In the illuminated central frame the picture wasn't verybig: it had been blown up to the point where the grain would start blurring the definition. The ribbed background of dunes was perfectly clear but the grey ashy smudge could be anything — or nothing, just a fault in the processing — but even from sixty-five thousand feet they'd seen it was some kind of aircraft and now that they'd found it the Bureau bad cabled Tokyo fully urgent and I was here looking at this vague configuration on the photographic plate that was the focal point of the mission they were trying to sell me.

'Where is it?'

Eastlake spoke before the others could start worrying. The people with No. 2 Fighter-Reconnaissance Squadron RAF spent most of their time taking the sort of pictures that nobody really wanted to reprint as post-cards for the tourist trade. This was one of them.

'Longitude 8°3′ East by Latitude 30°4′ North.'

' Tunisia?'

' Algeria.'

'When did the plane come down?'

'We weren't informed. Our job was to look for it and take pictures if we found it.'

'From sixty-five thousand feet?'

'It's the highest we go.'

'You could've gone lower.'

Someone coughed again.

I thought I might as well push them right up against the wall so that they'd either have to answer my question or throw me out.

'Did you get official overflying permission?' I counted up to seven.

'Did we what?'

Very slowly I said: 'Did you get official permission from the Algerian government to overfly their territory and take those pictures? Or did you go up to the maximum operational ceiling because the view was better?'

This time I was at nine before the pilot said:

'Actually, neither.'

It was just their natural disinclination as secret reconnaissance men to trust an unknown civilian with the whole score. Eastlake had told them I'd been screened and they'd obviously been briefed to give me all the info they could, but they still didn't like it.