Running it close.

Certain areas of the forebrain still functioning: the paramount factor was his threshold of fear and that was established by personal characteristics: the degree to which he valued life, the extent of his subservience to the idea of Allah, the measure of his willingness or otherwise to be beaten in a dare, other things, many other things. Not at all certain this was in fact forebrain activity: point now reached when self-critical capacity very much diminished, sounded more like the organism panicking again, trying desperately to raise doubts and scare me into chucking it.

No go.

It was quite a narrow road. It had been designed to take the width of two trucks with enough space between to let them pass. This meant that if you were driving a car the size of the Mercedes 220 and kept in the middle of the road there wouldn't be room for anyone else.

Headlights dazzling now and no means of judging distance any more,the gap closing at a rising 165 kph and too risky to leave it later than this so I hit the switch and flooded him with light and hit the horns to bring in the scare-factor of the karate yell and sat there staring him out.

I wondered what his name was.

Ahmed Somebody. Mohamed Somebody.

Thirty-four missions and only a few scars and then I met a man named Mohamed, unlikely name for an epitaph, why not Blenkinsop. My own, yes, my own fault. Not fault exactly. Whole thing was calculated. Miscalculated, thought he'd break first.

Light fierce and sight gone, driving blind, eyes shut and the retinae burning. Sound coming in explosively fast from the desert night, he'd been so far away, now so close.

Dark.

Dark and the wind rocking as the slipstream hit and dragged and set up turbulence, a great cough of sound then silence.

Brakes.

Eyes watering badly, the road swimming. Dark only comparative after the blinding light, silence relative to that unpleasant explosive cough, be interesting one day to try estimating how close he'd passed, how late he'd left it, how far he'd been airborne over the ravine before gravity overcame momentum, slide-rules and stop-watches, but really only one of those things you think are still going to be interesting later. They're not. Christ sake more brakes.

Slowing.

Nearside tyres nibbling at the edge of the road, important not to go over, anything could happen if you hit ground at a bad angle and started rolling. Don't spoil it now.

Brakes. Slowing and locking and sliding and bringing it down through fifty, forty, with the ribs pressing into the seat-belt. Acid in the stomach, various glands performing, a lot of adrenalin, a certain degree of weakness along the forearms, general feeling of lassitude as the organism tried to break the tension down, all right you snivelling little tick, I won't do it again.

When the speed was low enough I swung the wheel over and turned back. There was an orange glow against the sky about a mile away and by the time I got there most of the petrol had burnt out. I went close enough to make sure what had happened and then got back into the car.

'C'est bien le numero 136, que vous m'avez demande, m'sieur?'

'Oui, l'Auberge Yasmina.'

'Ca ne repond pas.'

'Insistez un peu.'

'Mais it ne sonne meme pas, m'sieur.'

'Pourquoi par?'

'Eh b'en, it est en derangement. Je vais — '

'Vous etes certaine?'

'Absolument. Je vais le signaler. Je regrette, m'sieur.'

I hung up.

The cabin was stifling.

There was still the odd flash, the after-image of his headlights: the retinae kept registering the glare. My hands weren't perfectly steady yet: when you do something like that the organism thinks more about the consequences after you've done it than before, because the tension has gone and there's time for nightmares.

Disregard.

Outside the cabin the terrace of the Oasis Bar was crowded, mostly with oil-men in transit to and from Petrocombine's South 4 camp. Light from amber lanterns threw shadows from the trellis screens and the tendrils of tropical creepers;a Malouf Tunisien from overhead speakers was half-drowned by the voices of the drillers; three young prostitutes were going the rounds, formally shaking hands.

Check. Double-check. Negative.

Because I didn't like the thing about the telephone not working at the Auberge Yasmina: she'd said it didn't even ring. It's not terribly comfortable to lose communication with your base two hours before a jump-off. It doesn't steady the hands. It was essential that Loman should know about the 404 in case we needed local smoke out: there'd be a police enquiry because the accident had been fatal and someone might have seen a Mercedes 220 on the South 4 highway about the time there'd been a glow in the ravine. We don't like police enquiries because it means a lot of questions and it can hold things up.

Bloody thing didn't even ring and I didn't have any means of knowing if it were just a routine breakdown, the heat buckling a conduit, a rat nibbling the cables, or if someone had cut the lines before they'd gone in for Loman and the girl with a sub-machine-gun. No means of knowing, at this moment, whether the mission was still viable or whether in the arabesque room beneath the gilded dome of the Auberge Yasmina it had been blown to hell.

The whole town had become a red sector: the whole of Kaifra, not just the Yasmina and the Royal Sahara and the Oasis Bar. Because they wouldn't just throw some flowers over that burnt-out wreck in the ravine: they were professionals and they had my dossier and they'd know I wouldn't neutralize a tag unless I were running close to some kind of deadline.

I left the cabin and went through the terrace and out to the Mercedes and checked and got negative and noted the trip and took the road north-east to Garaa Tebout and drove for seven kilometres until I came to the pile of stones.

He broke a pack of Gauloises and lit up. 'Excuse me, do you — '

'No.'

'I am trying to give it up, you know?'

'You won't do it that way.'

He laughed and squinted at me through the smoke, a small wiry close-knit man with a hooked nose and stubble and weathered skin, his eyes permanently narrowed against glare even here in the starlight.

A Renault stood on the far side of theredjem and he led me across to it and turned on the interior lamps, getting a torch from the glove-pocket. A map was already spread on the rear seat, the same Sheet NH-32 of the Hassi Messaoud area that Loman had briefed me with.

'We shall take off an hour late. There was a, delay because of the work — they have to make hinges on the front edge of the cockpit hood, you know? And they have to make thetrappe underneath so I can drop the supplies.'

'We take-off at 24.00 hours?'

'C'est Va.'He clicked the torch on. 'You know the Sahara?'

'I know the desert.'

'Okay,c'est la meme chose. Alors — these red marks are the drilling camps in our area: Petrocombine South 4, South 5 and South 6, the Anglo-Beige Roches Brunes A, B and Roches Vertes I and II. The circle here is around the platinum-prospecting complex set up by the Algerians, okay? These we shall use for our bearings.' He looked up at me. 'Of course nothing is certain, you know? It will depend on the winds. If they are right, I can drop you from theplaneur, but if theyare wrong we must come back and I take you out by the airplane — you were told of this?'

'Yes.'

But not precisely. On the second run through the briefing at the Yasmina the subject had only been touched on: Loman knew there were quite enough doubts in my mind without adding to them. He'd just said that Chirac was “confident”.