'Eh bien?' Pol's expression was even jovial, frivolous 'Such a sum is a bagatelle! If I were to have invested the money so far in building hotels on the Cote d'Azur, I could have doubled my profits - trebled them perhaps. And yet your people send you to squabble over a few million!'

'Thirteen million, then. But in return, I hope you will remember our last conversation. If there is any breach of security, any suggestion of cheating or treachery, you will get a bullet in your head. That at least would be cheap.'

Pol giggled and tapped the short sweaty hairs at the back of his neck. 'Ah, my friend, you forget that I have a hard head! But now, let us look forward to the venison.'

Three.

At 7.30 sharp next morning Guy Grant drove up to the front of the Lord ByronHotel in an open pick-up truck. He was wearing gla.s.ses with mirror lenses and a belted lightweight tropical suit. He allowed Rawcliff to sit in the front with him, while Thurgood and Sammy Ryderbeit rode in the back.

Rawcliff was not in the mood for conversation. He sat back and looked out at the shabby, dusty yellow street, at the low-roofed buildings, the half-derelict shopfronts. None of the garrulous sun-hatted vulgarity of the usual Greek Mediterranean sea-resort - the Turkish Army had put an end to all that, drawn up twelve miles to the north. This was the kind of place where n.o.body would worry too much, as long as the price was right. Even the police on occasional point-duty looked indolent and in need of a shave.

The town soon gave way to monotonous scrub sprinkled with olive trees and tiny white houses and herds of wretched-looking goats. What had once been the main road out to the International Airport was now shrunk and cracked, bitten into at the edges by weeds and the winter rains. Ahead lay the Salt Flats, already covered by a dull haze.

The sea was on their left, and on their right the Salt Lake came into view, murky-white like curdled milk. They were driving into the neck of a thin peninsula; and Rawcliff saw approaching the high cantilevered wire fence marking the perimeter of the moribund International Airport. In the far distance, along the margin of the lake, lay the hangars and terminal buildings. Then came a gate in the fence, secured by double padlocks. A rusty sign said in Greek and English: PROPERTY OF THE GOVERNMENT OF CYPRUS. ENTRY FORBIDDEN TO ALL UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL.

Grant got out and picked up a field-telephone attached to a wire that trailed away into the distance. He said something, then hung up and strolled round to Rawcliff's which was closed against the dust. Rawcliff opened his door a little to let in some air. Even outside it was hot and stagnant.

He nodded up at the sign. 'Does "Government Property" include us?'

'For the moment, yes. We're members of the International Red Cross, remember.'

Grant had climbed back in and sat waiting, with the engine idling.

'You're not fooled by all this Red Cross stuff, are you, Major?'

Grant turned to him, his heavy face damp with sweat; and Rawcliff saw his own features reflected in the man's mirror-lenses, distorted like two faces seen in a pair of spoons. 'Don't play the dummy with me, Rawcliff. We're being paid to carry out orders, not to question them. "Our's not to reason why", as the poet said.'

Rawcliff nodded.' "Our's but to do and die." Hardly the happiest quotation.'

Grant said nothing. Across the shimmering Salt Flats ahead they could see a blur of dust approaching. After a moment Rawcliff recognized the Suzuki jeep in which Ritchie had driven him down from Nicosia. It came up fast and stopped with a four-wheeled skid. Peters got out.

Rawcliff hadn't seen him since their encounter in that grubby little cinema at the back of the dirty-bookshop in Soho. The man was now wearing denim overalls, and his left foot bulged out in a white plaster. Round his neck was a flesh-coloured plastic brace which gave him the look of a full-sized Action Man doll, his blank features shielded by dark gla.s.ses that hid his still swollen and black eyes from when Rawcliff had b.u.t.ted him on the bridge of the nose. He hobbled up to the gate, snapped open the two locks with a key, then turned to face Rawcliff - a long stare from behind the dark gla.s.ses that might have meant anything. Rawcliff heard Grant chuckle beside him, 'No love lost between you two, eh? Rather you than me, old bean!'

Rawcliff made no comment. They waited until Peters had relocked the gates and backed the jeep round, then began to follow it out across the field, towards one of the hangars, which was at some distance from the terminal buildings.

Rawcliff could just make out a Red Cross flag hanging limply from the control-tower, next to a flaccid wind-sock.

Rawcliff now saw what Grant had meant about the difficulties of take-off. Down the centre of the peninsula lay the main runway, like an enormous strip of masking tape stretched across the Salt Flats, its surface already humped and buckled and pot-holed with neglect. To add to which some greedy entrepreneur had removed all the runway lights, all warning beacons, as well as stripping up the miles of electric cable that are the nerves of a modern airport. In their place, half-way down the runway, stood two rows of white-painted oil-drums. Rawcliff judged the distance between them to be barely three hundred yards. With the sea on one side, the lake on the other. And there'd be no help from the control-tower. No radar, not even radio. Those would have been the first to be looted.

