Kingfisher

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Isaac was back again in his lair, hugging the drinks trolley, ignoring the sights that he had lived with, the coats and possessions stuffed into the racks, the printed flower patterns on the walls, the terse material covering of the seats, the bobbing heads. Rebecca sat huddled in the cockpit doorway, shunning the sight of the body of the captain, unmoving and whitened by the pallor of death. Both from their different positions could see the top of the ladder, saw it buckle and shake before there was Charlie's shoulder for them to fasten on, and his growing height as he climbed into view. He seemed to pause for a moment, to hesitate and look about him, nostrils dilating to the smell of the interior. His eyes roamed about him, and there was a smile of recognition on his face, hasty but still evident, when he saw the girl, followed by a slight inclination of his head and then at his mouth the faint twist of protest, unspoken, at the pistol levelled at his chest. He turned his head, back towards the world beyond the hatch and called in English so that only Rebecca understood him. 'It's fine, Arie. Come on up, the party's ready.'

Isaac, squinting down the length of the aisle, trying to penetrate the face, assess the man: the enemy or the ally? Isaac needing an answer. Didn't fit the image of the enemy. Too old, too care-worn, too gross about the waist. An ordinary man such as he would have seen in Kiev, who might work at the railway station or occupy an office in the Bureau of State Pensions. He moved with neither the suspicion nor the aggression of a man who would do them harm. But this was the one who had broken them, who was the spokesman for the great force on the outside, who had not conceded to their demand for fuel. And his weapon had been placid, unyielding reasonableness, the tap that dripped on and on, beating out messages of logic and persuasion in endless repetition. Rebecca had been beaten from the time they first heard his voice, David following her, and now he, Isaac, joining his colleagues in defeat. How many times had he said there would be no fuel before the message slowly and inexorably won through? Not an enemy, but not an ally, not this man with the dirt-stained shirt and the crumpled, rounded trousers. Nothing he had said had carried friendship, sympathy or understanding. He could not be an ally. A functionary, that was what the man Charlie was. The one who had been sent to do the work.

The man that followed him was different, sharper on his feet, quicker in his movements, harder eyes. Poised, intense. He was an opponent, to be watched. But this was the man sent by his own people, the one they had to hear before he took Rebecca past the trolley barricade to the place of privacy in the far end corridor, beside the back toilets, close to the rear door. Not now, Isaac, shut it out: the time comes fast enough.

Charlie began to walk down the aisle of the plane, slowly, gently, so that there could be no doubts about his intentions. Then he stopped where all could see him, reach into contact with him, his hand resting relaxed on a seat-back. Confident, friendly, assured.

The famous smile, winning friends, putting the fears at ease, the man who was in control, looking to the passengers as his priority, avoiding Isaac with his pinched and sprung intensity, and his submachine-gun. Not looking back at the drab girl with the pistol.

'Hello, my name is Charlie Webster. Just "Charlie", they generally call me. I'm with the British Foreign Office and I've come to take you off the plane. It won't be immediately, but it'll be very soon. You just have to be patient for a while longer. I know you've been that already – fantastic – but just a little bit longer while we sort some things out with the gentleman and the lady. Please stay in your seats, don't move at all, and remember that it won't be long now.'

There were some who found his Russian difficult to follow, so there was a chorus of explanation as the word was passed back among the rows of seats till all comprehended. The applause came suddenly and spontaneously, sixty men and women and children hammering their hands together and shouting their support. Charlie blushed and smiled again, and put up his hand without avail to halt the flood of gratitude sweeping down the cabin. He looked for someone to speak to, and was grateful for the presence of the girl pilot, still staring to the front, hands moving in rhythm with the others, tears on her cheeks, losing the fight with her emotions.

Charlie said, 'You are Miss Tashova. I want you to know that everyone in the control tower, all the authorities that are gathered there, have expressed their great admiration for your achievement last night. The landing was brilliant, absolutely bloody brilliant, if you'll excuse me.

