The Tango Briefing

5: MOHAMED

She hit the set open.

Tango to Embassy.

Loman was restive again, thinking with his feet. He'd got me to the jump-off point and there weren't any more doubts: tonight the mission would start running.

Tango to Embassy.

'What time.' he asked me, 'did you hear it?'

'09.00 on Radio Tunis.'

Embassy to Tango. Receiving you.

'No details? Just that he was found in the harbour?'

'An Englishman named Fyson. A police enquiry has begun.'

Stand by, please.

She gave him the mike.

This is for London, Liaison 9. F Freddie absent believe other hand believe may pip-squeak first. No: pip-squeak. Near smoke negative please delegate. Q Quaker home on TJ-TK-S1-102 repeat TJ-TK-S1-102. Queries? Tango out.

I'd spread the map on the bed and he came over and began briefing me.

'I told you that after Tango Victor had taken-off from the UK there was a suspected false signature found on a Customs and Excise declaration form. It was discovered that the pilot had knowingly taken-off without proper freight inspection. Twenty-four hours later a report went in to D.I6 in London that the Algerian Air Force was in the process of mounting a ground-search by five squadrons of its desert-reconnaissance branch along this twenty-kilometre band from Oran here on the Mediterranean coast to Alouef, south of this upland here, the Plateau de Tademait. It was described as the usual "routine exercise".

'Was there any monitoring liaison at that stage?'

Customs, Special Branch, D.I.6 and the Bureau were very disparate organizations.

'No. Monitoring liaison began when a telephone call from a Frenchwoman in Tripoli was received at the airfield where Tango Victor's pilot was based — incidentally his name is Holt. The Special Branch was then called in and it was recognized that the twenty-kilometre band on the map here in fact straddled the proposed course of the freighter overland south of the Mediterranean. It seems that Holt diverted his flight to Tripoli without informing anyone, landing for an overnight stop in order to visit an acquaintance who lives there — the woman who telephoned the airfield in the evening of the next day. Evidently he had told her that he was to fly back to the UK after seeing her, and she phoned to make sure he'd arrived safely. It was of course only from that point in time that anyone in London knew that Holt's course across Algeria had been Tripoli-Alouef, not Oran-Alouef.'

The picture was coming up and I did a visual check on the map and saw that a line drawn from Tripoli to Alouef would pass through our target-area: Longitude 8°3′ by Latitude 30°4′.

'This was why the Algerian Air Force was unable to find the wreck and why the RAF succeeded. The recent actions against O'Brien, Fyson and yourself make it clear that the opposition realizes that we know where the plane is and that they're anxious to reach it before we do.'

'You think they're overlooking the obvious?'

He turned away from the map and walked neatly up and down. 'No. I think they don't rate their chances very high.'

He'd got the point but I didn't expect him to fill anything in for me: this was a briefing session at Local Control, not a planning operation in London. But there was an equation that didn't work out and it worried me: the opposition couldn't have overlooked the obvious point that if they wanted to reach Tango Victor the best thing to do would be to follow us in and make an over-kill on the spot. Loman thought they weren't too sanguine about this and maybe he was right.

There was a theory I liked even less: they could have killed off O'Brien and Fyson and attempted to kill me toobecause they knew where Tango Victor, was lying. And we had to be held off while they tried to reach it. This would explain the hurry directive from London.

'What are the chances of another desert-recco exercise?'

He stopped pacing and looked at the wall and I knew this was something that needled him.

'That's quite impossible to deduce.' He was trying to make up his mind whether to block me off here and avoid overloading or cover the situation for me and he couldn't reach a decision standing still so he got into motion again. 'The opposition may conceivably include factions other than Algerian. We shouldn't discount Libya or Egypt or the United Arab Front organization. Nor should we discount the effects of internecine shifts of policy. The lack of a second search by the Algerian Air Force — this time over the target area — does not necessarily indicate that they know where the aeroplane came down: it could be due to a reluctance on the part of the newly-formed government in Algeria to mount an «exercise» so close to the Tunisian and Libyan borders. The assassination of King Hamouda and the seizure of power by the generals has left North African relationships rather delicate for the time being.'