Grant nodded ahead. 'The local ground-staff filled in the worst bits, but there's subsidence half-way down. We've got exactly one thousand and eleven feet - which is just over the minimum the Lockheed handbook gives. For landing we b.u.mp down and use everything we've got - flaps, airbrakes, reverse screws, and a lot of muscle. If you sc.r.a.pe an engine or a tyre you go into the drink.'

Like Gibraltar, Rawcliff thought: only without a planeload of screaming tourists. At least it would be something to get the adrenalin going.

Ahead there was a stirring like bees in the dark mouth of the hangar, where he could just make out, against the raw sunlight, the huge shapes of fuselages and wings and high triangular tailpieces.

Jim Ritchie came out to meet them. His smile showed through a mask of black grease as he wiped his hands on his overalls. 'Ready for a long day's work?'

he shouted, as the two vehicles drew up outside the hangar. 'We've got three of them ready for inspection. But it's slow work. As I warned you, the electricals are going to be our big headache.'

'That's Nugent-Ross's job. And Flight-Lieutenant Thurgood deals with the radios,' said Peters.

Ryderbeit and Thurgood had climbed out to join them -Ryderbeit's fatigues and black hair chalk-white with dust -while Matt Nugent-Ross came strolling out of the hangar towards them.

'Right!' Peters said, to the six of them lined up in front of him. 'You know the drill. Check your aircraft down to the last detail - your lives are going to depend on it. Op schedule is as follows. Fuel and supplies arrive by sea sometime early tomorrow morning. The ground-crews will help with the loading.

And I want every man to keep his eyes open. Anyone seen nosing round the field, report to me. And when you're off-duty, you keep your mouths tight shut - these Greeks gossip like b.l.o.o.d.y women!'

He went on to detail each man to his aircraft, marked 1 to 6 in chalk on the tailpiece; then turned awkwardly on his injured foot. 'Now get to work.' It was only when Rawcliff was inside the hangar, adjusting his eyes to the blue glare of the arc-lights, that he realized the full size of a Hercules C-130. The six long fat fuselages were drawn up in diagonal rows: almost windowless, except for the control-cabins: matt-grey, all markings painted out, with the swing-down loading-bays open under the ma.s.sive tailpieces. Each aircraft nearly a hundred feet long, its high-wings appearing to sag under the weight of the four mighty 4,190 hp turbo-prop engines, and the two torpedo-shaped external fuel-tanks. A hulking great, ugly, sensible aircraft -no frills, no nonsense, providing you treated her right.

There were about forty Cypriot ground-crew in airport overalls, crawling over the three aircraft which were still incomplete. The hot oily air was shattered by the roar of fork-lift trucks, by excited shouted orders in Greek as a wing was levered up into position.

As a professional pilot, Rawcliff was mildly rea.s.sured to see that the hangar seemed well-equipped. Besides the fork-lift trucks and heavy welding tools, there was the long-familiar sight of refuelling trucks, generators, pumps and ramps, elevators and hydraulic boosters - as well as a small fleet of Suzuki jeeps, belonging to the airport. All presumably hired from the local authorities for the duration.

He had also noticed, parked outside the hangar near the narrow beach, a number of yellow caterpillar tractors and long trailers with huge soft sand-tyres.

Rawcliff's plane was Number 3, next to Ryderbeit's. Both appeared complete, except for the empty outboard engine-housings. Ryderbeit grinned at him through his dust-caked lips. 'Not quite up to Heathrow! Anything worrying you?'

'Plenty. But that's what I'm being paid for. I'm just puzzled why the aircraft were brought in in bits. Why not fly them down from Germany in the first place? The Red Cross haven't got anything to hide.'

'You're green, soldier. Half a dozen of these big babies attract a lot of attention, what with overflight clearance across Switzerland, Italy, Greece, and most of the Eastern Med. Don't forget, this is a sensitive area - nice and close to the Lebanon and Israel. But most important, you forget the Turks.

They've got their front-line just up the road, and the Turk doesn't give a snake's s.h.i.t for the Red Cross. With six b.l.o.o.d.y Hercules landing under their noses, they wouldn't think twice. Greek-Cypriot military build-up, and they'd have their Army into the whole Larnaca area almost before we'd switched off the landing-lights! And the Turks don't fart about.'

'What about security? The British still have bases on Cyprus - one just north of here.'

'Raffles. Load of s.h.i.t. Spend most of their time going to tea-dances and swapping wives.' He raised his arm in a salute, 'You just worry about that aircraft of yours. She's an old lady who's had a long life, and she's probably getting tired.'

