At Close Quarters

4

He lay across them, sheltering them, as if they were still in danger. Blood was on his hands and on the cuffs of his shirt, red on white. He had taken Jane's hand in his, an unresisting hand, as it was when she was exhausted or sleeping.

The scream in his throat had died with them.

He was aware of men and women, fearful, around him. They formed a circle at the level of the door, and on the steps, and on the pavement. The shoes of one of them crunched the glass fragments, and the shoes of another nudged the spent cartridge cases.

"Ambulance," Holt said, in English. "Get us an ambulance."

The duty day manager called that the ambulance was sent for. Holt saw his face, quivering and streaming with tears. He saw that the driver was talking urgently into a personal radio, couldn't hear the words, could see the white-faced shock of the man. The street was blocked from Holt's view, only the line of knees and skirts and trousers and shoes for him to focus on. Empty ground between the legs and the feet and where Holt lay covering the bodies of Jane and Ben, empty ground laced with blood trickles and with shards of glass. He held tightly onto Jane's hand as the misery welled in him. He had seen the face of the man. He had seen the smooth pine varnish skin, and the eyes that were burnished mahogany, and the thin chisel of the nose, and the clip of the moustache. He had seen the scar hole on the man's cheek and had followed the lines that ran from in four lines, into the shape of a crow's foot.

There was the far away sound of a siren.

He had been behind Ben and behind Jane. He had been behind them and safe. He had seen the man with the aimed gun, and he had done nothing. Could not explain to himself how he had watched the slow ballet movements of the man raising the weapon and aiming, and done nothing. Desperate misery, and it had all been so slowly drawn out in front of his eyes. He squeezed Jane's hand, her fingers, hard enough for it to have hurt her, and she did not flinch.

The driver broke the circle. He jostled the people back, and was shouting to them to retreat, pushing a corridor clear through them. Holt could see down the corridor, down the steps, across the pavement, into the street. He could see where the man had stood and taken his time to aim. He was aware of the closing bleat of the siren.

His view of the street was cut by the white bulk of the ambulance.

The driver was tugging at his shoulders, trying to pull him upright, trying and failing to break his hold on Jane's hand. He still held her while the ambulance men swiftly heaved Ben onto a stretcher, carried him away down the corridor to the open rear doors. They came back for her, for his Jane. He saw the shrug in their shoulders. The shoulders and the faces told him that they knew this was not work for ambulancemen.

They lifted her more gently than they had lifted Ben, and more awkwardly because his hand never unclasped hers.

The doors closed behind him. Ben's litter lay on one side of the ambulance's opaque interior, Jane's on the other. Holt crouched in the space between. One ambu-lanceman was with them, going perfunctorily through pulse checks, and bending to listen first at Ben's chest and then at Jane's breast. The ambulance was going fast, siren loud.

Her last words were clear in his memory. Scathing words.

'Don't be childish, Holt."

Young Holt had loved Jane Canning and the last time he had seen her face it had been puckered, screwed up in annoyance. He bit at his lip. He looked down at the fright that was set like wax on her face. That was the obscenity of it, that all the good times, wonderful times, were blasted out.

"Don't be childish, Holt."

He had a bowl of beetroot soup in front of him and a tub of sour cream and two slices of black bread. He had a quarter bottle of vodka in the desk drawer beside his knee. The militia major was tucking a napkin into his collar when the news broke out of the control room.

Garbled, staccato chaos. A shooting on Lenin Street, He was gulping a spoonful of soup. A killing at the Oreanda Hotel. His napkin sliding into his soup, Foreign visitors attacked with rifle fire. He was careering from his desk, the sour cream slurping over his papers.

A call for all assistance… It was Saturday lunchtime.

It was the time that Yalta closed itself down and the militia headquarters was at one-third strength. He felt sick. The tang of the beetroot and the chopped onion was choking in his throat.

Into the control room. A relay coming through on the loudspeaker from Ambulance Control. The young sergeant at the console listening at the telephone and writing urgently. The telephone slapped down.

"Major, the management at the Oreanda Hotel on Lenin Street report that the British ambassador and his interpreter were shot outside the hotel…"

''Dead?"

"They did not know… Ambulance Control reports that they are carrying two cadavers and one survivor to the clinic on Naberezhnaya…"

A foreign diplomat, possibly dead… Everything he did now was going to be examined under a microscope at the investigation in a week, in a month.

"Inform the KGB Control, exactly as it comes in.'

The sergeant was reaching for his telephone. To go to the clinic, to go to the Oreanda, to stay in headquarters Which?