I looked at the map. If we could read it properly it could answer most of the questions.

'What made the opposition think the plane came down near the Tunisian border?'

He looked at me with his shoulders drooping suddenly.

'O'Brien. Then Fyson.'

'Then me.'

'That wasn't your fault.'

'I walked straight into surveillance.'

'You could hardly avoid it.'

'Do you think that our presence in the field is theonly reason why they believe Tango Victor came down within a hundred miles of Kaifra?'

In a moment he said:

'I would like to.'

I'd never seen Loman like this before: within hours of throwing the mission into gear he was uncertain on major aspects that London should have cleared for him before sending either of us into the field. Everything about this operation stank of panic and I didn't like it because I was the ferret and the ferret's always the first to go when the whole thing blows apart.

'Who have you got lined up?'

He stopped moving about.

'Lined up?'

'If I come a mucker.'

I felt the girl watching me from near the radio.

'No one,' Loman said.

'With a thing as shaky as this — '

'I anticipate success.' His tone had risen a fraction and he controlled it at once. 'Complete success. You understand?' He was wiping his face again. 'Had there been no chance of complete success I would have refused to direct the mission, regardless of pressure. I am asking you to proceed with every confidence, both in me and in the constant support we shall have from London.'

I was learning something about Loman: the higher the stress the more he talked like a schoolmistress.

'All right. Tell me about access, will you?'

He began moving again at once. I'd pushed the briefing into the final phase and he wouldn't have to worry any more about the background aspects: the area where he was critically uncertain.

'You will rendezvous with a French pilot tonight as soon as he contacts meto say he's ready. His name is Gaston Chirac and he was engaged in combat flying during the Algerian war. Since then he has flown for the oil-companies in desert survey work and knows the area thoroughly; he was also the world sailplane champion three years ago when he raised the altitude record to forty-six thousand feet. There is only one way of sending you into the target area without either surveillance or active obstruction and that is by glider.'

'And parachute?'

'And of course parachute. Since this is a night-drop, both will be dull black, to ensure that you go in unseen as well as unheard. The take-off is arranged for 23.00 hours. The rock outcrop you saw on the reconnaissance photographs is approximately five hundred yards from the aeroplane and can be used as a landmark even by starlight; it may also conceivably offer partial shade during the day, though that is less certain. Your equipment will comprise the second transceiver, a 35mm reflex camera with flash, and of course desert survival gear.'

'What's the estimated duration?'

He'd been pacing towards me and he turned away when I said that and it needn't have meant anything but I thought, it did because my nerves were getting into tune as the deadline approached and they could catch vibrations that I'd miss at other times.

'Flexible.' I didn't hear anything in his tone because he'd make bloody sure of that. 'Forty-eight hours at the most you'llhave rations and water for that period, plus reserves. The task itself is not exacting: we are asked for photographs of the plane and its cargo. At the same time you will be reporting in precise detail by radio onwhat you discover, and your report will go directly on to tape in this room.'

So that if I didn't survive, all they'd lose were the photographs. That was all right.

I left the map and went over to the carved teak table and looked at the second transceiver. There was a recessed button that the other one didn't have.

'Manual destruct?'

'Yes. Ten-second fuse.'

'Acid?'

'Explosive.'

'Safe range?'

'Five yards.'

He paused for a moment and said: 'In any case it's purely a refinement: the worst you'll have to contend with in the desert will be the heat. The more difficult phase of this operation is getting you to the jump-off point without attracting surveillance or obstructive action. We must therefore take every possible care.'

Near the edge of the retina an object is invisible: but movement can be seen. At the actual edge of the retina not even movement shows itself: but it triggers a reflex and the eyes will turn quickly to bring the moving object into central vision for inspection.

Static objects have no automatic interest unless their shape is significant, but to all animals movement has its own primitive significance: it may be signalling the presence of food in the form of. prey or of danger in the form of a predator. In man, whose prey is killed and processed for him, the perception of movement serves as a warning alone, until the movement can be explained.

