He sat back. 'I regret that I do not have much time, Miss Jenkinson. First, allow me to ask who informed you about my firm?'

'Oh, you're very well known, Mr Dettweiler! I understand that you specialize in this kind of thing. Aerial-surveys, and so on,' she added rather wildly; and noticed that his eyes were cold and oily and had never once left her face.

'We specialize in a great many things.' His English was very correct, with only a trace of that ugly Schwitzditsch. 'But you mentioned a specific job, which we had commissioned in June? A survey of the Red Sea area, is that not so?'

'That's right.'

He gave her a bloodless smile. 'It has been explained to you, I think, that all work we do for clients is in confidence?'

She smiled with him, as the waiter put down her c.o.c.ktail. The Swiss was drinking mineral water. 'I appreciate that, Mr Dettweiler.' She began to tap out her cigarette with rather too much energy. 'My company would, of course, respect that confidence.' She shifted slightly to avoid his cold black gaze.

'We are not in the least concerned with your client's ident.i.ty. But we would be interested in acquiring a copy of the print-out.'

'Miss Jenkinson, if I understood correctly, a client of yours is anxious to obtain mineral rights in the area concerned?'

She nodded vigorously. -'But unfortunately, owing to some unexpected last-minute compet.i.tion, my client finds himself very short of time. I'm sure you'll agree that it would be unnecessary and wasteful, in both time and resources, if we were to duplicate the work which you've already done?'

'Yes, I would agree. a.s.suming, of course, that there is no conflict ofinterests between our clients? Permit me!' he added, leaning over and lighting another cigarette for her. 'You see that we already have a small problem here.'

She drew on her cigarette, and took a long sip of her c.o.c.ktail. Her lips felt dry, her throat harsh from so much smoking. 'I don't think I would be breaking any confidences, Mr Dettweiler, if I told you that our client has mining interests out in Australia.' She was improvising now, calculating that whoever was behind her husband's escapade in Cyprus was unlikely to fall into this category. She'd been surprisingly lucky so far, and just hoped that her luck would hold out.

Dettweiler said, 'Thank you, Miss Jenkinson.' His sallow Swiss face was giving nothing away. He licked at his gla.s.s of flat water. 'The Red Sea covers a large area. Can you be more specific?'

She reached for her gla.s.s and saw that it was almost empty. 'I wonder if I might have another one of these?' She needed time to think.

'Of course!' Dettweiler had the eye of the waiter almost at once. Judith finished her drink and handed the man her gla.s.s.

She decided to play a little dumb. 'I'm afraid I haven't been fully briefed on the exact details. But I understand that our client may be interested in Egypt or part of Saudi Arabia. Or possibly areas further south.' She smiled brightly: 'I'm sorry I can't be more specific than that, but you know how it is with these large corporations like mine. They love to keep secrets!'

'Quite.' Dettweiler did not smile, and his eyes still did not leave hers. 'By when do you require this information?'

'As soon as possible. Within twenty-four hours?'

He gave her a long stare. 'Miss Jenkinson, if I may say so, you seem a little nervous?'

She laughed again. 'I'm just overwhelmed at your kindness in agreeing to see me so soon.'

'Yes, you are fortunate to find me in London. But as for my helping you' - he broke off abruptly and stared across die bar. Much as she would have liked to, she refrained from following his glance.

'Miss Jenkinson, if you willexcuse me a moment, I must make a telephone call.'

She made her second drink last, and smoked two more cigarettes. He was away nearly ten minutes: at this rate Mr Dettweiler was going to be late for his lunch engagement.

He came back rubbing his hands. 'Miss Jenkinson, I have arranged an appointment for you to meet a colleague of mine at four o'clock this afternoon at the c.u.mberland Hotel, Marble Arch. His name is Sims - he will know how to recognize you.' He gave a short bow. 'I have been enchanted, Mademoiselle.

Please stay - I have ordered you another drink.'

'Oh, just one last thing, Mr Dettweiler.' .'Please?'

'Has anyone else approached you for this material? I'm referring to our client's compet.i.tors.' 'No, Miss Jenkinson. Be a.s.sured, you are the only one.' He gave another little bow, and she watched his narrow shoulders disappear behind the lunchtime crush along the bar.

He was not, as she expected, lunching in the Rib Room. Perhaps a private party in one of the hotel suites? A man like Dettweiler would have his secrets too.

She didn't wait for her third Manhattan. As she left, she noticed that the Swiss had forgotten his newspaper.

Charles Pol took the call from London, just as he was preparing to leave Geneva's President Hotel for an excellent meal at La Taverne du Postilion, across the French border, at St. Julien-en-Genevois.

He listened with his usual good-humoured patience. 'You are sure the name was Rawcliff?' he said at last. 'And she used a different name to you? I see.' He took a silk bandanna from his breast pocket and mopped his face. 'Well, I see no serious problem - providing she is shown the correct results of your work.

You follow what I mean?' Pause 'And she must on no account be suspicious.

Provide the usual problems, and charge a good price. Then your agent can perhaps come to his own arrangement with the lady. But I don't want any stupid bungles. If there are, the consequences could be grave.' He listened, nodding a couple of times: 'Bien, bien. Entendu! I shall expect your call before eight this evening. And invoice me for the usual expenses.'

He went out into the fresh cool air by the lake. He had found the call more irritating than disturbing: it was too late in the the day, and the operation too advanced, to have to deal with these awkward little last-minute obstacles.

Still, Pol was an eminently sanguine man and he knew that the success of any campaign depended on its commander being able to countenance the least difficulties, however unexpected. It was the unexpected which had destroyed so many great men. In any case, he was determined that the incident should spoil his appet.i.te.

We've had a sniff, sir. Wife of one of the pilots. Name of Rawcliff. Husband's on file - former SAS - but we don't think that's relevant, as far as this case is concerned.' Simon de Vere Suchard held the scrambler-telephone in one hand, and with the other shook a couple of artificial sweeteners into his cup of black instant coffee.

'That's right, sir, and Willie Skate's confirmed it. Yes, sir, seems she works with computers, knows the form.' At the other end, the Head of Department was short, to the point. Suchard frowned and stretched himself on the sofa. 'Isn't that rather gilding the lily, sir? It isn't as though we had any real control over the press - unless we try using the new Act, which could mean everybody getting mauled, the Department included. In my considered opinion, sir; the issue is too sensitive to risk feeding Fleet Street in at this stage, even as a favour. And Number Ten aren't going to thank us for having it dumped in their lap, either!'

He lay listening for several moments; swallowed a yawn and said, 'Very well, sir. I'll see that it's put in hand, right away. We've got a full description of the woman - there shouldn't be any problems.'

He hung up, reached over and snapped a ca.s.sette into a tape-recorder. The room filled with a soothing chorus of trumpets, oboes, ba.s.soon - Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D minor. Then Suchard lifted the scrambler-phone and called Addison, of Special Branch, with instructions to contact the car-pool and order a priority surveillance.

Two.

Forty minutes after take-off, flying in a slightly lopsided formation, with Guy Grant drooping to starboard, the six Hercules transports were approaching the Nile Delta: a lush green fan veined with glittering snakes of water reaching back into the blurred horizon over the industrial towns north of Cairo.

The sun was almost at its full height, but up in the oily gloom of his control-cabin, behind the anti-glare windows. Rawcliff was aware of the intense cold. At over 12,000 feet, even in these lat.i.tudes, it would be only 6 Centigrade. Cruising at around 300 knots, unpressurized, with the back-vent of the fuselage hanging open, he had fastened his leather jacket, and was wearing his boots and gloves, while his legs were frozen numb It was perhaps a sign of his lapsed experience that he had neglected to bring warmer clothes of his own. As Ryderbeit had said, there were to be no frills on this one, no luxuries. It was becoming increasingly clear that they'd be earning every little Swiss centime of their money.