They are looking forward to congratulating you personally.' Just once she slipped a glance to him, without commitment, without dropping her reserve, then gazing again into the dour material of the seat-back in front of her.

Keep it going, Charlie, keep it moving around, gentle and natural. Make the two of them believe it's all over, that it's finished, out of their control. No negotiation, no concession, just that tbe game's gone, the whistle's blown. 'Taking the initiative', the boffins would call it, and holding it so that Isaac couldn't wrest it back. Silly little bugger, should have known his bible, rule one,

'Never let the bastards with the open faces and the empty hands on board.' Curtains after that, Isaac, old sunshine.

He moved forward two more rows. Closer to Isaac, closer than he had ever been, where he could see the confused and shadowed face with its sheen of sweat. Able to focus on the gun, understand its cooling system, its front needle sight, its age and peeled paint work. Shouldn't dwell on it, though, shouldn't show apprehension, like a policeman that edges along the windowsill towards the man determined on suicide, and who must talk calmly and be mundane, matter of fact. As he turned to the nursing mother the style of the gun was imprinted on his mind, the knowledge that a flick of the trigger, casual and involuntary or predetermined, and the magazine would be unloading in a cascade of shells hurtling through the trimmed airspace between him and the squat, tensed, curly-haired boy. He tapped the baby's head with his left hand, trying not to draw away from the stench of the unchanged clothes, attempting to weave the web of normality.

Just keep it going, Charlie, ever so slow, ever so gradual. In front of him the children, the school kids, still quiet, and waiting for you, Charlie. Had to get beyond them, had to impose himself between the boy with the gun and their soft flesh that would be ripped and carved by a single volley. Winked at a couple of the little brats. Eight or nine more rows, that would be enough, then he'd be a shield for the kids, then he could talk of who left the plane first, then he could believe that it was finished.

All the time moving, edging closer to the boy with the gun, soft voices, controlled smile, creeping nearer, insidious, and deep inside his heart pounding and his muscles taut and stretched, and his eyes on the gun. Don't lose sight of that gun, Charlie, don't take your bloody eyes off it.

Gendy Charlie spoke to Isaac, spanning the few feet of carpet with his words, making the contact. ' I've brought Colonel Benitz to see you, Isaac. He's from the Israeli Defence Force, and he's a fighter, he's like you. Listen to him, Isaac. Listen to what he tells you.'

It took Charlie time to realize that Benitz had begun to speak behind him. A different voice, and words that he could not understand, a language that was strange to him and incomprehensible.

Benitz turned back towards the open door and the cockpit entrance. Gazed down the length of the aisle towards the girl.

'Come here, Rebecca. Come close to us where you can hear what I say.' A cool, spring voice, an instruction in the Yiddish tongue, 'Come nearer, so that I do not shout.' Looking into her eyes, absorbing the creased lines of her tiredness, and her faltering step. The girl who wanted to come to Israel, who wanted to take her place amongst his people, bear her children there. 'Keep coming, Rebecca, keep coming, you have nothing to fear from me.'

He saw the way she looked at him, as if the flood-gates of her misery might now be broken down, saw the relief catch at the curls of her mouth that now, after all the hideousness and pain, she had finally found her friend. And they had told him on the telephone that these young ones would be sent back, would be returned to the land of oppression, and to cells, and to death and to the quicklime pits. He wondered as she came towards him where she had started, where she had begun the journey that had brought her here. In the arms of one of the boys? Or something more rare – had there been the driving inner commitment, the force that sharpened the men that he led, the men of the storm squad? And he would not know, would never know, because now there was no time.

When she reached him Benitz put his arm around her shoulder, draped loosely and carelessly, glanced once at the pistol held in her hand and mingled with the folds of her dress, worked his fingers into the muscle of her shoulder, the gesture of reassurance, and saw Isaac straighten as if his fear too was waning.

