Sharon wound up like a little cyclone. 'Or you are planning to smuggle him out, perhaps! '

I filled in destination and time: LCNC at – a loose guess -1315. 'Come out and search the aeroplane, then.'

'We were going to.' Tamir said apologetically.

'For Ken? What's to stophim leaving the country anyway?'

'Why did he come back?' he countered.

Alternate airfields: there aren't many, for Nicosia. Put in Akrotiri RAF base – that's LCRA – and back here, LLLD again. 'Maybe he got homesick for Beit Oren.'

'You are not being serious! ' Sharon snapped.

I put down the operator's name as Castle Hotels, which was about as true as the rest of the plan, then my estimated endurance. 'I'm planning for two hundred miles in bad weather over water. To methat's serious.'

Tamir said: 'You mean the weather is going to be worse?'

'Much. Didn't you bring a coat?'

He groaned.1 left it somewhere last night. With my luck, I could lose my right hand and left glove in the same day.'

I grinned at him, then crossed out most of the emergency/ survival equipment list -1 only had life-jackets on board – and signed the form.

'So let's emigrate,' I suggested, and picked up my bag and briefcase.

The searchers gave me a proper search, despite my escort. I told them Sharon was carrying a gun but nobody smiled. Tamir routed in a pocket and took out a revolver. 'So am I.' I don't think he was talking to the searchers. How we could get a yard of sword past this sort of check…

I suppose Jerusalem did make some sense. As a customs-only-on-request field we should be able to take off without let or hindrance provided we landed at Ben Gurion to clear customs there. By then the sword might be under the floor panels, hopefully not carving through the control wires.

Outside, the sky was as per menu: about five-eighths lowish stratus leaking occasionally like an old dog, patches of blue showing through. Nothing serious yet, though the wind was beginning to gust nervously.

We walked across the wet tarmac, and even there nobody was trusting us; twice snoopy sub-machine gunners stopped us to ask Tamir what was going on.

I unlocked the Queen Air and waved them on up. Tamir put his hand in his pocket and went first. At a generous estimate, it would take one man about ten seconds to decide that nobody was hiding aboard an aeroplane that size: there's just no place. Tamir looked hopefully at the rear bulkhead that seals off the tail cone, but it was obviously permanent. He climbed ponderously down again and stood looking sad, with the wind whipping his thin hair.

'There are no other luggage compartments? I think some planes have them in the nose.'

They do, the Queen Air doesn't, but this was a touch of luck. I led them round to the port side of the nose and, without saying a word, started undoing the twenty-two Dzus screws holding on the electronics access panel. By the time I'd got half of them loose (four of them weren't even holding, which shows the standard of pre-flights I'd been doing) even Sergeant Sharon had lost a little faith. But the panel's nearly two square feet so just conceivably somebody could squeeze through.

I lifted it out and they could see the two solidly-packed racks of electrpnic black boxes – these mostly grey-greenish – each about the size of a carton of 200 cigarettes.

I called: 'Come on out; we know you're there! '

Sergeant Sharon said: 'Don't be stupid! '

Tamir hushed her, then: 'All right, please close it up.'

I fitted the panel back. 'How did you think anybody could get on to the airfield with security like you've got?' I did up only four of the screws.

'Real security is not trusting your security. Too much has happened at this airport. Is it safe to fly like that? '

'No, but I want to open it again and check one of the inverters for sparking when I've got main circuits on.' I hoped he hadn't studied electronics in night school.

But he bought it. 'That is all for your radio and radars and things?'

'Two comm sets, two ADF's, VOR/ILS, radar, marker -this aeroplane's under-equipped. When I first flew jet fighters, at night, we had just one ten-channel comm set and a transponder thing that never worked. The big changes in aviation haven't been jumbos and supersonics.'

He nodded. 'So – what do you do now?'

'Pre-flight check.'

'Please…' So I went back to the door and started again. Normally, a pre-flight isn't something you have to be too sincere about, particularly if you're the one who last flew the aeroplane. Just check the wheels for punctures or cuts, the wingtips and tail in case some hit-and-run pilot taxied into them, take off the pitot head cover and waggle the controls. But you can also do it by the book, and this time I did.

I was conscientiously poking a pipe-cleaner into the static air entry holes by the tail when it began to drizzle again. Tamir hunched his shoulders. 'I think we leave you now. Happy landings.'

'You've been watching too much TV.'

'Where else can one learn how to be a detective?' He shook my hand, Sergeant Sharon didn't, and they hustled away towards the terminal. Now I had to work.

I whipped off the electronics panel again. Up on the bulkhead that separates the compartment from the cockpit is one nonelectronic thing: the brake fluid reservoir. Why Beech put it there I don't know, but today I was glad they had. It doesn't look much: just a fat metal-polish can with a screw top and a plastic tube leading into the bottom.

I unclipped the can from the bulkhead, took off the top, and poured out the equivalent of two ounces of tobacco into an empty tin. The human race must have invented nastier liquids than hydraulic fluid, though Greek wine is the only one that springs to mind, and even that doesn't smother your hands in sticky rose-coloured muck that smells like a robot's brothel. But I don't suppose it does as much harm toa VOR/ILS box when you pour it carefully into the joints, either.

That would look too selective, so I sprinkled the last drops around obvious but non-dangerous places where it would show if anybody came looking.

Then I jammed the cap back on against the screw thread, to show how it had slopped out, and clipped the can back in place. Panel back on andall screws twisted home. Then wash my hands in petrol from the fuel tank drain and I was on board only a minute behind my schedule.

27

'Ben Gurion groundcontrol, Queen Air Whiskey Zulu. Request start-up, please.'

'Whiskey Zulu, stand by." They always say that while they sort through the bits of paper to find if they've got one about you. But I'd started up already anyhow; I don't like working the radio off the batteries.

'Whiskey Zulu, clear to start up. Set QNH 981 millibars.'

That put the pressure as far down as I'd seen it in the Mediterranean. The low had tracked closer than predicted. I ran through the rest of the cockpit check, including radar, marker receiver, ADF's and VOR/ILS on. The ILS needles shivered and swung to one side, but the 'off' flags went out; it was still in business. I set the ADF's on the local beacon and Tel Aviv, but without much faith.

'Whiskey Zulu, taxi clearance.'

'Whiskey Zulu, clear to taxi to holding point runway 30.'

'Whiskey Zulu.' I started moving, checked the brakes, rolled on. Nothing else on the field seemed to be moving. The armed guards sheltered, shaking wet feet, under Boeing wings and watched me pass with expressionless eyes.

'Whiskey Zulu, are you ready to copy your clearance?'

'Go ahead.'

"Whiskey Zulu cleared to Nicosia on Blue 17 Bravo flight level 80.'

That didn't need copying. 'Blue 17 flight level 80. Whiskey Zulu, thank you.'