Kingfisher

CHAPTER SIX

While the big Ilyushin purred its way across the airspace of Poland and the German Democratic Republic – with its now more discreet escort of Migs, scrambled from more forward Warsaw Pact airfields – frantic meetings were being convened throughout Western Europe.

All the continent's countries can now call on the services of 'crisis committees' of politicians, civil servants and senior police and army officers who are on call to advise the heads of government on what course they should take if confronted with a major guerrilla action. It is the task of these committees to evaluate the threat and the implications of involvement with the new breed of warfare that since the start of the decade had proved so costly in terms of money and prestige to the old world. The lesson of preparation had been learned the hard way, with cabinets ill-briefed and security forces poorly trained to do battle with the new militia playing by their own new rules of warfare who descend in their capitals and airports with the AK47s and RPGs and who spread mayhem and disgrace and disfigurement with minimal discrimination.

Meetings in Bonn, in Copenhagen, and Stockholm and Oslo and Helsinki. Ministers and officials hurrying to their chauffeur-driven cars in Brussels, Paris and The Hague. Policemen being called by telephone to the Cabinet offices in Madrid and Rome and Lisbon and Berne. In all these capitals, as in London, it was recognized that speed was of the essence, that a policy must be formulated and agreed before the Ilyushin attempted its inevitable landing. Dominating the discussions was the Russian note, now being studied in a dozen languages, none of which could blunt the harsh message that it had been the intention of the Secretary General of the Russian Communist Party to convey. They have something in common, the politicians of Europe who are answerable to an electorate; the constant factor is the determination not to lay their backs open to the rod that can strike and wound them. To permit the plane to land when it had fuel to fly on, that was only begging for difficulties, for diplomatic furore and dangers in the high echelons of international relations. Those countries most keenly affected, in that their airports lay within easy striking range of the present flightpath of the Aeroflot airliner, had the least discussion time available to their committees, and reached their decision first.

In Bonn the advice to the Chancellor was without equivocation. Under no circumstances should the aircraft be allowed to land. Any airport that the Ilyushin approached should immediately be closed; if necessary, trucks should be driven across the runways to prevent their being used. A drastic solution, it was agreed by all who took part in the evaluation, but then so were the alternatives horrifying. Let the plane land and offer yourselves to the whim and hazard of a full-blown hi-jack siege; there could be no question of allowing the airliner to refuel and fly on in the face of the Russian demands, and no possibility with the pilot still warm in his seat of offering safe conduct. Far better to skirt the issue, and pass the problem outside the Federal frontiers. The embassies of West Germany were instructed to pass on the government decision to other interested parties. Including the Soviet Union.

It was Isaac who stayed close to the navigator watching the pencil lines that he drew across the green heavily overscored map surface on the small pull-out table that acted as his work bench.

Slow and painstaking, the plotting of the course. A few more minutes and they would have crossed the dark and shaded line that marked the barricade between the cul-tares of East and West. Just a line on a map at that height, and hazed squares of toned brown and yellow beneath them. Nothing to demonstrate the wire, and the mines and the watch towers, and the fear and the clinging helplessness that the frontier meant twenty-seven thousand feet beneath. Soon the descent would start, and the ground shades would sharpen, and then it would be over, and they would have achieved the impossible. Escape, something that could not have been contemplated two short days before. And now it was achieved, bar a few miles, a few minutes' flying time.

'We are nearly there,' he called softly to David. Why is the man still so tense, why is it necessary to hold the gun so close to the girl? The Migs have gone, been defeated, seen off. Tt is over now, friend. We have beaten the pigs, hammered them, destroyed them. Relax, David.' Still the stress etched across David's face, still the suspicion there, nothing to show that he was convinced of their victory. Impatience now from Isaac. 'Can't you see, David, we are there?' He pulled the map from the navigator's table and thrust it under David's face. 'It's over, we are there.

What was it you called it? The Kingfisher flight? The Kingfisher flight is over. The break-out of the Kingfisher, and we have done it."

David did not speak to him, but said quietly with strain eating at his voice to the pilot officer,

'Which airport should we land at?'

Disinterest on her face, not her concern, she jerked her head back in the direction of the navigator. 'You should ask him. He is the one who will tell you that.'

'Which airport do we go to?' David asked his question of the navigator, and the man in the blue uniform with twin rings of gold braid on his wrists waved away the question. 'I am talking to the ground. They have contacted us. They say they have a message for us and are awaiting the responsible person Who will read it. The nearest airport should be Hanover, that is the civil airport, also in that area are many of the military bases of the NATO forces of the British

… It's unlikely they would permit us to use an Air Force camp. There are many options that are open if they give us permission to land. But you must be quiet, because I do not have much English and that is the language they will use to me – the pilot officer has very little, insufficient to talk to the controllers. The man that you killed was the one who spoke English.'

'How far are we from the border?'

