“Look, they’ve got a table for us.” Freddy stood.
“The truth is the flies shall inherit the Earth,” Skull said. “The flies already occupy Libya.”
They went into the dining room, Freddy nodding and smiling at a few acquaintances. The waiter gave them menus.
“A pint of Beluga, a double Chateaubriand, and any bottle that says Rothschild,” Skull told him. “Since my rich uncle is paying.”
“The club doesn’t do a Chateaubriand,” Freddy said. “Their steak-and-kidney pie is well spoken-of.”
“I’ll have the chops. Lightly grilled. That’s a stunning play on words. Chops. Hilarious. Forget it.”
When the waiter had gone, Freddy said: “Normally, postings go from Air Ministry via Command and Group to the officer concerned. You know that. So this is an exception. For old time’s sake.”
“I don’t really want a CBE,” Skull said. “I’d sooner have the lunch anyway.”
“I just wanted you to know that we couldn’t possibly leave you at Kindrick, not with your irregular views on deterrence and secrecy.”
“Irregular. Is that the same as uncomfortable?”
“Try unacceptable. We can’t have a Senior Intelligence Officer casting doubt on our nuclear deterrent policy. You’d corrode morale. Aircrew can’t have doubts. You know that.”
Skull tore a bread roll in half, and then in half again. He saw a crumb on his left index finger, and he licked it off. “We seem to be in something of a SMIT,” he said. “State of Mounting Interdepartmental Tension. Your department and mine. I can’t stay at Kindrick. You can’t court-martial me or even admonish me, because if you try, I’ll make damn sure Mrs Zoë Silk MP knows all the sordid details, and the result will be the kind of publicity that gives your people nightmares.”
“And the Vulcan crews’ morale doesn’t concern you?”
Skull raised his hands, palms upwards. “Since they’ll never return from Russia, they deserve to know the truth before they go.”
“There you go again,” Freddy said. “Swearing in church.”
Lunch arrived, and they talked of other things.
Eventually, as they stood outside the club, enjoying some late autumn sunshine, Skull said: “I appreciate the courtesy, Freddy. Now, what’s your plan?”
“Send you on a course at a Defence College. In America, perhaps. That’s what we usually do with our loose cannons. But you have to promise to behave properly. Don’t embarrass us.”
“Years ago, when they shunted me off to the Desert Air Force, Air Ministry gave me another ring on my sleeve. Up to squadron leader.”
Freddy put his head back and stared at the pure blue sky. “Group Captain,” he said. “You want to be Group Captain Skelton.”
“Analytical brilliance. Penetrating insights. Your words.”
“Blackmail,” Freddy said. “Don’t go back to Kindrick. Stay at my place. I’ll get all your stuff sent over. And do us all a favour, Skull. Learn how to lie, will you?”
“Yes, of course, at once, fluently,” Skull said. “How did that sound?”
Freddy flagged down a taxi. Another problem solved.
Freddy arranged for Skull’s stuff to be packed and taken to his house, but he forgot about the Lagonda. Skull immediately caught a train to Lincoln and a taxi to Kindrick, collected the Lagonda from the Motor Transport Section, and he was quietly driving away when Silk saw the car and came running. Skull stopped.
“You weren’t at our briefing,” Silk said. “We had an idiot flight lieutenant Intelligence Officer who doesn’t know Arthur from Martha. Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. Freddy’s place. He’s putting me up for a while.”
“Oh.” The Lagonda’s huge engine began to grumble, and Skull made tiny adjustments to the choke. “You mean you’re off,” Silk said. “Leaving for good.”
“Good or ill.”
“Well… that’s bad news, that’s all I can say. I mean, stone the sodding crows, this whole damn place is falling apart. Bloody hell… You weren’t much good, Skull, but at least you never let the bullshit baffle you.”
“Raw cunning, Silko. It’s as easy as falling off a bicycle. Try it, sometime.”
A quick handshake. Silk watched the Lagonda go. “Nothing lasts forever,” he said aloud. “More’s the pity.” It sounded like bad advice from a stupid friend who meant well and should have shut up.
The flight was a routine training exercise: a trip to Benbecula on the Isle of Lewis, where No.81 Signals Unit would test Dando’s air electronic warfare kit.
Six-monthly servicing. No sweat. Even the weather was friendly, for late autumn. Patchy cloud, the odd shower, light winds.
Silk captained the bomber, with Young in the right-hand seat, and Silk flew it for the first twenty minutes, until they were high above the commercial airliner routes and heading for the Atlantic south of Ireland. Then he gave the control to the co-pilot. Hallett would navigate them around Ireland and north to the Western Isles of Scotland. Young could drive the bus. Quite soon, Silk regretted it. Young flew well; too well. There was nothing to tell him, nothing to do but think.
Silk thought about Skull. It couldn’t have been an ordinary posting. Movement orders normally took days, or weeks; they didn’t happen overnight. The odds were that Skull had got the chop again. He’d been shat on from a great height. This was such a bleak thought that Silk forced it out of his mind, searched for a happy replacement, and got Zoë. She could easily capture his mind with a royal flush of memories; but Zoë was moving to Seattle. The better the memory, the bigger his loss. He kicked Zoë out, and in came Tess Monk, riding her bike. She’d chucked him out. He forgot her. What he couldn’t get rid of was this act of forgetting. Everywhere he looked, he lost people, one after another, bang crash wallop, and it hurt. He turned to Young. “So you’re a mountaineer, are you?” he said. “You must be mad. Explain to me how you’re not mad.”
“Ah, well now…” Young didn’t turn his head. His flying was rock-steady. Maybe this was a test, an attempt to distract his attention. He checked the major dials and indicators: all correct. “Good mountaineers have a love of the mountain, they understand the rock and work with its shape. Bad climbers treat the mountain as hostile, and they fight it and lose, sometimes they die. Ten years ago, the newspapers said Everest was conquered. Wrong. Nobody conquers a mountain. What happens is it lets you share its space for a while.” He checked the fuel gauges. Okay.
“Still, it’s dangerous,” Silk said. “You wouldn’t do it if it was safe.”
“I wouldn’t be on a Vulcan squadron if I wanted a quiet life.”
“Nothing lasts forever, not even Vulcans.” That got no reply. “We’re the last in line,” Silk said. “After us, empty skies.” Still no comment. “Make the most of it, I say. What’s the best mountain in Scotland?”
“Not Ben Nevis,” Young said. “Too many tourists in gym shoes. It once had a hotel at the top. Imagine that. A hotel… I prefer the Northern Highlands. There’s a peak called Suilven…”
At that height, through the cockpit window, Scotland was unseen. When Young got a course change from the back room and gently banked the bomber, Scotland might be glimpsed. From eight miles high it looked as flat as a map.
Talk about mountaineering whiled away the time until they reached Benbecula and then it was all business: steady cruising at fixed heights and speeds and bearings while Dando switched his black boxes on and off, and 81 Signals Unit got washed in their electronic energy. Then Young turned north. Their flight plan took them clockwise around the coast of Scotland, and finally south to East Anglia and Kindrick. Routine trip. Not even a mock interception by Hunter fighters. Maybe Fighter Command had lost the hangar key.