The heat didn't bother him. It was his second tour to Muscat and Oman that had been interrupted. The sun didn't burn him, just leathered his face and his arms, and he could absorb the scents and smells and odours of the East.
The canvas grip bag was collected.
Rossiter shouldered his way through the hawking taxi cab drivers outside the terminal, as if he were a man for whom a limousine and chauffeur waited. Barney followed. When he was not required to lead, he was happy enough to follow. Through the noise, through the bodies, through the shouting. Coming home in a way, a sort of home, a home that had once been in his family's history. His grandfather had been here, married his grandmother here, his father had been born in some fly-blown cantonment up the road in Raj days. There had been photographs in a drawer in England, old, dog-eared and sepia. His grandfather had died here, further up the road. That made it a sort of homecoming, somewhere that his family had trod before.
It was not a limousine but a paint-scraped Land Rover.
'You'll be dying to know what it's all about. I'm sorry, you'll have to wait till we get to the hotel.'
Barney raised his eyebrows. He didn't join in the game. He gave no hint of disappointment. Rossiter would be suffering because he couldn't yet play the big briefing man. Barney threw his bag into the open back of the Land Rover.
There was hazard enough on the road without distracting the driver with small talk.
They weaved amongst the curtains of white-robed cyclists. They stuttered over the no-give-way cross roads. They swerved onto the verge to avoid the lorries blundering down the crown. Rossiter was hunched over the wheel, grinding his gears, intent on the traffic as if engaged in combat. They had turned off the main road after half an hour.
Now they were flanked by rich green undergrowth and by the white-walled bungalows of Islamabad's diplomatic community. The mauve jacaranda blooms were failing on the trees. Quite pretty, Barney thought. Not a bloody flower in sight in Muscat, and no rain to grow them. Just the sun and the wind and the sun and the mountains.
'They didn't tell you anything?'
'Nothing.'
'So you haven't been asked whether you want the job?'
'I don't expect to be asked,' Barney said.
'Well, it's a bit out of the ordinary, but not at all hair-raising. In fact I expect you will think it's pretty straightforward.' Barney didn't prompt him and Rossiter volunteered no more, so they drove to the hotel in silence.
Barney knocked on the door.
'Come.' Muffled and peremptory, like he was a bloody headmaster. But, of course, Barney had to wait for Rossiter to remember that the door couldn't be opened except by himself. He was laughing when he went into the room and Rossiter looked at him with irritation.
'I've ordered some coffee.'
'Good.'
'Please sit down, Barney.'
Barney sat down. He was close to the window and near to him was a table with a briefcase on it. He clasped his hands, rested his chin on them. He waited. Rossiter ignored him, paced until the soft tap at the door. Rossiter let in the waiter, signed the chit with a flourish, took the tray to the table, heard the door close behind his back.
'Milk?'
'No.'
'Sugar?'
'No.'
Rossiter poured thin black coffee, pushed the cup and saucer towards Barney.
Rossiter was walking again, head up, as if counting flies on the ceiling, drawing his thoughts together. Abruptly he stopped, turned and faced Barney from the centre of the room. Barney stared back at him.
'This is to be a highly secure operation…'
Barney inclined his head. God, what crap.
'Would you read this, please?'
From an inside pocket of his jacket, Rossiter took an envelope, passed it to Barney.
Barney opened it. Ministry of Defence paper, a Brigadier's signature. Captain Barnaby Crispin was to work while in Pakistan under the direction of Mr Howard Rossiter, FCO. Barney tore up the envelope and the letter and flaked the pieces into the table's ashtray and set light to them.
Rossiter coughed, poised himself, rose twice on the balls of his feet, and started to speak. 'Through a helicopter, the Soviets have achieved a quite critical of superiority over the mujahidin. The helicopter in question is the Mi-24, armoured undercarriage, armoured cockpit, big bastard. They're virtually invulnerable, they soak up the small arms fire, ignore it, spit at it. They're hard, the Afghan tribesmen, but the Mi-24 makes them run, makes them shit themselves. Another couple of years of the helicopters and there's the prospect of the mujahidin losing serious effectiveness. We don't want that. We like it the way it is at the moment, we like a dozen Soviet divisions getting bitten, we like the Soviets getting kicked around the Third World scene for aggression against a small country. We think the chaps up in the hills need a small shot in the arm, and we have the opportunity to provide it.'
We're' arriving, Barney thought, slowly but finally. His eyes never left Rossiter's face.
'We're going to blow out a helicopter, Barney…or two, or three. I don't know how many. Just as they're flying along, nice and safe, nice and happy, we'll give them a bloody great shock up the arse, up the exhaust. I'd like to think we'd be there to see it when it happens. But, that's too much. I'm the fixer, you're the instructor, but we don't get onto the field. We're strictly on the bench. I find the people we work with, you train them, and off they go over the border and do their stuff. We don't cross the border, Barney, under any circumstances, but with my organisation and your expertise, they go across the border, all the way up the backside of an Mi-24.'
Rossiter stopped. He saw the astonishment spreading on Barney's face, a cloud over sunlight. He plunged on. 'So, we're on a double bonus. We've never had a decent look at the modern Mi-24, and that's going to be rectified. I'm not suggesting they load the bloody thing's wreckage on a mule train and bring it over to us, but they'll have cameras, they'll rifle all the paperwork inside, and they'll be briefed on which bits of the electronics we want hand-carried. You can't quite believe it, can you?'
'I didn't know they had the balls,' Barney said.
'They can be quite bullish when they set their minds to it, our masters.'
'What's the missile?'
'Redeye, American…'
'It's British and American policy not to supply missiles.'
'Redeye goes to Israel. Israel ships into Iran when they were scrapping with Iraq. Iran is a conduit for the mujahidin…there'll be Israeli markings on the kit underneath the last coat of paint, the top coat markings will be Iranian. Pretty?'
'Very pretty, and you've been here a month?'
'Finding the men who'll fire Redeye, whom you'll train.'
'You've found them?'
Rossiter looked away from Barney, looked out through the window. 'I think so…it's not easy. Had to be people that we could be reasonably certain wouldn't blab to the world what they had.'
'And you have these men?'
'I said that I'd found them, but that's my problem. Your job is to train them.' An edge in Rossiter's voice.
'I'll train them, Mr Rossiter…if you've found them. How many missiles?'
Rossiter had not turned back to Barney. His answer came quickly, offhand. 'Twelve.'
'Twelve…' Barney echoed the figure in derision.
'That's what I've got coming in.'
'And what's twelve going to change?'
'Who said it had to change anything? It gets us an Mi-24, it gets us a hundred photographs, it gets us the manuals, it gets us target acquisition and locking sensors, low speed data sensor, IFF antenna, Doppler radar, you want the rest? And if we drop a few of them, think of the morale, what it'll do for the mujahidin in their caves, up in their mountains.'
'Twelve,' spoken softly by Barney, spoken to himself.