A momentary calculation by the navigator, a deviation from his main task of awaiting the message from the ground, pencil and ruler on the map. 'We are there.'

Isaac turned away from the cockpit, walked past the forward exit door and the lavatories and the cupboard space for the winter coats, came to the entrance of the passenger cabin, machine-gun still at the ready, held low across his thighs.

Looked at the faces, saw only the drained and exhausted stares that faltered back at him. He realized the ordeal to which they had subjected this passive, muted collection of strangers – only one thing in common, all of them, that they wanted to sleep tonight in Tashkent. Time to relieve their misery, and time too, to demonstrate the power of three young Jews, and what faith could win.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have news for you that I hope will prove welcome. We are now crossing the frontier between the two Germanys. We are awaiting the instructions of the government of the BDR as to which airport they wish us to use for landing. You should be aware of our descent very soon. It has not been our intention to cause you any hurt, but you must stay in your seats and observe our orders. That is all.' And as an afterthought – and he laughed like a child when he said it -'Perhaps some of you would care to leave the plane with us?' His humour was met by the sad, tired eyes that offered no flicker of response. Separated from him by the full length of the cabin, half-hidden by the drinks trolley that was her protection from the rear passengers, Rebecca, flagging in her strength and leaning on the trolley top for relief and showing the pistol; he smiled to her, saw her return the greeting. Funny girl, he thought, but she'd done them well. There hadn't been the time, not the opportunity to talk to her of Yevsei. The little bugger must have been on a hope and prayer to have put the guns aboard, but he couldn't have made it with her, could he? Not if David wasn't getting it… No chance for Yevsei. If she wasn't round David so much, then there could have been the opportunity, roll of drums for Isaac. David just didn't understand – too busy with his war games to see what was there on a plate. But she couldn't have kept her legs crossed all night, must have let old Yevsei get his hand in somewhere

– stands to reason, if he was going to take a risk like that. Take a girl to persuade a man to put guns on Aeroflot, only a girl…

David was tugging at his shoulder, pulling at him, wrenching him backwards and off balance as he was swung towards the cockpit 'Shut up, you fool. Shut up and come in here.' A moment to see the relief sucked from the faces of those passengers closest to him, and David had dragged him too deep for them to follow his whispered words. The Germans say we cannot land. They forbid us to use their airfields.'

'It's a bluff… like the Migs.' Even as Isaac spoke the cold sweat that comes from chronic uncertainty, comes when the mast is broken, when the ladder slips, was spearing its way across his stomach, into his groin, an awful chill. 'They don't mean it…'

"How do you know they don't mean it? They say they will prevent us from landing.'

'Perhaps it's just an airport official, someone who had not been notified about us. Do they know who we are? Do they know we are Jews?'

They know everything about us. They know we are Jews. They know our names. They know we have passengers on board. They say that they know we have fuel, and they say we must fly on.'

'Which is the nearest airport to our present position?' Isaac snapped at the navigator, seeking to regain the initiative.

•Still Hanover.'

Tell them that we are going to Hanover. Tell them we are going to land at Hanover.' Isaac was shouting; they were coming to the West, they were coming to freedom, they were coming to the democracies. 'Tell them that, and hold the course for Hanover.'

'Only one person that can give orders in the cockpit, Isaac, and that is me.' David, animated, creased in anger.

'Well, give some orders then. Take the plane down to Hanover.'

Take the plane to Hanover,' David told Anna Tashova. The transfusion of energy from his fury was short-lived, and he seemed to crumple again, the belief in the outcome slipping. The girl's hands moved to the instruments to make the changes and deviations that were called for by the navigator. Checking altitude, checking airspeed, asking him to seek a talk-down into the airspace, and with her face set tight as he shrugged and said they would give no co-operation, that they could only repeat the message already passed to the airliner, that they were sorry.

'How long?' David asked the navigator.

Ten minutes and we will see the airfield. I will tell them again that we are coming. But you should know that they were very definite. They said they would prevent us from landing.'

Because he was a big man and sat high in his seat Edward R. Jones Jr had seen David pull Isaac back towards the entrance to the cockpit. All the passengers, adult and children, were susceptible to the changes of mood in their captors, studied and analysed them, because they had little else to do, and because these were the only clues they possessed as to the future of the flight. Every smile, every furrowed forehead was noticed and evaluated as the passengers sought for information. It was as if the act were mimed, because the voices of David and Isaac were far removed, and were lowered, and the yowling of that bloody baby Obliterated any possibility for even the keenest ears to eavesdrop. But Edward R. Jones Jr was not totally disappointed by his inability to hear the words that were spoken; his eyes had not betrayed him. They reported a new mood, a new urgency, a new tension at the front of the aircraft. He and his wife were seated at the back of the plane, among the last rows of the cabin, while the mass had herded towards the front because they had not read, as the American had, that the only possibility of survival in an air disaster is to be sitting in the rear. He and Felicity Ann always sat at the back, and it was that which put him in easy conversational range of Rebecca, as she stood with the gun still unfamiliar in her hand watching her charges and as ill-informed about what was happening in the cockpit as they were.