He picked up a telephone himself. He rang the number of Criminal Investigation two floors above, and the telephone rang and his fingers drummed on the console surface and his feet shuffled. Bastards gone their lunch. The sergeant came off the telephone and the major told him to send all militia cars to the Oreanda The major ran out of the building, howled in the yard for a driver, had himself taken to the Oreanda.

The KGB had beaten him. Half a dozen of ther there. Crowds gathering but back on the far side of the street. He shouldered his way forward to the knot of men all with radios, all either talking into them or listening to the return messages. In front of the broken plate glass front door he saw the blood stains. Perhaps, in the car he had half hoped the radio at headquarters had carried an aberration.. . well, that some hysterical idiot had.

The bloodstains and the KGB swarming over the steps of the hotel wiped that out.

They treated the militia major as dirt. They were the Organ of State Security, he was a common policeman Brusquely he was told what had happened.

"You had a very fast call," the militia major said.

For answer there was a cursory gesture, down the steps towards a black Chaika car. A man was sitting haggard over the wheel of the car, a radio in his hand, shaking his head in response to the questions of two others. The driver, the militia major understood; a KGB driver had been assigned to the British ambassador's party.

'"So you have a description, something I can broadcast?"

The man he spoke to looked away.

''If I am to seal the city, put in road blocks, I have to have a description."

"He saw nothing."

"What? A close quarters shooting, right under your own man's nose, and he saw nothing? How could he see nothing?''

"There is no description."

"There has to be," the militia major shouted.

"He did not see the killer approach. He took cover when the shooting started. He did not see the killer leave. There is no description."

"Shit," spat the militia major. "You pick your men."

The KGB officer walked away. The militia major sighed his relief. The fear of failure was shed. A KGB matter, a KGB failure. Best news he could possibly have been given.

He followed the KGB officer.

"What do you want of me?" the militia major said flatly.

"We have closed the airport, we have suspended all telephonic communication from the city, we have referred all details to Moscow. You should put blocks on all routes out of the city."

"For what are they looking?"

No response.

He sat on a long wooden bench in a corridor of white walls and polished linoleum flooring. Two old ladies hadat first shared the bench with him, but they had long since been ordered away by the militiaman who stood with arms folded and watched over him. Through the flapping rubber doors on the other side of the corridor the trailing white coats of the doctors and surgeons and the white skirts of the nurses came and went. He waited. Another militiaman stood on guard by the rubber doors. He hadn't fought it, he hadn't wanted to be inside the Emergency Room. He was alert now, conscious of everything around him, aware enough to know that he did not want to see the last medical rites performed on the girl he loved and the man he admired.

Each man and woman who went into the Emergency Room, or came from it, gave him a glance and then looked away when he met their eyes.

It was an older man who came to him. White haired and lean, and with his smock coat bloodstained. He spoke with his hands, his hands said that hope had gone.

In Russian, Holt was told that the man was the senior surgeon on duty at the hospital. He was told that the injuries had been too severe for treatment. He shook the hand of the surgeon, and thanked him.

Holt said that he needed a telephone. Again the hands of the surgeon were in motion, it was outside his prov-ince. The surgeon backed away. Two trolleys, sheet shrouded, were wheeled through the rubber doors and down the corridor. He sat numbed, watched them go.

His attention was to his right. The man wore perfect creased slacks and a well cut wool jacket. The man flashed an identity card, didn't linger with it but it was there long enough for Holt to recognise the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti. Holt read the name of the KGB officer.

"I want a telephone," Holt said, speaking in Russian.; The KGB officer was fishing a notebook from his pocket, and a ballpoint pen.

"I said that I wanted a telephone."

"There will be a telephone, Mr Holt. But my first priority is to apprehend the despicable culprits responsible for this crime."

"Just a telephone – the street was packed solid. You don't need me to tell you."

"Mr Holt, we need to have a description from you."

He was in a police state, a state controlled by the leviathan apparatus of the Organ of State Security. A state where the KGB crushed all dissent, kept the gulags filled. He was in a country that boasted no terrorism, no law and order problem, no incidence of armed crime. He believed, as never before, that in this country nothing moved, nothing happened, without KGB authority. Now a charade about the need for a description.

"Ask someone else what the bastard looked like,"

Holt yelled at him.

The militiaman close to him had clenched his fist, ready to intervene, and the militiaman beside the rubber doors had his hand wavering close to the wood trun-cheon fastened to his belt.

The KGB officer strode away.

