Two.

  The muzzle of the gun scarcely wavered.

  I watched her shadow.

  If her shadow moved, I must move, and faster, Phutt.

  Three.

  The mosquito net shook again, and was still.

  This was why excitement had sounded in her breathing.

  She held the gun with great steadiness, Phutt,.

  Four.

  Her shadow was misshapen on the floorboards: her arm looked grotesquely thin, reminding me of a praying mantis.

  This was what she hadn’t been able to do when she was with me. It was what she’d never been able to do, with any man.

  Phutt, Five.

  Orgasm, The mantis devours its mate, following copulation.

  My spine crept.

  In my trade we are frequently a target, and when we are quick or lucky we live to remember, and learn to be even quicker next time and to hope for more luck. But our very proximity to the bullet and to death lends an almost banal reality: there’s nothing for the spirit to dream on, in the potential smashing open of a skull by a hurtling object, This was different I wasn’t there.

  I was some distance away from the target of murderous intent, even though that target was myself. As if removed from my real body by some altered state of consciousness, I was a mere observer, a witness to my own dying; and it occurred to me, as the bullets went regularly into the mosquito net, that this was the mechanism of the voodoo killer who sticks pins in the effigy of his victim.

  By small degrees I felt drained of life as each bullet smashed into the bed, Phutt.

  ‘I hate you’

  Six.

  I know.

  The reek of cordite was on the humid air.

  In the silence her breath was trembling.

  The mosquito whined faintly in the room.

  In a moment she went away, closing the door, ‘Information,’ he said.

  I listened for bugs.

  ‘We’re blown,’ I told him.

  There was another silence.

  Ferris thought fast but he never spoke fast I waited. ‘Where are you?’

  His tone was under a lot of control: I’d told him the mission was blown and he knew I wouldn’t say a thing like that for a giggle.

  ‘Manaus Airport.’

  I could see the plane as I talked to him. It was a DC-6, one of the three listed in the Amazonas Airlines flight schedules, and the departure board had it down for 04:20 today, My watch read 04:07.

  It was a four-engined propeller aircraft: Amazonas Air’

  lines was a shoestring outfit flying animal trappers, gold mine-; and Indian jute farmers from Manaus to Belem and back One of the engines was now being started up, ‘All right,’ Ferris said.

  He meant talk.

  ‘The girl has a fever. They’re flying her out in thirteen minutes from now.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Somewhere in the United States, as far as I could learn.’

  ‘Washington?’

  ‘I heard it mentioned but I don’t know in what connection.’

  The four-bladed prop of the second engine, port side, began turning.

  ‘Do you think they’re moving to the exchange point?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was listening carefully and I watched what I said: if I’d known they were moving to the exchange point I would have said so and he understood that This looked like being the final signal of a blown mission and if there were anything to be rescued we didn’t intend throwing it away on sloppy communications, ‘How did you get to the airport?’

  ‘I took the hotel jeep.’

  ‘Did they know about that?’

  ‘No. Listen, for Christ’s sake, I can’t-‘

  ‘Don’t worry-‘

  ‘If London thinks I’m going to waste time-.’

  ‘Relax.’

  But he said it like a whiplash.

  Sweat ran down my sides and I looked across the tarmac again at the DC-6. The second engine was running now, pouring out a stream of unburnt oil towards the group of passengers.

  London’s terribly fussy about private property and if you’re stuck for transport you’re meant to call a cab or Avis or someone and hang around while the objective slips the hook and leaves you with a blown operation and I do not know why those bloody idiots can’t see the problem of the executive in the field when-all right, relax, he’s right, Sweat it out Third engine running.

  Eleven minutes to go, And all Ferris could do was worry about letting the hotel know where to find their bloody jeep. I’d left two hundred-cruzeiro notes in the glove pocket and a scribbled note so what more did anyone expect me to ‘Would they recognize you if they saw you?’