'Miss,' he said, hands still on his head, 'Miss, do you speak English?'

'You have heard the orders, it is forbidden to speak.' Clipped, hostile, shunning the contact; but an answer in the language that he sought.

'Forget that crap, Miss, if you'll excuse me. The question was, "do you speak English?" and the answer was that you do."

It is not permitted for you to talk.' Halting and styled by school classrooms, but she could understand what he said, and reply in a fashion.

"It strikes me, Miss, and I'm only a passenger here, but it strikes me your friends up the front have a problem. You get that impression?' She ignored him, wondered what else she could do.

Couldn't hit him, not without coming from behind her barricade, and she couldn't call David or Isaac because they were at the cockpit, and she had seen what the American had, and the two men had looked anxious. 'Perhaps the problem is, Miss, that no one is that keen to have you. Thought of that one, have you? That there won't be a red carpet down there waiting for you.'

'We are Jews, we are persecuted. We are fleeing from a system of intolerance, and so we go to Israel. In the West they are the enemy of the Soviets – you tell me they will not help us?'

Edward R. Jones Jr turned full towards her, eye to eye, face to face. Quite a pretty girl really, if she did something about her hair, bit of make-up, little eye shadow – not a beauty but presentable, dreadful frock, but they all wore things like that over there.

"Have you thought, Miss, that it could all be a bit harder than that, that people this side of the line might not be quite as cosy, quite as friendly as you thought they would?' A rhythm in his voice, monotonous like the drip of a tap that needs a new washer, hypnotizing in its way, and dulling and wasting. 'When the Palestinians fly the planes into Arab countries they get locked up now, you know. No more garlands and a big villa to lie around till the heat cools. They shove them in the cells. Times move on, Miss.'

'We are not Palestinians, we are not terrorists. We are Jews and we have been oppressed, we have been persecuted, and now we have fought back…' She too had now raised her voice, the last of the group to do so, but responding in her own way to a strain that was becoming intolerable, crippled all the time by the isolation of her position, divorced from the others, wanting comfort, reassurance.

They all say that, Miss. All reckon that their God is on their side, that he looks with a friendly eye on their cause.

You're not the first to join this merry-go-round, Miss; there are plenty before you. Proper all-sorts they are-Weathermen, Puerto Ricans, Tupamaros, Zeepa, Provos, Baader- Meinhof, ETA 5, PFLP. They're all in your line of business. And one problem they all face – they need somewhere to go, somewhere to sleep, somewhere where they aren't going to be hunted. Rest* houses are short on the ground, Miss. If you can't put this bird down in Tel Aviv you're lost, you'll be like all the other lepers and pariahs. No one will want you.'

'We are going to land, Isaac told you so. Isaac told you we were going to land. And the plane is now descending.'

Close to shrieking, and the words carrying the length of the cabin, enough to rouse Isaac from far away so that he ran the distance of the aisle, and when she pointed to Edward R. Jones Jr she could not speak because the tears choked in her throat. He seemed to dare the boy, to taunt and anger him in the very defiance of his steadied, aged eyes. Not even the hands raised in self-defence across his face, nor his body turned away that a blow might be warded off. Isaac swung the barrel of his gun in a short, chopping arc on to the apex of the American's skull, one blow to submerge it under the protection of Felicity Ann's arms, and there was blood on heir dress and the sound of the distress of an old man for protest.

'Rebecca, it will be over very soon. We are nearly there. We are losing height. Courage for a few more moments. Courage."

Isaac's was the only voice in the great hushed cigar of the cabin. But he had not told her of the message from the ground, had not thought to. Flaps moving and arresting the progress of the plane, causing it to yaw from side to side, thrust sound changed to a higher pitch, and the rumbling of the extraction of the undercarriage.

The movement of the plane made it difficult for David to stand in the cockpit, but there was nowhere else for him to go. The pilot officer in her seat, the navigator in his, and only the captain's place with the strapped-down body available to him. Couldn't bring himself to touch the man, different if they'd meant to kill him, if he had been an enemy and his death had been reached by decision. But it was just an accident, an empty and hollow accident to a man whose status represented no threat to them. Not like killing the policeman. And so the captain reserved his seat, his head rolling with the motion of the aircraft and the blood trail congealed and darkened.

We are talking again with the tower at Hanover. They repeat that we are not permitted to land there. They call it a blanket order for the whole of the Federal Republic. They are emphatic that we will not be permitted to land there.' The navigator seemingly calm, unaffected by the bow-string tension around him, and repeated his messages as if uncaring as to who heard them, all the time interrupting his recital of instructions from the ground with the minutiae of course adjustments that the pilot officer required of him.

