'

'If it suited you.'

'That's the way we do things, isn't it? We don't like you people to have too much on your mind. Gives you indigestion. Now why don't you just buzz off and — '

'Where's this film show?'

'Air Ministry. Nine ack-emma manana — will you be there?'

'All right.'

'Room 43, Squadron-leader Eastlake. Code-intro's «Birdseye», okay? Then you can tootle back here and I'll give you the rest and you can get cleared.'

I stood watching his smooth cherub's face for a bit and thought again about what he'd said — you might not like this one- and then got it out of my mind and picked up the trenchcoat and slung it round my shoulders because it was too stinking hot to put it on.

'What's the area?'

I think you'll need tropical kit.'

'Oh my God.'

It's a shame,' he smiled amiably, 'in winter they send you to Warsaw, don't they?'

'Why did they want me for this one, specially?'

'It's a solo mission, apart from the director in the field. You like working alone, don't you? So it ought to suit you down to the ground.'

Suddenly it struck me that they'd deliberately got Walford out of the way so that this bland little angel-face could handle me softly, softly, till they'd caught their monkey. This job was a bastard and they'd picked the only one who'd take it on out of sheer bloody-mindedness because he knew that anyone with a bit of sense would refuse. It had happened before and now it looked like happening again. If I let it.

'Get you a taxi?'

'I'll walk.'

'In this rain?'

'It'll cool me off.'

'We could put it down,' he said comfortably, 'on the expenses. Let's say the operation's running, as of now.'

'From what I can smell about this one you can stuff it, along with the taxi-fare.'

Her breasts were marbled in the greenish light and her face looked cold and blind. The shadow of the window cut half across her body, leaving her long legs in darkness, silvered with moisture.

The rain had stopped a long time ago but now and then a diamond drop flashed down from the guttering. Taxis were still about, their tyres hissing along the roadway; in here the air was stifling, even with the window open.

She moved and I looked down at her, she'd opened her eyes and they were brilliant in the half-dark.

'Okay?' she asked.

'Okay.'

She smiled and uncurled herself, getting off the bed and shaking her hair out, moving lazily in the glow from the street lamps, her hands idly smoothing her body as she stretched a little, her eyes closing again as she took pleasure simply in being alive, turning slowly in a kind of dance and forgetting I was here.

I hadn't meant to be.

But Tilson had seemed so certain they'd got me, and he wouldn't be stupid enough to think I'd take onany kind of job. He knew enough about the background to know that I'd finally fall for this one after I'd put up a preliminary squeal to show I had a choice.

So I'd gone dripping wet into a phone-box and tried four numbers before I could find anyone with enough time on their hands to take in a nerve-case who wanted a woman and wanted her badly because he knew that once the mission was running he wouldn't get another chance and that if somewhere along the line a wheel came off she'd be the last one he'd ever have.

'You're quiet.'

'I was watching you,' I said.

She smiled again, just a lazy movement along her mouth. 'You weren't.'

Her name was Corinne. I'd only seen her twice before but we liked things the same way, it was a kind of natural. 'There's another job,' I said, and found my clothes

'How long for?'

'You can't ever tell.'

She got her cigarettes and held one out and I shook my head and she lit up. 'Where is it this time?'

' Italy. Whole coach-load, want to see the Tower of Pisa before the bloody thing falls down.'

I dropped my keys and she picked them up, stooping naked in the light, giving them to me, smiling with her brilliant eyes. 'I just can't see you doing it.'

'Why not?'

'I just can't see you standing up with a microphone and saying on the left there's the statue of Marco Polo and on the right there's the Co-operative Spaghetti Works.'

'Well, I've got to do something for a living.'

The smoke curled across the slanting light, quickening to an air current from the window.

'I wish I was going with you.'

On a coach-trip in a heatwave?'

'It'd be a different kind of grind, and there'd be you.' She moved around the room, unconsciously making stylized turns on her slim bare feet. 'You know something? It isn't the cutthroat bitchiness of the competition that gets us down in the end, it's the strain on the shoulders, lifting our arms to get in and out of the dresses. You're right on the point of throwing it in, then you get a break and see your face on the front ofGo-Girl so you think you've hit it big, and you're back in the grind again.'

I tied the second lace.

'You ought to get married.'

'Oh futz, spare me the suds and the sink.'

'Someone with a sack of loot.'

I got my coat and we kissed and I opened the door and looked back and she was standing perfectly still in the small airless room, the after-rain smell coming in and the light striking obliquely across her, across a thin willowy girl with blue-veined breasts and a slowly-dying smile as she watched me go, a girl called Corinne whom I'd met only twice before and wouldn't, maybe, ever see again.

Room 43 was on the fifth floor and I was standing by the window when he came in.

'Sorry I kept you. You're Mr Gage?'

'Yes.'

'I'm Eastlake.'

