The arabesque room and the way she'd been holding the gun at me when I'd gone in. Some kind of association. Important? Something overlooked?
'Now please tell me if there is anything you will wish me to repeat, about this thing.'
'You've made it clear enough. The wind-factor governs the situation at both ends of the flight, is that it?'
Cellulose. Dope-nail-varnish. Sense of smell strongly associative. Dismiss.
'C'est Va.If there is no wind when we will make the circle over this complex here, we must make a less big angle of glide, not to lose too much altitude. And if there is no wind near the end of our approach to the target area, I must stay much higher so that I have my chance to get back here, or anyway so that I come down somewhere not far from any water and people, you know?' He began folding the map. 'Of course when I tell you" no wind" like that, I mean any wind that is not good enough to go higher.B'en, je crois que c'est tout.'
Batagnier straightened up.
'Allons-y?'
'Allons-y.'
The pilot went back through the hangar, shouting for some ground-staff, and one of the riggers trotted after him. A minute later a Koffman starter banged and the engine took over, then the second one fired.
I checked the time: 23.51.
'My stuff's already on board?'
'You can see it from inside the cabin, not through thetrappe.'
I climbed in and checked the set-up. They'd taken out the centrally-disposed third seat and made the drop-trap in the floor below it, accommodating the 'chute immediately forward of the polyester container to keep the loads balanced: I would be sitting beside the pilot and the weight of a third man was transferred to the supplies and transceiver. The ripcord was linked to the fuselage by a tension breakaway for automatic opening and release, so that all the pilot had to do was drop the trap and the rest of the operation would go into sequence.
The hangar had begun drumming and I saw a tow-truck moving across and turning and backing up. Chirac was calling to me above the noise and I pulled the hook-release ring to let them link up the cable.
I climbed out and they tilted the mainplane horizontal and began towing. The pod design formed a sound-box and the noise was like an empty crate being trundled on roller-skates, and the whole structure flexed so badly that Chirac had to keep shouting orders to the driver of the truck to break up the periodicity. A gust of sand stung our faces as Batagnier's twin-engined Fauconnet gunned up and swung its tail, rolling towards the airstrip. The tow-truck made a diagonal line across its wake and left the glider in position fifty yards behind it.
Watching Chirac as he directed the preliminaries to takeoff it occurred to me that he was the key man in the Bureau's attempt to have Tango Victor's cargo examined at first hand: and to a certain extent Loman had been justified in persuading me that we weren't taking over a wrecked operation with orders to clean up the mess, but were setting up our own mission with a specified objective.
Someone in London had said: we want a mercenary flier to do us a night-drop in the Sahara, someone who'll keep to his contract, a man who doesn't mind risking a stray shot if the money's right.
It wouldn't have been difficult to find a man like Chirac in a region where there were more airstrips than oases and where working-conditions were tough and the pay commensurate, but when they saw his record and learned that he was an ex-champion sailplane pilot they seized the chance and refined the mission and bumped up his insurance to half a million francs to cover the increased risk and told him to get himself a glider.
The access had been revamped in a big way and the fact that the Minister had decided to sting the Treasury for that amount of loot made it clear that the Bureau had told him it had a chance of paying off. From this data I was certain of two things: the opposition was monitoring all aircraft movement in this area by every means including listening-posts, and they were doing it in the hope of tracking me in to the target area and neutralizing me at the site of the objective.
Priority requirement: silence. The silence of these wings across the starlit dunes, our passage having no trace on the screens of the acoustic scanners dispersed among the oases between Sid Ben Ali and Kaifra and the complex of drilling camps.
Strict hush.
The sand blew back from the Fauconnet as Batagnier ran up the revs and tested for mag-drop and the ground-crews by the glider turned their backs to it, hanging on to the wing-tips. Then the roaring died and the props idled and I saw Chirac turn and look in my direction, lifting a hand.
Give it to London then, give them a bit of credit. They'd been prepared to drop someone in from a powered aircraft and risk the opposition picking it up and going in for a kill in the final phase of the penetration: a crude and bloody business that always costs more lives for fewer results whenever they're driven to mounting this kind of operation with the opposition already in the field. They do it on the principle that when the objective is high priority and there's even a ten per cent chance of the executive's coming out alive with the stuff they want it's worth this brand of brute frontal attack on the target that might offer a chance of knocking out the opposition in the target area itself. They doit whenthey're desperate.
They'd been desperate but they'd seen Chirac as the key to something more controlled and they'd worked on it and come up with a design that at least made sense on paper and the delay in planning had brought them right up against the clock and they'd had to shake the whole network with panic directives but give them this: they'd got a bit of elegance into the mission at last, a bit of class, sent for a top kick like Loman and told him to pick his own executive for the field and set the thing up and make it succeed, bring off a classic.
I anticipate success. Complete success. You understand?
All right you little bastard we'll give it a go.
They'd turned the glider to line up with the runway and I walked into the carbon-monoxide airstream that was coming from the Fauconnet. Chirac was getting into his parachute and one of the ground-crew was holding mine ready for me — and when I was settled into it Chirac passed me some goggles.
'You will need these, if there will be a sandstorm.'
I slung them round my neck. The rigger was helping me to adjust the 'chute-harness and we pulled it too tight and a flash of pain burned in the nerves of my shoulder where the ricochet of the sixth bullet had left bruising.
'Ca va, mon ami?'
'Oui.'
I dropped my flight-bag into the cabin and climbed aboard and buckled the restraint-belt. Chirac called something to the ground-crew, I didn't catch what, then he followed me in and settled his feet on the rudder-bar and checked the four instruments: airspeed-indicator, spirit cross-level, compass and variometer.
He raised his hand.
'Allons-y!'
The rigger stood away and lifted both arms in a signal to Batagnier and then walked to the wing-tip, waiting. The revs went up and the airstream began fluttering at the hood of the glider as the Fauconnet rolled cautiously, taking up the slack in the towline. A jerk came as it tautened.
Chirac was peeling some silver paper.
'You want some gum?'
I shook my head and he put the strip into his mouth and flicked the paper into the air current and slid the hood shut as the Fauconnet gunned up and we began rolling. A haze of sand came flying. against the Perspex and the man at the wing-tip broke his run and fell away as the speed rose and the vibration hammered under our seats and Chirac felt the resistance coming into the controls and brought the stick back gently, feeling his way, gently again until the vibration died out and the sand-haze cleared and the mission was airborne.