  ‘Of course they’d-‘

  ‘Easy,’ he said.

  I shut up.

  This wasn’t very good. If that aeroplane took off in ten minutes from now the Kobra cell and their hostage would be on board and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I couldn’t believe I’d blown the whole operation so easily as this, but I’d better start getting used to it. They were going to walk away and I was going to watch them do it ‘Can you delay the take-off?’

  ‘Of course. But it wouldn’t do any good.’

  You can always stop a plane taking off at the last minute and there’s a dozen ways of doing it-start a fire, call up and say there’s a bomb on board, so forth - but in normal circumstances it’s an extreme measure and too clumsy to give you more than a few minutes’ advantage. In the present circumstances it would blow the mission sky-high instead of letting it die a natural death because this was a group of international terrorists we were handling and at the first sign of anything unusual they’d close up and start using their guns on the first target they could see and from that point onwards the situation could explode into fatal dimensions and the first one to die could be Pat Burdick.

  The only way to control Kobra was to do it quietly, without their even knowing.

  The next plane out,’ Ferris said on the phone, ‘is at noon tomorrow.’

  I knew that I didn’t say anything.

  They’d got number 4 running and the slipstream blew a sheet of newspaper across the tarmac and I watched it, and didn’t see it.

  All I saw was Egerton picking up the yellow telephone.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Signal from Ferris, sir’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘They’ve blown Kobra.’

  The newspaper drifted upwards again in the rush of air, and caught against the railings by the emergency bay.

  And Tilson, sipping his tea in the Caff, ‘Who was operating that one?’

  ‘Quiller.’

  ‘Good grief, I’ve never known him miss’

  ‘We all do, old boy, in the end.’

  Exhaust gas blew past me from the DC-6.

  The next plane out was at noon tomorrow and the night plane had already taken off for the coast: I’d heard it when I was with Shadia.

  ‘By the way,’ I said, ‘they think I’m dead,’

  4Oh do they?’

  But it was shut-ended.

  It was the perfect cover, and she’d handed it to me when she’d stood there in the lamplight pumping six slow shots into the shape of the rolled-up rug on the bed, firing blind through the mosquito net but making sure, taking her time, working from the head and down along the spine to the coccyx. The perfect cover.

  But I couldn’t use it.

  ‘There’s no way,’ Ferris asked rather tightly, ‘of going aboard with them?’

  ‘No way.’

  I could see them from where I stood, waiting at the departure gate and checking everyone in sight. They thought I was dead but they’d recognize-me and realize there was a mistake and they’d rectify it and this time they’d make sure.

  ‘Can you think of anything,’ Ferris asked me, ‘that I could do?’

  ‘No.’

  I’d already thought about it and there was nothing. I’d thought of a hundred things, and there was nothing.

  Ferris couldn’t get here before take-off in nine minutes and even if he could get here it’d be no go because he’d come into Manaus from Belem on the same flight as Satynovich Zade and Zade would recognize him and if he tried to follow the Kobra group they’d know it and deal with him. Ferris was in any case the director in the field and his function was totally different from the executive’s: he was here to run me from phase to phase and keep me in signals with Control and provide me with access and cover and directives, and if the opposition wrote me off or I became missing or overdue on a rendezvous then Ferris would remain in the field where London could find him. In any mission me end-phase can blow wide open and the director can go through half a dozen executives and finally bring in a hit for Control, regardless of cost.

  The executive is dispensable; the director is not.

  I looked at my watch.

  04:12.

  ‘What about Interpol?’ I asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not twice.’

  The rules are quite explicit on this: London can use Interpol at its own discretion but the director in the field can only make one appeal to its services unless a signal permits it. The Bureau doesn’t exist and if too much contact is made with other services the involvement deepens and becomes dangerous: Ferris had asked for Interpol’s help when I was holed up in quarantine and the local police had co-operated; but if we asked them again they’d start taking an interest and they’d want to know who this group of Europeans were and finally they’d want to know who we were and we couldn’t tell them. And there was only a hairline between that point and a breach of security.

