the last three years driving about in his matt-green Opel, taking pictures of tanks and helping defectors across the wire, but was getting out of the Regiment after this tour. He claimed he had no plans beyond sitting full-time on the terraces at Barnsley FC, but I knew he was talking bollocks.
Tenny was also from D Squadron. He was taking over from Red Ken, but for how long, nobody knew: when the Wall crumbled, so would Brixmis. He was about thirty, very smart and hard. You’d have to be, growing up with a hairdo that looked like a rusty Brillo pad. ‘Tennyson’ wasn’t a name you normally heard shouted across an inner-city playground, but his drop-dead gorgeous fiancée seemed to like it, and I guess that was all that mattered.
Tenny had always been a star. After university and a spell in the OTC, he decided he wanted to hang out with squaddie lowlife rather than do what he should have done – become a doctor or lawyer or something that lined his pocket. Tenny had been going places. He had golden balls. We all knew he was destined for better things. For me, being in the Regiment was the best I was ever going to get. For him, it was just another stepping-stone to global domination.
‘“Jol-ly boat-ing weather, /And a hay har-vest breeze, /Blade on the fea-ther, /Shade—”’
‘Shut the fuck up!’ Dex was doing Red Ken’s head in.
Dex threw the aircraft into a tight right-hander. I had to throw out an arm to stop myself sliding across the cabin.
‘Now, now, Red – manners. You guys should like it. The music was written by a Rifle Brigade chap at the North-West Frontier. I think his name was—’
Red Ken had had enough. ‘Shut the fuck up, crap hat!’ To Para Reg, that meant anyone who didn’t wear a red beret.
These two had always been like a couple of fishwives. They bickered 24/7, but couldn’t do without each other to bicker with.
Dex’s tone suddenly changed. ‘Border crossed.’
Down below it looked like someone had taken an axe to the Christmas-tree cable. Even the navigation lights had been doused.
‘Over the sterile zone.’
A Bronx growl filled our headphones. ‘I can see that. Just tell me when we’re going to goddam land.’
Tenny kept his voice low and controlled before Red Ken had a chance to tell our American friend where he could shove the Special Relationship. ‘It’s OK, Spag. We’ll get you there, don’t worry. We can’t do anything right now apart from lie here and let Dex get on with it.’
I’d met Conrad Spicciati three days earlier and known straight away I didn’t like him. It wasn’t just because he was small and so overweight he looked like Humpty Dumpty – he didn’t know how to behave with us. For a low-grade CIA agent he had a Pentagon-sized swagger. We had to take the piss. Dex started calling him Spaghetti. Ten seconds later we’d shortened it to Spag.
It got him so worked up his porn-star moustache was in a permanent twitch. He kept stroking it with his thumb and forefinger, possibly to calm it down. I wondered if he’d grown it especially for the job. But I didn’t give it much thought. As far as I was concerned, we’d get this shit done and never see him again.
He sat with his arms locked around a black nylon sports bag in the dull red glow of the aircraft interior, gripping it like he thought we were going to mug him. I probably would have done if I’d thought I could have got away with it. The bag contained Vladislav’s twenty thousand US dollars. It didn’t sound like a lot for a bit of top-secret kit, but it would have been a life-changing sum to me.
Tenny needn’t have worried. Dex ignored him. ‘“Bang, bang, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang . . .”’
Red Ken’s and Tenny’s shoulders heaved in unison.
Spag bellowed into his headset that nobody sang on his goddam watch.
Biggles segued straight into ‘Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines’.
Odd smudges of very East German light appeared – dull and yellow, not the fairground stuff their Western mates went for a few thousand metres away. We called them nein-watt bulbs.
Red Ken cut in: ‘OK, that’s it, enough. Let’s switch on.’
3
The Dornier dropped the final couple of hundred feet. My head bounced off the steel as we hit the ground and bumped along the field.
When I sat up I could see a line of small fires through the windows. Benghazi