Steady. Anger — heat — sweat — thirst. Don't forget where you are.

Not his fault. I was having to wait, that was all. He was looking at the photograph now, looking at the sketch and then at the photograph. Taking his time.

Christ I can't go seven miles.

Fourteen hours' minimum through that blinding furnace and finish up delirious and the last drop gone.

The definition on the air photograph wasn't too clear because they'd blown it up to the point where the grain would start fogging so he probably wouldn't be able to match the narrow end of the formation where the pacing went six and six and five, all short runs, but the overall shape ought to give him an answer.

Sweat in my eyes. In the shade here it wasn't evaporating so fast. Pronounced heart-beat: quite regular and perfectly normal in these conditions. Thud-thud-thud.

Looking at the photograph, then at the sketch. The girl watching him. I didn't know if he'd got juxtaposed stills of the terrain surrounding the target area and I wasn't going to ask him because that'd be another nasty one if both outcrops had much the same shape at this degree of blow-up. The girl watching him.

You there, Diane?

Yes.

How's tricks?

All right.

Lovely day, isn't it?

Yes.

Tried to say it with a smile, couldn't make it. Nerves in her voice, nothing explicit, just a tenseness. I suppose she knew the score, worked out what we were doing, didn't like it, none of us did. Rotten having to wait.

He said

Those are the right ones.

Shut my eyes and said:

Oh that's good.

I'm going to ask those people to confirm everything for us, the scale, orientation, and particularly the distance and bearing of Tango Victor from the rocks. Someone might have made a slip.

Just what we need.

It's a possibility we have to consider.

How long will it take, Loman?

Perhaps thirty minutes.

Kaifra — Tunis — Crowborough — London. No delay at all from Kaifra to the Embassy because he'd use the radio and the signals room in Tunis would use their own. Crowborough — London was the slow bit, by normal telephone.

I want to be out there longer than that.

He still hadn't told me to get moving and I didn't like it: he sounded too bloody relaxed. The panic had gone because we knew now that we were at least in the target area but he still ought to be worried because the aeroplane had disappeared.

You're camped in the shade at present?

Yes.

I want you to stay there for the moment. I'm in signals and London is monitoring.

Didn't like it all and the sweat was running into my eyes, what was he in signals for at this phase?

For Christ sake fill me in, Loman.

I just want you to stay at your base so that I can call you immediately if I need to. I take it you'd prefer not to carry the transceiver about in the full sun.

I know that bit.

Five-second pause.

Chirac has reported.

He all right?

Oh yes. But he didn't find the wind he needed, so he had to circle for several hours to gain enough height to make a final run-in through dead air. He came down in agassitwenty kilometres from South 5 and they picked him up in a half-track.

Oh Christ, there'd been some kind of security leak, smell it a mile off. He wasn't relaxed at all, he was just over-correcting again.

Did he report by phone?

Yes. He hadn't been able to begin his final run-in until shortly after dawn, and he says he was observed by an aircraft at considerably higher altitude.

Worse than I'd thought.

What area, Loman?

Quite a long pause. Didn't want to worry his executive. All the worrying was meant to be done at Local Control.

Not far from the point of drop. He puts it at something like fifteen kilometres from there. He was flying in the dark for most of the time and couldn't even see the No. 1 Philips tower or the Roches Brunes derrick.

I couldn't see why Loman had to get into signals with Control. And I was beginning to think I didn't want to know. You don't bring in London on a local security leak unless the whole thing's been bust wide open.

What was the aircraft registration?

He couldn't read it.

Too high?

Yes.

I had to think how exactly to say it.

Loman, have we still got a mission?

It was a bloody awful thing to ask your director in the field and I knew that but I wanted the answer.

Let us hope so.

There was a faint crackling noise somewhere. Not from the set. I looked past the edge of the canopy.

Quiller.

Hear you.

What is that noise?

Lizard, cracking a snail open.

He didn't bother to answer.

I looked out from the canopy across the blaze of sand, for an instant seeing it, then seeing it vanish.

Loman, I want to go out there.

Not yet.

While I'm fresh. Let me go and look for the bloody thing. It must be there somewhere.

Certainly it must. But we have to wait for London.

Bloody London, gets on your tits.

Switching oft transmit.

Very well, but stay open to receive.

Had to drink some water, then I lay on my back and decided not to think about the aircraft that had been observing Chirac only fifteen kilometres from the point of drop, Loman's headache, not mine, though of course when the crunch came I'd be right in it, like that poor bloody snail

Slept.

Tango.

Check: 13.19. Switch.

Tango receiving.

I have London's signal. Monitoring liaison with Algiers informs that five squadrons of desert-reconnaissance helicopters are to search a prescribed area of which your own position is approximately the centre.

I watched the lizard. It had found another one and the crackling noise began.

When do they start?

They are already airborne.

12: SANDSTORM

I stood watching them.

They were quite high, about five hundred feet, but their shape and their flight were unmistakable: they drifted in circles, their wings held like black hoods to trap the air. From this distance I couldn'tsee their heads but theywere watching me: despite their feigned disinterest I was the focal point of their circling.

I hadn't noticed them before but they'd probably been somewhere overhead since early this morning, attracted by the movement of the dot that had been making its laborious way among the dunes towards the rock outcrop. Their patient observation heightened my feeling of vulnerability and I had the urge to go back to the refuge that thirty minutes ago I'd been sharing with the lizards.

Nobody likes being watched, and this was particularly unpleasant because I was being assessed as potential carrion.

I moved again, trying not to drag my feet and leave tracks. The heat of the sun was like a weight on my back, pushing me down rather than forward, and its light struck upwards against my face, reflecting from the sand. I knew that the water-flask was still a quarter full and was tempted to drink, but when I'd broken camp and pushed everything into the shade I'd noticed that one of thebidons was already empty. In the last ten hours I'd used half the water-supply, pouring it into my body as you pour water on a fire.

The desert is not like other places. The slaking of the increased thirst puts back only fifty per cent of the water lost in the cooling process, and in this degree of heat my cooling process was breaking down because the sweat was being evaporated the instant it reached the skin. In one hour I was generating seven or eight hundred calories and my sweat was ridding me of less than five.