The first exhilarating thrill on take-off was long dissipated, and Rawcliff had now settled into the ennui of the pilot flying a steady course through apparently perfect conditions. Unlike the driver of a car he was not constantly working, though part of his mind had to remain ever alert, watching the battery of flickering dials, warning lights, correcting the tiniest deviation on the radio-compa.s.s against the meticulous flight-plan that Serge had given them. Meanwhile his physical senses were lulled by the pounding roar of the engines, each with its own peculiar pitch and rhythm, an incessant subliminal whine that changed imperceptibly every few seconds, nagging at his subconscious with the constant threat of a choked feed-pipe, short circuit, a fractured tension-wire controlling the pitch of the props.

Even the regular weather reports, which continued to give . conditions as good, were not always reliable. The flight's relatively low alt.i.tude ruled out the various 'jet-streams' to be found in the tropopause - that no-man's-land between the edge of the Earth's atmosphere and s.p.a.ce. And at anywhere under 20,000 feet they were unlikely to run into that other nightmare weather-freak, CAT - Clear Air Turbulence -which plagues the high-flying jet-pilots, and can strike out of a clear sky, without warning. But these lower alt.i.tudes did not exclude troughs of localized turbulence and rising draughts" of hot air which can tear rivets out of even the strongest aircraft within a few seconds.

There was also the danger of the 'Haboub' - the local wind over Egypt, which is sister to the mistral and the sirocco, and can make low flying, especially landing, extremely hazardous. Over desert areas its progress is usually marked by sandstorms; but across the cultivated and populous Nile Delta, it hides unseen.

Cairo was ahead now, to their right, and the radio was picking up, above the static, the harsh Arab voices from Cairo West. Rawcliff tuned in on their wavelength and presently heard someone intoning their call sign, in that international English that is the lingua franca the world over of hotel-clerks, high-powered salesmen and air-controllers: 'Mission Humanity, state your position and flight path.' Peters' South African, accent came over very clear - hardly a tactful introduction to the African continent where all South African over-flights are rigidly banned. A minor detail. Rawcliff reminded himself that it was too soon to start getting windy. Below him, the city sprawled away under a brown haze, pierced by the white pencil of the tower at Gezira. Here they made a slight change of course to the east. The Pyramids lay ahead now, very small, like toy bricks lying on their side half-buried in the sand. The Nile, crawling between its belt of blotched green, fell away behind them to the west. Ahead, the monotonous glow of the desert reached to the rim of the horizon.

Fifteen minutes later he saw the blurred neck of the Gulf of Suez, with the Sinai Peninsula coming up on their left, as they followed in close formation the south-south-east course down towards the Red Sea, which even in winter, is one of the hottest places on earth.

Rawcliff removed his gloved hands from the controls and again slapped his frozen thighs. Hardly any turbulence so far: no trace of the 'Haboub,' no sudden deviations to avoid the swift unexpected path of low-flying military aircraft.

Another half-hour, and they were past Sharm el Sheikh. Below, the Red Sea extended interminably, like the desert, its metal-blue surface broken occasionally by the tiny white wake of a ship or tanker. Despite the thin, icy, inebriating air, he now felt that dangerous drooping of the eyelids. He started jerking his head up every few seconds, ma.s.saging the muscles in his neck and shoulders. For he was beginning to realize, as he headed on through the clear empty blue, that his greatest hazard, was no longer the weather, or a mechanical fault or failed radio, but lay in himself: in the sheer boredom that was now compounded with an overwhelming urge to sleep.

He considered switching on to the auto-pilot and taking a short nap; but then there would be nothing to wake him -nothing except a sudden emergency, by which time it would probably be too late to react.

He started wondering about the others. About what Ritchie and Jo would be discussing, if they could make themselves heard above the engines. Or did the 'rules of the game' - as Jo had put it - exclude their both talking shop?

He wondered how Thurgood was making out, at the rear of the formation; his inflamed body racked with itches under his leather jacket or perhaps just flying high on whatever magic potion Jo had given him?

In the Hercules directly ahead he could just make out, in the open loading-bay under the tail-piece, the lean silhouette of Ryderbeit. He must have put the plane temporarily on to auto-pilot, and now stood holding one of the parachute-lines, urinating out of the back. Rawcliff noticed that he was wearing neither flying-jacket nor gloves. Ryderbeit was truly a man for all seasons.

At 13.15 they were three hours out from Larnaca, and cruising now fifty miles off the Saudi Arabian coast, twenty miles north-west of Jeddah. Then things started to go wrong - nothing very serious at first, for an experienced pilot, on what should have been an ordinary flight. But this was not an ordinary flight; and at least one of them, Guy Grant, was clearly not an experienced pilot.

Grant's plane, flying ahead and to the right of Rawcliff, in die second line of the formation, had again begun to tilt to starboard. His nose was also going down, and Ritchie -flying directly behind him - came over on the R/T, correcting his course and warning him that he was losing height.

Grant, out of stubborn pride perhaps, did not reply; and after several longseconds managed to climb back into line. Five minutes later the same thing happened again, only it was more serious this time: his starboard wing dropped as though he were preparing to break away into a dive. The plane held steady for a moment, then again began to lose height. Peters cut in on the R/T, speaking with an angry urgency, 'Grant, do you hear me? What's your problem?'

Another pause followed, until Rawcliff wondered whether Grant's radio had failed. Then the man's voice came over, tight and abrupt, 'Right flap jammed down - getting a lot of drag - can't get the b.l.o.o.d.y thing up!'

Rawcliff could imagine him, his heavy face sweating in spite of the cold, his shaky liver-spotted hands wrenching at the controls. First rule, never force them, like squeezing the trigger of a rifle - never pull. Easy does it.

Grant was obviously rattled. 'Can't move the f.u.c.king thing - jammed down.

Those b.l.o.o.d.y wogs back at base -skimped on the job, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!'

'It can't have jammed down unless you were using it,' Ritchie said reasonably.

'You were okay until just now. What happened?'

Another pause, then Grant came back, sullen now, but with fear beginning to sound in his voice, 'Hand must have slipped. So many b.l.o.o.d.y controls for just one man. These things were built for a crew of b.l.o.o.d.y four!'

'Try again,' Ritchie urged: 'Slowly this time. If nothing happens, slow your Number Four engine.'

Grant was no longer losing height, but he was wobbling badly. Then they saw the next problem - two of them, to be exact, flying towards them, but higher, at around 15,000 feet and ten miles away, and closing fast. A pair of fighter-bombers. Five miles ahead they broke apart and came streaking down at the formation, one on each side - Saudi Arabian Air Force F-5's, like two plump drooping bats, their wings heavy with air-to-air missiles.

Rawcliff was watching for the tipped wing signal - once for follow, twice to land. The planes pa.s.sed close to Mach 2, leaving their long thin trails of exhaust, then veered off on either side, climbing on to their backs and heading away east toward the coast.

He spoke into his transceiver, 'What was that all about?'

Ryderbeit's voice came back, 'Just nosey. We're well outside their airs.p.a.ce.

The Saudis just like to keep a beady eye on us b.l.o.o.d.y pagans pa.s.sing by. But it all helps to establish our pattern.'

Ten minutes off Jeddah, at 13.30 hours, they saw the jets returning. Slower now, closing in like pincers around the formation, and this time they got the tipped wing signal, clearly visible on either side. The R/T picked up the Arab voices, in broken words of English: 'Instruct Hercules us accompany!'

Peters came back with, 'Wilco', as the two F-5's looped around and set a course due east, flying at their minimum speed with a curious waddling movement, their noses in the air, like ducks walking on their tails.

Occasionally, as though to exercise themselves, they would sweep round and fly several miles behind the Hercules formation,

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It must have been obvious to them that Grant was slightly lame, but they made no allowance for him. His aircraft seemed to shudder and wince every time oneof them pa.s.sed him. He began to talk continually over the R/T, 'b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!

What do they think they're trying to do - force me into the f.u.c.king sea?'

'Steady as she goes,' said Ryderbeit. 'They're calling us into Jeddah.

Probably a spot-check. No sweat, Granty -they'll have that flap of yours fixed in no time!'

