Kingfisher

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

David stayed in the dull-lit recess at the back of the aircraft, his body pressed hard against the fastened drinks trolley. Waiting for nothing, passing the minutes away. He had not moved since the Italian had been taken from his seat to the doorway. After the noise of the shot that had sent a shudder through him, involuntary and unsought, barely a muscle or a nerve had functioned. Just stood there, hearing the rhythmic sounds of his wrist watch, willing the progress of its hands. The gun was held loosely across his waist, apparently ready to be fired at a moment of crisis, quickly and expertly, and giving the impression of a man who had found confidence and was his master.

David alone realized the deception.

The exact moment when he knew that all was over, that the struggle was hopeless, was not clear even to him. Perhaps it had been on the pavement in Kiev as Moses had stumbled and shuffled through his pockets in search of the balaclava. Perhaps it had been in the woodman's hut when Isaac had first raised the plan for the break-out and in doing so had usurped his own place as innovator and initiator. Perhaps it had been with the words, flat and unemotional, of ground control over Hanover when they had been ordered to fly on. Perhaps it had been as the dawn had risen lighting the cabin and he had witnessed the fear and hatred that alternated on the faces of those who were guarded by the guns. Perhaps the moment had come, the journey been completed, when he had seen the surprise and terror and comprehension merge on the face of the harmless and inoffensive little Italian. Which moment he did not know, but at one of them had come the knowledge that the game was completed, that he was ready for what Isaac called

'surrender and capitulation'.

They were big and bold words and worthy of a greater occasion. Armies surrendered, governments capitulated. They signified momentous times, nothing as scabrous or as dirty as the collapse in morale of three young Jews far from home. Babi Yar… that had been a great wrong, thousands machine-gunned because they were Jewish, for no other reason. A hundred times a thousand people had died in the ravine of Babi Yar. Jews, and not remembered, and the cheap belated monument made no mention of them. And those who came with flowers on the anniversary, on the day in late September, they were stoned and scourged and imprisoned -or

'detained', as the authorities called it. Babi Yar had been the flint that forged the four of them together, a desire to avenge, to tilt the balance of the wrong… and now the water had come in its torrent and destroyed the flickering of that small flame.

He had liked Moses, known him better than Isaac, because he was younger and less able and more dependent, and because he laughed more. Remembered him now, untidy, confused, willing to try, willing to become a casualty, a statistic. And Moses was already taken, and had bought them time- at what cost David could not know. And for what?

The Italian should not have died for Babi Yar, nor even the schoolmaster who had jumped. It was not their quarrel. They did not wear the uniform of the authorities, did not carry the badge of office presented by the bullies who would not permit prayers to be said by the ditch where the Jews had fallen, that had become a tip for rubbish. Nor was it they who sent the Jews to the camps, arrested those who sought passage to Israel. They had no guilt, yet one had died and it had been intended another should have fallen in his place.

If that was the cost of avenging Babi Yar and all that it had accumulated in shame, then the price was too high, that was the feeling of David as he stood far from the others at the rear of the cabin aisle. How to surrender? How to conclude his part without destroying what Isaac sought, without betraying his friends? He had thought long and hard behind the unmoving eyes, struggling with his tiredness till the solution came reluctantly upon him. A brutal, desperate solution that brought a chill over his body. And then the decision was made and there followed a calm and a clarity of thought that had been denied him for many hours.

Often the American had looked at him, peering and twisting round in his seat, inviting conversation, still crowned with the knotted handkerchief that he wore across his scalp. While David had wrestled with his problem the man had kept his silence, bided his time. Now Edward R. Jones Jr recognized the lightness in the face, appreciated that he could speak.

'How long do you go on like this? You shoot one, you lose one, but the British aren't talking, they aren't moving, not an inch.' The same nagging, grating voice, primed with aggression. David understood not a word, knew only that behind the deference to the gun and his youth the older man sneered at him. He shrugged his shoulders, and looked on down the aisle.

' I said, how much longer do we have to sit on our backsides here, waiting for you to call it quits?' David turned with the tolerance of one who is irritated by a wasp but cannot gather the energy to swat it, a half smile on his mouth.