'We know what you sought, we know what you have accomplished.' Arie Benitz spoke with a simplicity, with the humility of the funeral oration at the graveside of a soldier of Squad 101. 'We know of it and we marvel, and are proud. We understand the depth of despair, the pain and the agony that will have been yours when the welcome was of guns and armed men and tanks. We understand why you felt driven to take the life of a man who now lies outside and dead. We understand.' Both of them were looking at him, both watching, and the gun barrel of Isaac lowered so that the muzzle aimed at the slight space between his feet. 'In many ways we can struggle against our opponents. The battle may be offensive, it may be passive. There are those that fight in the front line, those that are far to the rear. There are sudden victories that can be won, and there are those that are secret and quiet and without garlands.

There are times, too, when the victory must be purchased, times when great sacrifice is demanded. Those are the sad times, the times when our people weep upon the coffins.. The tank commanders who held the Golan at Yom Kippur, when the Syrians came, for them there could be no relief, no reinforcement, no supply. They were pitifully few and they fought till their shells were expended, and then they fought with their machine-guns, and when the magazines were empty then they threw their grenades. And they died by their broken tanks. They died because it was required of them. And there was no fear, no terror, no panic. They died because Israel needed their lives, needed them as currency to pay for the ultimate victory. They won us time, and when we returned we stood in awe and understood what these few had achieved for us, and we buried them in the military cemetery on a hill outside Jerusalem, and there are flowers there, and men come with their women and children to stand in silence beside the stones.'

Only Isaac and Rebecca understood his words, but the plane was hushed, as if all were sensitive to the moment.

'We do not share our fight We do not rely on allies. We stand by ourselves and expect favours from none. It is a hostile, friendless world,' Arie Benitz smiled, not from humour, but a deep sympathy, 'you have found that, you know it as I know it. When you were in the air over Hanover, that was when you would have known it, and when you woke to the dawn this morning and found the guns that circled you. It is a hard and savage place that you have come to.' His hand had slipped from the girl's shoulder, and his fingers played now with the sun-dried skin of her upper arm where it was bared beneath her sleeve, pulled gendy and squeezed it, and played patterns with his nails. Winning her, comforting her, and all the time edging down towards the limp-held pistol. "The British have told you that you will not fly on from here. If they say that I believe them, and I have no power to alter their decision. And if you surrender the British will send you back… back to Kiev, back to the courts..

He felt the girl stiffen at his side, and his hand now gripped her arm, tight, pinioning, pressing it against her body, denying her movement.

'What do you want of us?' The peace clearing from Isaac's face, the weariness returning. 'What is the message that you bring us?'

'There is only one course for you, only one that you can contemplate, and I have come to help you.' Said firmly but with resolution, the man who has loved his dog, which now is in pain, and must be killed. 'I will help you. It will be at the hands of a friend.' Benitz's hand had sunk far on Rebecca's arm, below the bony elbow, and his fingers brushed at her waist and close to the butt end of her pistol.

'That is what you came to tell us?' Isaac laughed, throwing back his head. 'That was the message that they flew you here to deliver? Be good little boys, kill yourselves nicely, and we'll send a man to do it with you, to hold the hand, make certain it's a nice clean shot, that it's not messy…?'

'You cannot go back, Isaac. Neither of you can go back/

Isaac now sank to a crouch, the gun barrel up. The passengers fidgeted in their seats.

'There is no other way, Isaac,' Benitz shouting down the aisle.

'From these people, yes, from the British we could expect this. From the Russians, yes, we could expect them to send a killer to us. But that it should be you, of our own people, who can offer us nothing

…'

'There is nothing else.' The calmness gone, the soldier in uniform. Benitz's fragile patience diminishing.

Slowly and with emphasis, pointing each word, Isaac said, 'But that it should be you.'

' I said it was a hard and savage place that you had come to. I offer you the best, the only way.'