'b.l.o.o.d.y wogs. Just because they think they've got us by the b.a.l.l.s with all their b.l.o.o.d.y oil. Well, I'm not putting up with it, I tell you. Not from b.l.o.o.d.y wogs, I'm not!'

'Careful,' said Ryderbeit, 'They might hear you. They're sensitive in these parts.'

There were mountains ahead now: high naked ridges, one upon the other, rolling back bluish-brown through the haze. Then a pool of jagged white - tiny sky-sc.r.a.pers growing like a fungus down to the sh.o.r.e. They could see the tankers lined up in the port, and now the wide modern streets jammed with gleaming ant-like traffic.

The airport, just outside, looked as though it were entertaining some ma.s.sive rally: thousands of white-clad figures bunched along the edge of the runways, overflowing between the airport buildings where there seemed to be an unusually large number of aircraft on the ground.

The two F-5's closed in again in front, wiggling their wings, and Peters gave the order to follow them down. Rawcliff's hands moved over the controls, watching the altimeter drop: 1,200 - 1,000 - 900 - 700 - 500. . . The.

fighters were leading them down towards a runway in a far corner of the field, away from the crowds and the rows of parked aircraft.

Rawcliff could feel the heat now, blasting through the rear of the plane, smelling like hot iron, as though an oven had been opened. He had no time to tear off his jacket. The sweat began to itch down his face, settling in the fold of his eyelids, and he could see the heat bubbling up off the glaring concrete below.

Peters went down first - a short landing, turning off abruptly to the right, in accordance with the instructions which were now coming from the control-tower. Grant followed. His starboard wing was still perilously low, although he seemed now to have got both main flaps down, without difficulty.

His right tyres, like two punch-b.a.l.l.s, hit the ground and bounced several times. The port wheels came down and the aircraft began to slew drunkenly to the left.

He had a good seven hundred yards in which to make the landing - more than twice that needed by a Hercules - and he seemed to be using all of them. At the last minute, while both main and nose-wheels were still just skimming the ground, he reversed the four screws. He had all flaps down now, and the whole plane shivered and seemed for a moment to rear up, its enormous wings heaving with the strain. Grant tore part of a fence down, before coming finally to rest on the sandy verge at the end of the runway.

'That Granty,' Ryderbeit intoned, 'is one of the worst farts of a landing I've ever seen.' As he spoke, he gave an exhibition performance of his own, touching down and pulling up effortlessly, in the minimum of three hundred yards.

Rawcliff followed. He was less worried by the problems of landing than by thesight of two white police Land-Rovers that were now driving along the perimeter to meet them.

Ritchie had landed and was just taxiing up to join the others, where ground-control had ordered them to park in line, facing the mountains. There only remained Thurgood's plane. He was coming in smoothly, his wheels just about to touch down, when he suddenly gave the engines full throttle and roared upwards, his main under-carriage barely missing Guy Grant, who had somehow managed to turn his aircraft back on to the runway, manoeuvring slowly into line with the others.

Rawcliff watched, with a kind of horrified entertainment, as the crowds scattered like geese, shrieking and wailing even above the noise of Thurgood's engines. He noticed that many of them were veiled women with children.

Thurgood now headed towards the control-tower, and this time he pa.s.sed so close that it looked as though his wing-tip would slice the roof off. He wheeled round and came back again, brushing up another crowd, which included scores of terrified ground-staff.

The two police Land-Rovers had swerved to a halt: but not before Thurgood had seen them. He had just finished his second run and was steadying the Hercules, still at fine-pitch and full-throttle; and now came bearing down on the two vehicles, like some monstrous grey albatross.

The Land-Rovers' doors were open and eight policemen flinched and threw themselves flat, as the aircraft's under-carriage roared over them, missing them by less than a foot, its huge wheels revolving idly on their own momentum.

Thurgood executed another immaculate turn, straightened out, and made a smooth unhurried landing, taxiing up alongside the other five aircraft.

The eight policemen were on their feet and running towards him, each carrying a long cane.

Three.