“Your flight briefing starts this evening at six o’clock. Why don’t you hop into town today and shake yourself loose a bit? Get rid of the tension.” He sounded terribly casual.

“Fair enough.”

“I am sorry to disturb you, gentlemen!”

“Morning, Hans. Not disturbing.”

“Your embassy in Bonn was on the line. The cultural attache would be obliged if you’d call him back.”

“All right.”

Ferris left us, hurrying through the drizzle with his head down and his mac flapping.

“No one seemed to know where you were, Mr. Nesbitt. I always find that a distinct advantage myself to be difficult to find.” A soundless laugh, his cheeks wobbling with it.

“How right you are. That limousine, by the way.”

We began walking towards the buildings.

“Ah, yes.” He was right on to it. “They are our friends, of course.”

It was a large black Mercedes and I’d seen it standing there at the boundary fence for most of yesterday. There were two men leaning on it, identically dressed and watching the aircraft on the north side of the hangars.

“Are they always there?”

He shrugged amiably. “Nearly always.”

“I don’t think much of their cover.”

He bubbled happily at this. “You are familiar with their thinking, I am sure. In Russia only the nachalstvo drive about in large black limousines, and no one dares to question their movements. They believe it is the same in the West, and therefore station their cars where they please — quite often near airfields and missile sites.” His hand rested for a moment on my arm. “You may be quite sure Squadron-Leader, that when your aircraft leaves its hangar before dawn tomorrow, those two gentlemen will be safely at police headquarters on a minor charge.”

I saw Ferris for a few minutes in the Base Operations Office. He said the embassy call had conveyed a London signal asking for confirmation that Slingshot was ready to go into access phase at first light tomorrow, 07:47 local time.

“Except for flight briefing and clearance,” I said.

“We’re giving you those tonight.”

“Then we can go.”

“That’s what I told them,” he nodded.

“You like that?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Tell me what you like, and what you do not like. Tell me,” she said, taking her mouth away for a moment, “what drives you crazy.”

“You drive me crazy,” I said, “whatever you do.”

She started again and I shut my eyes and stroked her short thick hair, listening to what she was doing. The glare of the wintry light from the window was white against my eyelids, and I kept seeing the red word jump into the screen: HIT.

But we’d beaten that one: the last three had been misses, even with the Foxbat. There wasn’t anything to worry about.

“This is the way?” she asked me.

“Yes. That is the way.”

I wouldn’t have been able to take it much longer if I hadn’t been letting the brain run on. The thoughts in the brain weren’t very sexy. If they were going to cut me off in the end phase and leave me hanging on the wire then I would do what I could to confound their bloody enterprise: get out and go to ground somewhere, and if possible leave evidence of death.

“You do not touch me,” she said, and took her mouth away to get her breath back. So I touched her and she jerked her thighs as if I’d released a spring. She’d come into the car park outside the hotel just after me, and we’d noticed each other and that was that. She was young, pretty, blonde and suntanned, with nothing very interesting about her; but I agreed we should go up to her room because that was what I was here for. She said she would speak English, because it was very bad and she would like me to correct her as often as possible so that she could improve.

“Oh God,” she said on her breath, ‘you are fantastic… I have never known a man like you…”

It was a strictly sales-training compliment and I’d realized by now that she was practised to the point of pretending she was virginal and inexperienced: “You like this?” and so forth.

I didn’t think she was run by the hotel but she may have been free-lancing with a pitch here, on commission.

“Halt, bitte! Ich kann nicht mehr!”

She was forgetting her English now. At first I’d thought she was a lesbian and professional enough not to let it show; but now she was getting involved and her honey-brown shoulders had slid to the floor and she was arched upside-down across the edge of the bed, so I buried my mouth in the thick triangle of hair that reached almost to her navel, and she began thrashing about and saying things in German again.

“Noch einmal mach’ es noch einmal!”

At some time I thought I heard a knock at the door but I let it go because I’d checked for security on my way here and it was satisfactory; the only trouble I’d had was in flushing the man Docker had obviously sent along on my tail when I’d left the airfield; it was good of him but I don’t like being mothered.

“Du bist so schon she was gasping, and the choice of the word was lesbian so I assumed she was a bi, which was why she’d been able to get involved. We started all over again and I stopped thinking about the screen and the silhouette and about the high degree of risk on take-off and about the fact that for the first time in my life I was considered expendable.

Later we found ourselves lying across each other on the floor, our eyes shut and our sweat cooling, the quietness coming back.

“God,” she whispered, “I need to drink.”

“You need 'a' drink,” I said, and she laughed softly.

I fetched her some water and she drank and asked for more. She’d seen me at the airfield, she said: she had a brother working there as a technician — did I know him? His name was Max.

I said I didn’t know him.

“You are pilot?”

“Yes and no.”

“Yes and no?”

“More water?”

“No, thank you.” She got off the floor and kissed me and got a comb from her big leather bag and went over to the mirror, leaving the bag open. “Max knows all the pilots, because he is technician on airplanes. How long will you be at Furstenfeldbruck, darling?”

“I can’t really say.”

She lit a cigarette and followed me as far as the shower. You must stay a long time,” she told me, “and we will meet with frequency. Are you here on special work?”

“Not really.”

“Max said there was an Englander here on special work.”

I turned the tap to cold and took the shock and turned it off. She handed me the towel.

“Well, you see,” I said, “I mustn’t really talk about it.”

She rubbed my back dry, dropping some ash on my foot.

“But I never tell about things. Max tells me many things, and he knows it is safe with me. You must be special pilot, or maybe technician.” She threw the towel on to the linen basket and walked into the bedroom with her arm round me. “I think you are someone very important in your work. I guess good at these things, darling.”

‘”I’m good at guessing things,” I said and she repeated it slowly.

“You are beautiful teacher.” She put her hands down and stroked me. “You will teach me about this too.” Some more ash dropped and she went over to stub out the cigarette. “Now tell me what is the work that you do — it must be exciting. I will never tell anyone, never.” She came back, walking with a swing of the hips that started me thinking about bed again, so I started putting my clothes on.

“I promise,” she said. “You can trust me, darling.”

I looked into her eyes. “I really believe I could.”

“But of course!” She kissed me generously.

“The thing is,” I said doubtfully, ‘you might not understand, even if I told you. It’s rather technical.”

“You forget my brother is technician.”

I pulled the zipper up and got my polo-neck sweater. “That’s perfectly true, of course. Well, I’m at Furstenfeldbruck to work on a new system they’re developing. It’s called the Directional U-beam Kinetic Sensor. We call it the DUKS for short.” I pulled the sweater over my head. “The key compartment is the ARS, which is short for Annular Reciprocating Speculum.”