“The Swedes are a bit touchy about maintaining their neutrality.”
Skull said: “So would you be, with Russia just around the corner. Theirs is not the only delta-wing fighter, of course. France claims their new Mirage can make twelve hundred knots at fifty thousand plus.”
“The French always lie,” Renouf said. “They add ten per cent. Like their rotten restaurants.”
“Screw the frogs,” Quinlan said. “What about the bear? Has he got a new delta?”
“Only the MiG-21,” Skull said. “Probably a trifle faster than the others.” Quinlan closed his eyes. “But it’s also much smaller,” Skull added. “So its range and firepower aren’t as good.”
“That’s all right then,” Hallett muttered.
“Hey, speed isn’t everything,” Renouf said sharply. “You can be too fast. I’ve seen fighters so keen, they went slap through the bomber formation, never fired a shot. If a MiG finds you, he’ll be subsonic, and he’ll be bouncing about in your wake, trying to get his guns lined up.”
“He can’t find us,” Dando said, “because I’ve jammed his VHF channels so bad that his ground controllers are weeping into their vodka.”
Nobody cheered, but nobody disagreed. “Anything else to report?” Skull said.
“Has Tartu got a cathedral?” Quinlan asked.
“Yes. Rather a fine one.”
“Not any longer, it hasn’t. It evaporated, along with the orphanage, the infirmary, the old folks’ home, and the tomb of St Bruno the Bastard.” Quinlan was feeling better again.
“Precision bombing,” Renouf said. “Name of the game.” He was gazing out of the window.
“Game?” Silk said: “What…” He looked at Skull, but Skull just shook his head. Renouf’s mind was elsewhere. Re-fighting the last war, probably.
Silk got the cello case out of his car and carried it to his room. Stupid bloody shape, too big to tuck under his arm. Why wasn’t there a handle? Or a wheel on the end, like a golf trolley? He scraped the doorframe and flinched with guilt. The cello was probably worth twenty thousand. He opened the case. No damage done, thank God.
He tried using the bow. After a few minutes he got bored, so he plucked the strings instead. That was hard on the fingertips. Someone rapped on his door and before he could speak, Tucker came in. “Jack Hallett’s up shit creek,” he said. “Lend him a thousand, Silko.” He looked grim.
“Bloody good idea,” Silk said. “Only one reason why I can’t.” He plucked a few strings. “No, actually there’s a thousand reasons.”
“Don’t give me that crap. Your old lady’s rolling in the stuff.”
“Rolling in it but not chucking it away.”
“Then we’re completely fucked.” Tucker dropped into an armchair so hard that it groaned. “Nobody else has that sort of money.”
“Okay.” Silk rested the cello in a corner. “So Jack’s up the creek. What creek?”
“Gambling. He owes his bookie a thousand. The bastard’s threatening to go to the CO if Jack doesn’t pay.”
Silk made a face. Jack Hallett, the genial, steady, competent nav plotter? Not possible. “Gambling on what?”
“Dunno. Horses, dogs? Who cares what?” Tucker heaved himself out of the chair. “If Jack gets found out, he’s for the chop.”
“Security.”
“Of course bloody security.”
They stood, not looking at each other. Tucker kept cracking his knuckles. “Can you play that thing?” he asked.
“Taking lessons. It’s a hobby.”
Tucker nodded. Silk noticed a vein throbbing on the right side of his neck. “Jack’s bookie’s waiting outside the Main Gate,” Tucker said. “The SPs won’t let him in, of course. Let’s go and reason with him.”
Hallett was in the corridor. “It’s my idiot son,” he told Silk, wretchedly. “Same name – Jack. He’s been placing bets, using my telephone account, they thought he was me. He’s twenty-one, it’s legal. Isn’t it?”
“It’s brainless,” Tucker growled.
They walked to the Main Gate. Jack’s bookie was small, not young; an ordinary man in an ordinary blue suit. Only the brown shoes were wrong.
“You can’t come on the base,” Tucker told him. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“I didn’t come here for exercise. I came for my money.” He was calm. He’d done this a hundred times before.
“We’ll talk as we walk,” Tucker said.
They walked. The bookie explained that it was a simple business matter. People thought bookies were rich. In fact they worked on a very tight margin. A thousand pounds one way or the other made all the difference. “If you ran a garage and you serviced my car, I’d expect to pay you,” he said. “Well, I serviced Mr Hallett’s bets, and he should pay me.”
“Can’t we do some kind of deal?” Silk asked. “You know, pay off so much a week, or…”
“Tell that to my other clients, the people who placed bets and won. What would they say if I offered them a deal? So much a week?” He looked almost amused.
“Give us some time, at least. Maybe – ”
“Time? This isn’t the first time of asking. Is it, Mr Hallett?” But Jack Hallett was looking at the horizon.
“You haven’t come to any old aerodrome, you know,” Tucker said. “This is a Vulcan base. What are the odds against you being in business if Russia takes over?”
“I see,” the bookie said. “This is your way of saving me from Communism, is it? Wiping the slate clean? You bet, you lose, you don’t pay? That’s your style in the Raff, is it?”
“Yeah,” Tucker said. “And we’re not in the Raff.”
“I can probably find a couple of hundred soon,” Silk said.
“Soon,” the bookie said. “Probably. How often have I heard that before?”
They had turned a bend and were out of sight of the Main Gate. “I know how we can settle this here and now,” Tucker said. “See that patch of nettles? I bet you one thousand pounds you’ll lie in those nettles.” The bookie laughed. Tucker punched him, a fast short right to the ribs, just below the heart. The man’s legs folded and as he fell, Tucker’s left fist swung and whacked his head sideways. He lay on the road in an untidy sprawl. Tucker picked him up and threw him in the nettles. “Now we’re all square,” he told him. The bookie crawled out. Tucker picked him up and threw him back. Then he put his foot on the bookie’s head and rubbed it in the nettles. “That’s a bloody silly thing to do,” Silk said. Tucker had stepped away from the bookie. Now he turned back and seized a bunch of nettles. He ripped them up by the roots and lashed the bookie’s face with them.
“Hey, enough, enough,” Hallett said. His voice was thin. His face looked crumpled about the eyes.
“He wasn’t going to change his tune,” Tucker said. “So I stopped his clock. Now he knows not to bugger us about.”
They walked back towards the Main Gate. Hallett said, “I think you bust his ribs.”
“Next time, I’ll bust yours. And any other manky bastard who calls me Raff.”
“Your trouble is you think with your fists,” Silk said.
“Shouldn’t we…” Hallett began, but he couldn’t finish. “Leaving him there, it’s…” He gave up.
“Nettles are good for him,” Tucker said. “My granny in Glasgow rubs her legs with nettles. Cures her rheumatism.”
“That’s bollocks. Suppose he goes to Pulvertaft,” Silk said. “Then we’re all in trouble. Assaulting a civilian –”
“I didn’t touch him,” Hallett said.
“You didn’t stop it.”
“Neither did you.”
“And for why?” Tucker demanded. “Because deep down in your flabby hearts a spark of esprit de bloody corps was still burning! The crew always sticks together, right? That bookie had his knife into Jack, and if Jack got the chop we’d get a new nav plotter and bang goes our Combat status! And we start all over again. Bottom crew. Well, no poxy civilian is going to destroy our Combat status. If I can take out Murmansk East any day of the week, then God help any mouthy bloody bookie who gets in my way.”