'Don't you speak English? Don't you understand me? Was it only the girl that went to school?'

David no longer cared to listen, shut himself apart again, sensing the subsidence of the American in the face of his inability to communicate. Heard him mutter to his wife with her loud clothes and rinsed hair and hands that sought to silence her man, prevent provocation. What did that fool know of Babi Yar, or the labour camps? What did he know of militia headquarters, of the interrogations, of the humiliations?

His eyes roved over the heads of the passengers. Through the hours he had come to recognize some, to know which were eager for his approval and would cringe for him, which tried to hide their pent-up hatred. He had begun to acknowledge them as individuals, had carved faces and personalities from the initial mass that they had taken on the journey. The children were still quiet, he could not say how or why. The old man with the farm boots bristled with independence as best he could from the confines of his seat belt. The pilot, Tashova, with her neat and close-cut hair, who held herself above them, superior to their struggle. The navigator, cautiously interested in what happened close to him, but never speaking. The Italians who had screamed, some of whom still cried and held each other's arms. The woman halfway forward, in the widow's clothes, with the baby on her knee and a pitch of smell around her and the reddened weather-stained face of the country and who asked each time he passed for milk for the child. The man beside her, who seemed a stranger, and whispered that she should not speak lest she draw attention to herself.

Those who were frightened, those who were bold, those who were indifferent, those who rested on their nerves and those whose eyes darted to accumulate each nuance of mood from their captors. He had begun to know them all. But the familiarity had won him no friendship. No warmth, no love, no affection, only the loathing of those who watched him now.

Abruptly David started to move the length of the aisle. His hands had tightened on the gun barrel, fingers entwined around the trigger guard. In front of him, their faces masked in shadow, were Isaac and Rebecca. Without a victory, he thought, not even there where it had lain waiting.

Should have won her by conquest, should have taken her, hours, weeks, months ago. Isaac had struck her, out there in the full gaze of the passengers, and now she fawned at him and played to him, and was close so that their bodies touched and their voices would be soft with the intimacy of equal conversation. Perhaps that was the defeat that hurt him above all. One could be proud and surrender to an army, capitulate to a government, but when defeat came from the hands of your friend, when the prize at stake was not great but the way between the thighs of a girl, then there was the capacity for wounding. He had hit her and she had come back to him; the bitch that snivels at the ankle when it has been whipped. And Isaac no better, on no higher a pedestal. He had been betrayed by her, yet now he nestled his shoulder close and protectively by hers. But irrelevant now, decision taken. Just a child she had seemed to him, a follower, who was not worth the attention of affection or love, and now that she was taken by his friend regret dominated him, and he fought to hold back the tears that welled in his eyes.

As he passed the woman with the baby arrested his arm.

"Sir, there can be milk for the baby. That cannot hurt you.'

He saw the pleading, and the screwed, torn face of the infant, and the nervousness of the man who counselled quiet.

' I don't know,' he said hollowly.

'But you are the leader,' she persisted. 'If you tell the others to allow it then they will not prevent it. Milk can be sent to the plane.'

" It is not easy…*

' It is just for a child. Many hours it has not fed. A child can do you no harm.'

Angrily David wrenched himself clear from the clinging hand and continued down the aisle.

If he had taken the girl then it would not have been as it was now. Could have been in the hut, on the dry and dusty planking, or on the sacking of the window cover if they had first shaken the spiders and cobwebs loose, or in the forest among the leaves and watched by the birds. He looked at her closely, eating into her clothes, his thoughts drifting to the whiteness of her skin, the softness that would be her breasts, the firmness of the hips on which he would have spent himself. Why had it not happened? Why had there never been the moment? And when he had gone would either understand that it was because he loved them, both of them as his sister and brother?

Isaac and Rebecca had ceased to talk and watched curiously as he came awkwardly towards them, sensing in their separate ways that the control he so obviously sought to maintain was a wasted, puny thing.

There were many contrasts between the two men who walked together across the car park that had been designated for operational traffic only.