  Further: the United States Secretary of Defense had called on the Bureau for an ultra-secret operation, exclusive of the FBI and me CIA and therefore exclusive, by definition, of the Brazilian police.

  The four engines of the DC-6 gunned up a degree and then fell to idling. Movement came towards my right and I looked in that direction and saw the passengers being led across the tarmac to the plane.

  04:13.

  One of the major functions of the local director is to think for his agent ‘Ferris.’

  ‘Yes?’

  He knew what I was going to ask.

  ‘Have you got a directive for me?’

  At this moment the Kobra mission was still running.

  ‘No.’

  Then it stopped.

  Chapter Fifteen: GHOST

  Noise.

  Darkness.

  The noise deafening but the darkness not total.

  Vibration beginning as the power came on. Increasing vibration.

  I couldn’t see my watch. Its digits were luminous but it was out of sight and I couldn’t bring my hand down. In any case time wasn’t significant: the Amazonas Airlines DC-6 was down for take-off at 04:20 hours and that would be the approximate time now because the engines were hitting peak revolutions and the wheels were rolling.

  Very little was visible in my immediate environs: vague dark shapes, the gleam of a highlight on metal, nothing more. Below me the rubber-streaked surface of the runway was slipping past mesmerically, the streaks becoming a blur in the faint glow from the exhaust flames.

  Estimated ground-speed seventy.

  The roaring was infinite, quelling the senses: the ears being deafened, vision seemed impaired, and I believed it was growing darker. Perhaps it was. During this phase I could do nothing except wait and hope to survive.

  Estimated ground-speed a hundred and twenty plus.

  Errant and abstract thought: a noise like this could bring the sky down. Thunder must sound like this in the instant of its inception.

  The runway was now blurred to the point of looking perfectly smooth, and the last chance of changing my mind had gone: if I dropped to the ground now the spinning tonnage of the twin wheels would leave a sudden red smudge along the concrete.

  I hadn’t told Ferris what I was going to do. There hadn’t been time.

  My right foot was slipping again and I pulled upwards, feeling the electrical conduit flex critically under the strain. The problem was to keep my body arched against the curved top of the wheelbay, giving me a chance of escaping the Wheels when they slammed home and locked. This was the only place where I could hope to survive: right at the top and right at the back, lodged against the transverse flight-control cables and their rack of pulleys. The engine-control cables ran fore and aft above my head and I had to remember they were there and keep clear of them. I had also to remember that if I lost purchase and grabbed for any handhold available, the flight-control cables were within dangerously easy reach and my weight on them could disturb the aircraft’s trim to the point of crashing it The vibration was easing.

  Easing.

  Lift-off.

  The nick-flick-flick of the runway lights, falling away.

  It was going to happen now and I was suddenly exposed to the last-second thought that I’d got it wrong: there wasn’t enough room in here. The landing lock was going to fold on the fulcrum and the oleo strut was going to swing up and bring the wheels with it, their huge tyres spinning and their weight forced into the bay by the hydraulics, slamming home as the doors came together below.

  There hadn’t been time to measure anything, even crudely. There’d only been time to look upwards and assess the chances and I’d done that and I’d thought the chances were good but at that time I’d been on the ground and in no immediate danger and now I was jammed into a death-trap and when the wheels came up they were going to crush me against the bulkhead and the only think I knew for certain was that it was going to be quick.

  Lights falling away.

  Then darkness below. The jungle.

  There hadn’t been time to tell Ferris what I was going to do because I hadn’t known I was going to do it till a few minutes before take-off. This flight and the night-mail service were the only traffic movements between dusk and dawn and there was a skeleton staff at Manaus and I’d had the choice of a dozen pairs of mechanic’s overalls in the ground crew locker room, together with the ear-mufflers. The baggage-trolley had gone out past the emergency bay and I took a lift at the rear end where the driver couldn’t see me.