And there was a shame in his voice, a humiliation. And banging in his ears the words of the Ambassador. A detestable job. T was not ordered to bring you this message, not by my government. They wanted to save you, but you have destroyed yourselves. When you took the man to the doorway, that was when you died, Isaac. Whether at my hand, your hand, or a Russian hand, that was when you died. I only came to make it easier. I can give nothing more. When you took the man to the door you went beyond our reach.'

One hand at the pistol jerking it from the girl's wrist, the other jack-knifing her arm behind her back, so that she shuddered from the pain of the movement. He pulled her across in front of him, protection against Isaac's submachine-gun that was now at his shoulder, aimed clear and straight down the length of the aisle.

The urgency of his voice scything over the heads of the passengers, Charlie shouted, 'What are you saying, Benitz? What are you telling them?'

'Whalt I have to say. What is obvious to a fool/

'What is it? Tell me'- the rare anger that Charlie was unused to.

'Keep out, Charlie. This is not your quarrel. Come back here, to behind me/

A command, spoken with unarguable authority, and Charlie obediently edged his way down the aisle, all the time watching the face of Isaac, watching for the steeling of the eyes that" would mean he was preparing to shoot. Backed past the children, past the woman with the baby, away from the American, away from the pilot officer. Benitz's arm came to meet him, grabbed his collar and half-guided, half-hurled him sideways among the legs of the passengers. As he stumbled, trying to regain his balance, pressing into a lap for support, Benitz went past him, using the girl as his protection, advancing with a slow and strange circumspection towards Isaac.

Arie Benitz forced his thighs and knees into the back of the girl's legs, melting their movements into one, compressing his body against hers, and all the time talking in the language that Charlie did not know. Softer now, and using the tactic of persuasion, the same message all the time, till Charlie had no doubts. He wanted the submachine-gun, wanted it thrown down, wanted it abandoned and harmless. Had the pistol that would be the weapon of execution, raised and cocked and ready.

Ten paces from Isaac now, the Israeli and the slight Jewish girl. Ten paces and closing. Charlie could anticipate the way Benitz's mind would run. Work himself close enough to propel the girl against the boy, and in the medley hope for the chance to snatch at the submachine-gun, or just simply shoot into the chaos he would have created. Still closing on Isaac and staring him out all the time. The advance of the predator on the rabbit, and no bolt-hole for Isaac.

One sentence Rebecca shouted.

'Shoot him, Isaac, shoot him!'

Banal, silly, words… not those she would have chosen for her epiltaph, not the final words she would have wanted to speak to Isaac, the last she would say in her life to the boy who had kissed her lips.

Breaking through Charlie's thoughts – the endless bleating of the machine-gun, spitting out its bullets, a single drumming cacophony of noise, on and on, an unbroken rhythm of flashes. It was a low-velocity weapon and the first shots stayed with the girl, beating at her body, hitting, wracking her till she pitched forward. Still the gun fired, as Benitz made a last and forlorn gesture towards the saving of his life. Alone now and without the human wall for security he seemed to try to aim the girl's pistol at the source of his pain. There was a half-face for Charlie to see, bemused and irritated that he had been found out in such trivial company. A man of Entebbe, and the Savoy Hotel, and of Maalot and Kyryat Shmona; a man who had fought with the storm squad against the best of the Palestinians, and now undone by a boy and a girl who knew nothing but the dream of a country they would never see.

Benitz was a long time falling. Even as the bullets hit him he sought to steady himself, holding grimly on to a seat. Raising the right hand, the fist that held the pistol as each succeeding shell threw back his resolution, forced him to begin again, a man who fights the tide and cannot win.

When he was still, on the rumpled carpet of the aisle that his feet had racked and that soon would be stained by the coursing of his blood, then Isaac pulled his finger from the trigger and lowered the gun barrel.

Scrambling along the aisle, Charlie reached Benitz, knelt by his head, Isaac forgotten, lifted him at the back of the neck as he had been taught to do. Precaution against a man drowning in his own blood, standard and automatic reaction however grave the wounds, however small the chances of salvation.

