Monday
Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi Headquarters, Yasenevo, Tëplyystan, Moscow
‘Even for an administrator, you’ve been very stupid,’ Zharkov snapped, sitting down opposite Abramov. ‘What did you think you could achieve by approaching the general directly?’
‘I hoped he would make you do your job properly,’ Abramov replied, with spirit, hoping his action had wrong-footed this man. ‘I hoped he would order you to carry out a proper investigation here at Yasenevo, and to check what Raya Kosov claims to have discovered. And have you found her?’
For the first time since he had met Zharkov, the colonel looked unsure of himself, and Abramov guessed that he’d faced a fairly hostile reception from the general in charge of SVR security. His manner also suggested his men had failed to track down Raya Kosov, which the colonel’s next words confirmed.
‘Not yet. But we know roughly where she is, and we should have her by the end of the day.’
Abramov smiled inwardly at the man’s response, recognizing that Zharkov probably still had almost no idea where Raya had gone to ground, because if he had, she would already be in custody.
‘So where is she?’ he asked.
‘Northern Italy. We have all the borders covered, and our people there are working closely with the Italian police. Every means of transport she could possibly use is being monitored. She won’t get out of the country, that I can assure you. Now, Abramov, since you suggested Kosov’s ridiculous allegations are worth investigating, you can help us while we do so.’
‘Does this mean you no longer believe I was involved in her defection – or whatever you’re now calling it?’
Zharkov shook his head. ‘The general seems convinced of your innocence, but I do not share his view. I will be watching you very carefully from now on. I have decided to let you assist in the investigation only because you are familiar with the security procedures and computer systems, but everything you do will be checked and double-checked.’
‘Where do you want me to start? With the Top Secret files?’
‘No, I’ve already assigned one of my men to check those. You can inspect this office Kosov claimed somebody was using illegally, and find out exactly where this Moscow telephone number is located.’
Checking the number didn’t take long, and within a few minutes Abramov knew that the telephone which the unknown traitor – for, unlike Zharkov, he was prepared to accept that Raya had been telling the truth, until unambiguous evidence was provided to the contrary – had dialled, from Yasenevo, terminated in an office within the Lubyanka, in central Moscow.
‘The number’s in the Lubyanka?’ Zharkov asked yet again.
‘That’s what the trace reports, yes,’ Abramov replied.
‘Right, contact the Lubyanka security staff and tell them to identify which office that telephone is located in, and to go there immediately. Anyone they find in the room is to be arrested. If it’s empty, they’re to seal it pending my arrival.’ Zharkov stood up and walked to the door, then turned back to glare at Abramov. ‘Get up,’ he snapped. ‘You can come along as well.’
London
Andrew Lomas had received three more ‘wrong number’ calls, each providing him, through the Russian website, with a continuing update of information on the hunt for Raya Kosov.
The last message had been the most encouraging. Moscow, through the Russian Embassy in Rome, had enlisted the help of the Italian police and security forces, and this had now paid dividends. A car had been spotted close to the French border and, when a police officer had tried to stop the vehicle, the driver had accelerated away. Then both of the pursuing vehicles had been immobilized by two extremely accurate rifle shots, which was almost a confirmation that Raya Kosov was the fugitive inside the car. Lomas already knew, from a brief telephone call to his other asset, both of them using public phones, that the defecting officer was now accompanied by an ex-military pilot called Paul Richter, and by a specialist sniper from the SAS.
The Italians hadn’t caught Kosov yet, but the net was certainly tightening around her. The pursuers now knew, to within a mile or so, exactly where she was, and could concentrate all their resources in that area. The next message, Lomas was confident, would merely confirm that she had finally been captured. And then he, and more importantly, his senior asset in the SIS, a man code-named ‘Nick’, could relax. ‘Nick’ sounded suitably English, but was actually a contraction of Vnutrennik, a Russian word meaning ‘insider’, and was specifically used to mean a penetration agent. In this case, the use of this word was extraordinarily accurate.
Above Piemonte, Italy
The Piper rocked slightly sideways in the turbulence caused by the jet fighter powering past it, and Richter put both hands back on the control yoke.
‘Shit!’ Dekker said, and automatically reached for the case containing his sniper rifle.