Both were trained and expert Counter Insurgency Operators -CIOs in the restricted training manuals – but the methods they had learned to use and that suited their differing temperaments were hugely varied. Charlie Webster, 49, married, two kids, hard-put to meet the bills, keep the garden trim, done it all and seen it all, and opted out, tried to close the file. Arie Benitz, 32, single, devoid of ties and personal relations, a room at the barracks, the seven-days-a-week student, top of the tree and looking for a higher summit. Charlie who had survived to grow old and paunchy through cunning and stealth and the ability to merge into backgrounds. Benitz, the direct, hedonist fighter, faster and dirtier than those they pitted him again. Charlie, who saw all points of argument from whatever side of the spectrum. Benitz under no such disadvantage, his world neatly divided into compartments of right and wrong. Charlie, with the flesh to spare under his chin and the haunted flickering eyes of a man who has been hunted and harried without the strength of military unit comradeship to turn to. Benitz, muscled, vibrant, his strength undisguised by the hanging, ill-fitting clothes the Royal Air Force had dressed him in, having to shorten his stride to keep pace with the other.

Charlie had never been part of a spearhead attack team. Benitz had never taken the role of the deep-sleeper infiltration agent. Out of the very diversity the men found a respect for each other.

Acting without an order, was Charlie, but then there were many precedents in his career for that, and he didn't give a damn for the inquests his initiative might rain on him. He had made his decision that Benitz alone could help him avoid the mayhem that he believed was the only possible result for a storm assault by the SAS on the Ilyushin. In his conceit-and Charlie was not short of that as befitted a man who had spent an operational life outside the barrack's walls – he had told himself that he alone of the crisis committee, Charlie Webster, understood the capabilities and state of mind of the three young people, and the heart of ft was his conviction that Isaac, the little bastard, would stand and shoot it out, and be prepared to die. Across the car park he saw it all – the crossfire, the smoke, the screaming, the children rising from their seats to escape the blasting of the automatics, the bodies cut and ripped by the tempered steel of the shells, and when it was over, just the blood and the moaning, the shock and the pain. Children like his, like the ones in his road, like the ones at the bus stop in the morning, the ones who chased a football across the street. And all because they'd lost their cool up in the control tower clouds, just like Clitheroe. said. The big men from London who'd seen a single stiff, and couldn't face the same humiliation again, and would hide behind their bloody outrage, and find the easy exit.

So he walked with Arie Benitz to the transit van where the driver idled with his morning paper, and toyed with the cigarette that he had tucked into the palm of his hand.

Charlie said, 'Same drill as before. Close to the aircraft are some petrol tankers, where the Special Air Service detachment are holed up. I want to talk to them first, hear their feel of it, and then well head out to the plane. When the van is behind the tankers it stops and we jump for it, flick the doors and off she goes. It's what they're doing to ferry the military back and forward.'

Benitz listened, well satisfied.

The Israeli climbed inside, Charlie following, both squatting on the van's floor, the closing of the door the cue for the driver.

'You have clearance to take me?' Benitz asked.

'We can do without any more paperwork on this caper.'

It would not be like this at home.'

Charlie said quietly so that his words were almost lost in the echoed motion of the engine,

'Sometimes you have to kill people like this, but not for the sake of it, and not when you risk the innocent.'

' It is a luxury that is seldom given us, to be able to decide. The tide is not often with us. It is rare for me to have the order that I have been given, that I should help your efforts towards a surrender.'

Won't know what's hit them, thought Charlie. Shining bloody angel climbs the ladder, and then they find he's scaled and tailed and horned, and bringing the news that destroys them, kicking them in the crutch and with interest, then booting them again, just when they're getting used to it. Not a job you'd want, Charlie, not if they were your own people, not telling them it was all over, all down the drain, that they should have stayed home.

'We're just about there,' the driver shouted back. 'Ease the door and go the moment I stop.

Don't forget to close it again, and don't stop, don't hang about.'

