The camouflage was highly-developed and only the glint of a gold-ringed eye gave it away. It was about two feet in front of me and almost on a level with my face: probably I'd driven it in here unknowingly when I'd stowed the canopies and provisions and it had been afraid to clamber across the strange terrain they'd formed on the rocky floor. Its forefeet were splayed on each side of the scaly bulk of its body and its head was lifted to watch me, the black iris glistening within the ring of gold. It kept utterly still, afraid of me because visually I menaced it gigantically, almost filling the niche, and possibly afraid of the helicopters: it had no sense of hearing but it was probably picking up the vibrations in the rock.

I had positioned the transceiver so that I could use it if I wanted to, and I ought to tell Loman the situation even though he couldn't do anything about it.

Tango.

The form of the pointed head was prehistoric: it was a descendant of the lizards that had been here before man.

Tango. Tango.

The motors chopped heavily at the air and I was tempted to move my head and take a look but there wasn't any point; they were military desert-reconnaissance aircraft making an area sweep at low altitude and there wouldn't be anything in their shape or colour that could tell us anything we didn't already know. The chance of their catching the movement if I turned my head was one in a thousand but I might just as well not risk it.

Teach me, my small and ancient friend, how to keep still.

I didn't call up base again because it was obvious now that Loman had decided to keep radio silence. I got a lot of squawk and tried two channels and came back and found them quite close at 6 MHz.

113: ihtafidou bi kasdikoum i — la mitine oua sabina degre.

The volume of sound from their rotors was making the frame of the transceiver vibrate and I could feel it under my fingers. Shadows swept across the mouth of the niche where I was lying, and the lizard appeared to move slightly but I knew it hadn't: it was just the shift of the light-contrasts as the shadow passed over us.

120–121 — 122: an-zi-lou mina oulou-ouikoum hata miyate mitra.

They obviously had a group captain above and to the rear of the line keeping them in order. It occurred to me that I was being gratuitously masochistic about this because at any moment the observer in the machine nearest these rocks and the site of Tango Victor was going to call up and report seeing the freighter. That would be the precise instant, if we wanted to be particular about it, when the mission would end. But I couldn't resist listening-in because I always like to know what people are doing.

Ali: ha-l'-laka a-ne toufahissa hadihi a sokhr mini djhatika?

T a-ya-b.

Dust began blowing in: their rotors were creating a wave of turbulence across a twenty-five kilometre front, whirling a cloud of pulverized quartz into the air and letting it fall as they passed. The light became amber-tinted and the colours of the lizard deepened.

104: sahihou al kasd.

The stink of kerosene.

Head lifted, a golden eye staring.

If the vultures eat the lizards and the lizards eat the snails, what do the snails eat?

The note of their engines held steady.

I waited for one of them to break the line and land near the freighter. The others would follow, gathering in a swarm. It was going to be very noisy here.

It had been the weather that had beaten us: the wind. There hadn't been enough for Chirac so he'd been forced to circle for height till after dawn and they'd seen him and it wasn't anyone's fault and for a moment I felt sorry for Loman because the little bastard had done his best, put his ferret into the field and set up a makeshift base with an operator to man the set even though the poor little bitch couldn't hold a gun and he'd seen me through the access lines and kept me in touch with London, done all he could and now the whole thing had gone grinding into the dust and he wasn't a man to take a failed mission in his stride, not Loman.

The note of their engines was steady.

And quieter now.

Kerosene.

Kerosene and the dust settling and the brightness coming back into the light while I lay prone watching the reflections in the dark unwinking eye, while I lay surprised and not quite understanding, listening to the thrum of the rotors passing towards the west, while I lay with weakness flooding into me as the tension came off and the nerves lost their tone, the sound from the sky dying away until, as I lay listening, silence came.

Switch.

Tango.

Can get quite worked up when your base won't answer then I remembered and spun it back to 7 and called him again. Still wouldn't bloody well answer. They've been off the air for over two minutes now well don't panic there's no action needed but why don't they answer they're my base and this is my lifeline.

Tango — Tango.

It was her voice, soft and precise.

I said

Where the hell have you been?

Loman hates that: he likes you to make a point of replying with the code for the mission, not his day today, the sweat running into my eyes because we'd confirmed these were the right rocks and the freighter must be near them and they'd put sixty choppers across the area and they hadn't seen it so it couldn't be here after all.

I'm sorry. We were monitoring the helicopters.

So was I.

Then Loman came on.

Tone rather light, rather correct.

Quiller.

Hear you.

Where are the aircraft at present?

They've gone.

They overflew your position?

It wasn't really a question. Diane spoke Arabic and she'd monitored their frequency so she'd heard them telling each other to 'check those rocks' and she would have told Loman so he knew bloody well they'd overflown my position. He just didn't understand it and I knew what that meant: he'd got confirmation from London.

I was still lying prone and there wasn't any more need so I crawled backwards out of the niche but stayed in the shade, my shoulders against the rockface. There was a scuttling sound and I turned my head and saw it had gone. Then I shut my eyes because the panic was over and I wanted to think.

Did they overfly your position?

I ought to be helping the poor little sod.

Yes. Slow speed, low altitude, took their time, couldn't miss it. You've had confirmation from No. 2 Fighter-Recco, is that it?

Pause.

Yes. There has been no error of any kind.

Didn't make sense.

There must have been, Loman.

You and I have confirmed that the rock outcrop where you are now is in fact the rock outcrop in the photograph. The RAF has just confirmed by signal that the object in the photograph is a crashed aeroplane and that it is lying on the sand at a distance of four hundred and eighty-five yards — four eight five — from the outcrop with a bearing of two hundred degrees — two-double-oh.

Vaguely I thought no wonder he's been worrying about my mental condition but he can think again now because a hundred and twenty men of the Algerian Air Force couldn't see the thing either.

You do it for me then, Loman. You work it out. That's what you're for.

After a bit he said:

Stay on receive.

I shut my eyes again.

There wasn't anything he could do anyway. Get a pencil and paper but there weren't any figures, no way of checking. Talk to the girl but what could she do? Any of us do?

Beware.

Not quite a word: the shape of a thought. The fine grains hitting the side of the box in the low wind. More scuttling now, maybe I was stuck right outside one of their dens and they couldn't get home. It had sounded like the sand when it had pattered against the polyester box in the low wind, with the folds of the 'chute canopy still showing where the sand hadn't yet drifted. I'd made a mental note at the time, warning myself that the desert wasn't like other places.