'How long have you worked with this type?'

'Over two years.'

'Did you choose it because of that?'

'No. Because it's perfect for the conditions here.'

I nodded and turned away.

Loman was watching me. I felt him watching.

She was all right on the radio and she knew how the thing worked but if I went out there a hundred miles deep into the desert I'd be like a diver with a lifeline. My lifeline would be the radio liaison facility and if it were put out of action I'd fry out there like a louse. Worse: the mission would end at the same time and in the same place,objective unaccomplished.

Loman said

'Arrangements have been made to jump you in rather soon.'

'How soon?'

'Tonight.'

This was the argument he'd been looking for.

The nearer you get to the brink of a mission the faster you want to go: it's a kind of target attraction and you don't want to pull out and the little bastard knew this and now he'd thrown me the deadline and it was close. In a matter of hours I could be out there in the silence of the sands and alone with the objective: the broken-winged smudge on the desert floor that no one had been closer to than sixty-five thousand feet.

Tango Victor.

I looked at the girl.

'Did you volunteer for this kind of work.'

'Yes.'

'You know it's dangerous?'

'Yes.'

'What makes you want to do it?'

'The interest. And the danger.'

'Would you say you had a strong sense of survival?'

'Pretty strong, yes. I'd fight like hell.'

I told Loman he could brief me.

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.'