It was 1:32 when I checked my watch again. The time was important, because I would very soon have to do something definitive.
The empty cabin made a soundbox for the soft rush of the jets. The lights had been left on in here, turned low on the rheostat. Something was rolling on the floor, pinging against one of the cylinders, and I picked it up. It was a lipstick, and I put it onto the counter of the galley, and bent again to pick up the teddy bear – freeze – but it was all right, nothing happened, and I sat him on the counter too, with a sense, I suppose, of restoring order while I sipped my coffee and thought things out and eventually reached conclusions, deadly conclusions.
Solitaire was in the end-phase, and if all went reasonably well I could bring it home, though only metaphorically. I would remain somewhere in the Atlantic, distributed piecemeal on its surface to be plucked at by fish – and I say this without bitterness, because I'd rather have them than the worms. In the end-phase of a mission when we realise the executive's status is terminal it's rather like drowning, in that we look back over the events that led us here, and at this particular moment I found myself thinking of that clown Thrower and hoping that Shatner would learn from his mistake and not send him out again unless it was to direct a shadow who could work comfortably with a bloody schoolmaster. I also thought of Helen Maitland, and hoped that one day she would shatter the self-image she'd been stuck with, and start fresh again; and as I considered these things I came to know what was happening: I was putting off the moment when I must set in motion the necessary procedures, because they would bring my death, and the sweat was crawling on me and the adrenalin was firing the motor nerves as I drained the cup with the Pan Am crest on it and put it into the sink.
Polaris had been high on the starboard side when I'd checked our heading through one of the windows and the time was now 1:46, so we were somewhere west of Morocco and over the Atlantic.
Procedures.
Three of the nitrogen tetraoxide cylinders were stowed vertically just aft of the galley and secured with straps, and I loosened a buckle by one notch and pulled a cylinder away from the others and let it fall back. It had the deep musical sound of a. bell.
Did it again.
Remember the orders, don't knock these things around. He'd been the leader of the work group, the jeep's driver. Knock two of these together a bit too hard and we're goners, kerbooom, so for Christ's sake be careful.
Did it again.
Boom…
This was all right, I wasn't knocking them about.
There was a shipping label on the loose cylinder, half torn away, printed in French. It had been shipped – they had all, then, presumably, been shipped – out of Libya.
It's believed that Dieter Klaus has the substantial backing of Col. Moammar Gadhafi. It had been in my Berlin briefing.
Boom…
The voice of one of the pilots cut through the rushing of the jets. He was telling his friend, I would have thought, that he was going to take a look: there was some cargo shifting, so forth.
Boom…
I saw his shadow now, moving across the wall of the cabin on the other side. I let the cylinder fall back again and backed away, staying close to the galley bulkhead. The Iranian reached the three cylinders, and saw what the trouble was.
I searched him and found a gun and emptied the chamber and dropped the bullets into the trash container in the galley and put the gun into the refrigerator. The edge of my right hand was throbbing but that was normaclass="underline" the strike had needed great speed and great force so that he didn't have time to cry out. He'd started falling towards the cylinders and I'd steered him away and let his body down gently, then dragged it behind the galley bulkhead.
Then I straightened up and tightened the buckle on the strap securing the cylinders and went forward onto the flight deck.
The pilot said something, asking what the problem was, I suppose, and I didn't answer so he looked up and his face opened in surprise and he brought his right arm across his body and I waited until the gun was in his hand and then broke his wrist and worked on the gun and threw the bullets into the cabin and shoved the gun into my coat, bugger was throwing up for Christ's sake, the bugger was lolling over the control column with his face white, all right, there's a lot of pain with a broken wrist but you don't have to go into histrionics, do you, and I told him in French:
'Get that control column, watch what you're fucking well doing!'
A lot of anger coming out, it had been suppressed for a long time now, and there was some fear in it, I knew that, because the chances of getting out of this thing alive were so terribly thin.
I pulled him upright, slapped his face, got him more or less conscious again, I suppose he'd got a low pain threshold, some of us are like that, it's a matter of sensitive nerves, but I didn't want him messing about when he was meant to be flying a jumbo load of explosives through the dark.
I said in English: 'What's our destination?'
He looked at me with his eyes trying to focus. 'Come on, for Christ's sake! What's your target?'
There was 15° north of west on the compass but that didn't tell me enough.
He shook his head.
It looked all right. I was going to use a lot of English in a minute or two when I hit the radio, and I didn't want him to understand.
In French: 'Where are we heading? Wipe your mouth, for God's sake, get a handkerchief. What is our destination?'
He wasn't quite with me yet, kept looking behind him into the cabin. 'Where is Hassan?' he asked me.
I reached and slid the door shut without taking my eyes off him. If I told him I'd killed his friend he'd go crazy and try something and I didn't want any milling about, we could break an instrument, kick a control out of whack. I wanted, in any case, his cooperation.
I didn't think I'd get it.
'What is our destination?'
He glanced down and across, wasn't fast enough mentally yet to stop himself, and I saw the briefcase on the co-pilot's seat and picked it up. Then I looked into his eyes and said quietly, 'Khatami, if you give me any trouble,- I'm going to kill you. Do you understand that?'
He watched me, some anger of his own coming into him now as he thought of his friend.
'Did you kill Hassan? he asked me.
'As long as you understand, Khatami.'
'You are a pilot?'
'Yes.'
'You fly these planes?'
'Yes.'
Otherwise I couldn't kill him and he knew that.
He wasn't a small man; he looked strong, fit, probably did a lot of aerobics, athletics, to keep in shape doing a sedentary job. But he was an airline pilot, and hadn't undergone any special training, or he wouldn't have let me take his gun away. And the difference between any given athlete, however strong, and an agent who has been trained for years at Norfolk and by exhaustive experience in the field is immeasurable, when it comes to effective close-combat techniques. This man was also in a lot of pain, his face still bloodless, and I didn't think I'd have to work on him again until he started feeling better.