All so clear now to Holt. The State had butchered them. The authorities had killed them… He went off down the corridor, he shrugged away a feeble attempt by his militiaman minder to stop him. He went into an office that was empty because of the weekend. He picked up the telephone, he dialled a zero and then seven for long distance, he waited for the clicks, he dialled the Moscow code and the embassy number. The "unob-tainable" whine sang back at him. He tried twice more.

Twice more the same blank whine.

Out of the clinic. The short walk along the sea front, the two militiamen trailing him, a distance away as if he might turn on them, savage them.

He reached the Oreanda Hotel. The street and the half steps picketed off, brown paper stuck where the glass panels had been, the glisten of soap and water on the steps. In past the militia and more KGB, up to the reception desk. He wanted a telephone call to Moscow.

It was regretted there was no telephonic communication with Moscow. Then he wanted a telex connection with Moscow and he wanted it now, right now. It was regretted that there was also no telex communication with Moscow. By whose authority? By the authority of State Security.

So tired, so bloody exhausted. Slowly, deliberately,

"I have to speak to Moscow."

"I am so sorry, Mr Holt, but it is not possible for anyone to speak to Moscow. All the lines are closed."

"Is there a post office?"

"It is Saturday afternoon, the post office is closed, Mr Holt."

› "I'have to speak to my embassy."

"I am sure that later, Mr Holt, the lines will be restored."

The reception manager gave him his room key and then reached below the counter and shuffled to him Jane's handbag. Dropped it when she was hit. It was a small, kind gesture by the reception staff, to have retrieved the handbag, kept it for him. He offered his thanks. He went slowly up the flights of stairs to his room. He locked the door behind him. He tipped her bag out onto the coverlet of his bed. Her purse, her passport, her notepad, her pen, her embassy I/D, her lipstick, her mirror, her hairbrush, her letter from home, her photograph of Holt in Whitehall held in a small silver frame, her camera…

He was shipwrecked. His landfall was a room on the second floor of the Oreanda Hotel in Yalta. His sea was a closed down telephone and telex system to Moscow and a wall of silence. He had gone through shock and misery and fury, now his reserve failed. Alone, where no-one saw him, Holt knelt beside his bed and wept, and his face covered her possessions, and he said over and over again the words she had spoken to him.

"Don't be childish, Holt."

The ciphered message whispered onto a teleprinter at main headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square. A report from KGB Yalta to KGB Moscow, giving information, requiring guidance. Saturday afternoon in the capital city. The message, still in cipher, passed to Second Directorate, domestic counter-subversion, and to Fifth Chief Directorate, suppression of dissent. Rows of weekend empty desks in Second and Fifth Chief, dust covers over the computer consoles, skeleton staffing.

The minutes sliding away. Second Directorate duty officer going in search of his senior, his senior telephoning home to the man commanding the Second Department of the Directorate, the man commanding Second Department waiting for a call back from the Directorate chief out walking his dog. Fifth Chief Directorate on hold and looking for a lead from Second Directorate. Foreign Ministry Embassy Liaison stating they would take no action until briefed by Second Directorate, and until consultation with Fifth Chief Directorate. The dog was a young German Shepherd and needed a good long walk on a Saturday afternoon.

The duty officer at the British embassy whiled away his afternoon in the near deserted building, and watched the ripple of the Moskva River from his upper room.

He had run down Lenin Street. He had turned away from the shore front into a small alleyway. No more running then. He had walked as he had shrugged into his windcheater. One bad moment, when the windcheater had been on the ground and he had had to scoop it up. The gun under the shoulder of the windcheater. Another right turn, and another left turn, and the Volga car in front of him, and the man starting the engine.

The rifle – magazine detached and metal stock folded down – wrapped in sacking on the floor of the car. Going fast out of the city and towards the Alushta road.

"Did you succeed?"

He punched the air in front of his face, and turned to the wide billowing smile of his commander.› There was no obstacle to their flight. They had beaten the road blocks.

He was Abu Hamid. Abu Hamid was the name he had taken when he had joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was 28 years old. His body was bone thin, spare, as if he ate little, as if he enjoyed no luxuries. The complexion on his face was smooth with the exception of the scar under his left eye. He wore no moustache and his matted dark hair was cut close to his scalp. Beyond the scar he was unrec-ognisable, unremarkable.

He was a chosen man.

He sucked hard, like he was panting, on his cigarette.

He exploded the smoke from his mouth. He had stripped off the civilian clothes in which he had appeared on the front pavement of the Oreanda Hotel.