' It was rubbish you talked, Charlie, silly deceitful rubbish. They go back, and you know that.'

A gurgling, panting chant. Charlie's hands under his head, tilting it. 'The little fools did not know, did not know which was the easy way. Dead whatever they do, better at my hand… better at the hand of a friend.' The death of Arie Benitz came in a last shaking spasm that lifted his head sharply; the cough was barely complete before his life fled him. Charlie eased the weight back on to the carpet, and looked up at Isaac, still motionless, the gun at his knees.

The baby was crying.

' I prefer to believe him, Charlie. Not your new-found promise for us. And we were going to do as he wanted, we did not need to be told. Not by the man that you brought to us, not by anyone. We knew. But it was to be in our time – not with these bastards sitting round us, counting us out. Can you understand, Charlie, Rebecca and I, we were going to do it? We trusted you and you brought this animal to kill us and hang us up by the ankles. You brought him, and because he was with you, because of what you said, we wanted to hear him. He came to execute us, here among the crowd. Not even in Kiev is the firing squad public, Charlie.'

Isaac started to come forward. Lightly, almost delicately, slightly-built and on the balls of his feet. He swung his arm in a lackadaisical way so that as he released the gun it made an arc in the air, almost brushing the roof before Charlie caught it.

'Do it for me, Charlie. Do it quickly.'

In three fast, trained movements Charlie removed the magazine, ejecting the shell in the breach so that it flew from the weapon sideways, falling on to a passenger's trousers. Then he pulled the trigger with the barrel aimed at the ceiling. Harmless.

'No, Charlie, no!' Isaac, curious that his request had not been observed. 'You have to do it. You owe it to me, Charlie.'

He bad stopped seven, eight feet away, separated by the mingled blockade of bodies of Rebecca and Arie Benitz. He did not look down, but instead fastened his eyes on Charlie.

'Charlie, you have to do it.' Faint, hard to hear, the first trace of anxiety winning through the trance that had becalmed him since he had killed Rebecca and the Israeli. 'Charlie, you cannot leave me to them. I'm not strong enough, not to be sent back, not to do it here. .. not without Rebecca. Charlie…'

'Animals', they called them in the pub where he went at lunchtime from the Department.

Swine. Murderers. Communists. Fanatics. All the usual slogans as they chewed at their pork pies, and mouthed through their fat beef-filled sandwiches, and swilled the pints of warmed beer.

Should come and face one of their animals, see him at three paces.

'Just keep coming, Isaac. It's all over. You need some food, some sleep. You need to rest.

You're not going back, they told me that. Just keep walking.' Nothing else to say, Charlie thought, away from what he knew, away from the papers that would be piling on his desk high in the tower block half a day's drive away.

Now the scream.

"Charlie, you're lying to me. You have to shoot, you have to. You cannot send me back there.

Charlie, we believed in you. You were the one we trusted…'

There was a scuffling sound behind him, and Charlie spun to see the first of the SAS troopers emerge from the doorway into the interior of the plane. A fast, trained man whose speed was electric and fear-inspiring; the line of the little gun, the Ingram, up to his face traversing with his body. More noise, louder and closer, and Charlie turned back to see the wheeling of the door behind Isaac and the flood of men intervening, scrambling aboard in their camouflage uniforms.

The lead man of the group that came from the rear of the Ilyushin was half over the fastened-down drinks trolley when the implications of what was happening swirled through Isaac's dulled comprehension. He seemed to launch himself forward, not at Charlie, but at the space beside the body of the Israeli, the few vacant inches of carpet where Rebecca's gun lay, Charlie knew the meaning of that last gesture of defiance, could have swung his foot towards the pistol, kicked it clear or trapped it beneath his shoe, and he did nothing. All of the alternatives were there, available to him, but he stayed back, rooted and detached.