  The electrician had been busy with his gear and the checker was talking to the navigator through the flight deck window when I’d looked into the wheelbay and made the decision. To vanish into the wheelbay of a DC-6 takes approximately three seconds and kids do it in Cuba and some of them survive.

  It’s easier when you don’t think too much.

  You have to believe there’s going to be enough room when the wheels come up and you have to believe you can go on holding on like this with the open doors leaving you poised above the surface of the earth at a lethal height if you lose your grip and drop and go on dropping. You have to — Mechanical movement beginning.

  I couldn’t see the wheels: they were well aft of the bay. All I could see in the light of the exhaust flames were the hydraulic cylinder and the two long coil springs and they were moving now, working in unison.

  Darkness began rising.

  Keep yourself braced.

  The jungle below had the faint sheen of moonlight on its leaves and the rising darkness was the black rubber of the tyres as they came swinging forward and upward, blotting out the ground. They were immense and I dragged a breath in and arched my spine and felt the sharp heads of the hose-clip screws digging into my shoulder as I pulled upward against the conduits and waited, hearing the faint scream of the wind-rush in the roaring background. The wheels were still spinning and I could feel the sting of stone fragments as they were flicked away from the ribbed treads by centrifugal force.

  Keep braced and don’t weaken.

  Then there was sudden and total darkness as the strut locked home and the doors of the bay came together, shutting me in. I hadn’t imagined that this degree of sound could increase but the three-thousand-horsepower radial engine was immediately forward of the wheelbay and the closing doors had trapped its sound, confining it, until its volume swelled to a vibration inside the skull.

  Into this constant thunder came a higher note that alerted me to unconsidered hazards but for a moment I couldn’t identify its source. Conceivably it was an alarm buzzer sounding somewhere above my head but it would be heard from the flight deck and I discounted it. My right foot was trembling and heating up and the faint whine was diminishing gradually and I took a better grip on the conduit and raised my foot an inch and the sound stopped at once: the heel of my shoe bad been in contact with one of the tyres and they were still spinning and I was warned.

  Don’t dropv If I dropped I wouldn’t live: the wheels would flick me against the forward bulkhead and jam my body there with their momentum.

  But I was tiring now.

  Noise fatigues the organism. So does fear.:

  I was afraid.

  There was no action to take. I had to do nothing, in order to live, except hold on and try not to think. The wheels would lose their rotary inertia within minutes but I didn’t know how long I could force the muscles in my hands to remain contracted with the fingers hooked over the conduit or how long it would be before the conduit broke away from its clips and sent me down. Once the wheels had stopped spinning I could drop across them and rest but if I did it too soon it would be fatal. It was a matter of time.

  Euphoria, A sense of twilight The noise roared far away, in the caverns of Nirvana.

  Watch it.

  A sense of floating, of life adrift in weightlessness, of deep and eternal peace.

  Three great swans flew across the aching dome of infinity, and were caught in its vortex, spinning. The sky cracked like an egg.

  Get out of this. Pull yourself out.

  Consciousness flickering, like a loose light bulb.

  Colours swirled, ebbing and flowing to the theta rhythms of hypnagogic sleep. The sun burst, and the birds turned black and struck horror in the psyche, Pull up and pull out. Move.

  My hands floating in theMove for Christ’s sake or you’ll — Adrift in the streaming depths of Lethe, whereMove your hands, hit something. Feet, kick something. Pull out.

  Heart thudding.

  Darkness, the real thing, and the engine roaring.

  I kicked and floated back the other way, nearly losing the sense of reality as the clouds drew down and blinded - watch it, pull out! Kicked again and floated to the right, and I knew now what was happening: I was lying prone across the enormous tyres and when I kicked at the bulkhead the force was irs turning the wheels and they were swinging me across in an arc against the firewall.