Unexplained movement is always suspect.

The rendezvous with Chirac had been fixed for 21.00 hours ata redjem seven kilometres along the road to Garaa Tebout and I was getting into the Mercedes when the visual reflex was stimulated and I turned my head and looked away again and pulled the seat-belt tight and got the engine going and thought Christ, they didn't even let Fyson die in peace.

Loman had told me he'd got here from Tunis with no tags and he couldn't have made a mistake about that because on those long straight stretches through the olive groves he would have seen a tag a mile away. I'd got here clean too and it was nothing to do with the girl because there'd been no surveillance when I'd gone to our base: that's a trip when you treble-check. So it was impossible that anyone knew I'd holed-up in Kaifra: if you forgot about Fyson.

Fyson had known I was coming here and they wouldn't have had to do very much because his nerves had been shot and he didn't carry a 9-suffixand they'd only had one question for him so it was easy and Loman wasn't being funny when he said the most difficultstage of this operation was getting me to the jump-off without someonetrying to stop me.

I turned the 220 and drove under the lights of the hotel marquee and looked round to see if there were anything coming and took the east road through the tunnel of overhanging palms and checked the mirror and kept the speed steady at thirty, a little more, such a nice evening for a drive.

The slipstream didn't cool anything: it just circulated the heat. There were gnats already sticking to the windscreen and I used the wiper jets and the screen went silver and slowly dark again. The roads in Kaifra are sanded over in places: theGhibli blows it from the south and nobody feels like sweeping it away so it's left for the wheeled traffic to break up the drifts and scatter the sand towards the edge of the road.

I didn't like the way Loman had said the estimated duration of my work in the target area was “flexible”. After two seconds he'd put it at forty-eight hours' maximum but that didn't mean anything more than that I'd forced him into an obligatory answer. There are always unknown factors in any target area whether it's the office of the Cuban Minister for Defence or the off-limits research and development section of a Japanese electronics complex under government contract or a square mile of sand in the Sahara, but the director in the field makes a point of mounting a model operation on paper before he sets the real one running: and people like Loman and Egerton and Mildmay do it with a slide-rule and a stop-watch and a blueprint of the area.

That word “flexible” simply meant that on this operation the director in the field didn't know how long it should take me to do the work once I'd gained access and it pointed to the same thing that all the other features pointed to: those bastards in London were sending me in with almost no preparation and once I was there I'd have to carry the whole of the load. The 'constant support from London' he'd talked about was strict cock because there'd be nothing London could do if I mucked it right in the middle of the job.

Yes of course I must try not to muck it but in a panic directive like this one the chances were a bloody sight higher.

A lovely night, with clear stars and soft shadows. The thing was to do it without bending a wing or anything because of police enquiries later. I didn't want to leave any paint.

He wasn't using his dipped heads but the sidelights were quite bright enough for me: they kept floating into the mirror and out again as we left the avenue of palms and got on to the wide sandy road bordering the desert.

Dark 404, nothing exceptional.

And he was alone. Wearing a fez, someone local. But quite professional, the way he hung back a long way and took a short cut now and then, crossing my bows a hundred yards ahead as if he were someone else. He knew the roads here, the intersections, and after ten minutes I got fed-up because he was so showy: it wasn't going to be easy with this one. So I did a U-turn and took three rights with the lights out and caught him at an intersection and he had the grace to swerve and look worried but it didn't make things any better because he began hanging on much closer so the only thing it proved was that I'd done it on my own doorstep.

He was only a tag: there wouldn't be any action unless I did something busy. If they'd wanted to neutralize me they'd have used two men: one with the wheel, one with the gun, the rear tyres first to slow me and then the rear window. picking at the bottom left-hand corner while I couldn't duck any lower without losing sight of the road.

He only wanted to know where I was going.

The rdv was twelve minutes from now and I didn't want to turn up late for Chirac so I started a slow routine, using the sand to slide on and flicking the lights out at the fast end of a right-angle turn and doubling in the dark and slipping him twice before he worked out the score and decided to keep so close that I could see his eyes in the mirror. No go.