He was now in military fatigues. They had stopped by the roadside at the city's limits and behind the cover of flourishing saplings Abu Hamid had swiftly dug a deep hole in the ditch and crammed in it the windcheater, the trousers, the shirt, the moustache, and the wig.

The city of Yalta was behind them. The high slopes of oak and beech forest that dominated the city were lost to them. In a comer of the car park of the Sechonov Climatic and Physiotherapeutic Institute, shielded by small recently planted acacia and laurel and magnolia trees, they had transferred from the Volga car to a military jeep. The car could not be linked to them. The car had been hired from Intourist. The car had been fitted with false plates. Later, the plates exchanged, the car would be returned, the bill paid. None of that was the business of Abu Hamid.

The commander knew that the journey from Yalta to Simferopol would take, given a few minutes either way, one hour and three quarters. They hammered through Gurzuf, past the signed turnings to the Defence Ministry sanatorium and the "Sputnik" Youth Camp.

The commander's eyes flickered to the side mirrors of the jeep. They had no tail. Through Alushta, as if it did not exist, as if the narrowing streets in the town were merely an inconvenience on their journey. The commander pricked his ears to listen for a trailing siren. He heard nothing. The jeep straining when they climbed towards the lower reaches of the Chatir Dag that rose higher than any mountain in Lebanon, higher than the mystic Hermon of Syria, higher than any mountain of Palestine that was the homeland of Abu Hamid.

The aircraft should now be leaving Moscow. There was a schedule to be met. At the road's summit, under Chatir Dag, they did not pause to look back and down towards Yalta and the hazed seascape.

Abu Hamid leaned forward. He unwrapped the AK-47 assault rifle from the sacking on the floor space between his feet. He emptied the magazine. On semi-automatic, at a range of five or six paces, he had fired eleven bullets. He knew the weapon as he knew himself.

Now he put the remaining rounds with the magazine and the rifle carefully into the mouth of the sack, wrapped it tight into a bundle and tucked it under his feet. A tradesman's tool, and he had finished with it.

Holt lay on his bed.

He had heard the whispered talk in the corridor outside his room. He had already been into Ben's room and into Jane's room and he had packed their belongings. Ben's case and Jane's were at the foot of his bed.

He presumed the low voices outside were of a guard posted there. For his protection? To keep him inside the room?

Each half hour he rang reception to see if the line to Moscow was open, and each half hour he was told that it was not. Each half hour he requested a call to KGB headquarters in the city, and each time he was told that all KGB numbers were engaged.

There was no other explanation. Of course they had killed Ben and Jane. He lay on the bed, her blood still on his hands and on his shirt.

Simferopol is in the centre of the Crimean peninsular.

The city, with a population of close to 300,000, is the hub of the Crimea and from this regional capital the roads snake out to Yevpatoriya and Sevastopol and Yalta and Feodosija and Dzhankov. It is an old city, dominated now by industrial estates, its university, several research institutes. At Simferopol is also a military academy.

For the colonel commandant (foreign cadre training) that Saturday was a hell of a good day at the military academy. His best day in six months, in fact. The colonel commandant would this day wave goodbye, without a shade of regret, to the delegation of Palestinians. For the Ethiopians, the Cubans, the Angolans, even for the North Vietnamese, he could find some words of praise. Nothing good could be said for the animal Palestinians, not even as a courtesy at the farewell airport parade before the animals filed onto their aircraft. When the doors closed on the fuselage they would get the sharp index finger Nightly in the mess, to his brother officers, he catalogued their abuses.

Three of the animals caught trying to climb over the walls after curfew hour to hitch into the city. One with the insolence to complain that a prostitute in Simferopol had stolen his wallet. One returned to the academy by the militia after being arrested when trying to sell counterfeit American dollars. One brought back to the academy by the militia dead drunk and violent. Four who would be in solitary confinement right up to the last minute for attacking a senior instructor. One accused by a fine Party man of getting pregnant his fine daughter.

Not much sympathy from his colleagues in the mess, and rudeness to his face from the odious commander of the animals. One rifle lost, damage done all over the camp, and throughout the course an atmosphere of indiscipline that was insufferable to the colonel commandant. He would cheer their going, every last one of them from their ridiculously named groups. Popular Front, Sai'iqa, Democratic Front, Liberation Front, General Command, Struggle Command – idiot titles.

He was a career soldier. He despised these animals.

Through the colonel commandant's office window came the blast of Western music, loud and decadent, cassette players turned to full volume. The animals taunting their instructors, because the animals were going home.