Edward R. Jones Jr had understood not a word of the screaming appeal that Isaac addressed to the Englishman. His ears still sung from the explosion of the bullets, and he had seen the entry of the troops from the forward door, was unaware of those who moved behind him. To his own mind the situation was clear-cut. Elbowing his wife hard in the stomach he heaved his considerable frame out of the seat, pitching himself into Isaac's path. Much of his weight landed on the back of the young Jew, sufficient to deter his momentum, cause him to flinch from his target, lose sight for the fractional and vital second of the gun that he stretched for.

Alone the American and the Jew wrestled on the floor, and then, as if a signal had been given, the passengers that flanked them rose from their seats and threw themselves into the melee.

Charlie lost sight of Isaac. He saw the face once, one that held terror and shock and surprise, then could not find it. Fists from the teachers; the dark, flying boot of the farmer; the pummelling of a straight arm that wore a suit and had buttons at the cuffs. He was brushed aside, a quick, fast push, and his view of the writhing scrum was obscured by the trim blue uniform that he knew was worn by Anna Tashova. Her flat-soled shoe in her hand, beating without aim, without direction into the melee. He made a feeble attempt to pull some of the bodies clear, but he created no impression and soon sagged back on to the armrest of a seat.

The SAS men cleared the aisle. One bellowing into a megaphone that all should stay in their places, the rehearsed drill, others dragging and tearing at the passengers – Russians, Italians, and last of all the American.

His face blooming with a mouth-breaking smile, Edward R. Jones Jr held out his great fist to Charlie. Enveloped in it was the pistol.

'I think I was just about in time for you. Perhaps you'd care to look after it.'

Charlie took the gun without response and looked past the American, already busy manoeuvring himself back over his wife's legs while she reached up and clung with linked hands around his throat. Isaac was there, uncovered now, visible and violated. Angry blotches on his temples, weals Where there would soon be blood at his cheeks, his shirt ripped open to expose the reddened patches against his ribs, trousers at his knees to expose the particular vengeance of one. But he was alive, and conscious, and his chest heaved as he struggled to replace the air lost to his lungs.

Nausea rising through him, welling from his stomach, Charlie found he couldn't take his eyes off the boy. He strained to hear what Isaac tried to say.

'Charlie, for the last time, you have to do it. Don't let them send me back. Please, Charlie.'

" It's not like that, Isaac. You're not going back, that's what they told me.*

The boy tried to laugh-bitter and shrill, till the sounds merged with 'his tears.

'Don't give me that crap, Charlie. Shoot me, for fuck's sake do it '

The last cry, the last plea, the last moment of faith for a stranger. Charlie felt the pressure of the gun handle where it rested against the softness of his palm, his fingers twined round the trigger guard. He tried to think back to what the control tower had told him, the way the response had been phrased, the words of the policeman, whether they had been specific, whether there was room for interpretation. He couldn't remember the exact words, the phrasing, but the impression had been there: that they wouldn't send them back. Or was that just what you wanted to hear, Charlie? And the little bastard didn't believe him anyway. So what now? He saw that Isaac had closed his eyes, clamped his lids together. It's what he wants, begging you, cringing to you, because he thinks that you alone among all the army of enemies can rescue him. He believes in you, Charlie, believes you can do it. Don't hide, not behind what the control tower told you, don't shelter there. Do you kill him or not? Can't pass the buck any more, no one else to catch it Do you kill him, Charlie? He seemed to see a boy in handcuffs pulled by the troops towards a prison wagon and the death cell of Nicosia Central, same height, same youth, same hopelessness, and you'd fingered him, Charlie. And another in Aden who was dead in the gutter with the rubbish, shot in the temple and quivering, and you fingered him, Charlie, told the squaddies where to look.

And there are more, who are pushing the weeds up, that you could make a living, earn your shilling. Haven't there been enough, Charlie, haven't you finished sending the bright-eyed kids on their way? But if it isn't Charlie Webster it will be someone else, a bloody Russian, and only that after all he'll go through first. Don't know, do you, Charlie? And you've not time to find out The gun was at his side, held loosely, unmoving.