'Another few seconds and we will be through the haze, then we will see the runway, then we will see if they mean to stop us, or whether as your friend says it is just a bluff.' Five years' flying she had had, three more before that at the training school, sufficient experience solo for her to be able to handle the Ilyushin on her own. Too senior really for her to be flying co-pilot, especially a creature like this, but the rosters were not logically drawn and did not always recognize her log book of flying hours. They taught you how to pilot an aircraft, and gave you lectures on emergencies -but those were concerning the technical problems that might be faced – fire in an engine, undercarriage that would not retract, fracture of pressurization, loss of flap control. They did not know how you would react if there was a submachine-gun at your ribs with a thirty-round magazine attached, and a class of school children that you must bring to safety. No way they could know that when they gave you command of an aircraft. Lectures and courses, but this…

There is the runway,' she snapped, peering high over the bottom lip of her windscreen at the dun-coloured strip of concrete thousands of feet beneath her. The city was laid out like a toy town further away. Neat gardens, high chimneys of the factories, rising office blocks. But closer

– and this held her attention – the shape of the airfield, runway placed straight ahead for her by the skill of the navigator.

There are trucks across it. See them? Petrol lorries, armoured cars, suicide, suicide if we go down there.' Without the order from David that had preceded her every previous move she had pulled on the instrument column, and was scrambling to complete the job she would have shared with her captain, to reset the mass of dials and switches that were necessary if the plane were to climb again. David had seen it all, seen it as she had. And he too recognized the impossibility of a successful landing. Every three hundred metres the variation between the yellow and white petrol tankers and the green and olive armoured cars, clear and silhouetted against the background of the tarmac.

'Do not answer any calls for us from the ground, and circle the airport, low enough so that they can see us.' David moved out of the cockpit, the first time that he had left it in more than two hours, stepping into the corridor, the passageway between the flight deck and the passenger cabin. He reached forward to pull the curtain across that the watchers might not observe him as he spoke to Isaac. He spoke in a quiet and sombre voice, and with a resignation about him that unnerved Isaac, and with his shoulders seemingly shrunken by the enormity of the problem.

'What do we do now? In God's name, Isaac, what do we do now?'

'We can tell them we are coming in to land, and see what..'

And if they do not move the trucks, and if we are committed to landing, and cannot climb again – then we are dead.'

'Perhaps it is because they know we have fuel."

'And how many countries will follow the lead of the Germans?'

'If we crash the plane that is by our hand. They know the fuel that we have, they know when we can go no further. It will not be at our hand, David.' Isaac spoke feverishly and searching to build again the momentum that had taken them to the flight. 'When the fuel is expended what government will refuse us permission to land when they know we have children on our flight?

This is not the crisis, not yet. Time for "Masada", the time for suicide is later. When we have landed, then it will be different' Again Isaac had his arm round him, the gesture of friendship and support. 'David, you are down, and that is how they would wish you. They want us to dispute with each other, they want your depression because that helps them. We always knew it would not be easy, that it would not be simple. There are other countries that we can reach, many others.

Not all are like the Germans. We too have friends, David.'

"Less than two hours now, that is the fuel position. After that it will be settled for us.'

As he went back into the cockpit David wondered at the new turn in their fortunes. He realized that he was bemused they should meet with opposition at this time, and after they had won so much. Like a betrayal, like a boy feels when he knows his father has told him a he. He had not known that Isaac possessed such inner reservoirs of stamina; they would come to lean on him, both of them, Rebecca as much as himself. He felt such a great tiredness now, just a longing to be shed of it, to walk again on the ground, to escape this box of confusions that he did not understand. The joy of walking again on grass, and of not running, and of not listening at night for the footsteps that might follow.

He repeated it over in his own mind. Lean on Isaac, lean on him till his own strength returned.

Could any of them understand the awful wearying, endless conflict in the cockpit? The pilot dead, the shape that would not respond, would not forgive. The fighters, modern, technological killing soldiers that he had stood his ground against and beaten. The cool proficiency of the girl pilot. He had stood against them, stood against them and seen them off. But it had sapped and weakened him and now he should rest on Isaac, let the boy carry the load till he was ready again.

And the boy was good, better than you expected, David, and there was comfort there. The only comfort he had.

'Give me a course for Holland,' David said. Again the Ilyushin banked and began to turn, roused by the new thrust of power, searching once more for the Kingfisher's landfall.

The airport at Hanover is categorized as 'international', but the trade that it handles is not considerable, and certainly minor in comparison with Frankfurt or Munich or Cologne,' Bonn. So the groups of delayed passengers and crew and idled airport staff were sparsely scattered on the concrete terminal roof. Clusters of multi-national businessmen, a party of British war veterans who had come again to relive the triumph and the misery of 1945, some Scandinavians in search of fresh hiking pastures, mingled amongst the Lufthansa men and girls.

