Uncle target, p.14
Uncle Target, page 14
‘Your … major is part of a crew apparently trying to get our new tank prototype out of the rebel area of Jordan. We understand they’ve shot up one rebel tank already and are probably heading south for Saudia.’
Agnes’s knees quite literally gave way and she grabbed at the corridor wall. ‘But he told me …’ she babbled, ‘… he was only supposed to take the tapes to …’
‘I know. We don’t know exactly how he got involved, except that he and the military attaché out there worked out where Zweiwindburg was, and he went with a helicopter mission to blow the tank up. The helicopter went wrong somehow and they must have decided to drive the tank out. All we’ve got is one garbled message from them via an Army ship in the Gulf of Aqaba.’
‘Did the rebels find out where the tank was, too?’
‘Somehow. Here we are.’
He ushered her in through the Snowflake door. By now, it was beginning to look intended. The map of Jordan had coloured pins in it and a clip of teletype messages hung beside it; several people sat around a trestle table littered with paperwork and coffee cups, and the Brigadier had a smaller table against the wall and a scrambler telephone. He got up to introduce himself and shake hands; the Squadron Leader brought her a cup of coffee, then sat down at the Brigadier’s table.
‘We’re delighted to have you with us.’ In company, the Brigadier adopted a penetrating, almost yappy voice, softened by frequent smiles. ‘You’ve briefed Miss Algar, have you, Edwin?’
‘In outline.’ He was a bulky tall man, almost bald, and with an indefinably well-bred face that looked more sympathetic and less clever than he was. It was a useful face for a career in Intelligence.
‘Is it daylight out there?’ Agnes asked.
The Squadron Leader said: ‘It has been for over an hour.’
‘Then they’ll get caught, won’t they?’
‘It’s a faster tank than anything 17th Armoured’s got,’ George said. ‘Better armed and armoured, too.’
‘But Harry doesn’t know anything about tanks.’
‘He, they, whoever,’ the Brigadier said, ‘knew enough to knock out another tank.’ He obviously disliked sitting, or the chairs the room offered; he had propped his backside on the back of a chair just outside their circle. They’ve got the chap Timbrell who led the design team, it could be him, I suppose. He was eight years in the Royal Tank Regiment. The other character seems to be the helicopter observer. Navy, of course.’
‘It’s not even a real tank crew?’ Agnes was appalled. But perhaps this Timbrell is in charge, she thought with a sense of relief that immediately reversed itself. No, if something as lunatic as this is going on, at least I want Harry in charge of it. And I bet he is. If he gets out of this alive, I’ll kill him.
Scott-Scobie, representing the Foreign Office, rocked pudgily and precariously on his folding chair. ‘I can assure you, Agnes, that it was no doing of ours. We simply wanted him to deliver the tapes to Amman and show goodwill. While he was there, Defence realised the tank wasn’t present or accounted for and signalled the military attaché to ask Major Maxim if anything Katbah had said gave a clue. Then, it seems –‘
‘With the greatest possible respect, Scottie,’ Giles said urbanely, ‘that is pure balls. Somebody at Defence knew right from the start of the revolt that the tank was missing. That was why they pressed so hard for a direct assault on the hotel room, to kill off anybody who’d learned anything from Katbah. Yes, George, I have heard about what happened there. You hoped to find where the tank was from American reconnaissance, and when that failed you fell back on what Katbah had said.’
Scott-Scobie let his chair bang down on the floor and glared across the table at George. Then he turned and glared at the Brigadier and Squadron-Leader as well. Finally he said: ‘I’m not sure what I’m doing here, since the foreign policy aspects seem to have been taken care of for us – and for the last several days, too.’
‘Government policy as a whole,’ added Sir Anthony Sladen, tall, aristocratic, nervous and better dressed than anybody else there. ‘Really, George, it might have been better to consult us before, ah, taking any irreversible steps –‘
‘We had to move quickly once we’d located the tank,’ George growled. ‘If we’d managed to get it blown up, policy wouldn’t have come into it.’