Rawcliff turned and climbed the sloping tailvent of his Hercules. Besides the weary, meticulous task of checking and double-checking every control, searching for the tiniest fault, he also wanted to pause, be alone. Have time to think. Time to devise that telegram to Judith. The longer he left it, the more difficult it would be: and he knew that if he left it too late, it would take more than fifty thousand pounds to buy her back. Yet what could he truthfully tell her, besides describing his unholy mob of colleagues? Tell her, perhaps, that he was preparing to fly a secret mission in a twenty-year-old aircraft that had been stripped down and was now being glued together again by a bunch of Cypriots on a derelict airfield that no sensible pilot would think of using, except in the most dire emergency?

At around noon Peters and Ritchie drove back into Larnaca in one of the Suzuki jeeps. As usual, they offered no explanation. Guy Grant was left in command - a role he clearly relished.

Although Rawcliff was relieved at the absence of Peters -however temporary - he soon found Grant hard to endure. The man seemed less interested in checking his aircraft than in a.s.serting his authority to the full. He had a.s.sumed an almost theatrical demeanour of martinet - strutting, snapping, balling out the ground-crew, criticizing wherever possible, even insisting that the other three address him as 'Major' at all times. It was only with a measure of evident self-restraint that he did not insist on their saluting him.

At around 12.30 pm the field-telephone rang. Grant, who had been entrusted with a second set of keys to the gates, drove out to the perimeter wire. He was back a few moments later, followed by another of the jeeps. At the wheel sat a girl, her hair scooped up and fastened under a stiff little white bonnet.

Rawcliff scarcely recognized her, in her starched blue and white nurse's uniform, with narrow blue waist-band, dark stockings, sensible shoes. Grant looked slightly confused, as he escorted her from the jeep into the hangar.

The two of them paused, close to where Rawcliff was working messily under the open cowlings of one of the ma.s.sive engines. She was prettier than he remembered her -almost demure now, in her uniform, as she stood shielding her eyes against the naked inspection-light.

He climbed down the ladder, wiping his hands on a rag, and heard her laugh ripple above the grinding roar of machinery. 'Mr Rawcliff, isn't if? You're the man with the b.u.mp on his head?'

He instinctively touched his oil-smeared face and nodded. Grant said stiffly, 'Mr Rawcliff, this is,Miss Shelby. I believe you've met?'

'I gave him a gla.s.s of brandy when he wasn't feeling very well.'

Grant was standing rigidly to attention. 'Everything in order, Rawcliff?'

At that moment Matt Nugent-Ross appeared. 'I've got to check the electricals on this one, Major.'

Jo laughed. 'Electricals - that sounds awfully bad!'

Grant was frowning. 'Right, get to work, both of you. We've got a schedule!'

Rawcliff began to turn as Jo said, 'I'd like to have a look inside. It's the first time I've seen one of these monsters.'

Grant hesitated. 'I don't want you getting in the way, Miss Shelby. It's also extremely dirty in there.'

'Don't worry, I've got a spare uniform!'

'It's okay by me, Major,' said Nugent-Ross, 'I'll keep an eye on her. And I'vegot to start somewhere - might as well be this one.'

Grant watched scowling, as Rawcliff led the way round to the back of the plane where the rear loading-ramp was still lowered. He went first, carrying the inspection-light on its long trailing cable.

The inside was a broad tunnel, smelling of hot metal and plastic and old leather, of hydraulic fluid, lingering kerosene fumes and sweat. Along the floor were two sets of rails, fixed at intervals with free-wheeling rollers, and the walls and ceiling were lagged with plastic-covered padding and hung with a ma.s.s of buckled straps and parachute-lines. Everything metal was scuffed and sc.r.a.ped and smeared with an oily grime that had become furry with dust. They picked their way up between the rails to the s.p.a.cious control-cabin, with anti-glare window-panels on three sides. Above and below the front window were two wide batteries of dials and switches and levers, some of the dials almost indecipherable through the grease, while several panels were missing and bunches of coloured wiring spilled out like entrails.

Nugent-Ross settled down in one of the s.p.a.cious seats and 151 reached for the battered .flight handbook, issued by the USAF.

Jo stood gaping. 'I must say, it makes my old MGB look rather silly!'

'How does she seem to you?' Rawcliff asked the American.

'Well,, she's no virgin, that's for sure. But Uncle Sam looks after his property pretty well. Your biggest danger's a broken connection, either when they were taken apart or rea.s.sembled.' He flicked a few switches, peered at the dials. 'Amps reading a bit low - you'll need a charge. Igniters seem okay.'

Jo had stepped over and ran a finger down Rawcliffs brow. 'Poor old b.u.mp-head!

You were -really asking for it, you know - taking on Peters. Still, everybody seems rather delighted!'