He crawled forward, brushing against the Israeli's body, scrabbling for the door handle, moved it and waited. The stop was sudden, lurching them together, and Charlie had the door open and slid clumsily, showing his stiffness, to the ground. Benitz out straight after him and both blinking in the sunlight. Charlie fastened the door, banged lightly on it and watched the van pull away.

'Get yourself behind the wheels,' a command, not to be questioned, and the two settled themselves against the warmed rubber of the tyres that soaked up the heat. From his left side Charlie was aware of the blur of camouflage uniform that sprinted to him. A day's growth on the face, dark and mixed with the sweeps of lotion used to banish the whiteness of skin. 'Captain Howard. They didn't tell me anyone was coming out, there's been nothing about you on the radio.' No suspicion, only confusion that protocol had not been observed.

' It's because of him,' Charlie said quickly, 'they didn't want it all over the net. This is Colonel Arie Benitz, Israeli Defence Force, flown in by the RAF. His line at home is this situation. His presence is sensitive.'

Howard acknowledged the explanation. None of his business anyway.

'There's not much here at the moment. The Major and ten others are working on the DC6 over on the far side. Leaves seven of us here, with a basic fire cover role. The body's still out there by the Wheels, and we gather there's no contact about shifting it. The camera isn't picking up much, but the tall boy has just come down towards the front, so they're all together now where the fish-eye picks them up.'

No more explanation required, and they stood together, the soldier and the Israeli waiting for Charlie's lead. But he was quiet, saying nothing, trying to work at the problem that itched somewhere far back in his mind. That did not fit the pattern, that was out of place and therefore annoying and that he should clear up. That Benitz should want them to surrender, and nothing specific and categoric on their future. Wouldn't want them shipped out, couldn't, but there must be more to it, the Russian must have been shooting his mouth, must have been a deal somewhere down the line, a deal that they hadn't been told of in the control tower. Had to be something that was covert, that was being kept from them. But all a bit of a bloody mystery. Nothing new in that. When did anyone ever give you the grand picture? Just packed you off and told you to get on with it. But he'd have to clear it up, sometime, get it all sorted out. People should know where they stood

…

From the cement hut the top half of a civilian emerged, sweeping his head round, searching for the army officer.

Excitement in his voice, urgency. 'Captain, come and look here. On the fish-eye, they're hanging on to each other like it's goodbye – hugging, kissing, shaking hands, the whole works.'

Everything else erased from Charlie's thoughts. Jesus help us, not a bloody break-out, not a split for it, not a fucking slaughter inside? Captain mirroring him, barking names, and as the soldiers ducked from the hut to their appointed fire positions the young officer was cocking his Ingram submachine-gun with a single, noise-laden movement

Rebecca struggling not to cry, Isaac distantly silent and refusing to argue, and David all the time stumbling through his explanation. All holding and clinging to each other as a last link was forged with the past they had known.

' It is treachery, it is a cowardice to you both, but I cannot last any more. I cannot remain, not inside here, closed in here, waiting, for what will happen. Too long it has been for me, and it has broken me… not any longer, not trapped in here, looking and waiting through hours and days more, perhaps. There has to be a gesture for me, the only gesture that I am capable of, but I cannot last more. I had never thought it would take so long, that time would creep so slowly, that there would be nothing but existing here and waiting. And perhaps then we die, or we feel the manacles on us. I cannot wait for that. We are doomed, Isaac, damned and finished, and I am afraid. Afraid because I do not know what will happen. I cannot wait any more to be answered.'

He felt the fingers of the girl tight at the back of his neck, holding his shirt collar, and below at his arms the pressure of Isaac, both pinioning him against the lavatory door as if wanting to strengthen him in his purpose. Neither tried to turn him, so that there was no retreat, no backing from his course. Isaac, it was brave and courageous, and it might have been successful. But that time is gone, and I can no longer help you. I want to leave you in my own fashion and I do not want to look back. I am only a weakness to you now. Help me, Isaac. Walk away, take Rebecca and go far so that I will not look at you.'

