‘We’ve put one of the embassy chauffeurs into it since …’ he nodded his head towards the house which held da Cunha’s equipment.
‘Perhaps he has a wife who will make some coffee,’ I asked.
‘Aye,’ said Stewart.
‘You’d better organize it,’ I said. ‘I have a feeling we’re in for a long wait.’
After a lifetime of travelling one is prepared for transient discomfort. A good-quality dressing-gown will double as a blanket, a bed will fold to the size of an umbrella and a pair of soft slippers go into an overcoat pocket. I had all of these things — in my baggage at the hotel.
Stewart and I took an hour each at the binoculars and the chauffeur took an embassy car around the block to cover the back. I don’t know what he was expected to do if they went out that way, but there he was.
At 3.30 in the morning, or what
‘Now there’s a little van parked outside,’ he said. By the time I had got across to the binoculars they were moving the fluorimeter out.
‘Do you have a gun?’ I asked Stewart.
‘No sir,’ he said. I hadn’t considered the possibility that da Cunha would move the laboratory equipment elsewhere. I was waiting for him to turn up. When the van was sagging under the weight the three men locked the back doors and drove away. We followed. It wasn’t a long drive to the airport.
As dawn drew a pink frown across the tired forehead of night a small Cessna aeroplane turned its nose to south-south-west and buzzed happily towards the horizon.
‘Cessna’; I thought of Smith’s file-card; it had to be a Cessna. We watched from the tarmac because none of the three charter planes had a pilot available. Stewart beat on the doors of the padlocked offices and damned them, but it got us no nearer to the equipment that was now at three thousand feet and still climbing. It was 7.22 a.m., 15 December.
52 I see better with this
‘Do you know what time it is?’
A stout balding man in a threadbare dressing-gown barred my way.
‘Step aside, fatty,’ I said. ‘I haven’t got time for niceties.’ Stewart followed me into the empty, echoing hallway.
‘Get the Ambassador out of bed,’ I said, ‘I have special authority from the Cabinet and I want to see him at once, and that doesn’t mean in half an hour’s time.’
‘Who shall I say is calling, sir?’ said the man in a dressing-gown, aggressive but doubting. I wrote ‘W.O.O.C. (P)’ and the words ‘Minutes are vital’ on a piece of envelope and waited while he took it upstairs. I shouted after him, ‘And pull the blankets off your radio officer. I want him on the radio set in three minutes too.’
My treatment of the Madrid embassy staff was causing Stewart physical pain. The sight of H.E. in pyjamas was almost too much for him.
Gibraltar answered our radio signal with commendable promptness. I spoke quickly into the microphone.
Gibraltar was very impressed with my cloak-and-dagger stuff. ‘I’ll put an officer on the radar set,’ the senior officer there offered.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t afford a botch-up. Put the usual operator on.’ They were a bit hurt but linked me to the corporal on the set. It was 8.15 a.m. ‘The plane left here almost exactly an hour ago, corporal,’ I said. ‘If we assume it has an airspeed of 150 m.p.h. and stays on that south-southwest course, we’d expect it to be half-way between us. Can you see anything?’
There was a long silence while the corporal, sitting somewhere in the scooped-out heart of the rock of Gibraltar, watched a blue cathode tube.
‘Can you see anything?’ I said again to the radio. I had an awful feeling that the Cessna might have changed course or already landed.
‘It’s the Seville Traffic Control Zone, you see, sir. There’s a great mass of stuff around there and it’s almost directly on the expectation course. If it gets mixed into that traffic stack I’m not sure that I’ll be able to sort it out before it lands.’ His voice was brittle through the loudspeaker.
‘Perhaps if you increase your range,’ I coaxed. ‘Look for a blip north of Cordoba, over the Sierra Morena, perhaps even as far as Almaden.’ The Ambassador had combed his hair. He gave me a cup of coffee and I put down the map and microphone and we all waited while the corporal did his stuff. Every now and again his doleful voice said, ‘Still searching.’
‘What will you do if you get no result?’ the Ambassador asked Stewart.
‘This officer is in charge, sir,’ said Stewart, ‘I’m seconded to him.’
I let that thought settle, and then I told him, ‘I’ll put up airborne radar and I’ll send a jet fighter plane to every airfield in the Iberian peninsula until I find it.’
The Ambassador wiped coffee off his moustache and said, ‘That would take a bit of explaining, y’know.’
‘I’m sure the explaining will be in very capable hands,’ I said politely.
‘Gottit, gottit!’ The voice rumpled the loudspeaker as the radar operator sorted one pinpoint of blue light from a constellation of others.
‘How do you know it’s the right one?’ I asked.
‘I’d bet on it, sir. It’s one of the larger single-engine jobs. A bit under forty-foot wingspan (I’m guessing now of course) and it’s not on any of the commercial routes or charter runs either.’
‘You mean it’s not on a direct line between two airports?’
‘Affirmative, sir. He’s what we call “coasting”. He’s locked on to a course …’
‘You mean he has an auto-pilot. Doesn’t that make that blip more likely to be a big aircraft?’
‘No, sir. Even the little single-seaters have autopilots nowadays.’
‘What do you think he is going to do?’
‘Well, as I say, sir, he’s probably “coasting”, he’ll continue on that bearing until he reaches the coast. Then he’ll drift along the coast until he recognizes Malaga. Then the pilot will set himself a new course, using a wind direction and velocity according to how far he is off his original course. He probably has no navigational aids, you see.’
‘Will he cross the coast at Malaga?’
‘A bit east of it.’
‘Would you put the Group Captain on the line, corporal.’
The corporal’s voice gave a little lift of pleasure as he said, ‘Yes, sir.’ I suppose he enjoyed calling the Group Captain.
‘Take a close look at this aircraft, would you, Group?’ I said it as calmly as I could and I felt his hesitation through the ether before he said, ‘We’ll be over Spanish territorial waters, but if Sir Hubert thinks it will be in order …’
I said, ‘He does. I want high-speed fighters with Air Pass.[36] Can do?’
‘Well, I don’t know. You see my standing orders forbid …’
‘I want those planes over the coast by the time this Cessna gets there. Arrange a radio link so that I can speak to the planes as well as keep me connected to the radar set.’
The Ambassador gave me the merest whisper of a smile and raised his eyebrows in a tacit offer of support. I shook my head. The Ambassador and I stood looking at each other as we waited to see whether the Group Captain would give way before my brow-beating. Finally the loudspeaker gave a clip and there was a hubbub of voices before it went silent again.
We listened as the jet fighters moved in on the Cessna.
Then suddenly a ‘contact’ call came through.