'Peters doesn't appear to be very popular?' said Rawcliff.

'He makes my flesh creep. He's so inhuman.'

Nugent-Ross turned to her. 'Look, Jo, I don't want to sound mean, but me and Mr Rawcliff have work to do. Why don't you just hop out and get yourself some coffee from one of the ground-crew?'

She turned quickly, and without a word, even a last glance at Rawcliff, walked back "between the rails and down the ramp into the hangar.

'Seems a nice enough girl,' Rawcliff said, from the copilot's seat. 'What's in this for her?'

'Bread, I guess. And kicks. Mostly bread, plus as many kicks as she can get.

Don't ask me. I gave up trying to figure out that kinda girl a long time ago.

I guess the only consolation for guys like us is that one day girls like that get old and withered and finally put us out of our misery.'

'You sound bitter.'

'Just practical. I've got a job to do, like the rest of you. As for Jo, she comes along for the ride, and picks up a nice pay-cheque at the end of it.'

Rawcliff looked at him curiously, as the American went on checking the rows ofswitches of dials and b.u.t.tons. 'And what's in it for you, Matt?'

'I told you - a job. And some money at the end of it. I'm just part o' the hired help that squares the local bra.s.s with the odd bribe, and is supposed to fix fuses and dud magnetoes, and a few other things. You've got a couple of blown fuses here, by the way.' He had taken out a little leather notebook with a tiny gold pen slipped into the spine, and made a quick jotting.

'What other things, Matt? Aerial guidance-systems for instance?'

The American flicked a switch and there was a dull humming noise from under the floor. 'You're mighty curious, friend. You ought to know the law around here. Like the military - the less you know, the better.'

'No harm in asking questions. Not if you don't want to answer them.'

'You been listening too much to that guy, Ryderbeit. What did he tell you about me?'

Rawcliff stared out through the tinted perspex, into the vivid confusion of the hangar. 'Nothing, except about you being some expert in computers and high-technology.'

'That guy talks too much. Maybe he thinks he's got a charmed life - unlike some of us.' He went on working with leisurely concentration while he spoke.

'Did he mention that I'd been to Princeton? And Oxford?' He gave a weak smile, still not looking at Rawcliff. 'I was the model student - the one voted most likely to succeed, and all that c.r.a.p. Then I got thrown out. Stealing.' He twiddled some more k.n.o.bs, pulled a lever. 'I got a pa.s.sion for rare books. Had myself quite a collection, until the Dean of the Faculty dropped by for a drink and recognized some of his old tomes. Faulty connection here - I'll have to get that fixed, for sure!' He scribbled again in his little book.

'I got slung out of Oxford too. Oxford was nice - all those lovely cloisters.

Trouble was, I had too much money. Spent most of it living high and fast up in London. Oxford didn't like it. They had a lot of funny old-fashioned ideas about scholastic discipline. So I went home and joined the Marines just in time for the Lebanon landing back in '58. The morning we went ash.o.r.e I was smashed - woke up in the hospital ship and was rewarded with a Dishonourable Discharge.'

'That's fine,' said Rawcliff: 'You, Thurgood, Grant - all thrown out of the Services.'

'And how do you rate yourself, Mr Rawcliff? Are you another b.u.m - another misfit trying to make a fast buck the dangerous way?'

Rawcliff's narrow Anglo-Saxon instincts closed in: he was not a man to bare his soul to anyone, except perhaps to Judith, and then only with painful remorse. He said slowly, 'If you want to put it that way. Like the rest of us I'm dispensable. I've got nothing to lose, except my wife and two-year-old son. Are you married, Matt?'

'Not any more.' As he spoke, Rawcliff saw the man's face a.s.sume a greenish pallor under the glow from the windows. He added, in a hushed voice, 'I'd better go fix those fuses, and that connection. Your lights and flaps are okay. But I'll check your undercarriage - you need just -one sloppy mechanic round here and you can kiss us all goodbye.'

He had stood up, controlling his expression with visible effort, and held outa limp hand. 'It's been nice talking to you, friend' - and he started back down the body of the plane. 'If you have any problems, let me know. Technical ones, I mean.'

'Put that f.u.c.king cigar out!' Grant roared.

Ryderbeit removed the Havana slowly from his lips, spat delicately between his boots and laughed.

Guy Grant had stripped off his mirror gla.s.ses and his eyes held a small mean look. He was holding a clip-board, clasped like a swagger-stick under his arm.

'Right, Flight-Lieutenant.' Thurgood stepped forward, half to attention. His raw bony face was smeared with a congealed layer of dust and oil, like macabre make-up. 'You've checked the radio equipment?'

Thurgood nodded.

'You address me as Major, Fight-Lieutenant! Grant swung round. 'Nugent-Ross!'

'Major?'