Basically it was a low-aspect ratio design with high-mounted delta wings and the twin air ducts starting from below the cockpit and flaring back to the engines and beyond them to the six-foot-diameter exhaust nozzles half-way along the tail unit. I walked round it, and Bocker and the guards stayed where they were, for which I was glad: I felt a sense of assignation with the machine, because I was going to be the last man ever to fly it and if I got things right it could do a lot for me and if I got things wrong it would kill me.

It was very quiet in the hangar and my footsteps grated on the concrete as I ducked under the plane and looked at the other side. It didn’t have a lot in common with the FM-3O as far as the configuration was concerned, though that didn’t mean its handling characteristics were as different to the same degree. This model had a retractable air brake mounted well aft, almost underneath the exhaust nozzles, and the undercarriage folded backward and inward instead of forward and inward: there were also six underwing missile pylons, which had been adapted to sling centre-line fuel tanks to complement the wing pods.

When I climbed the steps I heard someone move closer, but it was probably a coincidence: they knew I was allowed to look into the cockpit and maybe I was touchy, anticipating some kind of opposition. They would also be touchy, since this machine had tighter security wraps than any other in Europe and it was going to be their neck if someone got through.

Ferris hadn’t been selling me short: when I pulled the canopy back I saw that the cockpit layout was very like the FM-3o’s; and for the first time I relaxed a little and thought there might be just a chance of pushing through with this and coming out at the other end and giving those bastards in London the stuff they wanted.

I didn’t know what it was, yet. Ferris had played it very close to the chest in Barcelona and I’d got the impression that the planning stage wasn’t finished even now and that he was standing by for new instructions to pass on to me as soon as they were ready. There was also the smell of sealed orders about this operation and I didn’t like it but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Our feelings vary on this subject: some of the executives like leaving it all to Control, so they don’t have to do any thinking on their way through the mission they simply go for the selected targets and get there and do the job they’ve been told to do. These types work well for people like Parkis because Parkis is good at winding them up and pointing them in the right direction with everything already built in at the start so that all they have to do is respond to negative feedback till they hit the objective. His rationale is that if they knew the size of the background politics it’d give them purpose-tremor so that right at the critical time when they were meant to be making a document filch or blowing a cell or getting a contact across they’d just go to pieces and stand there doing it in their trousers.

The rest of us prefer to know what’s happening behind the scenes because it gives us a chance of switching tactics or changing course according to the run of events: we like the responsibility and it makes us feel a bit less like a robot on its way to a toy fair, but the fact remains that if Control or your director in the field doesn’t want to tell you anything then it’s a waste of time asking.

All I knew about this one was the access, and even the info on that was incomplete. All I really knew was that in approximately fifty-six hours from now they were going to send me into Soviet airspace in a Soviet aircraft and hope no one would notice.

“All right, we’ll try putting her down now.”

“We can skip that bit.”

“You mean landing?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Watch it.

“I’d like to get those turns right.”

“You’re not doing badly. I want you to put her down during this session because that’ll just leave us evasive action to go through.”

“If you say so.”

You’ve got to watch security every second and I’d nearly blown it. All right, Thompson was career RAF and London had deep-screened him and he knew what a Finback was but he might not have been told it was a one-way flight and that I wasn’t going to make a landing. And I’d almost told him.

Watch everything.

And concentrate.

“Okay, we’ll go into the approach.”

“What altitude?”

“Get down to three thousand feet and we’ll start from there. But make a full circuit.”

I put the column forward and used twenty degrees of to the left, watching the horizon and altitude.

“That’s fine.”

I could see Thompson in his glass-panelled control box in front of the simulator. He sat crouched with his headset on, watching the slave screen on the console; he never looked up at me through the windscreen, even when he had to give a sharp command.

“You’re going too wide.”

I corrected.

We’d been working for two hours on this session, nearly seven hours so far for the day. Thompson had wanted more frequent breaks but I’d kept him at it because for me any kind of learning has got to be intensive. I think he was getting fed up.

“What have you got now?”

“Three thousand five.”

He’d got the same reading but he wanted to hear how fast I answered so that he’d know I was watching the right things. During the first hour I’d looked all over the control panel for missing FM-3O features and he’d got worried.

“Make another circuit. Don’t forget you’ve got a twelve-thousand-foot runway, two thousand feet longer than at Zaragoza.”

We kept at it. The clock on the facia said 18:05.

“Right. Level out. Level out now. Less lift than the FM, remember?”

I over corrected and the nose came up too high and I said shit and pushed it down again and thought Ferris might have told me it was a one-way trip because these bloody things were unlandable.

“Watch your altitude.”

There wasn’t any lift at all: we were dropping out of the sky and I trimmed again and put the flaps down and saw her hit a wall on the airspeed indicator.

“Too soon. Ease off.”

It took another ten minutes and I made the over corrections and hit the power too late because she was going down like a stone and I panicked and Thompson went on talking into my headset, repeating himself so often that I didn’t have enough time to assess anything for myself. The angle of approach was all right and we were lined up with the wings level but I cut the power too soon and we hit the deck and lit up the failure sign and I sat there thinking Christ we’re going to go through all that again till I’ve got it right and it’s going to be a total waste of time because I’m never going to need it and I can’t tell him that.

“All right, here’s the first one.”

I watched the screen.

“It’s a MiG-21 and it’s seen you and it’s closing. What’s the distance?”

“A mile.”

“A mile and a half at this point. Okay, we’ll stop the action. Don’t forget to turn into the missile’s trajectory. It’s the only way you can beat it. You just go into a very high g-turn, as tight as you can. Right — action.”

The shape on the screen began moving again and a thin white cylinder shot forward from it.

“Missile fired.”

I used the rudder and ailerons and glanced across the dials to check the degree of turn and pushed it a bit more and concentrated on the missile.

“More g’s.”

The cloudscape swung on the screen but the white cylinder

“You’re too slow. You’ve got to turn on a sixpence.” Pushed everything hard over but the missile kept coming in. “More g’s. But it’s too late anyway.” I was braced forward against the harness and this was the limit of turn but the thing on the screen was rapidly filling it and then the screen went white and a word jumped into the frame: