'The military position is, in summary…?' The Foreign Secretary stretched at his desk.
'Quite satisfactory for the Soviet forces inside Afghanistan. Since they don't have a public opinion problem, their casualties are acceptable. The mujahidin — that's what we call the dissidents, the Resistance forces — can cope fairly well with the Soviet and Afghan Army tanks, artillery, all the ground force elements. If that was all there was to it, then we'd have stalemate. It's the helicopters that make the difference. You will recall, sir, that it is the policy of Her Majesty's government, and Washington's policy, that ground-to-air missiles should not be supplied to the mujahidin. The local chaps can't touch the helicopters. The helicopters are the decisive element. Given time, and this is our assessment, the helicopters will be the foundation of Soviet victory over the Resistance.'
'Is there a special helicopter?'
'There's one, the gunship. It's the Mi-24…the best they have, perhaps the best anyone has.'
'What do we know about it? How much of it is worth finding out more about?'
'I'm not a military man but, as I understand it, the D and E versions are in Afghanistan, those are the latest. They're very much worth finding out more about. Anyone who builds helicopters would be more than grateful for information about this chappie!'
The wife of the Foreign Secretary had gone to church. He'd told her to make his apologies to the rector. His detective let the Brigadier into the house. The couple who kept house for them in London and in Herefordshire always took Sundays off. At weekends the detective was more of a butler than a bodyguard.
He didn't know a great deal about the man who was ushered into his study. Only that he was Henry Fotheringay (known as Fo'am to only a very few), that he held the serving rank of Brigadier, and that he headed that department of the Ministry of Defence that specialised in acquiring the details of Soviet weapons systems. A tall sort of cove, very straight in the back, and with a fidgeting tick in his hands. It was early in the day, but the Foreign Secretary poured two thin sherries.
They talked.
'You'll forgive me for saying this, Foreign Secretary, but we find it extremely hard to work alongside SIS. On this particular case, a fellow comes to see me, says he's going into Afghanistan, offers me first option on any hardware he brings out, for a fee. I don't mess about, I tell him he's on. Down I go to SIS, and they don't want to know. The attitude is: if we haven't thought of it, it's not worth thinking. The most I can get from them is that they'll bag the stuff once it's in Pakistan. They seem to think they're the best and the brightest because they're all Oxbridge. I didn't get the chance to go to University, I was fighting with the Commonwealth Brigade in Korea…'
The Foreign Secretary nodded sympathetically.
'I'd like to hear about the Mi-24.'
'We call it Hind…it's big and powerful and quite naughty. The tribesmen in Afghanistan can't cope with it. It's the one thing that scares the hell out of them. The D and E versions of Hind, the most advanced, are deployed there, but they're also littered across every Frontal Aviation base in the Warsaw Pact. We'd love to have our hands on one; we'd love a camera round one. We'd love the paperwork for the inside.'
'What shoots it down?'
'Occasionally the Afghans get one with conventional ground fire, once in a green moon. A ground-to-air missile would give it a bit of a fright.'
'And the Americans?'
'The Americans, in my experience, believe either that they have everything or, failing that, then they can buy it. They haven't much of a file on Hind, which peeves them.'
'If we possessed that information?'
'We'd be happy to share it, at a price. I'm sure we'd find a price, and a high one.'
'I'd like that.'
The Brigadier glanced up sharply.
'This isn't meant to be an impertinence, but do you know what you're getting into, sir? Do you know how deep the water gets? You'd have to snaffle one for yourself, you couldn't sit around banking on the locals getting one with their fire power.'
'I'd like to be in a seller's market,' the Foreign Secretary said easily.
The Brigadier had gone long before the Foreign Secretary's wife returned with a long, impassioned complaint about the sermon.
The following Sunday, the Foreign Secretary was once more absent from his place in the front right hand pew of the village's small Norman church.
Again he entertained the Brigadier.
'We've done nicely on the missile, sir.'
'Tell me.'
'American, and we can cover the tracks quite beautifully.' The Brigadier grinned, they shared a moment of mischief.
'Found the works down at the School of Infantry in Wiltshire. I've requisitioned it. The paperwork says it's for evaluation in case the Provisionals get their hands on the system in Northern Ireland; and there's nothing that says Uncle Sam needs it back. If there was a risk of it blasting us out of the Irish skies, then we'd have to know the capabilities. And if those buggers were to get their hands on ground-to-air missiles it would only be through the States. The cover's going to work rather well, actually.'
'What about the personnel?'
'I've taken in tow a fellow who used to be with us. Made it to Major, I think, before he was passed over, he's an old hand in that part of the world, in FCO now, quite used to muddy jobs. I hope you'll excuse me, but I need your ink on this, sort of a requisition paper for him.'
The Foreign Secretary had signed it, and the Brigadier had pocketed it, before a bell rang in the Foreign Secretary's mind. The clever bastard had picked a man from the Foreign Secretary's own stable, and had the authorisation for it. The Foreign Secretary breathed deep, smiled again.
'He'd be the organiser, the fix-it fellow. We need an instructor, I'm looking down in the Gulf for him. There's a fair few running around Muscat and Oman, but that's just a detail.'
You'll require SIS cooperation.'
'I might require it, but I won't get it. Put it this way, we'll bypass SIS if you want this to happen. If you don't want it to happen, then we can involve them, up to their bloody throats.'
The Foreign Secretary fancied he walked on ice. He remembered the rudeness of the man in the private dining room at the American Embassy. 'I want it to happen very much,' he said distantly.
'You'd best leave it to me, sir,' said the Brigadier affably. 'That way it will happen, well and satisfactorily.'
The Foreign Secretary heard the crunch of his wife's car on the gravel drive.
'Thank you, Brigadier Fotheringay. I'm much obliged.'
He had climbed two thousand feet from the valley floor to the summit of the escarpment in a few minutes over four hours. He was breathing heavily, and the weight of the loaded Bergen pack dug down into the small of his back. The sun had soared into a blue hazed sky, and the wind blew warm suffocating air that dried out his throat, and made him crave for water. He would resist the craving, because the route march he was tasked to make would take him five more days, and he had no more water than that which he carried, and on the roof of the mountains he would find no more water.
His ankle was sore. Not cracked but sore from the landing after the parachute descent in the High Altitude Low Opening fashion. He knew of no man who would not admit to a knotted cold stomach at the prospect of a HALO free fall and late rip-cord jump. Bad enough to jump from the Skyvan with only the moonlight to show the rock ground hurtling up to meet you, bloody daft when you were free falling and counting 'one pineapple', 'two pineapple', all the way to fifteen of the lousy, sweet, messy, bloody fruits.