Richter glanced sideways, saw what he was doing, and shook his head. ‘Forget it. Now he’s shown us that he’s here, he’ll stay behind us, where we’re nicely within range of whatever weapons he’s carrying. And any second now he’ll call and tell us what he wants us to do.’
Dekker stared out of the side window. The Aermacchi was in a tight right-hand turn that would bring it up behind the Piper.
‘How will he know what frequency we’re on?’
‘He’ll call us on Guard, which is twelve-fifteen megahertz. All civil aircraft are supposed to monitor it.’
The radio speaker suddenly crackled, and a heavily accented voice filled the cabin. ‘Unidentified aircraft, you are instructed to turn onto a heading of one one zero immediately, and commence descent.’
‘What are we going to do?’ Raya asked, her voice choking with fear.
‘Well, not what he tells us, that’s for sure,’ Richter said. ‘Not after all we’ve already been through.’
‘But that’s a jet fighter, for fuck’s sake,’ Dekker snapped. ‘How the hell are you going to outrun it? He’ll be all over us.’
‘I can’t outrun it,’ Richter said simply, ‘so I’m going to have to out-fly it. Make sure you’re belted in, both of you, and get that rifle secured, Colin. I don’t want that case flying around the cabin and braining someone. Your bag too, Raya. This is going to be bouncy.’
‘Oh, God,’ Dekker said, and jammed the rifle case under the seat.
Richter reached out and pulled the throttle back gently, reducing power and watching the airspeed dropping.
‘You’re slowing down,’ Dekker said nervously.
‘I know. Trust me, there’s no point in trying to go quickly, because that jet’s got a top speed about four times faster than we can manage. He can probably do about five hundred knots, and I already know this aircraft is flat out at around a hundred and twenty. But we do have one advantage: we can fly slower than him.’
‘And that helps how, exactly?’
‘His stall speed will be at least one hundred knots, almost as fast as we’re going now, which means he has to keep travelling faster than that, or his aircraft will fall out of the sky. We can go as slowly as fifty knots and still keep flying.’
‘But he can keep circling around us.’
‘I know. But he can’t stay behind us, and that’s the point.’
As Richter spoke, the Aermacchi flew past them again, this time on the left side of the Piper, the pilot gesticulating for them to head back the way they’d come.
‘He looks pissed off,’ Dekker remarked.
‘He’s going to be a lot more pissed off in a minute. Now, let’s see how good a pilot he is. Hold on.’
Richter pulled smoothly back on the control yoke, and simultaneously applied full right rudder. The Piper’s nose rose high in the air, then the aircraft’s right wing dropped with sickening suddenness. Instantly, the Piper started to fall, plummeting straight down towards the ground, the whole aircraft rotating clockwise, clearly completely out of control.
Above Rhône-Alps, France
‘I hold visual contact with the target aircraft,’ the U2 pilot reported. ‘It’s still in Italian airspace, but getting close to the border. Wait. There’s also a military aircraft in the same area, behind the target. Waiting for identification now. Confirmed. The military bogie is an Italian Air Force Aermacchi MB-339.’
‘What’s your assessment?’ Westwood asked. He was sitting in the luxurious cabin of the Lear 60 as the pilot taxied towards Fiumicino’s active take-off runway, talking to the U2 jockey on a discrete Company UHF frequency. ‘Is the Italian aircraft acting as an escort, or is it hostile?’
‘Difficult to say. Standby . . . something’s just happened. It’s definitely not an escort. The target aircraft has just started a spin, so it’s possible the Aermacchi engaged it with a gun. Definitely not a missile, beause my systems would have detected missile launch.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Westwood muttered, a feeling of impotent disappointment flooding through him as he visualized the unarmed civilian aircraft crashing onto some unforgiving Alpine slope. ‘Pinpoint the crash site,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the emergency services moving.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Dekker muttered, ‘you’ve bloody lost it.’
Richter calmly shook his head, keeping the controls in the same positions and alternating his attention between the instruments in front of him and the swirling landscape visible through the windscreen. ‘We’re in a spin. We’re losing height very quickly.’
‘I can fucking see that. More to the point, can you get us out of it?’
Richter nodded, looked again at the altimeter and then at the compass, its needle swinging wildly. He waited until the aircraft had almost completed another revolution, then removed his right foot from the rudder pedal. Almost immediately the Piper stopped spinning, but continued its uncontrolled plunge towards the floor of the valley.
