The Mission Song by John le Carré

on that arm of yours, doesn’t it?’
    Maxie’s men were shouldering kitbags and stepping into the darkness. A no-name aeroplane loomed stubby and sinister in the twilight. Anton walked at my side while big Benny took care of the Frenchman in the beret.

5
    It is a known fact that the thoughts of the most loyal raw recruit on the eve of battle stray in unforeseen directions, some of them downright mutinous. And I will not pretend that my own were in this regard exempt, given that the décor, ventilation and lighting system of our windowless flying machine would have been better suited to the transport of champion dogs, and that the howl of our twin engines, once you got hooked on it, was a composite of all the voices I didn’t wish to hear, with Penelope’s in pole position. In place of cushioned seats we had iron cages opening onto a central aisle, each equipped with a grimy prison mattress. Hammocks of orange webbing were slung from the ceiling, grab handles being provided for the convenience of those wishing to jump into the unknown. The one mitigating factor was the presence of Anton and Benny in the cells to either side of me, but Benny appeared to be doing his household accounts and Anton was ostentatiously absorbed in a pornographic magazine of great age.
    Our flight deck, regarded by many as an aircraft’s sanctum, was cordoned off with frayed ribbon. Our two pilots, middle-aged, overweight and unshaven, were so busy ignoring their passengers that you might well have asked whether they knew they had any. Add to that a chain of blue corridor lights evocative of a certain North London hospital and it was little wonder if my sense of high purpose should give way to the internal journeys I was making on the newly opened shuttle between Penelope and Hannah.
    Within minutes of take-off our team, almost to a man, had fallen victim to African sleeping sickness, using their kitbags for pillows. Two exceptions were Maxie and his French friend who, huddled together at the aft end of the plane, were swapping sheets of paper like an anxious couple who have received a threatening communication from the mortgage company. The Frenchman had removed his beret, exposing an aquiline face, penetrating eyes and a tonsured pate fringed with straw-coloured hair. His name, which I extracted from the laconic Benny, was Monsieur Jasper. What Frenchman was ever called Jasper? I asked myself incredulously. But perhaps like me he was travelling under an alias.
    ‘Do you think I should go over and offer them my services?’ I asked Anton, suspecting that the two were having difficulty communicating.
    ‘Governor, if the skipper wants your services, the skipper will take them,’ he replied, without lifting his head from his magazine.
    Of the remaining members of our team, save one, I can give no account. I remember them as a grim-jawed group in bulked-out anoraks and baseball caps who stopped talking whenever I drew close.
    ‘Wife problems sorted, old boy? Chaps round here call me Skipper by the by.’
    I must have been dozing, for when I looked up I found myself staring into the magnified blue eyes of Maxie as he squatted Arab-style at my elbow. My spirits instantly revived. How many times had I not listened to Brother Michael regaling me with the feats of arms performed by Colonel T. E. Lawrence and other great Englishmen at war? With the touch of a magician’s wand the interior of our plane transformed itself into an Arab nomad’s tent. The overhead webbing became our goatskin roof. In my imagination, desert stars were peeping through the gaps.
    ‘Wife well and truly sorted, thank you, Skipper,’ I replied, suiting my energetic manner to his. ‘No further problems in that department, I’m pleased to say.’
    ‘How about that ailing chum of yours?’
    ‘Oh, well, he died actually,’ I replied with equal casualness.
    ‘Poor bugger. Still, no point in hanging around the back of the herd once your time’s up. You a Napoleon