All could see the Ilyushin, alone in the azure, late afternoon sky. They watched its flight around the far perimeter of the airfield, occasionally stealing their glance away to the rock – steady armoured cars and tracks that were the runway obstructions. A transistor radio chattered a report from a local broadcaster who described the scene and could tell of no more than their own eyes could take in. It was the only sound to compete with the low-pitched, incessant drone of the engines set far forward on the wings from which the Aeroflot flight's markings could be read by those with clear eyesight.

And the watchers realized that the plane would not come, that the confrontation was not sought They saw the new course set, and watched the diminishing silhouette and were left with a feeling of emptiness and inadequacy, because they were part of something that would not be completed. Only when the plane was telescoped to their vision, small and hard to see, and its engine noise was faint, did a new sound spring forward, powerful and dominating, as the armoured cars and tankers revved their engines and started to move clear of the tarmac.

There was a woman from Stockholm who cried, and said again and again, 'I don't know why.

I don't know why.' And her husband was embarrassed and gave her his handkerchief and tried to shield her from view as she dabbed her eyes.

The tolerance of the men with dark suits and attache cases and schedules to maintain was waning. There was much checking of watches and loud discussion on how long it would take to get things moving again, to fly them on to their homes or belated meetings.

The ground staff were first to leave the roof, beckoned by the work and organization that now awaited them, the businessmen hard on their heels, the hikers needing to make up lost time if they were to reach their chalets by nightfall.

The old army men stayed on. They'd no hurry; it was known where they were, and they were confident of being called when their flight was ready. Men in their sixties and seventies, at the fade of their lives, who for a week had recalled 'machine-gun platoon', and 'mortar platoon', and

"Monty', and 'knocking the Hun for six'. A great deal of wine and beer and sausage and reminiscence they'd been through in the last few days, and they did not seek to end it by returning more quickly than necessary to the polished cleanliness of the departure hall.

"Should have come on in, shouldn't they?' Cyril from mechanized infantry.

Then there'd have been the risk of pranging her.' Bertie, HQ Staff.

'If you're to win in that sort of game you have to take a few chances, like it was when we crossed…' Jim, Pioneer Assault.

They won't have come this far if they haven't taken some risks. You don't knock an aircraft off and get this far without chancing your arm a bit. I wouldn't fancy doing what they've done.'

Herbie, Armoured Corps Maintenance.

'Cyril's right, though. Whatever they've done up to now, they chickened this time. Should have come on in, like Cyril said. The Hun always buckles. Pressure him enough and he buckles.'

Dave, General Staff, Batman.

'What do you bloody know about it, Dave? You were so far back, they never even bothered to give you a rifle. Never even saw a bloody Hun with a gun in his hand, you didn't.' Harry, Airborne machine-gunner.

And they all laughed, and Dave looked pained, and they slapped his back. 'Time for another beer,' someone said.

Harry Smith had been a sergeant when they'd all been in uniform a lifetime ago. Para too, and they admired that. Gave him a sort of leadership over the rest, that and his Military Medal, and the fact that he now had a sweet shop in Kilburn and was 'self-employed'. 'I heard a bit of what the chappie said on the radio, picked up a bit of the language when I was here. They're Jewish boys up there. I don't know whether that makes it all different. But it's not for us to call them cowards. We had a bloody great back-up scene behind us. Stores, supplies and orders, some other bugger to tell us what to do. So what have they got? Sweet Fanny Adams, not much else. If they're Jewish they'll have thought it was all over by the time they reached here. Thought they were home and dry. Think of it as they'll be seeing it now, think of it and you'll know why that bird over there was crying.'

'They're still bloody terrorists, Sarge,' said Dave.

'If you say so,' said Harry Smith. He stared hard into the lowering light, searching through his spectacles for the aircraft. But the haze and mist of distance had wrapped the Kingfisher flight, lifting it beyond his reach.

Had David but known it, the West German 'Crisis Committee' had anticipated that an attempt might be made to land the plane in spite of the precautions taken. The petrol tankers and the armoured cars all had members of the green-uniformed Bundesgrenzshutz at their controls. If the word had come from the tower that the Aeroflot plane was on irreversible landing approach then the order would have been transmitted to the cabs of the vehicles that they should drive on to the grass verges of the runway and allow the aircraft to land without further hindrance. In the first-floor offices of the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Bonn there was much congratulation and back-slapping among the team of politicians and civil servants who had directed the operation as the news was brought to them that the plane was climbing, and had taken a flight plan that ran to the south of Hamburg and to the north of Bonn, Cologne and Dusseldorf. A bottle of Scotch was broached. It was the opinion of the aviation experts that the course was for Schipol, Amsterdam.

' I had not thought,' said the Minister, 'that we would accomplish the plan so easily.'

