Free Monsieur Pamplemousse Aloft by Michael Bond

net disasters could happen. Tragedy was never far away, lurking round the next corner waiting for a chance to strike. But nowadays people were so blasé; they had seen such tricks many times before on television.
    Yasmin was twenty-eight. She was still in a coma, but the local hospital hoped to issue a statement after she had undergone further examination. Her temporary loss was a great blow to the circus, but they would do their best to carry on.
    Monsieur Pamplemousse folded the paper carefully, broke the remaining
croissant
in two and gave one piece to Pommes Frites, then he signalled for the bill. The clock on the churchtower said ten-forty. It was time they were on their way.
    Back in the car, he unlocked his issue case and removed the Leica camera and the Trinovid binoculars. The flight would give him a good opportunity to take some aerial photographs; something he had never done before. He hovered over the compartments of the felt-lined tray for a moment or two, unable to make up his mind which lenses to take, but eventually settled on the standard 50mm and the 28mm wide-angle. He had no idea how high they might be flying and he wished now he’d given the matter more thought; there might be a problem with the light. He always kept ultra-violet filters on the lenses anyway; they provided extra protection against scratches, but he slipped a couple of yellow filters into his jacket pocket to be on the safe side.
    On the spur of the moment and acting on an impulse that had paid off many times in his days with the Force, he attached an auto-wind to the camera, slipped a zoom lens into place, and on the pretext of checking it, pointed the camera in the direction of the circus and shot off the rest of the reel of film. As far as he could tell, no one had seen him do it. A few moments later, the camera re-loaded, they set off.
     
    The airship was tethered to a mooring-mast attached to the back of a large lorry. From a distance it looked like a giant wind-sock floating to and fro, the double wheels below the gondola describing a large arc as the wind blew the envelope first one way and then the other. There were more people standing around waiting for his arrival than he expected. No doubt they all had a function to perform, but it reminded him of a film set, with everyone poised for action. On the other hand, security struck him as being remarkably lax; apart from two gendarmes and a man in civilian clothes occupying a hut at the entrance to the field, no one asked to see his credentials and he was allowed to drive right up to the concrete square which served as a landing and take-off area. If the dark grey pill-boxes near the cliffs were anything to go by it was probably a relic of the war years. The Germans had built to last.The small office and reception room near by looked freshly painted and from two white poles alongside it the flags of France and the United Kingdom were already flying.
    Monsieur Pamplemousse wasn’t sure whether the airship looked bigger or smaller than he’d expected. Both in a way. Close to and seen from below, the balloon itself looked vast – vast and slightly out of control; the gondola, with its large windows and helicopter-like Perspex dome surrounding the flight deck, like a pimple which had been added as an afterthought.
    Two men in dark blue uniform came out of the office to greet him.
    ‘Monsieur Pamplemousse?’ The first one, grey-haired, with a weather-beaten face and an air of quiet authority, held out his hand to introduce himself. ‘Commander Winters.’ He turned and nodded to the second man. ‘My colleague – Capitaine Leflaix of the French navy. I’m afraid,’ he looked down at Pommes Frites, ‘your dog will have to stay behind.’
    ‘Stay behind?’ repeated Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Pommes Frites? But he always comes with me. Wherever we go.’
    ‘Company orders, I’m afraid.
Chiens
are strictly
interdits.
’ Clearly there was no point in arguing.
    ‘
Là, là.
’