Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [80]
‘Have you seen J. D. Silver?’ said Darius.
‘Carmen? Yup. Saw him in Tehran. Think he’s on his way here.’
‘Where are you, Felix?’
‘I’m right across the street, Darius.’
‘Are you a friend of James Bond?’
‘ Santiago! That’s our battle cry. Same as Cortez. James Bond is my blood brother. Shame about his taste in automobiles. Apart from that, he – ’
‘ That’s good enough for me,’ said Darius. ‘Come up to my room. Number two three four.’
‘You got it.’
Leiter replaced the receiver in the waterfront telephone booth and limped the short distance to Jalal’s. When he got up to room 234, he found Darius Alizadeh already dressed with a tray of coffee and fruit waiting on the table.
Also in the room was a portly man with a bootbrush moustache. ‘ This is Hamid,’ said Darius, as he shook hands with Felix. ‘Driver. Part-time spy. Expert on dead drops and safe-houses.’
Hamid smiled diffidently.
‘Boy, that stuff takes me back,’ said Felix.
‘And Hamid knows where the Monster lives.’
‘Did Bond trust him?’
‘With his life,’ said Darius.
‘All right,’ said Leiter, taking the cup of black coffee Darius held out to him. ‘ Tell me what you know.’
When Darius had finished giving him the details he’d received from London of the modified Ekranoplan, Leiter said, ‘Okay, at least we know where she’s starting from. But the rate that baby moves across the water we’re going to have about two hours from Scramble to Bombs Away. After that our planes will
be in Soviet airspace. And that’s not a place where a US plane can be for more than five minutes.’
‘Where’s your nearest base?’ said Darius.
‘Officially, it’s miles away. Timbuktu, for all I know. But unofficially we got planes in Dhahran in Saudi, and something in eastern Turkey. Fighterbombers. I don’t know for sure. I’m on a need-toknow ticket here, Darius. I just pass on the good news. It’s going to be tight as hell. And that’s just half the problem.’
‘What’s the other half?’ said Darius.
‘ This is what I got. That British airliner went missing a few days ago, it’s due to reappear any day, heading north.’
‘ Towards the Soviet Union?’
‘Yup. We don’t know where, but we’re sure it’s up to no good. We got some intercepts out of Istanbul. Probably been converted to carry bombs of some kind. The Soviet radar’s pretty good and I think we can rely on a whole bunch of Mig-21s swarming all over this airliner soon after it enters Soviet airspace. Bam. Down she comes.’
‘But the fallout from that,’ said Darius. ‘Politically. If it appears to be part of an orchestrated attack by Britain, or NATO.’
‘You got it, Darius. We gotta get that bird down
before the Soviets do. And we don’t even know where she’s taking off. All our air-force bases are on full alert – but, hell, the sky’s a big place. Carmen Silver’s got his ears burning off with updates every minute out of Langley.’
‘ That bad?’ said Darius.
‘Yup. The president’s cancelled all engagements. They’re following the protocols they laid down after the Cuban missile thing. They think this is the big one. Any moment.’
‘But what can we do?’
‘Nothing right now. Just await instructions. Silver may have more news.’
Darius sipped his coffee and sighed. ‘ There must be something I can do,’ he said. ‘If it’s Gorner, then Savak had a rough idea where he’s based in the desert.’
‘Yeah, but the plane won’t be coming out of the desert, will it? Must be at some airstrip. Or an airport. It’s a big plane.’
Darius stood up and walked round the room, scratching the back of his head. ‘Mmm . . . Airports. Yazd. Kerman . . . While I’m turning this over in my mind, Felix,’ he said, ‘just tell me one thing. Why do they call him ‘‘Carmen’’?’
‘What d’you hear?’
‘He told me some story of his first job in Guatemala,’ said Darius, ‘and how he helped to start a mutiny to get the strong man thrown out, and that was what the character Carmen did in the opera –
caused a mutiny.’
Felix Leiter laughed. ‘What a load of bull. JD’s a man doesn’t like women, if you know what I mean. One of those. He fixed some cover with General