I walked some more, a few steps to the window and back, did it again and felt the hallucination thing starting up and their high cackling screech and the fourth one smashing into the instrument-panel and stood and didn't do anything, hung limp, remarkable efficacy of total muscular relaxation, very old ferret, an instinct now, the wall steadier but I had to slow the breathing consciously, I didn't think she'd moved to help me, learned fast.
'We have do — ' try again and get the slur out while you're at it, 'Do we have a rendezvous Lo — with Loman?' Possibly it wasn't good enough yet but I didn't want to repeat it, certain amount of satisfaction in having pulled out of the spasm without having to sit down and ask for an aspirin or anything.
I turned round, away from the wall, and looked at her. She wasn't looking at me, looking upwards, listening. I could hear it too.
'Not immediately.'
I didn't understand. Traces still threatening the psyche, his upturned face and the expression on it and the way the leg had snapped when I'd hurled the thing away, I suppose I was a bit tired, that was all, it didn't help, not being on top form.
She was watching me. I saw what I looked like, because her eyes showed everything, and I turned away but the window was there with the outside dark making it a mirror, yes indeed, a sorry figure as they say, rather messed about with, one way and another. Saw her point now. Motherly little soul, wanted to tuck me up before the whole bloody auction had time to disintegrate.
So I walked about a bit to prove it wasn't going to.
'When's it for?'
'What?'
'The rdv.'
She was still listening to the jet, head on one side. It sounded as though it was going into circuit above the airport.
'Later,' she said, not looking down.
'What time?'And she jerked her head to look at me because I'd put a lot of force into it, fed-up with not knowing things and not being able to talk properly or think properly, getting better but not nearly fast enough, upsetting.
She was watching me critically, trying to make some sort of decision. Her hands were still bunched inside the windcheater, and the weight of the Colt Official Police.38 was dragging it down at one side; you wouldn't have to frisk this pint-sized Mata Hari: you could see shewas armed half a mile away.
She kept her voicelow, moving closer.
'Loman has some orders for you. He insisted I didn't give them to you unless you seemed fit enough for some more work. Well, you're not fit but you won't give an inch so what can I do? He's at base keeping up a signals exchange with London in the hope that you'll be able to operate. '
'That doesn't sound like Loman. He'd grind a blind dog into the ground.'
'I don't think it's a question of consideration.'
'More like it, come on.'
'He wants you to do something he called «sensitive» and if you can't bring it off he said the "repercussions would be grave in the extreme". He also — '
Suddenly I was shaking her and she drew a breath and shut her eyes and waited and when I realized what I was doing I stopped and stood away and she didn't say anything for a bit, furious again I suppose because she was doing her best and I wasn't helping. Quietly as I could:
'Just put it in your own words.'
Couldn't stand the man, that was all, a pox on his grave repercussions, if he meant the whole thing'd blow up if I ballsed it why couldn't he bloody well say so. Besides which I was badly shaken because they'd wanted me to go and report on Tango Victor and I'd done that so I'd thought the mission was tied up and now London had got second thoughts on it, they never let you alone, those bastards, drive you till you drop.
'Things have been happening,' she said. 'Soon after you went off the air we had an alert from London. We were asked to rebrief you for the end-phase of the mission. We didn't know if you were still alive, but London said they were going ahead on the assumption that you could still operate.'
The whine of the jet was thinning above us as it came into the approach path and I looked at the square electric clock above the instrument trolley. 23.52.
'It's for tonight, is it?'
'Yes. I don't know it all. I can only tell you what I've been instructed. You're to know that a representative of the Foreign Office was flown out this evening to meet the Tunisian Minister of the Interior. It's been arranged that an aircraft of the RAF Tactical Command will be permitted to land here at Kaifra tonight, at approximately midnight. Your orders are to meet it, receive a consignment and take it to base.'
Final approach now and eight minutes early. I looked from the window but couldn't see anything of his lights in the sky. Then I moved away, not hurrying.
All right,' I said. 'Anything else?'
The room wasn't big: nine short paces from this window to the one opposite. I counted the paces because I like knowing about things, especially about the environment I have to operate in. I hadn't walked this far since I'd been in the desert but the legs were holding up all right.
'Nothing else,' I heard her saying, 'till you reach base.'
The glass of the window was black and I could see her reflection: she was standing there with her hands in the windcheater, watching me. The only light from below was from a street lamp, reflecting on edges and curved surfaces.
'The immediate thing,' I said, 'is to meet that plane, right?'
'Yes,' she said.
I could hear it landing now, the jets screaming suddenly and then fading right out. I looked down from the window.
The other side of the building there'd been a Mercedes and a 404, both with their lights off. This side there was the small Fiat I'd seen at the Royal Sahara and a GT Citroen, no lights. They weren't just parked: you don't leave a car like that in the deepest shadow you can find; you put it under a street lamp if there is one, so people won't pinch things.
I said over my shoulder:
'D'you think you could've been followed?'
It took her a couple of seconds.
'Followed?'
I came away from the window, again not hurrying, but it didn't matter whether they knew I'd seen them or not because it was too late to do anything about it: this place was a trap.
15: TRAP
'I don't think so,' she said.
She looked small and cold and hunched.
'Wouldn't you know?'
She didn't answer.
I hadn't meant to hurt: I wasn't even thinking about her. I wanted facts, as many as I could get and as soon as I could get them. She moved slowly and I said:
'No. Keep away from the windows.'
She stopped at once, looking down.
I suppose she wanted so much to show me she was a professional, but everything she did was amateur.
'Did you get here before Chirac brought me, or after?'
'After.'
I began walking about to get the circulation going. There hadn't been a psychic spasm since she'd told me about the FO sending out a man to see the President here: the end-phase was being thrown at me like a fast-burn fuse and I had to do a lot of thinking and if the psyche wanted to act the bloody fool it wouldn't get any help from me.
They must be desperate in London. The RAF back in the act and unofficial negotiations at presidential leveclass="underline" if they went on like this they'd shake the whole thing off its bearings.
'When Loman told Chirac to pull me out he must have known the mission was still running?'
She lifted her head and looked at me, ready to make another mistake and ready to see what I thought of it, bracing herself.
'I don't know what you mean.'
'Oh for Christ's sake — '
Not thinking properly. Control. We were in a red sector and I wouldn't get us out of it by pushing this poor little bitch till she broke.
'Don't worry,' I said, 'they couldn't have followed you here. They don't know you.They haven't seen you since you set up the base and if they saw you in Kaifra before then it couldn't have meant anything: they don't know who you are.'