‘But you didn’t get it blown up,’ Scott-Scobie pointed out. ‘You got a Jordanian tank blown up –‘
‘A rebel tank.’
‘It belonged to the Jordanian government! They hoped to get it back in one piece, now we’ll have to pay for it. And a Navy helicopter. And God knows what else by the time we’re through; Harry Maxim isn’t the sort to go down without a fight … Sorry, Agnes, you really shouldn’t be here.’
The Brigadier said crisply: ‘Mr Giles thought Miss Algar might be able to help on a different aspect, you may recall. Namely, how did the rebel 17th Armoured find out themselves where the tank was?’
‘Well, I didn’t tell them,’ Agnes said.
‘Let’s take the time-scale first,’ Giles put in. ‘The revolt started five days ago. At the time, the rebels believed the tank was somewhere within reach but evidently didn’t know where. The cleaned-up tapes confirm that.’
‘Do they?’ Agnes asked.
‘I’m sorry, of course you didn’t know. The torture was directed at getting Katbah to tell where the tank would be, since he’d planned the Jordanjan trials before he came to London. In the end, close to the end, Katbah told them it could be at Zweiwindburg.’
‘So he only told Harry what he’d already told them in the hotel.’
‘Yes. But what he told them never got out of the hotel room. It was shot dead in there. The word Zweiwindburg only came out of the room in Major Maxim’s head and on the police tape.’
‘He told me what he remembered Katbah saying,’ Agnes said slowly. ‘It was in German … I couldn’t make anything of it. I asked you the next day.’
‘You did,’ Giles agreed. ‘I’m sorry to say I’d never heard of Zweiwindburg before. Did you mention it to anybody else?’
‘No. I didn’t know it was important, anyway.’
‘Did he mention it to anybody?’
‘I have no idea.’
There was a moment’s silence. Giles looked down at a pad on which he had drawn a rough grid of days. ‘You brought the cleaned-up tape back from the aeronautical lab at about noon, is that right?’
‘A bit after.’
‘And we can assume the Home Office got their copy at much the same time … Is anybody joining us from the Home Office?’
‘Norman,’ Scott-Scobie said.
‘Ah.’
The Brigadier asked: ‘Who?’
‘Norman Sprague.’
‘I don’t think I know him.’
‘I suppose anybody who rises to Brigadier must have a certain amount of luck. Go on, Edwin.’
‘We started getting a translation a couple of hours later.’ Giles was an Arabist himself, but nowadays he didn’t spend his own time winding and rewinding poor-quality tape recordings. ‘It came to me in dribs and drabs …’
‘And you passed it to Defence the same way?’ suggested Scott-Scobie.
‘We told Defence – they being our main client in this –as soon as we were certain the torture was directed to locating the tank. But we didn’t hit on Zweiwindburg until virtually the end of the translation. After six o’clock the day before yesterday.’
‘It wasn’t much later that we got a signal from Amman saying Colonel Jeffreys and Harry had solved it themselves,’ George said.
‘So,’ Giles summed up, ‘after 1800 hours the day before yesterday – about thirty-six hours ago – the probable location of the missing tank was known to my Department, to the Home Office and whoever they told, and to Colonel Jeffreys and Major Maxim in Amman.’
A lot of people, Agnes thought. It always is a lot of people.
‘But the rebels,’ the Brigadier said, ‘didn’t know until late last night.’
‘How do we know that?’ Sladen asked, perplexed.
The military men and George exchanged looks. The Brigadier, who was more impressed by a Second Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet than the rest of them, lowered his voice a little. ‘Well, sir, the rebels sent their own tank up there at night. It’s a messy business shunting tanks around at night. To me, that suggests both that capturing our tank was a prime objective and that they’d only just heard where to find it.’
‘Ah,’ said Sladen. ‘Ah yes, I do see. Thank you.’
‘And they didn’t know that we might know,’ George said, ‘or they’d have gone in with more force.’
Does he know that I know that he knows that I know? Agnes recited the old intelligence school song to herself, hunching her shoulders for warmth. She had thrown on a thin black sweater and a fawn denim suit that were too cold for the room (it was far easier to sit and take decisions which could cause men to die and nations to squabble than to get Ministerial central heating turned on early).