Kaifra isn't a big place and it's surrounded by desert and that made it difficult for me: there wasn't much choice of terrain. I suppose he'd got his air-conditioning on and that made me fed-up again so. I thought I should go and stare him out somewhere along the desert road to South 4.

I've only done it twice before and I don't like it because there's a touch of Russian roulette about it and that's inconsistent: in order to complete a mission you have to stay alive.

If Loman had known what I was going to do he would have had the shits and I tried not to let this reinforce my decision to do it. He would have argued that it was the duty of an executive not only to protect himself against obstructive action by the opposition but also to avoid resorting to tactics that could hazard the mission, so forth.

On the other hand my chances of getting out of the present situation alive weren't too high either: the man in the 404 realized that I was going somewhere exclusive because I'd been trying to throw him off. We could keep this up for half the night and if we went anywhere near his base he might decide to bring in some support to finish me off and if you start running with one an the tail and another one closing in from ahead of you the chances get progressively disappointing until they move in for the kill.

So I turned left twice and then right and found the road that ran through fifteen miles of dunes to the South 4 camp. The massed palms blocked most of the starlight but we didn't go on to heads and he kept coming up very close every time I jabbed the brakes and when he got used to the rhythm of the thing I broke it and started drifting across his bows and he didn't like that either because we couldn't see much on parking lights and I suppose he didn't want to switch his heads on because it would have looked so amateur.

Brakes: drift. Another drift and sand flew as the tyres scattered it. Brakes: oh very close and I cleared it because I didn't want to leave any paint on him.

Drift. Brake — drift and he got nervous and hit something, trunk of a palm, and then I gunned up and he spun a lot and I lost him and swung into the long desert road and went all the way up through the gears on the automatic and crossed the hundred mark with the power still coming on, no lights yet in the mirror but they'd be there soon.

Ravines both sides.

Not deep ones but the engineers had followed the natural lie of a bedrockgassi and then raised the roadway high enough to stop the south-blowingGhibli from burying it under permanent drifts of sand.

Coming now, yes.

Faint lights in the mirror. Headlights, faint.

It would be all right out here. The setting was classic: sand, stars and the highway leaning across the desert to the horizon, a fallen column. There was nothing complicated.

You can do it by first putting a critical amount of distance between your own car and theirs. You can do this either by relying on superior acceleration and maximum speed to take care of the distance-factor or by taking them through a series of feints and passes to slow them up before you go out for the kill.

The 220 had the edge on the 404 but it would have taken twenty miles to build up the degree of distance needed and I didn't have the time and that was why I'd made a point of slowing him in phase 1: it had brought the time-factor right down with a bang and the whole thing would now be over within the next thirty seconds and if I were still all right I could go back and keep the Chirac rdv more or less on time.

It was veryimportant not to touch him. Loman could do quite a lot to keep me out of official trouble because his cover provided him with the required diplomatic immunity and the Embassy had been asked to give immediate support in the event of a signal, but things could get tricky despite precautions and two years ago when Proctor had just finished setting up final penetration for a first-class cipher-break in a Curtain-state consulate he blew the mission because he'd left his car parked on a pedestrian-crossing and London got very upset.

Tonight there was going to be an accident and if it was the 404's and not mine I wasn't going to report it and everything would be all right so long as there weren't any marks on the Mercedes.

The power was full on and I left it for five seconds while I worked out the odds. It depended on the kind of man he was: it depended totally on that. And I didn't know him. He could drive all right and didn't chuck it in when things got rough but it didn't tell me much about the one factor that would finally decide the issue: his breaking-point.

No data.

It raised the risk but it was a calculated risk and the odds looked fair so I kicked the brakes and watched the needle because in the starlight the swinging parallax of the dunes didn't make for a good enough reference and it was safer to drive on instruments. Patch of sand and we lost traction and I got it back and wrapped the friction round again, slowly through ninety, seventy, fifty with the lights in the mirror getting brighter as the distance,closed.

Fabric getting hot: normal. Maximum deceleration-curve right out of the book and very effective but now I began wondering if I'd allowed the correct distance: all I'd had for a reference was the time he'd taken to come back into the mirror and the brightness of his headlamps when he'd turned them on.