‘Where’s that jet?’ Richter asked.
‘What?’ Dekker couldn’t tear his eyes away from the terrifying view through the windscreen.
‘Where. Is. That. Jet?’ Richter asked again, enunciating each word very clearly.
‘It’s a long way above us,’ Raya said. ‘It seems to be flying in a circle.’
‘Good.’
As Dekker watched with horrified eyes, Richter pushed the control yoke fully forward.
‘But that’s the wrong way?’ Dekker said. ‘You need to pull back.’
‘It’s counter-intuitive, I know,’ Richter said, his tone almost conversational. ‘I’d stopped the spin, but the aircraft was still stalled, which means the wings weren’t generating any lift. We were in free fall, if you like.’
‘I kind of fucking guessed that.’
‘So what you have to do is un-stall the wings, and you do that by pushing the control column forwards. Then,’ Richter added, his words mirroring his actions, ‘you increase power and ease back slowly, and that brings the aircraft back under control.’
Steadily, and without any drama, the nose of the Piper rose until the aircraft was flying level again, now only a couple of hundred feet above the high-altitude valley floor that stretched between the peaks of Pointe de Charbonnel and L’Albaron, and still heading west.
‘Where’s that Aermacchi? The jet? Where is it?’
‘It looks as if it’s still circling,’ Raya said, ‘but it’s still quite a long way above us.’
‘Good. We’ll stay down here in the weeds. I tried to make it look as if the aircraft was completely out of control, so hopefully he’s waiting to see the ball of fire that would mark our impact site.’
‘He wasn’t the only one expecting that to happen,’ Dekker muttered.
Richter grinned at him. ‘Have a little faith in me, Colin.’
‘Now it looks as if it’s descending,’ Raya said sharply.
‘Bound to happen.’ Richter pushed the throttle as far forward as possible. ‘Now let’s try a bit of psychological warfare.’
He grabbed the aeronautical chart he’d been looking at previously, then selected the civilian Guard frequency, 121.5 megahertz, and pressed the transmit button. ‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is French civilian aircraft Foxtrot Lima Yankee Charlie Papa. My position is near Bramans, about ten kilometres from the Italian border, and I’m under attack from an unidentified Italian Aermacchi fighter aircraft. Somebody, anybody, please help.’
Richter released the button and glanced at Dekker. ‘That might give the Eyetie flying that Aermacchi pause for thought, simply because we are in France now. Shooting us down on the Italian side of the border is one thing. Following us into France and doing the same thing is a whole different ball game.’
‘And that broadcast might be picked up by other aircraft or air-traffic control units near here as well?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. We’re surrounded by mountains here, so most probably not, in fact. Really, that was for the Aermacchi pilot’s ears only. Where is he now, Raya?’
‘He’s climbing again, and he’s started turning back the way we came, towards the east.’
‘Forget the emergency services,’ the U2 pilot corrected Westwood. ‘I said it was in a spin, not crashing. The pilot’s just recovered, and the target aircraft has now crossed the border. The Aermacchi’s still in the area, but I don’t think there’s anything he can do now that the civilian aircraft’s in France. And . . . wait.’
There was silence on the frequency for a few seconds, then the U2 pilot transmitted again.
‘OK, the guy flying the target is English, and he’s cute. He just made a Mayday broadcast on twelve-fifteen – that’s the civil emergency frequency – to say he’s flying a French aircraft and he’s being attacked by an Italian military jet.’
‘We didn’t hear anything,’ Westwood remarked. The Lear had just lifted off the runway, and the pilot had been cleared by ATC for an unrestricted climb.
‘You wouldn’t. You’re well out of range. In fact, I doubt if many people heard it, because of where he is, deep down in that valley. But it does prove he’s listening to twelve-fifteen, if you want to talk to him. He’s using the French call sign Foxtrot Lima Yankee Charlie Papa, which he’s obviously just made up if the aircraft’s on Italian registry.’
Then the radio speaker in the Piper crackled again, and the same harsh voice issued from it. ‘Very clever, but it won’t help you. We will be passing your details on to our French colleagues. They will undoubtedly take care of you.’
