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a speed, kept right on going, ploughing straight into the sea.
    Grant, depressed, walked towards the officers’ mess at Maison Blanche, his flying boots drubbing on the tarmac. He kept thinking of the way that Junkers had gone in, imagining the men inside. That was no good at all. He started up the steps to the mess and found Harry Carter standing at the top.
    ‘Harry!’ Grant said in delight. ‘I heard you were in hospital in Cairo.’
    ‘Not any more,’ Carter told him. ‘I had business with the man himself at dar el Ouad and as I have an hour or two to spare, I thought I'd see how you were getting on.’
    On the two occasions that Carter had dropped by parachute into Sicily, Grant had flown the plane, which was something of a bond.
    ‘Feel like a drink?’ he asked.
    ‘Not really. Let's take a walk.’
    They moved towards the hangars. Carter said, ‘I hear you got another one this evening.’
    ‘In a manner of speaking.’
    ‘And you're suposed to be grounded.’
    ‘Damn nonsense. I had to see Air Marshal Sloane a few weeks ago on squadron business and he said I had a muscle twitching in my right cheek. Insisted I had a medical and the bastards stood me down.’
    He was angry and it showed. Carter said, ‘We can win the war without you, Harvey, but only just.’ He put a hand on the American's shoulder for a moment. ‘What's wrong? What's really wrong?’
    ‘I keep thinking about the men in that Junkers this evening,’ Grant said. ‘I don't know how to explain this, Harry, but for the first time it was as if it was me. Does that make any kind of sense?’
    ‘Perfectly,’ Carter told him. ‘It means that the doctor who stood you down knew what he was talking about.’
    Grant said, ‘And what about you? Are you going back over there again?’
    ‘I shouldn't think it's likely.’
    ‘And a good think, too.’ They were passing a hangar in which ground crew worked under floodlights repairing a badly damaged Halifax. Half the tail plane was missing and the rear gunner's compartment shattered. ‘Rear gunner and navigator both killed on a supply drop to Sicily two nights ago. The Luftwaffe really do have things their own way over there, Harry. We've lost four planes in ten days, all shot down, and in each case the agents they were to drop were still inside. If you asked me to fly you in again, I'd give us no better than an even chance of reaching the target and dropping you.’
    ‘Oh, well,’ Carter said. ‘Someone else can worry about that one.’
    They had reached the end of the main hangar and he saw, to his surprise, a Junkers 88 night fighter standing there in the gloom, RAF rondels painted on the fuselage and wings.
    ‘What's this, for God's sake?’
    ‘Forced down up the coast a few weeks ago after dropping a couple of Arab agents by parachute. See where they cut a special door in the fuselage. This is a Ju88S, one of their best night fighters, capable of around four hundred miles an hour. We've been doing evaluation flights.’
    ‘You have, you mean.’
    ‘Well, an hour here and there.’ Grant shrugged. ‘Who's to notice?’ He clapped Carter on the shoulder. ‘So, what are you up to now? Something so secret the whole future of the war depends on it?’
    Carter soiled. ‘There's no such animal, Harvey. Wars aren't won by men any more. They're run by large corporations, just like big business.’
    ‘Maybe you're right,’ Grant tossed his cigarette away. ‘You want to know something, Harry? I feel tired I mean really tired. So I don't care any more.’
    ‘It's the war, Harvey. It's gone on too long.’
    ‘Good,’ Grant said. ‘I mean, that really does make me feel a whole lot better. Now let's get back to the mess and I'll buy you a drink.’
    *
    When the jeep dropped Carter in the courtyard outside the villa, there was a big Packard staff car outside. Carter went up the steps past the sentries and found Cusak still sitting at the desk.
    ‘Doesn't anyone work around here except