Slush Fund

The Fohn Fighter is a warplane built in Eastern Europe, and it has one serious design flaw: it kills its own pilots. Several of them are dead already, and the men who built it would rather the world never found out. Then a British reporter gets hold of the story, and the East German officials behind the plane hire a hitman called Van Neikerk to make sure it never runs.

The Professionals get the job of keeping the reporter alive long enough for the story to reach print. It is a simple assignment on paper and a hard one in practice, because a man with a deadline and a man with a gun want the same thing: the reporter, one to talk, one to silence. The chase plays out across the reporter's working life, with CI5 trying to stay close without being seen and the hitman always a step behind. Van Neikerk is a professional, which means he is patient, and the hunt builds slowly rather than exploding early.

Brian Clemens and Roger Marshall wrote it, William Brayne directed. Stuart Wilson is Van Neikerk, and he plays the hitman with a cold, courteous professionalism that is properly unsettling. Matthew Long is Martin Hope, the reporter, Lynda Bellingham is Betty Hope, David Swift is Sir Kenneth, Jeremy Young is Geiser, Timothy Carlton is Seymour and Victoria Burgoyne is the Kookie Girl.

The story is the weapon, which gives the episode a nice change of pace from the usual bombs and gunfights. The violence here is aimed at a man's reputation as much as his life, and the show understands that a newspaper can hurt a regime more than a bullet can. A fighter plane that is a death trap for its own pilots is a properly chilling secret to be carrying.

A taut, talky thriller with a good villain and a clear head.