‘Yeah, well, we’ll see about that,’ Richter said. He glanced again at the topographical chart. ‘Change of plan. I was going to keep heading west, but that Italian comedian is right: the Eyeties can ask the Frogs to force us down somewhere, so that’s starting to sound like a really bad idea. Especially as that fighter pilot will have noted our real registration number and description, and he’ll also be able to give the French an accurate starting point for a search.’
‘So?’
‘So we’ll head north-west, up into the Tarentaise area of France. It’s home to some of the most expensive ski resorts on the planet – places like Val d’Isère and Les Arcs – and we’ll try to find a flat bit of land where we can park this thing.’
Dekker studied the map for a few seconds. ‘I won’t be sorry to get my feet back on the ground, that’s for sure. And if a simple soldier like me can make a suggestion, if you can land somewhere near either Séez or Aime, that would help us.’
This time it was Richter’s turn to look puzzled. ‘Why?’ he asked.
‘We could try to steal or even hire a car,’ Dekker said, ‘and that would inevitably leave a trail of some sort. But if you can get near either of those two places, we won’t need to, because there’s a railway line there. We can just buy our tickets for cash, and let the French railway system whisk us away. No paperwork, no paper trail.’
‘As long as the trains are running, that sounds a very good idea. And railway tracks tend to run on level ground, so we might well find a convenient field to land in somewhere nearby.’
Still keeping the aircraft reasonably low, but mindful of the dangerous atmospheric effects, such as sudden updraughts and downdraughts, which could plague flying across mountains, Richter swung the Piper northwest, and increased their speed slightly.
‘The target’s changed course. He’s now heading northwest, currently approaching the Pointe de la Grande Casse.’
‘Copied that,’ Westwood said, studying a map of the French border area. ‘Thanks for your help. Stay in the area and monitor the situation, please. I’m going to call the aircraft now.’
‘Roger.’
Westwood selected intercom on the control panel beside his seat. ‘Give me twelve-fifteen megahertz,’ he instructed, ‘and a VHF chat frequency.’
‘You’ve got the civil-emergency frequency on button two,’ the pilot replied after a moment, ‘and you can use seventeen-fifty-five on button three.’
‘Thanks.’ Westwood clicked button two, and then pressed the transmit key.
‘Foxtrot Lima Yankee Charlie Papa, this is November Two Four. I gather you need some help.’
As they passed the peak of Pointe de la Grande Casse, and altered course to transit to the west of Mont Pourri, Richter gestured over to the right, where two lakes sparkled in the sunshine.
‘Val d’Isère is somewhere over there,’ he said, ‘and Les Arcs is just ahead of us.’
‘How far away now?’
‘About twenty miles or so.’
From the twin peaks, the ground sloped away to the north dropping down towards the gentler slopes of the ski resorts, where the green and brown hillsides were cut through by the skeletal black lines of unused ski lifts. Beyond them, at the foot of the valley, Richter could discern the town of Aime, with a road and the parallel glint of a railway line. More importantly, there were several areas of seemingly level ground, hopefully long enough to accommodate the fairly short landing run the Piper would need.
Then the radio speaker crackled again, but this time the voice was unmistakably American. ‘Foxtrot Lima Yankee Charlie Papa, this is November Two Four. I gather you need some help.’
‘What the hell?’ Dekker muttered.
Richter picked up the microphone and depressed the transmit key.
‘Thank you, November Two Four, but I think we’re OK now.’
‘Are you sure about that? The Italian fast jet has run for home, but how’s your passenger? Is she OK?’
‘What passenger?’ Richter asked, looking genuinely confused.
‘Sierra Lima minus one,’ the American voice replied, then fell silent.
Richter looked at Dekker, then glanced back at Raya. ‘What the hell’s he talking about?’ he asked, of nobody in particular.
‘He means me,’ Raya said. ‘Sierra Lima minus one. Take one letter away from each and you’ve got Romeo Kilo – my initials. That’s what he means.’
Suddenly Richter remembered what Simpson had said, and pressed the transmit key again. ‘OK, let me use the same convention, Kilo Xray. Give me a frequency.’
‘Neat,’ the American replied. ‘One seven five decimal five.’
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Dekker demanded, as Richter changed frequency.