His arm around the waist of Rebecca, Isaac pulled the two of them clear. He saw the deep, nut-brown eyes, felt the hand join with his own, gripped it. 'We showed the bastards, David. We showed them what we could do. Only four, and now they know of us. Moshe and you and me and Rebecca. They will remember us. We are not beaten yet, I promise you, David. We are not beaten yet…'

'They will come with the guns tonight… they are waiting for the darkness… only the darkness, when you are sleeping…'

'On your way, David.*

David smiled, and there was the freshness of his youth and the charm of his mouth and the flourish of victory that curled at his nostrils. He reached in his pocket and drew from it the straight stick magazine, and tossed it easily towards Isaac who caught it with his free hand.

' I will only need one. I have no need for another.*

'We will talk of you in Israel…'

David was gone from their sight, to the aircraft door, the Kingfisher flown from them. They heard the sound of his body thudding on to the concrete below.

'One out, sir. On the ground and armed.*

A dismembered, disconnected voice to Charlie who crouched by the wheel close to the booted feet of the marksman. Soldiers crawling and scuffing on the ground to gain better vision, a superior aiming point, and the captain wreathed in puzzlement.

'Just one, no hostages?'

'Just the one. Armed. An SMG."

A pause in time, Charlie and Benitz and the military frozen still.

'Doesn't look like a white flag job. Gun's up now.'

"We'd prefer him alive if we can have him that way. Don't drop him yet.'

'At this range I can take his kneecap out. Certainty.'

'Hold it, hold it.' In Charlie's ear the captain whispered, 'What in Christ's name do you think he's at?'

' I don't know,' Charlie answered. 'I just don't know.'

Never looking away, speaking from the side of his mouth, and with the quiet of a man who is in church, Arie Benitz said: 'It's very clear, Charlie. He has made his farewells, and now he wants to die. Better they should do it quickly, and kindly.'

Charlie turned to look at the Israeli. Too late. The face averted, the eyes hidden*

Braised, shaken, grazed at the shins where the cheap cloth of his trousers had been ripped by the fall, David rose first to one knee, then more slowly edged his way upright on to his feet. Had to fight for breath, recapture the air blown from his lungs and combat the ferocity of the sun bursting into his face after the diluted greyness of the Ilyushin interior. A step forward, and another, testing the unfamiliarity of his surroundings, but feeling the warmth on his face, the wind at his back, the exultation at the freedom. Round to his right an armoured car, and the big gun following him, locking on to his body with the sights, repetition to the left with the crew scrambling on its surface, and to the front the immobile, precious tankers. The tankers that held their salvation, carried the fuel they needed if they were to see the coast and the orange groves and the mountains of Israel; bright, gaudy, abrasive in their paintwork. And a triumph in his eyes when he captured the half-glimpse of the short stubbed barrel of the rifle deep in the darkness beside the forward wheel of the central tanker. That was where they were, hidden, covert, and he had discovered them.

Remember the bird that Timofey had spoken of. Remember the Kingfisher bird, fast and darting, sure in attack, brilliant in retreat, with the colours of a prince and a victor. Remember the dream of the Kingfisher, to be carried to a faraway place safe on the technicolour wings of speed and colour. But the nets had come and the beaters and the men with guns and there were no longer the river banks and bushes of concealment. They have clipped you, my Kingfisher bird, lured you from your sanctuary, broken, violated, trampled you.

The dream would not last. The sleep would soon be lost. Only the clarity of the machine-guns and the poking, prying rifle barrel would remain.

Five shots in the first burst, finger snatching at the trigger bar, feeling the throbbing pumping of the recoil against his shoulder, watching the creeping and ineffective gatherings of dust that told him he was short, that he would not reach the man behind the wheels.

Silence.

'Come out, you pigs. Come out and fight. Come out and shoot. I'm here for you to kill..

Fire again, whispered the instruction to himself. Dropped down to one knee. Take the aim steadily, don't hurry, there is time now, time to control the shaking of the wrist, time to hold the' flight of the barrel till it steadies. Why don't they shoot? Why don't they end it? Don't they know, can they not understand? They must shoot soon, the miserable, can- cered pigs, they must shoot soon. How long do they think the gun can be held, how long before it drops, before the hands rise in surrender of their own jurisdiction?