' It was a new tactic for these people. Their protests have been verbal before; they have not attempted anything of this intensity. But it is surprising, as you say, that they could be so easily deflected. I think we will find when the business is completed that they were very young.' It was the contribution of the senior police officer present who had been on the ground in the chaos of the Munich police ambush of Black September at Furstenfeldbruck airbase, who had laid out the bodies of nine Israeli athletes and coaches, and who never wanted to be part of a similar confrontation again. 'But because they are young, and because we have turned them, that does not mean that the problem for someone else is in any way diminished. What we have done is temporarily to depress them. My forecast is that this set-back will, in the long term, serve only to harden their resolve.'

The policeman spoke with distaste, unimpressed at the enthusiasm with which the unresolved problem had been shuffled elsewhere.

Parker Smith had left in a hurry, his departure preceded, by a confusion of ringing telephones, summoned messengers with paperwork and shouting through opened office doors. He had just time to push his head round Charlie's door. He was excited, and did not care who saw it. Call from the Big Boys, from Whitehall, beckoned to the presence, to attend the Emergency Group meeting. He might send for Charlie later, and would he have his files at hand, and be ready to bring them if it was required that he should come? Charlie noticed he hadn't cared to comb his hair, a mess without the ruler- straight parting, and that was unusual for him; meant the flap was building.

'Getting a bit nervy are they, Sir? Our masters?'

'Decidedly so, Charlie. You've seen the Russian note, and it's very tough. You've seen what the Hun's reaction is. Pass-the-parcel games, and it's with the Dutch next, and FO are trying to establish what position they will take. If they don't come down in Holland and they keep going we're next in line, and not much fuel to play with. If we send for you, look snappy.'

" I'm not a counter hi-jack expert, Sir. Home Office do that.. .' Caution from Charlie. Long time now since he'd been involved in anything fresher than stacking paper.

'Course you're not. But you're supposed to know these bastards, that is what we'll be requiring from you, every damned little thing about them. So don't shift off that telephone.'

Parker Smith was gone, not finding the time to close Charlie's door, lost in a welter of shouted farewells. And the word that the section was involved spread through the offices like a grass fire.

Huddles in the corridors, and voices raised in anticipation, and pleasure that the 'old man' had been sent for. Charlie went to his steel-grey cabinet, fished in his pocket for the keys, discarding those of his front door, his car, his office door, his garage. He unlocked the combination fastener and began to rifle through the buff-coloured folders. Kept a good system, did Charlie, something he'd learned in his old army days. Extracted seven-two of them marked with a red sticky-tape 'X' diagonally across, denoting the classification 'Secret', five with blue-tape crosses that were simply denoted as 'Restricted'.

Time for some fast reading, Charlie.

The helicopter that carried the Israeli Prime Minister had left the Golan Heights in a swirl of choking, rasping dirt, saturating all those who had gathered at the stone-cleared landing-pad to see him off.

His tour of forward positions on the Syrian front that overlooked the ruined and war-broken city of Kuneitra had been scheduled to last for three more hours, but the radio transmission from Jerusalem had caused it to be cut short. And there was enough for him to be concerned about without the burden of new fashioned crises; in his mind he was attempting to obliterate the problems of perpetual argument between Defence, who sought more planes and more missiles and more anti-tank weapons and more cement for fortifications, and on the other side Finance, who bleated at every Cabinet meeting at the cost of it all and the effect on civilian morale of the creeping taxation that was the corollary of sophisticated and modern fire-power. Shut it out, block it, as the helicopter staggered off the ground and hovered before seeking its route. The Prime Minister had been a military man before entering politics, and prided himself that he had spanned the gulf, that he understood both points of view, but that in itself made it no simpler for him. Three devaluations, and that inside the last nine months, and no change in the precariousness of the national budget, and still the army demanding more hardware and showing no interest in where the money should come from. The visit to the Golan and its strongpoints was long-planned and was supposed to have been a sweetener to his generals. He was to have walked around behind the sandbags and the barbed wire and laugh and joke with them in the slang they had used when they were together as lieutenants and captains, and look serious and understanding when that was required of him, and sympathize with their complaints and shortages, and make promises that would be vague and that would not sustain analysis, but that would mollify and placate.

And now the effect of the day was wasted.

The summons had come from his offices on the hill in Jerusalem that he should return forthwith, and there had been no time for explanations and excuses, just the opportunity to shake the hands of men who showed their disappointment, and who had the look in their eyes of soldiers who do not trust the commitment of their political leaders.