‘If I’m right, the guy who’s talking to us is a senior CIA officer named John Westwood, hence the “Kilo Xray” tag I gave him. “JW” equals “Juliet Whisky”, and adding one letter in each case gives you “Kilo Xray”. He’s obviously worked out that Raya’s travelling in this aircraft, and the fact that he’s talking to us means he’s also airborne somewhere nearby, flying in an American-registered aircraft, because of the “November” call sign.’
‘So?’
‘So let’s hear what he has to say,’ Richter replied, and pressed the transmit key. ‘You there, Kilo Xray?’
‘Do I know you?’
‘Not yet, no. What can we do for you?’
‘I think it’s more what I can do for you. I’m in a Lear 60, way up above you, and I’m prepared to offer you and your passenger a lift, if she’d want one.’
Richter glanced at Raya before replying, and she shook her head firmly.
‘The only problem with that, Kilo Xray, is that you’d probably have a destination in Virginia in mind. Somewhere near Langley, perhaps?’
‘That’s what I’d like to suggest, yes. But my first priority is your passenger’s safety, because she’s really important to us as well as to your own people. So if you accept my offer, I’m prepared to take you anywhere you want to go. Once you climb into this Lear, we can have you both in London in a couple of hours, no problem.’
‘Give me a minute,’ Richter said, and sat back in his seat.
‘You’re not going to agree to that, surely?’ Dekker asked.
‘I don’t know. Raya, were there any leaks that you knew of in the CIA?’
‘Not that I was aware of. If you hadn’t turned up in Nervi, my next move would have been to approach the Americans.’
‘OK,’ Richter said. ‘It might just be worth hitching a ride with the CIA, not least because the French are going to think twice about interfering with an American-registered and CIA-owned executive jet. And it might even give the Russians pause for thought. And we do have an ace in the hole.’
‘What?’ Dekker asked.
‘You, Colin,’ Richter replied. ‘John Westwood thinks there are two people in this aircraft – just Raya and me. When, or if, we decide to meet him somewhere, you can stay out of sight and cover us with your rifle until we know for sure that we have the situation under control.’
‘You really sure that’s a good idea?’
‘Listen, Colin, we’ve got a hell of a long way to go. The Italian authorities will know for sure that we’ve made it as far as France, and that means the Russians will know it as well. I really don’t fancy trying to fight our way through teams of Moscow hit men all the way to Calais. If we can hitch a ride on that Lear, we can be in London today. In a couple of hours. We just have to make sure that’s where we end up, and not in Virginia.’
‘OK,’ Dekker replied. ‘So how do we do it?’
‘That’s the tricky bit. Let me have another look at that map.’
‘I’ve now picked up two further contacts in the vicinity of the target aircraft, both heading north-east and in loose formation,’ the U2 pilot reported to Westwood on the Company chat frequency. ‘Slow-moving, so probably rotary wing. I’m waiting for the computer to confirm that.’
‘Position?’ Westwood asked.
‘Just about to cross the E70 autoroute near St Michel de Maurienne. That puts them about twenty miles from where the target turned north-west, and twenty-five miles from its present position. Computer now confirms they’re helicopters, most likely a pair of French Eurocopter Dauphin gunships. If they catch up with the target – and they will – they’ll be able to blow him out of the sky.’
‘Thanks.’ Westwood switched frequencies. ‘Foxtrot Lima, November Two Four, update. You have two probable helicopter gunships approaching you from the south-west. You can’t outrun them, so I suggest you land as soon as possible, before they force you down, or worse.’
‘That’s it,’ Richter said. ‘Decision made.’
He called Westwood. ‘OK, Kilo Xray, we’ll grab a ride with you. If you can land the Lear at Chambéry, we’ll put this thing down as soon as we can and meet you there. Agreed?’
‘That’s a deal. I’m up here with a friend, and we’ll fly top cover for you until you’re on the ground.’
‘A friend?’ Richter asked.
‘One high letter and one low number.’
‘Copied.’
‘You’re going to tell us what the hell he’s talking about, I hope,’ Dekker said.
‘It’s easy,’ Richter replied. ‘There’s only one aircraft operated by the Americans that’s designated by a letter that occurs late in the alphabet and also a low number. There’s a U2 somewhere way up above us. That explains how Westwood found us, and how he’s been getting information on other stuff flying around.’
