Solo

uniformed schoolchildren marching to and fro with wooden rifles over their shoulders. ‘Oh, yes,’ he added. ‘I want to go to the Janjaville airstrip tonight. Can you arrange that?’
    ‘We get you special pass,’ Sunday said. ‘They will issue it at Press Centre.’
    They drove back through Port Dunbar’s busy but ordered streets. Sunday leapt out of the car and opened the door for him.
    ‘You know what you can do for me, Sunday,’ Bond said. ‘I need a jacket, a bush jacket, lots of pockets.’ He handed over a few thousand sigmassis.
    ‘I get one for you, sir,’ Sunday said. ‘One fine, fine jacket.’
    Bond went to the Press Centre’s administration office where a young lieutenant provided him with the special pass that would allow him entry into Janjaville airstrip.
    ‘While we have Janjaville, there is hope,’ he said, with evident sincerity.
    It sounded like a slogan, Bond thought, something to shout at a rally – but the man’s self-belief made him even more curious to see the place and what went on there. He suspected that the placid near-normality of life in Port Dunbar meant that the real target of Zanza Force’s efforts would be directed at the airfield. Janjaville seemed the strategic key to the whole war. He reminded himself of the strategic key to his mission.
    He smiled at the lieutenant.
    ‘I’d like officially to request, on behalf of the Agence Presse Libre, an interview with Brigadier Adeka.’
    ‘It’s impossible, sir,’ the lieutenant said. ‘The brigadier does not talk to the foreign press.’
    ‘Tell him we’re a French press agency. It could be very important for Dahum in France—’
    ‘It makes no difference,’ the lieutenant interrupted. ‘Since the war began we’ve had over one hundred requests for interviews. Every newspaper, radio station, TV channel in the world. The brigadier does not give interviews to anyone.’
    Bond went back to the bar, perplexed. Perhaps he’d have to try gaining access through Abigail Kross. Breadalbane was sitting in the bar and asked if there was any chance that he could borrow some money, running out of funds and all that. Bond gave him a wad of notes and bought him a cold beer.

·12·
     

JANJAVILLE
     
    Sunday’s Peugeot bumped over potholes as it approached the perimeter fence of Janjaville airstrip. He had switched off his one headlight as there was a strict blackout imposed. Here and there at the side of the road were little flasks of burning oil providing a dim guiding light – enough to know you were on the right track. Bond looked at his watch. The journey had taken forty minutes, east out of Port Dunbar.
    At the gate Bond showed his pass and they were waved through. The perimeter fence was high and heavily barbed-wired, Bond saw, as Sunday parked up behind the airstrip buildings. There was a concrete blockhouse with a towering radio mast and wires looping from it to a mobile radar dish that spun steadily round on its bearings. There was a corrugated-iron hangar, and a few low wooden huts made up the rest of the airstrip’s buildings. On the grass by the blockhouse several dozen soldiers sat patiently waiting beside a row of assorted lorries and trucks, all empty.
    Bond was wearing the bush jacket Sunday had acquired for him – in fact it was an army-surplus combat jacket with a patched bullet hole in the back and the Dahum flag sewn on its right shoulder – the red sun in its white plane casting its black shadow below. Had it been stripped from a corpse, Bond wondered, cleaned and resold at a profit? He didn’t particularly care.
    Bond stepped out of Sunday’s car and looked around. The runway was closely mown grass but there seemed to be orthodox landing lights, though currently extinguished. In front of the hangar were three Malmö MFI trainers painted in camouflage green and black – single-engined, boxy-looking aircraft with oddly splayed tricycle undercarriages that had the effect of making them look as if they were about to fall back on their tails. Technicians were working on them and Bond saw the spark-shower of oxyacetylene. To his eyes it looked like they were attaching .50-calibre machine guns on to pylons beneath the wings.
    ‘This will be our new air force,’ Sunday said with manifest pride. ‘Madame Kross, she ask for me to introduce you to Mr Hulbert Linck. Please to follow me, Mr Bond.’
    Bond walked with Sunday towards the hangar. As he drew near he saw that there was a very tall