His telephone rang.

The animals were in the gymnasium with their baggage waiting for transport to the airport. A fighter from Sai'iqa had argued with a fighter from the Struggle Command, and knifed him. The fighter from Sai'iqa was in the academy military police cells, the fighter from Struggle Command was in the academy sick bay.

"Where is their commander?"

Their commander was off base,

Too much. He slammed his fist onto his desk in fury.

This was too fucking much.

The teleprinters linking Moscow and Yalta murmured through the afternoon, on into the early evening. Questions and demands for more information from Moscow.

Scant detail relayed from Yalta.

A crisis committee sat at Dzerzhinsky Square feeding from the teleprinter material, and going hungry. No workable description of a gunman, no getaway car identified. Cartridge cases that were from the Kalashnikov family, and there were more than two million weapons in the country that could fire such bullets. The files on dissident elements in the Crimea were being studied.

In his office, the Foreign Ministry Embassy Liaison was left to clean his nails and watch his silent telephone.

The commander drove his jeep through the main gates of the military academy at Simferopol.

He waved cheerfully to the guard. He braked to allow a squad of Soviet conscripts to march across his path.

All the conscripts were marched wherever they went in the camp, a difference in attitudes, he reflected, between the training demanded by the Red Army and the training required for the fighting in Lebanon. He checked his watch. He thought they had made good time, he thought the Antonov transporter would now be approaching Simferopol airport. He stopped by the gymnasium, punched the shoulder of Abu Hamid. He was too concerned with the tightness of his schedule to take note of the three military policemen standing outside the main doors of the building.

The commander did not have to tell the young man to hold silence, to play a part of relaxed indifference when he was inside the gymnasium. His Abu Hamid would know. He drove away, drove to the office of the colonel commandant.

He breezed into the inner office. On any other day he would have waited more respectfully at the door, but it was the last day, and it was the day that was the brilliant culmination of a difficult and dangerous mission.

"Later than I thought, Colonel. Profuse apologies… "

He laid the jeep's keys on the desk of the colonel commandant.

"… One last expedition for shopping in the city, an opportunity to purchase merchandise that will remind me for the rest of my days in the service of the Palestinian Revolution of the warmth shown to us by the Soviet people…"

He saw at once the barely controlled fury of the commandant.

"… I trust my lateness has not inconvenienced you, Colonel. Shopping in the city is not always as fast as one would wish."

"You have been gone seven hours."

"Some shopping, a good lunch, time drifts…" He saw the clenched fist, the white knuckles. "There has been a problem?"

"A problem!…" the colonel commandant snorted.

"While you took lunch and wine and shopped, your hooligans have been brawling. I have one in the sick-bay, I have one locked in the guard house." The colonel commandant slapped a small double-bladed knife down onto his desk. "A knife fight while you were lunching and wining and shopping. I will tell you the military crime code for such an offence. Assault by one service person on another in the absence of any subordinate relations between them, that carries a minimum of two years confinement and a maximum of twelve years…"

"My abject apologies, colonel. I will deal with the offender at once…"

The colonel commandant stood. "You will do nothing of the sort. You will get it into your head that I have the authority to detain the entire cadre until a full investigation has been carried out."

The commander thought of Abu Hamid coming panting to the Volga car. He thought of the Kalashnikov in the sacking, hidden in the large shopping bag of the Simferopol beryozka souvenir store, and, hanging from his hand, the rifle listed as "lost on manoeuvres".

"But our aircraft…"

"Fuck the aircraft. A serious breach of discipline has taken place amongst unsupervised personnel."

"We have to take the aircraft." The bombast gone from the commander. Nervous and wheedling now. "It is of critical importance that we take the aircraft."

"A fortnight's delay, a thorough investigation, will teach these hooligans the authority of discipline."

"It cannot happen."

"Don't tell me what can or cannot happen. It should happen and it will happen."

Out of the confusion in Yalta would soon come order.

The commander shivered. The trap would close.

"I make a deal with you."

"You are in no position to offer me a deal, military regulations are not subject to negotiation."

"Give me a pistol…"

"For what?"

"And a mop and bucket…"

"For what?"

"And access to the guard room."

"For what?"

"So that I can shoot your hooligan and clear up the mess and remove your problem."

The colonel commandant blanched, sat down. "You would do that?"

"With my own hand. Give me the pistol."

The knife was returned to the drawer. "Take him with you, then. Take both of them and punish them at home."

