Eastlake cut the viewer lamp and someone pulled the curtains and stopped sharp when I said: 'What sort of plane is it?'

Someone gave a nervous cough.

Squadron-leader Eastlake said: 'Don't you know?'

'If I did, I wouldn't ask.'

It was perfectly all right if the Bureau had its reasons for pitching me in here without any briefing, but if their idea was to get me steamed-up about this thing then people would haveto answer the questions I wanted to ask them or it was go.

'Thank you, Phyllis. That's all we needed to see.'

When the WRAF went out and shut the door the pilot and navigator and photo-interpretation bod stood looking at their toes and Eastlake said:

'Mr Gage has been fully screened.'

They relaxed a bit and one of them offered a package of gum around and nobody wanted any and the pilot said: 'We were told to look for a medium freighter.'

'You think this is a medium freighter?'

We were grouped by the static viewer. On the blown-up still it didn't really look like an aeroplane at all but now that I'd seen it on the movie strip I could accept the smudgy configuration on the sand as an aircraft with one wing dislocated at the root end.

The interpretation officer didn't say anything. The navigator shrugged.

'All I'd say from the pix is that it could be. From what I through the binocs I'd say it's not military and not very big.If I had a bet on it I'd put it down as a light or medium twin-prop short-haul commercial transport.'

'Not just because that's what you were told to look for and expected to see.'

He smiled lopsidedly. 'What can we ever do about that? Once we're told what kind of target to look for, we're to an extent conditioned.'

I was feeling it difficult now to look away from the static viewer.