'You've got quite a birdseye view from up here.'

'Appropriate word.' He was going to add something but the phone buzzed and he picked it up. 'Squadron-leader Eastlake. Yes, I told him to get three while he was at it. Well,tell him to pull his finger out, and listen, I'm going along to Projection and I don't want anyone to come barging in, so put someone on the door.'

I came away from the window and he gave me a slow probing look, wondering what a nondescript civilian was doing in here with a code-introduction. I'd used the name Gage because that had been stuck on for Tokyo and if they'd changed it when they'd arranged this meeting Tilson would have told me.

'Let's go along. Nobody with you?'

'No.'

In the small room smelling of acetate and overheated guide mechanism he introduced me to a WRAF operator and three flight lieutenants: 'Hinchley was piloting this sortie, Pierce was navigating, and Johnson's the photographic interpretation officer responsible for the analysis of the imagery material. Can we have those curtains drawn, someone?'

There were three or four rows of tip-up seats and we sat down and the WRAF hit the button and threw a desert on the screen and I remembered Tilson saying, 'I think you'll need tropical kit.'

Eastlake said: 'Ask what questions you like as we go along, will you? We did this with a cluster of four 35mm Nikons and a restricted field of 25 degrees. Filters were yellow, green and two reds and the film's been cut and joined for continuity, all right?'

'What altitude?'

'Sixty-five thousand feet.' He'd hesitated a fraction because it was classified so I thought this must be the Mk II version of the Albatross and started looking for missile installations dolled up as mosques.

But so far there was only desert, a sugar-brown terrain filling the screen and looking like a sheet of corrugated cardboard with a fold here and there.

'What are those rocks?'

'Shale upthrust, nothing very high, perhaps twenty or thirty feet.'

The pattern of dunes and rills spun slowly as we circled clockwise so I focused my eyes on the centre but couldn't see anything.

'This isn't a dummy run?'

'No. These are the pix we went for.'

I still couldn't see anything interesting on the screen but 1 was beginning to see a lot more of the job that Tilson and those other bastards were trying to pitch me into: a stinking Robinson Crusoe lark in an area defined on this frame-scale three miles across with nothing in it but a bunch of rocks and something else so small that only people like these could see it.

The ground resolution looked close on ten-tenths, with a shade of grain on the light-exposed side of the shale upthrust but the rest very clear, and I began getting frustrated because they'd sat me down to show me something and they knew I couldn't see it and I felt a bit of a lemon.

'Have you got those rocks on a static 3-D viewer?'

'We have, but I wouldn't bother.'

Eastlake had obviously been briefed. Last night Tilson had just told me to keep the rendezvous and that was all, so I hadn't reported at the Bureau this morning on my way here; but they'd briefed these chaps to run this film without telling me what I had to look for and there must be a good reason.

The desert spun and tilted, the group of rocks changing shape as the angle of view turned through its conic vector, the light-and-shadow corrugations of the dunes shifting definition like water flowing in slow motion. It was all I could see.

'Can we have a few stops?'

The squadron-leader spoke to the girl and she began breaking it up into ten-second runs and I still couldn't get it. The whole scene's slow revolutions were becoming mesmeric and I shut my eyes to prevent strain, viewing for a few seconds and trying to coincide with the rhythm of the stops, resting at intervals and waiting till the after-image had faded under my closed lids. I knew now why they'd been warned not to tell me what I was expected to look for: the inter-reactive process of eye and brain can play tricks and sometimes you can see things only because you've been told they're there.

'Would youlike some run-backs?'

'We can try.'

He told the girl and the scene began swinging anti-clockwise at precise intervals with five-second stops. It didn't make any difference: I was looking at the same thing in a mirror. There's no point in run-backs unless you think you've spotted something and want to recap and I hadn't spotted a bloody thing and I was getting fed-up. The heat of the projector was adding to the heat of our bodies in here and there was nothing much left to breathe and I thought it'd be nice if a girl came round with a tray of Dairymaid.

The dunes flowed under my eyes.

Swing. Stop. Run-back.

The projector droned.

I kept wanting to look at the rocks but Eastlake had said it wasn't worth bothering with. They weren't interested in the rocks. And it was no good asking them for a clue because the object of the exercise was that I should see the target for myself, avoiding the risk of conditioned illusion.

Swing. Stop. Run-back.

The dunes were becoming a mirage. The dunes and the rocks and the flow of light and shade across the scene were beginning to swirl in a slow-moving vortex and I was losing track of perspective.

'Would you like us to back-project against a — '

'What? No. Run it back. Run it back, will you?'

The scene swung to a stop.

'Tell me when — '

'Yes.'

Anti-clockwise. The shadows flowing and the angle. Stop.'

'This frame?'

'Back another fraction.'

The sprockets whirred again and stopped. 'Yes, that's the one. I've got it now.'