"An admirable solution. The injured man is fit to travel?" He was told that the injured man could certainly fly.

The commandant regarded the Palestinian with disgust – and with awe.

He told his duty officer to send the bus to the gymnasium.

Even in the crowded interior of the bus, 58 seats for 61 personnel, and the luggage filling the rear boot and the aisle between the seats, the commander thought that Abu Hamid was a man apart, dreaming his own dreams in his own privacy. The man from Struggle Command sat pale at the back of the bus with his left arm in a sling. The man from Sai'iqa stood in the aisle at the front, beside the commander, in handcuffs. They drove out of the gates. Only the commander and Abu Hamid and the man from the Struggle Command and the man from Sai'iqa refrained from cheering as the barrier was lowered behind them. Through the drab city where a greyness hung that even the sunlight could not lift, past the Ukraina Hotel, and over the wide bridge spanning the Salgir River, and past the museum and the terraced parkland and the railway station, through the industrial estates, out towards the airport.

Around the perimeter of the airport fence. Waved through the gates into the military section. Past the buildings and the control tower, out along the edge of the tarmac.

The sun was low in the west, and it hit the silver lower belly of the Antonov transporter. The Antonov was decorated with the green and white and black roun-dels of the Syrian Air Force. The commander's breath squeezed between his teeth. Military bandsmen were grouped around a rostrum. There were steps in position at the forward door. A fuelling tanker was driving away.

From his hip pocket the commander took a folded khaffiyeh scarf, shook it open and wound it round his head and his face, as if he were a revolutionary fighter for Palestine, not an embarking passenger at the military section of Simferopol airport in the Crimea. As he descended from the bus the commandant's transport drew up. The camp instructors, impeccably turned out, jumped down from their truck.

The 61 men were lined up in two platoon-sized squads. The anthem of the Soviet Union was played by the Red Army band, interminable, and they were a single phonecall from disaster. A phone call from Yalta to Simferopol. The band struck havoc with a fighting march of the Palestine revolution. In his ears the bell of a telephone screamed.

The colonel commandant, cold and contemptuous, scarcely pausing for the interpreter, addressed the men.

If they had been seen transferring from the Volga to the jeep in the car park… In the mind of the commander the bell of a telephone clamoured.

"Our Party supports and will continue to support peoples fighting for their freedom. We will never agree to the unacceptable American demands that the Soviet nation should cease to support its friends."

The commander stood at attention in front of his men. Only the major who was his friend, only Major Said Hazan, would have dared to launch the plan. Such daring, such brilliance. He pleaded for the speech to end.

"I wish you good fortune in your war for the regaining of your homeland. Long live Free Palestine. Long live the Soviet Union. Long live our friendship of i r o n… "

The final words were drowned by the starting of the engines.

A ripple of applause from the two ranks of instructors behind the colonel commandant was lost in the aircraft's engine roar. The colonel commandant and the commander exchanged salutes, shook hands without warmth. The Palestinians gathered their luggage, and then scrambled to get aboard.

The commander came last, gesturing that Abu Hamid should be ahead of him. They threaded their way around the wooden crates that filled the centre of the hold and looked for the canvas seats, their backs to the fuselage. The light from the doorway was blotted out, a member of the aircrew turned the locking handle.

A terrible tension in the commander as the Antonov inched forward and started to swivel. He seemed to hear in his mind the ring of a telephone in the colonel commandant's office, and the squawk of a radio in the control tower. His stomach was knotted – they could still be brought back. The member of aircrew was yelling at him above the drive of the engines for his belt to be fastened.

Four hours and three minutes after an incident in Yalta, the Antonov transporter lifted off the long Simferopol runway. It took a course, as it climbed, to the south west and crossed the shore line of the Crimea close to the old battlefields of Sevastopol and Balaklava, then swung south over the darkening Black Sea. The aircraft had prior permission to overfly Turkish airspace, a standard arrangement. Ahead of it was a flight of two hours and 20 minutes, cruising speed 450 miles an hour, altitude 25,000 feet. Within 18 minutes the four giant Kuznetsov NK-12MV turbo-prop engines had carried the Antonov beyond Soviet jurisdiction.

The captain made the announcement. The excited yelling rang inside the aircraft. The commander sat slumped, drained of the energy to celebrate. Beside him he saw that Abu Hamid sat back in his seat, swaying with the motion of the aircraft. The commander thought the killer was at peace, and marvelled. Moving down the aisle towards them, steadying himself against the lashed-down crates, came Major Said Hazan.

