There'd been no choice.

11:22.

The wind blew cold, penetrated my bomber jacket, penetrated to the spine, because there were going to be headlines, yes, after all.

The refuelling crew were hauling the flexible pipe away from the last Pan Am wing tank and stowing it on their plane, and the jeep started up and drove across to where Klaus was standing. He must have been a touch pissed off, Herr Klaus, had been expecting a nuke to play with, but it hadn't arrived. He was answering a question from the driver of the jeep, nodding emphatically, and some of the guards piled aboard. The jeep would turn, I believed, and head in this direction, towards the stack of crates that were giving me cover. It was time for the cargo to be loaded into the airliner.

I waited.

It seemed, somewhere in the shadows of my mind, that I had been waiting a long time for this moment to come, longer than hours, longer than days, as if in the past I'd been given a glimpse of the shape of things to come. I think this was because I'd just realised that there might be something, after all, that I could do to bring Klaus down before he could reach his target, Midnight Two, wherever it was.

A woman screamed somewhere among the crowd of passengers, having got to the point of hysteria, I suppose, and understandably. The scream touched my nerves, for an instant froze them, because I knew quite well that if I started to do what had come into my mind there'd be no calling it off, no chance of getting back.

Carpe diem.

I went on waiting.

Seize, yes indeed, the day.

My cover was good, here: the crates were stacked higher than a man, and I could move with freedom. Personal cover was also satisfactory: most people here were in black bomber jackets like mine: it had been the fashion of choice when we'd set out from Algiers for a winter's night in the desert. Three or four of the men on the jeep wore goggles, as I did, against the discomfort of the blowing sand; and we all wore padded gloves, de rigueur. I wouldn't have been noticed in the front row of the chorus: someone would have to tell you I was the fourth from the left, just above the bald-headed violinist.

In the distance the jeep turned and gunned up, its headlights swinging towards the stack of crates.

I didn't move.

You won't get out of this alive.

Shut up.

It's a suicide run, you know that.

Christ's sake shuddup.

Then the jeep slid to a halt on the dry sand and the men dropped off it with a clatter of combat boots and started work on the crates with their jemmies, breaking away the slats to get at the cylinders, two of them moving around to the sides, so I kicked at the slats of the nearest crate and prised them away and hauled one of the cylinders out and stooped and got it onto my shoulder and joined the chorus line, lurching with it across to the jeep, another man beside me, the one just above the red-haired lady with the trombone, the sweat running on me because I was committed now and beyond the point of no return, because if I could get this far I stood a chance of bringing the mission home.

That or the other thing: finis, finito.

I slid the cylinder onto the back of the jeep and found a spare tyre lever and went back to the crates and worked on the slats and dragged another cylinder out. There were two Arabs here but the rest were German, by their speech.

'Remember the orders,' one of them said, 'and don't throw these bloody things around. Knock 'em together a bit too hard and we're goners, kerbooom, so for Christ's sake be careful.'

'He's leaving it late,' someone said, 'you know that?'

'He knows what he's doing. Shuddup and get the job done.'

I checked my watch at 11:39 when we'd shifted more than half the cylinders, making five trips with the jeep fully loaded.

The two Arabian pilots had moved: they were standing with Klaus as we passed him on the final run. One of them was laughing, the sound carrying on the wind. They looked at their ease, hands on their hips and their heads thrown back as Klaus slapped their arms, telling them in his terrible French that they were heroes: I caught snatches of it – 'You will have streets named after you… You will go down in history as the saviours of Islam…'

It was not good news. This was not good news.

Unless he was wildly exaggerating, this concerned more than just a megadeath in a football stadium. It concerned Midnight Two, something big enough to earn them a place in history.

The mental sense of powerlessness is ennervating: my legs felt weak, my arms incapable. I needed help with my last cylinder as I staggered with it onto the Pan Am plane.

'You all right?

'Bloody things weigh a bit, that's all.' The cabin was swinging across my eyes, and I had to hold on to a bulkhead to steady myself.

The men were shouting at the entrance to the cabin, behind the flight deck.

'How many more?'

'Three.'

'Look sharp, then.'

I moved back to give them room.

'Okay, that one on top of those two.'

They moved about. I could hear them. I couldn't see them any more, because I'd slid down on my haunches behind the stack of cylinders: I think I was in one of the forward galleys, because there was a curtain drawn half across, and the smell of coffee. It was comfortable here with my back against a panel, and I closed my eyes.

Voices came from outside the cabin, speaking in French. Because of the curtain I couldn't hear them clearly.

They're on a suicide run, and now you're going with them.

Shut up.

You're out of your fucking mind.

Shuddup and leave me alone.

The wind blows across the desert, across the clay of the dried lake bed, flinging sand against the windows of the cabin. I listen to it.

I look at my watch.

It is 11:57. We have three minutes left.

Then I can hear voices again, this time speaking an Arab tongue. They come from inside the plane. Then there is the soft rushing of the jets, and vibration comes into the airframe. I can feel it against my back.

Now there is a roaring, the sound of huge power. The big metal cylinders begin a discordant tintinnabulation as the cabin trembles, and then it dies away as the wings lift and we are borne into the sky.

Chapter 23: AIRBORNE

01:13.

It was the first thing I looked at, took an interest in, when I opened my eyes: the watch on my wrist. We had been airborne an hour and thirteen minutes.

I had slept. The decision had been made for me by the subconscious when the beta-wave levels had been phased out by shock, by the accumulated shock of the mission that we file under the simple name of mission fatigue. It is not simple.

I felt quite good, felt refreshed, clear-headed again. Thought came easily now, and I was becoming aware of what had happened. But there were certain troubling aspects, because the decision my subconscious had made for me was totally illogical.

I could hear them talking up there on the flight deck through the open door, the two pilots. They were speaking a language I didn't know, presumably Farsi. I couldn't hear any specific words, wouldn't have understood them in any case.

Totally illogical, then, the decision that had been made, that I was stuck with. I could either have stayed where I was on the ground or I could have stayed on board the plane and taken off with it. If I'd stayed on the ground I could have joined the tanker crew or the freighter crew and hitched a flight back to Algiers. They wouldn't have recognised me, had never seen me before, would have accepted me as one of the team. Once in Algiers, communication, immediate communication: telephone Cone and tell him the situation, let him signal London and tell them to alert and inform Pan American Airlines. But there wouldn't have been anything they could do. Flight 907 would by then have been airborne for more than two hours, invisible in the night, untraceable, on its way to the unknown target, Midnight Two. If it hadn't already reached there, if there weren't already headlines running through the press.