An hour and twenty minutes he sat in the helicopter. They'd brought an Alouette in from Rosh Pinah to ferry him back, a maintenance problem, fractured oil-feed pipe, denying him the use of the faster, more comfortable Sikorski that had made the morning journey from the capital. Room for only three passengers once the army fliers had taken their seats- ADC and a bodyguard. No one to talk to, and he'd left the majority of his party on the bare, stripped ground of the Heights, to follow on by car. There was a radio in the helicopter but that must be kept clear for operational messages, so that effectively he would be out of contact for the duration of the flight. Little enough information to consider at this stage. Russian aircraft hi-jacked, internal flight, on its way to the West, that the involvement was Jewish, that the Soviets would take a hard line. Not much to chew on in that.

No contour flying, not with the Prime Minister on board. Up to three thousand feet where the sharp winds that gathered on the hills behind Tiberias buffeted and pitched at the helicopter, causing him to steady himself in his canvas seat and feel for the safety harness that he wore. Not a time for thinking, for weighing alternatives. Dead time, lost time, that would duly add up till inevitably the pressure on the decision-makers would increase. Not the way it should be, but the way it always was: the penalty of living in a country perpetually in a state of war.

Flying south of the hills and towns and villages where the Palestinians liked to work, the settlements close to the Lebanese border fence. The targets the Palestinians sought out Hard, fanatical killing teams who came to Israel to test their muscle against the might of a modern and sophisticated society, and who were broken on the anvil of gunfire and grenade explosions, and who kept coming. This was the ground they came to, bright in the harsh sunlight below him, to the little communities that nestled close to the cultivated fields and the orange groves that were burned and dry in the heat. Men who came in their groups of four, having let their blood run together in the symbolic farewells in the Fatahland of South Lebanon, and who died horribly and brutally at the hands of Squad 101, the elite of the Israeli army, the counter-terrorism storm squad. 'Terrorists' they called them in his country – could find no other title for them, shunning the acceptance of such words as 'guerrilla' and 'commando' because that would bestow a certain fractional legality on their actions. He was musing to himself, not thinking with the speed and clarity he was capable of, just wafting the ideas in his head as the helicopter powered its bumping way towards Jerusalem. And what was it Gadhafi had said? Moammar Gadhafi, President of Libya, paymaster of the assassins, organizer of their plans, harbourer of their escapes. Gadhafi said there were terrorist? and freedom fighters, that if the cause is right then so too the action is justified. Any action against the State of Israel is justified, any attack could be supported if it bore the name of Palestine, that was the message of the Libyan. And the response of the Prime Minister's government had been fierce and consistent; that the international community should succour no sympathy for the gangs and cells of armed men, that there should be no condoning of the terrorist, that he should be fought and brought to justice. There must be no weakening. –

The helicopter yawed its way down the scale of the altimeter, dropping sharply and without ceremony into the city, the sun's flat beams splintering light on to the silver dome of Al Aqsa.

Was a Jew with a gun held to a pilot's head a different flower, to be "watered and ' husbanded from the Palestinian weed that they chopped and hoed when he took his grenades and explosives to the cockpit of the El Al plane? Did the Jew fight for freedom or for terror? Principle or self-interest? There was ano precedent from which to take comfort. The decision of Entebbe had been easy by comparison, the decision to loose the killer squads in Europe to seek out their Palestinian ccounterparts had been simple. But this was fraught with dangers. Principle and expediency, principle and emotion; all cavorting inside him as the machine lurched the final feet to the ground.

He hurried to the grey-green Pontiac with its curtained rear windows and chassis that strained low under the weight of the armour-plated body. Men around him with unshielded Uzis, and walky-talky radios, and police who saluted him and who wore pistols at their belts in holsters of which the top restraining flap was unfastened. And why were they all there? One reason, one reason only: because of the threat of the small groups, the men who stood apart from the shouting, chanting abusive crowds of protest. Four hundred yards from the helicopter pad to his offices, and a lift to the third floor. More men in slacks and light summer shirts that they wore outside the waist of their trousers that their hand-guns should be concealed and not frighten the stream of foreign visitors who came to pay their respects and tell him how his government should conduct its affairs.

The Security Committee was waiting for him, gathered round the table by the window, opposite his wide-topped desk. Piled in front of the chair that he would use were the papers that would tell him the story of the hi-jacking so far, what was known of the participants, the statements of the Russians, and the decisions that had been made by the West European governments in whose territory the plane might attempt a landing. Sombre reading, no light in the darkness, no crack through which optimism might wear a path.

He shuffled the papers together, waved his colleagues into chairs, understood the pain in their faces and knew they had read all that he had seen. Fools, he thought, three idiots wallowing in their own stupidity.

'One decision at least can be made,' the Prime Minister said. 'We cannot condemn and we cannot condone. The world will be watching for our reaction, our friends and our enemies. We cannot support these three, not publicly, and at the same time we cannot be seen to be abandoning them. Our movement must be through the passive channels, through suggestion."