The question was in the smooth child's stomach skin around the major's eyes.

"It was successful," the commander said. "The target was destroyed."

Abu Hamid saw that the major wore smart Syrian Air Force uniform, but his face was hidden by a wrapped wool scarf and his head was hidden by his wide peaked cap. Only the eyes were for him to see. Abu Hamid leaned forward. There was pride in his voice.

"There was a girl, with the ambassador, she too died."

Major Said Hazan ducked his head in acknowledgement, clasped the shoulders of the two men each in turn, with a leather-gloved hand. He made his way back to the cockpit.

The landfall would be high over the Turkish town of Samsun, the flight path would be above the central Anatolian mountains, the Syrian frontier would be over-flown east of Aleppo, and then the long descent to Damascus.

The words as taught him in the camps of Damascus before the journey to Simferopol were soundness in the throat of Abu Hamid.

The thoughts echoed in his mind. The thoughts were of the Old Man of the Mountains who had built his fortress a thousand years ago in the valley of Alamut and gathered his followers, who were the Assassins.

Enclosed in the valley that was paradise were palaces and pavilions, channels flowing with wine and honey, and young girls who danced and sang. Every pleasure was found here for the Assassins until the Old Man of the Mountains called one forward.

"Go from here and kill the man whose name I give you… When you return you will enter again into paradise… should you not return then my angels will seek you out and carry you back to our paradise."

A thousand years ago word of the skill and dedication of the Assassins of Syria, travelling from the valley of Alamut, had spread across the known world. Brilliant in disguise, unrivalled in their dedication and fanaticism, ruthless in murder, the Assassins were feared by kings and princes and military commanders and civil gover-nors and the priests of Sunni Islam. Abu Hamid saw himself as the descendant of the old Assassins of ten centuries before.

The words, soundless in the throat of Abu Hamid, were those of the Old Man of the Mountains, handed down over a millennium.

"To kill these people is more lawful than rainwater."

There was no advance warning. The car drove unannounced into the forecourt of the embassy. Three men in the car, all pressed into service and summoned from their weekend break. A First Deputy Foreign Minister, a protocol official, a full colonel of the Second Directorate. They were shown into an ante room on the ground floor where they were watched by a security man.

The duty officer for that weekend was a Second Secretary, Trade. He was still buttoning his collar when he came into the room. Grim faces staring back at him, all three men standing. They introduced themselves, even the one from State Security. Not the moment to offer them tea, nor the moment to ask them to sit. Their seniority meant urgent business to be conducted without delay.

"I am the duty officer," he said. He produced a pencil and notepad and waited on them.

The First Deputy Foreign Minister seemed for a moment to examine the close patternwork of the carpet, from Bokhara, then he straightened.

"It is with the utmost regret that as the representative of my government I have the sad duty to inform you that His Excellency, Sir Sylvester Armitage, and Miss Jane Canning were today the victims of a cruel and cowardly attack in the city of Yalta. As a result of this attack His Excellency and Miss Canning have died. The third member of the delegation, Mr Holt, is unhurt. I am instructed to inform you that the Soviet government has made available a military aircraft to take to Yalta any members of your staff who would wish to go. The aircraft is ready to leave at your convenience. I am able to tell you that a comprehensive criminal investigation has been launched in Yalta, and it is our earnest hope that the investigation will bear fruit soon."

The duty officer was scribbling his note, in longhand.

Incredulity on his face. Lips moving, but they could not formulate the barrage of questions.

"The deaths were caused by shooting. His Excellency and Miss Canning were hit many times as they were leaving the hotel for lunch with the city authorities; they were dead on arrival at hospital. The initial indication is that the culprit was involved in an attempt to enter the hotel for the purpose of robbing the cash desk, but panicked as he was confronted by the British delegation leaving."

"Where's Holt?" The first stuttered question.

"He is in the hotel. He is quite safe."

"But this happened, you say, before lunch. Why hasn't he telephoned?"

"Mr Holt is in shock."

The mind of the duty officer was racing, incoherent.

"Didn't they have any protection?"

"Later there will be an opportunity for such detail."

The KGB colonel added, "There was a representative of state security at the hotel. He performed his duties with great bravery, but sadly was not able to prevent the attack."

"God Almighty…"

The First Deputy Foreign Minister said, "We shall be at the Foreign Ministry. We are at the disposal of the British people in this moment of anguish."

"It wasn't terrorism?"

"It was the act of a common criminal in pursuance of theft," the KGB colonel said decisively.