Twenty.

Ten.

Zero and I used the last of the momentum to swing the 220 into a fast U that brought us facing the way we'd come and then I gunned up by leaving my foot just where it was and letting the automatic send the needle up progressively.

His headlights seemed rather bright even allowing for the fact that I was now facing them and I started wondering again whether I'd judged things right but there was a rising fifty on the clock by now and everything was shaping up well enough; I think it was only the primitive animal brain starting to worry: the organism didn't like the look of this at all, up on its back legs and bloody well whining.

Ignore.

Speed now 70.

His estimated speed: 80 plus.

Minimum impact figure if things went wrong: 150.

I didn't put the heads on yet because I wanted to save that till later: three or four seconds from now. At the moment he wouldn't be absolutely sure what I was doing: he would have lost my rear-lamps but that could mean I'd simply turned them off; he would have picked up my parking lights but he wouldn't necessarily identify them: with an eye-level horizon the big North African stars seemed to be floating on the dunes and this would confuse him.

I had to wait for the instant when he realized that I'd turned round and was coming at him on a very fast collision-course: then I'd start making him nervous in the final few seconds in the hope that he'd see the point.

Bloody well whining. Brain-think had partially gone and the organism was snivelling about the risk: we wouldn't be here tomorrow, no more women, no more anything, so forth. His headlights very bright in my eyes, almost blinding. The dunes streaming past, the warm air rushing at the windows. Clock: 85.

Running it close.

Certain areas of the forebrain still functioning: the paramount factor was his threshold of fear and that was established by personal characteristics: the degree to which he valued life, the extent of his subservience to the idea of Allah, the measure of his willingness or otherwise to be beaten in a dare, other things, many other things. Not at all certain this was in fact forebrain activity: point now reached when self-critical capacity very much diminished, sounded more like the organism panicking again, trying desperately to raise doubts and scare me into chucking it.

No go.

It was quite a narrow road. It had been designed to take the width of two trucks with enough space between to let them pass. This meant that if you were driving a car the size of the Mercedes 220 and kept in the middle of the road there wouldn't be room for anyone else.

Headlights dazzling now and no means of judging distance any more,the gap closing at a rising 165 kph and too risky to leave it later than this so I hit the switch and flooded him with light and hit the horns to bring in the scare-factor of the karate yell and sat there staring him out.

I wondered what his name was.

Ahmed Somebody. Mohamed Somebody.

Thirty-four missions and only a few scars and then I met a man named Mohamed, unlikely name for an epitaph, why not Blenkinsop. My own, yes, my own fault. Not fault exactly. Whole thing was calculated. Miscalculated, thought he'd break first.

Light fierce and sight gone, driving blind, eyes shut and the retinae burning. Sound coming in explosively fast from the desert night, he'd been so far away, now so close.

Dark.

Dark and the wind rocking as the slipstream hit and dragged and set up turbulence, a great cough of sound then silence.

Brakes.

Eyes watering badly, the road swimming. Dark only comparative after the blinding light, silence relative to that unpleasant explosive cough, be interesting one day to try estimating how close he'd passed, how late he'd left it, how far he'd been airborne over the ravine before gravity overcame momentum, slide-rules and stop-watches, but really only one of those things you think are still going to be interesting later. They're not. Christ sake more brakes.

Slowing.

Nearside tyres nibbling at the edge of the road, important not to go over, anything could happen if you hit ground at a bad angle and started rolling. Don't spoil it now.

Brakes. Slowing and locking and sliding and bringing it down through fifty, forty, with the ribs pressing into the seat-belt. Acid in the stomach, various glands performing, a lot of adrenalin, a certain degree of weakness along the forearms, general feeling of lassitude as the organism tried to break the tension down, all right you snivelling little tick, I won't do it again.

When the speed was low enough I swung the wheel over and turned back. There was an orange glow against the sky about a mile away and by the time I got there most of the petrol had burnt out. I went close enough to make sure what had happened and then got back into the car.