The SAS hauled Isaac to his feet, one on each arm, not unkindly and with only that amount of force that was required to shift him, unprotesting, to the back of the aircraft. He looked back once at Charlie, before the caged face had turned, to be replaced by the matted black hair highlighted by a tremor of blood.

A set of motorized steps were driven to the forward door of the Ilyushin. By the time the first of the passengers clambered uneasily down to the oil-streaked concrete supported by a line of soldiers, their rifles dung, the corpses of David and Luigi Franconi had been covered with the scarlet blankets of the ambulance stretchers.

Anna Tashova, her right shoe still adrift, hobbled the first few steps on the tarmac on the arm of her navigator, before seeming to collect herself, disengage and walk unaided.

The teachers, like worried sheepdogs, penned the children together in a single cohesive group that stood and watched with fascination the bulging heaps that were covered all except the footwear; the one of polished leather still shining and immaculate, the other a tainted, dirt-torn canvas.

The Italian delegation of the Party subdued their traditional ideology and made the gesture of the cross over their chests as they reoogniized what the blankets hid.

Edward R. Jones Jr had his arm around Felicity Ann and had readjusted his 'handkerchief bandage so that the coagulation of the scalp blood showed clearly. He remembered to adjust his camera to compensate for sunshine of the exterior.

The man who might have been a farmer was triumphant.

As best they might they scrambled on to an airport apron bus, and one of the Foreign Office interpreters told them there would be hot meals and beds and baths at a nearby hotel, and that an official from the Russian Embassy in London was waiting there to greet them. There was no shouting, no cheering as the bus pulled away, none believing there were grounds for self – congratulation, and the very smell and filth of their bodies humiliated them.

A Saracen armoured car replaced the bus, but drove closer to the steps. The bodies of Arie Benitz and Rebecca were moved awkwardly down the steps on stretchers by men who sweated but bore the load in silence, and pushed far into the recesses of the vehicle so that they lay among the welter of gas canister boxes, and the coils of machine-gun ammunition, and the trenching tools and the emptied cigarette packets and coffee cartons. On top of the Israeli and the girl the soldiers laid David and the Italian, who to those who handled him seemed unmarked except for the scratch on his face from his fall from the plane; no one looked for the cavity set deep in the sleek and darkened hair.

Then came Isaac's turn. Handcuffed now, his arms locked across the front of his body. To the troops who ushered him from the plane and on to the ramp at the top of the steps he seemed an unworthy opponent. But he intrigued them, a boy who fought without a uniform, in the absence of a commander, and received no wage for it, and they permitted him to pause there, as if to drink in the freedom of the air, accepting and assimilating the surroundings to which he had brought the Ilyushin. Then he saw, deep in the Saracen, the body of David, uncovered, grotesque in the angle of fallen head, and seemed to wilt. He did not travel with David; another armoured car was designated to carry him, and the soldiers hustled Isaac to it, hands under his shoulder pits so that he was near lifted into the back, and then with his escort he was sat upon a cool iron seat. The great, thickened, high-velocity-proof doors were closed on him, exchanging for the boy one prison for another.

From the Foreign Secretary's office overlooking the lunch- time crowds that surged across Horse Guards Parade the news of the conclusion at Stansted spread quickly. Permanent Secretaries wound up their meetings, Under-Secretaries cancelled their lunch appointments. In News Department they prepared themselves for the issue of the statement that would explain the course of action being followed by Her Majesty's Government.

There was no more discussion on whether or not the survivor should be returned to Kiev. That decision had been taken; News Department was concerned with drafting only the justification.

There was much fetching and carrying of United Nations debate transcripts, Security Council and General Assembly, that had concerned themselves with aerial piracy. From the Security Council meeting that had followed the Israeli military intervention to Entebbe in July of