In darkness and amongst a sea of pimple landing navigation lights the Antonov put down at El Masr military airbase. They were checked with military thoroughness for contraband goods. They were home, in that home for these refugee strays of the Middle East was to be found in the Syrian Arab Republic. They had been together six months, now they were to disperse.

Minibuses each for the Struggle Command, and for Sai'iqa, and for the Popular Front, and for the Democratic Front, and for the General Command, and for the Liberation Front. The culprit from Sai'iqa had lost his handcuffs five minutes after take off, the victim from Struggle Command embraced his attacker when they parted. The commander reflected that the Russians could never understand his children.

All went their separate ways, except that Abu Hamid with his commander travelled from the base in the Mercedes car that had been sent to collect Major Said Hazan. Abu Hamid, unshaven and with the sweat smell on his body from his sprint away from the Oreanda Hotel, rode out of the base cushioned in the back seat between the officer of Syrian Air Force Intelligence and the officer of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

When the car had gathered speed along the wide highway from, the airport, the commander said softly to Major Said Hazan, "It was magnificent, Said. It was just as you had said it would be."

The voice was muffled through the scarf. "You played your part, friend."

Two quiet men talking casually across Abu Hamid, as if he were not there.

"But you took a great risk."

"Risk nothing, and it is not possible to achieve victory."

"When will the claim be made?"

"Claim?"

"What has happened has been a triumph for the Popular Front. The Popular Front should be, must be, credited…"

"There will be no claim. There will only be silence."

Abu Hamid heard the ice chill in the voice. He felt the major shift his body further into his seat.

He was in the darkness, on the bed, when he heard the light knock on his door. He thought he might have been to sleep. He felt the wet of his tears on his face when he rubbed his eyes. He heard his name called. He slid off the bed, opened the door, let in the flood of light.

The security officer said, "Thank God we've reached you, young man."

Holt blinked at him, turned away from the door.

"They gave us an executive j e t… "

"Bloody decent of them."

"I came down with the counsellor. He's at the hospital, I've been at militia HQ."

"Super, first class."

"It's all right, Holt, you've had a bloody rough time, eh?"

Holt gazed into the security officer's face. "Rubbish.

It's not bloody rough when you're watching a shooti n g… "

"Easy, young man."

Holt flared. "Easy… it's to be easy, is it? We come down here, Low bloody Risk bloody posting, we're set up for a shooting gallery. We're chopped down like Boxing Day pheasants…"

"I understand you were not exactly co-operative."

"Would you have been? What do they want co-operation for? They've just wiped out my boss and my girl, and they want me to help their bloody inquiry, put a gloss on their bloody lies. 'Course I didn't bloody co-operate."

A sharpness in the security officer's voice. "I have to tell you that the Soviet authorities could not have been more sympathetic and eager to help me. I have been given a very full briefing on their investigation and its conclusion… "

"So they soaped you up."

"A full briefing on their investigation and its conclusion."

Holt's voice dropped. "What conclusion?"

"They have told me that they identified an army deserter as the criminal responsible. It was his intention to rob the hotel at gun point. He panicked as the ambassador and Miss Canning and yourself were coming out of the hotel, and opened fire. They had good eye-witness descriptions of him, and this evening a vehicle in which he was travelling was waved down on the outskirts of the city. In attempting to evade arrest he was shot dead…"

"What else did they tell you about this 'deserter'?"

"That he was a 22-year-old Byelorussian."

"That's Minsk, he'd be a European."

"Did you see him, Holt, did you get a look at him?"

"At 15 feet. I saw his face."

The security officer lit a cigarette. The smoke spiralled in the quiet dark room.

"The man you saw, Holt, could he have been from Byelorussia?"

"They soaped and flannelled you."

"Give it to me straight, eh?"

"If he's from Minsk they'd had to have had a heat-wave there through this winter."

"Soaped and flannelled, as you say. I'm very sorry, very sorry about your girl."

Holt went to the window, showed his back to the security officer.

On Sunday morning a Royal Air Force VC-10 was diverted from its Cyprus to Brize Norton flight run to drop down at Simferopol.

The coffins containing the bodies of Sir Sylvester Armitage and Jane Canning were carried to the cargo doors by a bearer party of Soviet Marines. The coffins were taken past an honour guard of officer cadets from the military academy who stood sternly to attention, heads down and rifles in reverse.

The sight of the coffins, and the presence among them of young Holt and the counsellor and the security officer, was sufficient to subdue a company of para-troopers returning to the United Kingdom from a month's exercises.