'But that does not confront the issue.' It was the senior civil servant of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, still in his thirties with the aggression of youth and the high brow of intellect. The Russians are asking for the return of these people once they have landed; they are telling the Europeans that these three are criminals and must be sent back to stand trial for murder. They are accused of shooting a policeman in Kiev, and we hear now that the pilot of the aircraft has been killed. The penalty for those offences in the Soviet Union is death. There are many in our country who would believe in such a sentence if the roles were reversed. For any Western government to permit the plane to land and refuel and facilitate its onward flight is unthinkable. That is why the Germans refused to become involved. The country to which the plane comes must disarm these three and then will have to consider its options, will have to decide whether to send them back, to their executions. Whether we do it privately or publicly this is the issue on which we must clear our position,'

'You have pre-empted me,' said the Prime Minister. 'I too see the problem. You are not alone in identifying the difficulty. All of us can see it.'

'We have spoken much in the past of the need for solidarity to fight the aerial warfare of the Arab groups…'

'You say the obvious,' intercepted the Prime Minister wearily, his ears still ringing with the hammer of the rotor blades. 'We know that, we know what we have said. So what do you ask me to do? Do you ask me to tell the British, or the Dutch, or the Danes, or the French… do you ask me to tell them to disarm these people and put them on a flight to Moscow?'

The silence was broken by the scraping of chair legs on the tiled floor. All except the Prime Minister began pacing, searching for a clear way forward, while the smoke rose up in grey-blue columns, and coffee was poured… The evening of the Middle East comes fast, running across the sandstone houses and the cement towers and the grey roads, but it was many minutes after the shadows had infiltrated the room before the lights were switched on; that seemed to change the mood and break the stillness in which those present had cocooned themselves, and emphasized the passing of time. The Prime Minister rapped the desk top with his pen.

'When the plane lands we must offer our services to the government concerned. We must make an offer to help in all ways possible to ensure that there is no further bloodshed, no siege.

Perhaps we could send one of our people to talk to these three youngsters, to persuade them to surrender. We would demand one thing in return, and require a solemn promise on this, that the three should be tried in whatever country they land for whatever offences they have committed.

In anything with political involvement the death sentence isn't inflicted in Western Europe. We would accept a period of imprisonment…'

'And in Western Europe who has the greatest sway?' The scepticism of the Minister of Defence. 'Is it us, or is it the Soviet Union? What if our appeal is rejected?'

'What is your solution, then?' said the Prime Minister, angry that his reasoning so carefully arrived at should face challenge so soon.

' I have no "solution", as you call it. Perhaps there is none. But we must be clear in our minds what we are looking for. When the French took Abu Daoud then we called for his extradition.

We made noises and we flexed what muscle we possessed. It is irrelevant that it was not sufficient. On the same basis the Soviets will want the return of these children, but that Is something that we cannot permit, that is unthinkable. There would be the deepest shame on ourselves and our people if we failed to use every artifice available to us to prevent the young ones being sent back to execution. I accept, of course, that we cannot associate our government with their actions, but at the same time I say that we cannot disassociate ourselves to the extent of permitting them to go to their deaths in a Soviet prison…'

'What would you have me do? Fly in the paratroopers again, recreate Entebbe? Lift them from whatever airfield they land?"

' I say that we cannot hold our heads high as the representatives of the people of the Jewish State if we tolerate the sending back -'

'What do you seek to tell me?'

'For years now we have fought and struggled to rid our people in Russia of persecution. We cannot allow-must not allow-them to be sent back. The humiliation would be unacceptable.'

'What then do you think I am suggesting? Do you believe I look towards a craven retreat? This is why I offer to send a man.'

He broke off, thankful for the softened knock at the door that precluded further argument and would only take them deeper into confusion. A single sheet of paper was handed over to him, and while he read it he took in the sound of the door closing behind file messenger. A deep sigh, from far down in his chest, then the Prime Minister shrugged, irritated, as if to throw off the constriction of a burden.

'Gentlemen, there is little time now. The Dutch government has informed our Embassy in The Hague that they have decided-and they say it is with regret-that they have made certain conditions which must be met if the plane is allowed to land. They must have the word of the three that they will disarm themselves and surrender. I note that our Ambassador makes no mention of what would happen to the three should they comply with the instructions. But it would seem that the question is irrelevant. The demand has been rejected, the plane is flying on.

They will be over the United Kingdom in less than three-quarters of an hour, they have enough fuel to get there, but not for a further diversion. It seems it is the British with whom we have to deal.'

The Defence Minister leaned across the table, his hand outstretched, and reaching for that of the Prime Minister. I agree to what you propose. It is right for the first step. We must win more time to talk of alternatives. You have my support. You have my word.'

There was a pale moon of gratification at the Prime Minister's mouth. He said, 'You must find a man that you think well of, who could talk to the three, someone young, someone they will admire and accept, who can convince them. A man of our strength, of the strength of our people.'

And then he added, as an afterthought, half to himself and yet not caring who heard, ' I would prefer it had not been the British.'