‘A U2? You’re kidding.’ Dekker glanced at Raya with new respect. ‘You must be a hell of a lot more important than I thought,’ he said. ‘Makes me wonder why they sent a knackered old shag like Richter here to bring you in.’
Raya grinned at him. ‘Because that’s what I wanted,’ she said. ‘Somebody who wasn’t a member of your SIS. And he’s not that knackered, and I can prove it.’
Dekker glanced from Raya to Richter, and back again. ‘Got it,’ he said. ‘Message received and understood.’
‘OK,’ Richter said, as the Piper covered the remaining distance, ‘make sure your seat belts are tight, because the landing’s going to be bumpy. I’ll make a low pass over the field first, just to check for obstructions like cows or power lines, then I’ll put it on the ground.’
Dekker was still looking at the topographical map. ‘You’re heading for Aime?’ he asked.
‘Yes, it’s slightly closer, and the contour lines suggest there might be a bit more level ground there.’
A few minutes later, Richter throttled back, dropped the Piper down to about five hundred feet above ground level, and banked to the left as he studied the ground below them. A road and railway line were now clearly visible to the north, while below there was a largely open field, lying south of the railway line, which lay south of the N90 road. The field had clumps of trees growing at both ends, but there was an open area between which looked to Richter about five hundred yards long. It would be tight, but doable. And there was nothing else nearby that looked any better.
‘I suppose it’s a bit high here for growing most crops,’ Dekker remarked, ‘but I can see a few animals over to the north of the main road. Grazing the mountain pastures, I suppose.’
‘Ski areas are a pretty depressing sight in summer,’ Richter said, ‘but they’re also usually deserted, which suits us. That’ll do fine,’ he added, turning the aircraft left, to point back the way they’d come.
‘There?’ Dekker sounded horrified. ‘It’s like somebody’s back garden. You’ll never get it down into that space.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ Richter said, ‘but it’s actually long enough, and quite wide. I just need to drop down as near to those trees at the north-east end as I can, and then get this thing stopped before we run into the trees at the other end.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Dekker muttered, and pulled his seat belt a little tighter.
‘And, actually, there’s nowhere else,’ Richter added.
‘The two helos have split, one left, one right,’ the U2 pilot advised Westwood. ‘It looks like they’re starting a search for the target. The guy going north-east is going to spot the aircraft within a couple of minutes, if he stays on the same heading.’
‘Roger,’ Westwood said, and switched back to the frequency he was using to communicate with Richter. ‘This is November Two Four. You need to get that thing on the ground right now. One of those gunships will be on you in about three minutes.’
‘Copied. We’re almost downwind, should be on the deck inside two minutes. And thanks.’
The field was covered with grass, but it was far from a bowling-green surface, looking rough and lumpy. But, on the good side, it was reasonably level, and just about long enough for the Piper to land in, with no obvious obstructions apart from the trees. Like all pilots, Richter had a well-deserved fear of power lines, telephone cables and the like, which could rip off a wing or propeller in an instant, and turn any landing into an uncontrollable and fatal crash.
He continued around in a tight turn – to start what would have been called the downwind leg if he’d been at an airfield circuit. That took him over what looked like a small, recently built housing estate. He eyed the trees carefully as he prepared to land, but their branches seemed almost stationary, so he knew there was no significant wind.
Richter reduced speed still further, selected full flap and then lowered the undercarriage, dividing his attention between the instruments in front of him and the open field to his left.
With the airspeed indicator showing just over seventy knots – on the plastic board, the stall speed of the aircraft was listed at fifty knots – he turned the Piper onto base leg and continued the turn until he was lined up with the field. Then he continued reducing speed slowly.
As always, the aircraft seemed to go faster the closer it got to the ground, an optical illusion Richter was very familiar with. The trees seemed to rush up towards them, the field in front now looking deceptively short, and the surface slightly worse than he’d expected. He held the speed at sixty knots, which would give him sufficient speed to go around again – to carry out a missed approach – if he wasn’t happy with the look of the surface just before the Piper touched down.
Directly ahead was a short line of trees, at right angles to his line of approach, which marked the end of the clear area.
He watched the tops of the trees getting closer, and for an instant it seemed they were too close, that the undercarriage was going to clip them. Beside him, Dekker muttered something under his breath.