'The immediate thing,' I said, 'is to meet that plane, right?'

'Yes,' she said.

I could hear it landing now, the jets screaming suddenly and then fading right out. I looked down from the window.

The other side of the building there'd been a Mercedes and a 404, both with their lights off. This side there was the small Fiat I'd seen at the Royal Sahara and a GT Citroen, no lights. They weren't just parked: you don't leave a car like that in the deepest shadow you can find; you put it under a street lamp if there is one, so people won't pinch things.

I said over my shoulder:

'D'you think you could've been followed?'

It took her a couple of seconds.

'Followed?'

I came away from the window, again not hurrying, but it didn't matter whether they knew I'd seen them or not because it was too late to do anything about it: this place was a trap.

'I don't think so,' she said.

She looked small and cold and hunched.

'Wouldn't you know?'

She didn't answer.

I hadn't meant to hurt: I wasn't even thinking about her. I wanted facts, as many as I could get and as soon as I could get them. She moved slowly and I said:

'No. Keep away from the windows.'

She stopped at once, looking down.

I suppose she wanted so much to show me she was a professional, but everything she did was amateur.

'Did you get here before Chirac brought me, or after?'

'After.'

I began walking about to get the circulation going. There hadn't been a psychic spasm since she'd told me about the FO sending out a man to see the President here: the end-phase was being thrown at me like a fast-burn fuse and I had to do a lot of thinking and if the psyche wanted to act the bloody fool it wouldn't get any help from me.

They must be desperate in London. The RAF back in the act and unofficial negotiations at presidential level: if they went on like this they'd shake the whole thing off its bearings.

'When Loman told Chirac to pull me out he must have known the mission was still running?'

She lifted her head and looked at me, ready to make another mistake and ready to see what I thought of it, bracing herself.

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Oh for Christ's sake — '

Not thinking properly. Control. We were in a red sector and I wouldn't get us out of it by pushing this poor little bitch till she broke.

'Don't worry,' I said, 'they couldn't have followed you here. They don't know you.They haven't seen you since you set up the base and if they saw you in Kaifra before then it couldn't have meant anything: they don't know who you are.'

The breach of security must have been through Chirac. He wasn't a professional either and Loman had got him airborne again at short notice and he'd had to bring me here from South 6 by road and the area was stiff with surveillance.

'All right,' she said.

She turned away with her eyes getting wet and I suppose, she could stand up to me when I was being a bastard but she didn't know what to do when I stopped.

'Listen,' I said, 'I want to know things. When Loman told Chirac to pull me out of the desert, he must have known the mission wasn't over, right? He was still in signals with London, wasn't he?'

'Yes.'

'Then if the mission was still running and we were meant to keep it quiet, how could London send out a helicopter for me, right into the target area?'

This was something she knew about and her head came up quickly. 'He said that after the massive air search by the Algerians no one in Kaifra would go on thinking that Tango Victor was in the region, so a single flight wouldn't attract much attention. But he told Chirac to gain full ceiling before he set his course, as a precaution.!

'Fair enough.'

Quickly she said: 'Isthat right?'

'It makes complete sense.'

She nodded, feeling better, and I wished to God they'd found someone different to help us on this job, someone I could have ignored or disliked, a girl with glasses and a sniff or a yellow-toothed hell-hag with a barbed wire wig, anyone but this downy-armed child with her courage and innocence who ought not to be here with me now, caught in a trap that could kill her unless I could spring it.

'Not too near,' I said.

'No.'

She turned back, keeping near the instrument trolley, the point farthest from both windows.

'Are we able to phone base?'

'No.' Very emphatic about this. 'Loman said it's possible the telephone exchange has been infiltrated. I imagine he means — '

'Got at.'

I wanted to think and she sensed it and didn't talk for a bit. Proposition: it wasn't the cell that had set up the marksman for meor they'd be in here by now, at least four of them or any number up to sixteen or more, adequately armed and easily capable of taking us or leaving us for dead, the staff of the clinic powerless to stop them. It was the cell that had orders to survey us, find out where we were going, so that when the objective was reached they'd be there too. So far they hadn't donevery well: Loman had put me into the target area and pulled me out again and they hadn't been good enough; all they'd done was lose a man in a ravine. Tonight they looked like doing better.

It was a proposition only: not an assumption. Assumptions are dangerous and sometimes lethal. They might be simply holding their fire till we went out there so there wouldn't be any fuss, nothing for the ward-maids here to clean up afterwards. Theycould be that cell: the one with the marksman, the one with orders to stop me reaching Tango Victor wherever it was, in the whole of the Sahara. They hadn't done very well either: they hadn't stopped me reaching the target and reporting on it and getting out again; all they'd done was mess up a Mercedes and leave it full of shells. Tonight they were better placed.

It didn't matter which cell it was.

'You mean there's someone outside?'

I think she had to ask because she couldn't stand it any more, not knowing.

'Yes.'

She nodded.

Her little nods were expressive: just now it had meant she felt better: this time it was acceptance. Nothing more than that because she didn't know the whole thing, she probably thought there was just one man, just one man watching.

'Where's Chirac?'

'He went back to the Petrocombine South 6 drilling camp. Loman said he must use that as his base.'

Further operations: you don't need a base if you've finished operating.

A spasm came and I wasn't ready and they screeched and their black wings beat at me and I shouted at them without a sound, doing nothing with my hands, repulsing them with my mind, half aware of their unreality, only the psyche sensitized by the thought of Chirac standing by for further operations.

'Are you all right?'

'What?'

'Are you — '

'Yes.'

Sweat running and respiration accelerated, normal symptoms of fear. If Chirac was standing by it could be to fly me out again, drop me back into the nightmare, not ready yet to stand it, even to stand the thought.

She was keeping close to me, watching me, wanting to help. 'You're all right now.'

'Yes. You know it was nerve-gas, don't you, you were there when I — '

'Yes.'

'It's the one that puts the fear of Christ in you.'

'I know.'

I suppose they'd heard me yelling my way out of the freighter. A bit embarrassing but it wasn't my fault: there'd been photographs, a press release at the time when the stuff was invented, picture of a mouse in a cage with a cat and the cat was terrified of it, back arched and ears flat, spitting.

'Listen,' I said and turned away from her, 'what other facilities have been granted?'

When I turned back she was just standing still trying to think what I meant, trying to answer before I lost patience again. So I said: 'The UK's had permission to land a military aircraft here but I mean what else? Did Loman ask for any kind of assistance, police, army, secret service liaison?'