Just then, Norman Sprague was led in by a messenger.
He had not thrown on his clothes; his dark woollen suit and waistcoat, fresh shirt and club tie had all been carefully chosen, and his chin shone from a fresh shave.
‘Good morning,’ he smiled all round. ‘I hope I’m not the last, too humiliating. What a splendid gathering. Scottie, George, Edwin. I don’t think we’ve met’ – he shook hands with the Brigadier – ‘and dear Agnes. Now will somebody explain to me what all this is about?’
Wo,’ Scott-Scobie said rudely. ‘Just sit down and listen … Edwin, can we backtrack from 17th Armoured? How did they get the news?’
‘Radio. They’re cut off from anything else. But with the civilian relay station they’ve got a powerful receiver as well as transmitter, so it could have come through from Syria. Or Amman – I think we ought to assume that the revolt has some sympathisers in Amman, possibly quite highly placed.’
Everybody nodded wisely; yes, they were quite ready to assume that. Scott-Scobie said: ‘All right, then one step back from thatT
‘On the other hand, I find it difficult to assume that 17th Armoured, or even Syria, has somebody well-placed in any of the departments or services represented here. But if we accept the popular view that we are all riddled with Soviet agents …’
This time, everybody groaned. ‘Oh no,’ Scott-Scobie said miserably, ‘not another bloody mole hunt. My nerves won’t stand it.’
‘The country won’t stand for it,’ Sladen said. ‘The constant undermining of trust in the civil service …’
‘You asked me,’ Giles said urbanely. ‘I say the possibility is there, no more.’
‘London to Moscow to Damascus to Aqaba,’ Agnes said. ‘It would take time.’
‘A full day,’ said the Squadron Leader from Signals. ‘It would have to be decoded and encoded at each step and somewhere it would have to be translated, too. Certainly a day.’
Gloomily, they recalled that it was a day’s delay they were trying to account for.
‘But what are you doing to try and help Harry?’ Agnes demanded.
‘Nothing we can do,’ George said. ‘Not until we’ve established communications with them.’
‘How are you going to do that?’
‘The best hope is relaying messages through the ship, we’ve had one brief contact that way, but the tank radio’s short-ranged, there’s 5,000-foot mountains around there and high-frequency reception is usually better at night.’
‘Have you worked out what to tell him when you do get in touch?’
George looked around for support. ‘Umm, not yet; that’s what this meeting is roughly about.’
‘The trouble is,’ the Brigadier added, ‘that we don’t know where they are, don’t know what the situation is. Until we can get some recce coverage –‘
‘When will you have that?’ Agnes asked.
The Americans have promised us satellite pictures as soon as possible, and should put over a recce flight tonight.’
‘Tonight? By then they could be –‘
The Squadron Leader chimed in from behind the side table. ‘It’ll be one of their new Stealth aircraft, invisible to radar and all that. We’re actually rather privileged: they flew one into Cyprus the other day just to help us. But because it’s so secret they won’t let it take off or land there except at night. They’re scared the native Cypriots would take snapshots and sell them to the KGB. Or the Japanese model aircraft kit makers. As they probably would.’
The Brigadier looked at him a little severely, but nobody had anything else to offer.
‘And when you know where he is,’ Agnes persisted, ‘and you’re in touch, what will you do? Send in proper troops?’
‘No,’ Scott-Scobie said. ‘No we bloody well won’t – not even if we had them within reach. We’ve trodden on enough Jordanian toes already. I’m sorry, Agnes, but Harry is on his own.’
She looked around helplessly. Sprague gave her a sympathetic smile that she didn’t believe in, and said: ‘So now will somebody tell me what’s going on?’
Agnes saw no sense in going back home for a quick breakfast before turning round and getting herself caught in the rush hour. She signed out and walked through the streets, now lit by the shadowless sunless big-city dawn but still almost empty, across the river to Waterloo station. The only thing open there was a tea-and-coffee stand on the concourse, so she sipped instant black coffee from the plastic mug, leaning against the metal cattle-pen that defined a few square yards for customers only.
