'Maybe I can do it,comprenez? But only maybe. The winds here are very strange, with freak upcurrents from this range here and dead pockets to the south-east; also the air is cooling very quick after sundown, which is bad. The desert is different from other places,mon ami. You know how I learned about the air over this region? From watching the vultures — they areplaneurs, the vultures, and they smell out the winds. I have watched them. Now I do like them.'

Ash fell and he blew it off the map.

'What are the chances, Chirac?'

'Hein?'He flattened his hand, rocking it. 'I cannot say easily. Maybe it is better than fifty-fifty, about that. We will know when we slip the cable and start smelling for the winds, like those birds.'

He moved the torch again. 'These blue marks show the three beacons of the Philips radio relay network that crosses the area where we will go. They carry red warning lamps so we use them too, for our bearings. The drilling-rigs also have lamps at night — there are more airstrips than oases in this region, because everyone looks for the black gold, you see? For the oil. So we have enough landmarks, I think. After we will slip the cable it is different, a little, because then we are alone and we have to make a straight line south-west of the radio tower here. There is nothing else we shall see after this tower.' He shrugged with his hands. 'But maybe it is okay, we will find the winds that we will need.'

I looked at the pattern he'd traced with his torch.

'You mean you're making the final run-in from this tower by dead reckoning?'

'It is the only way, y'u see. There are not any more landmarks. But I know the terrain quite well — I fly the geologists all the time and we make aerial survey.'

'Are you familiar with the actual target?'

'Hein? SureI am. It's this outcrop here at 8°3′ by 30°4′, n'est-ce pas?'

Note: Loman hadn't told him about the aeroplane.

'Yes'

'I do not know the actual rocks, of course — they're very small, and we won't see them anyway in the darkness. But our target is ninety-seven kilometres south-west of the Philips tower, so we have a fix.'

'What's your airspeed going to be?'

'Maybe a hundred, but no more than that, because I must keep the angle of glide at two degrees, or we will not make the distance.'

Fifty-eight minutes for the whole trip, tower to target.

'Will you want me to compute your mean airspeed?'

He laughed and dropped ash on the map again. 'How did you know? I will lend you mySony.'

He chain-lit another Gauloise, his eagle's face squeezed into a frown over the glow.

'You normally use a pack a minute, Chirac?'

He looked up at me quickly and started to laugh again and then let it go because I obviously knew the score and he didn't think it was worth trying to make it sound funny.

'You know how much I am getting for this trip,mon ami?' He stamped the butt into the sand. 'A hundred thousand francs in cash, if I can drop you from theplaneur successfully. And insurance in the amount of five hundred thousand — that's half a million new francs, okay? If I don't get back, my family will be comfortable for quite a few years.' He looked away, thinking for a couple of seconds about what he was saying. He was the kind of man who would keep a photograph of his wife and children on him wherever he went, the gloss of the surface dulling and the corners curling until its very shabbiness told not of neglect but of constancy. 'Anyway I try to get back,hein? I am not a fool.'

'How far,' I said, 'will you push it?'

He raised the palms of his hands. 'Listen to me, please. It is nice money, okay, but you know what they say — you can't take it with you. So I will not push it too far, you un'erstand? When I tell you what they pay me, it is just telling you how much is the risk, when they will pay me so high for a few hours' work.' He blew out smoke. 'In a way it is easier for you, my friend, if I can drop you right on the target — because then they will know where you are, and where to find you. But when I turn back for Kaifra, the nearest oasis, I might lose the wind, you see, and I can come down anywhere on the sand, anywhere at all, maybe halfway, that's eighty kilometres from you and from Kaifra — from anywhere, and you know what that means? It means the same as if I have come down in the sea, eighty kilometres from the nearest shore, and try to swim there, you un'erstand?'

Carefully I said: 'But you'll be carrying flares.'

'No.' He squinted at me through the smoke. 'No,mon ami, I will not be carrying flares. That is in the contract too, as well as the half-million-franc insurance. If I go down on the sand, I will make no signals to bring people near to your target. I must not do that — I must try to walk out by myself. And like I say, they will be comfortable for a few years.'

A point of light showed in the distance and I watched it.

'And I will keep to my contract,' he said, apparently wanting me to know what kind of a man he was. 'Listen to me, after the Algerian affair I was a mercenary for certain people who I will not mention, some private armies, you know? And I fought like hell, I earned what they pay me. Also I have been forced down in the desert sometimes when there are sandstorms or the motor gives out, so I know what it feels like when you think your life is going, when youhave to think about what it is better to do — to shoot yourself or let the thirst send you mad. Oh yes, I have done this. So I know I can keep to my contract if that happens.' He tapped me slowly on the arm. 'The thing is, whatever happens, to remain a man. Do you not think so? Only in such a way can you die in peace.'

They were the lights of a truck coming south from Garaa Tebout. I could hear it now.

'Of course,' I said.

'You do not think so?'

'Well, actually I'm a bit wary of last thoughts — it can spoil your concentration when you're trying to duck. Would you say it's normal for a truck to be coming south on this road about this hour?'

'Hein?' Hefrowned into the distance. 'Oh sure. The airfield at Garaa Tebout takes bigger planes than Kaifra.' He dragged smoke in and it began fluttering out on his breath as he talked. 'Anyway, we shall try to come back, you and I, from the desert.'

'Yes, fine. Can youdouse these lights a minute?'

'Okay.'

He leaned over and turned them off, the torch as well, and I sensed him watching me in the gloom.

'You are expecting some trouble?'

'Not really.'

It was just that theredjem wasn't much good as visual cover: a long time ago it had marked a crossing in the paths of herdsmen, and near it there was the ruin of a gypsum and mudbrick shelter; this area had once been grazing land for sheep, I supposed, before the wind from the desert had smothered it with sand. Chirac had put his Renault on the far side of the shelter but there hadn't been room for the 220 and it wasn't concealed from the road.

It wasn't instinct alone that made me want the lights off: we were a hundred and fifty minutes from take-off and. London was sending us panic directives and the base phone was dead and this whole region was a red sector and all Chirac could do was add up his life insurance and if there'd ever been a time when I didn't mind being seen making rdv contact along a lonely road it wasn't now.

His face turned silver and our shadows lifted and swung under the roof of the Renault as the light came flooding from the road.

Heavy diesel. Canvas sides: PETROCOMBINE S-5.

Fine sand falling as the dark came down.

'That is a bum outfit, you know? They don't pay so good and the air-conditioning is alwaysen panne, you should hear the drillers talk about that!' He turned the lamps on again. 'When I quit mercenary work I fly mostly for the big American companies here, looking for oil. That is how I come to know the desert, every square kilometre from Oran to Ghadamis, and that is why they chose me,your associes. You want anaviateur who knows the Sahara, you send for Chirac.'