Aim again and fire so that they must shoot back.

'You cannot make me grovel before you, not at the last, not now. You cannot want that, to make me surrender, crawl in capitulation to you.'

Shoot, shoot, hurt the pigs, wound them, anger them. Finger sealed on the trigger, molten to it, the hammering against the muscle of his shoulder. The dirt trail inching forward, creeping to the tyre, hunting the pig in his sty, searching for him, sniffing for him, the long waving line of ricochets and flying bullets closing on his target.

'Find him Find him!' David screamed.

One shot fired in retaliation. For the marksman it was an easy shot, seventy yards and a static target, better odds than a fairground range and all the time in the world to line the crossed wires of the telescopic sight on the upper chest. Time to reflect too before the captain tapped his shoulder, time to look at the face and its contorted and twisted features, time to see the heaving of the chest. Seemed to be talking to himself, the little bugger, seemed to be saying something, all the time he was firing. Too easy really, not even worth thinking about, never get a pigeon that simple, not even a bloody rook.

David was picked off the ground, hurled a dozen feet backwards and came to rest spreadeagled, arms and legs outstretched, the gaping entry wound a tribute to the marksman's skill. There were no convulsions, no tremors, no useless lingering of life.

On his hands and knees, low under the chassis of the tanker Charlie Webster saw him fall, seemed to feel himself the power and hitting thrust of the one answering blow, closed his eyes, screwed them shut, muttered a soundless obscenity.

He felt the Israeli's arm swathed across his back, and the knot of the fist clamped in the shirt above his shoulder. Heard the man sigh, a low whisper of pain. So, even he feels it, thought Charlie, even he who is hardened and has killed many. Head of the bloody Storm squad, even him.

'But Isaac won't sell himself so cheap,' said Charlie.

They had walked five kilometres back from the police station.

More than two hours since they had been called from the cells, expecting only another session of interrogation, but instead they had been led up the stairs and then out into the hallway of the building. Their papers had been returned to them and the man in uniform had swung on his heel leaving the couple to fend for themselves with the weight of the heavy swing doors and find their own way back to their home.

Hardly a word had passed between David's parents as they had trudged the length of the streets and along the pitted pavements. Nothing to say, nothing to communicate. Old and wise enough to know the virtue of quiet. There had been hours of questioning, first the mother on her own, then later when the father had been brought from work they had stood side by side. A night spent in the cells, and then more questions through the morning stolidly enduring the repetitions of the officer behind the desk. Always the same point, no deviation from the perpetual question. Who were his friends? Who did he go out with? Again and again. Never a need for them to resort to threats. They were elderly, defenceless, incapable of resistance, and they had answered. Moshe. .. Isaac… Rebecca… there were no others. They had been shown the police photographs of the dead policeman, they had been told of the seizing of the airliner, of the killing of the pilot, that the aircraft had landed in Britain which was a country too far away and inaccessible for them to conjure the necessary images. The officer said their son would die there in a foreign country or if he surrendered would be brought back to face trial and execution in his own city; he seemed not to mind either course.

Then they had been permitted to go.

There had been a cluster of neighbours outside the house – some Jewish, some not, but all had drifted away as the couple approached their home. Word of plague spreads fast and they were contaminated, this pair, dangerous to touch. They did not speak to those who backed away at their approach; there was no reason to.

David's father opened the front door and put his arm around the shoulders of his wife. It had been a proud household, exemplary in the neatness of the three ground-floor rooms in which they lived. It would take them many hours to clear the debris from the floor, to shift the confusion of the search from the threadbare carpet. They had been thorough in their work, every drawer emptied, every cupboard spilled out, every chest upturned, every ornament split open.

Thrown in the firegrate, the glass smashed, was the large portrait photograph of their son, taken many years back on the day of his Bar Mitzvah – young, radiant, close-cut washed- down hair, promise and hope. David's mother drew it from the resting place on the newspaper that in summer covered the coal and chopped wood. It should not be there when the girls returned.