So Harry had done it again.
Three evenings ago, their last night, she had said: ‘You aren’t going to get involved in anything, are you?’
‘Like what?’ He had seemed honestly surprised, then amused. ‘Suppressing 17th Armoured Brigade single-handed? There’s a few Hollywood types that specialise in that sort of thing, but I never got the right training. I’m just a messenger boy: tell the tale, show willing, give them the tape
‘That tape’s a mess. We’re trying to get it cleaned up, but-‘
‘We? I thought it was police, Home Office, your old mob.’
‘With Jordan involved, we have to be, peripherally.’
‘We,’ he mused, smiling quietly to himself in the way that either enchanted or infuriated her. She decided to be infuriated.
‘Yes, we. I belong to that bunch of middle-aged pederasts now and I’m trying to make the best of it I can. You said that if you’re loyal to the main thing it can be transferrable among the smaller things. From your battalion to the SAS to your London unit. Now I’m trying to do the same thing so don’t you start criticising me.’
‘I’m not criticising, I’m admir –‘
‘And don’t you admire me, either! I’m just doing my job!’
And why am I going on like this? she had thought, trawling her emotions back inside herself. Perhaps because I’m afraid for him, because he’s a cat, warm and loving at home, but Lord help any other torn who wanders into his garden. But the other toms are getting younger and he’s getting older; there could come a day – God, it could have been at the hotel if one of the terrorists had got off a few shots … once a bullet’s fired, it has to go somewhere (something else he’d pointed out to her), and how many lives has my cat got left?
‘Whatdoyouwantfordinner?’ One fast command.
‘Anything except lamb, where I’m going.’ Then he had taken an airline ticket from his pocket and flapped it at her. ‘It’s return. How can they involve me?’
‘It’s not them … it’s you.’
And also George Harbinger, she thought now, drinking her coffee while it was still hot enough to suppress the taste. I shall have words with Master George when we meet alone, since he’d known about the tank being lost right from the start… had he deliberately sent Harry out there to … ? No, it was the Foreign Office which had asked for him. After years of investigating conspiracies, Agnes had settled firmly for the cock-up, not conspiracy, theory of history. And in any case, George would just say he was doing his job, as she had said to Harry, as he would say to her when – if- he got back. And Katbah and the terrorists and 17th Armoured, everybody just.doing their job.
She bought a packet of ham sandwiches and a newspaper and walked out of the station.
19
The sun was very bright now and the tank had reached a comfortable midpoint between being untouchable either because of the night chill or the noonday heat. The raw rock of the foothills ended with an abrupt plunge into the desert, opening their flank to the south. Maxim grasped the pistol grip of the main gun.
‘Traversing right. Piers, hang on.’ Their seats swung with the gun so that now they sat crosswise in the tank: it was still a disorientating feeling that the direction he faced could be quite different to the way the tank was heading – and the PVD screen could show a third direction as well. But right now he kept it lined up with the gun, watching the end of the cliff 800 metres away, where trouble might be waiting.
For the same reason he kept the tank going east until they were a kilometre beyond the cliff, before swinging south. Then, with the distance between them and any ambush increasing fast, he relaxed, handed over the PVD to Al-Hamedi, and stood up.
One thing the PVD could never do was give a sense and feel of the landscape. It was like a bore at a cocktail party (probably somebody who worked in television, from recent experience of Agnes’s friends) who could talk of nothing but the detail of his or her professional world. Fair enough: if the PVD wanted to be a military bore, obsessed with tactical detail, that was what it was for. But you had to carry the broad picture in your mind to interpret the screen; clever as it was, it couldn’t solve the oldest military problem of all: seeing what was on the other side of the hill.
He had actually wanted that kefiyah; it was a vastly more practical use than a pistol in a desert situation. He already had it on over his headset: now he wrapped it loosely across his nose, mouth and microphone to keep the dust out (could a pistol do that?) and scanned around the whole horizon except for the bit blocked by Piers, still perched on the hatch behind him.
