Kingfisher

CHAPTER SEVEN

The closing of Schipol Airport represented a huge task to the dozen Air Traffic Controllers on duty in the tower. All flights on the ground were to be indefinitely delayed – simple enough that, with only the passengers' fury and the carriers' frustration to contend with – but harder and more complex to handle the fifteen aircraft in various stages of final approach. Diversions to Brussels for those closest, to Rotterdam for those that came from the North, and for those that were further afield there were requests for information on fuel loads and suggestions that they put down at Lille or Charles de Gaulle and Orly on the outskirts of Paris. Short haul flights coming from North Germany and Heathrow were advised to delay take-off until the situation had clarified.

Within a matter of minutes of the order being given the intricate and complicated process of planning the controlled flights of some scores of aircraft across Northern Europe was in apparent chaos. In the terminals there was confusion, passengers struggling into queues at the check-in counters where the abused staff could neither accept their baggage nor award them with boarding cards.

Out on the runways of Schipol Dutch troops had taken to their lumbering armoured personnel carriers. Blue-uniformed members of the police airport squad with steel helmets and Ml carbines drove their jeeps alongside them to augment the effect of the APCs. The blocking programme successfully used by the Germans was aped till the runways offered no scope for landing, only for disaster. But the Dutch government faced greater emotional problems than the Germans. Ever since the Yom Kippur was of 1973 when the support of the Netherlands for Israel had been unqualified through the clouds of bitter invective from the Arab oil producers, the small nation had acquired a reputation of providing a solid staff on which the Zionist State could lean. For this reason the Dutch cabinet had felt the need to offer landing permission to the Ilyushin, but had attached such riders that they felt confident they would deflect the Aeroflot's route beyond their airspace. It was by now academic what line the cabinet would have taken in response to the demand of the Soviet Union that the three should be returned to their jurisdiction. The plane had circled the airport twice, watched by huge crowds of transistor-toting passengers and mechanics and ground staff, before heading towards the dykes and the sea wall and the cold evening waters of the North Sea.

Although on their circuits of Schipol David and Isaac had been able to identify the faint and indistinct shapes of the blocking vehicles their feelings were much changed from those above Hanover when they had first realized that the West was reluctant to play host to their errant migration from the East.

The navigator had provided them with the piece of paper on which was written in his neat hand the brief message from the Dutch authorities that listed the conditions of landing. They had studied it, read it perhaps three times each, trying to win the nuances of the carefully prepared government statement of policy, and known, both of them, that they would fly on.

'Where can we go?' David had asked the navigator, quietly and with respect, as if accepting that in spite of their guns and their proven willingness to kill they had still needed the man's expertise.

'We can go south. Try Belgium, perhaps, or the French.

We can go north towards Denmark, or back into the Federal Republic. If we continue we will reach Britain. But if they make us circle, if there is more waiting, then we have no further alternatives. We would not be able to regain the European continent. If we go to Britain that is where we must land.' The pilot officer supported him, wordlessly pointing to the quivering fuel counters that now edged past the vertical towards the wing of the measurement arc and that hustled closer to the red warning line.

The navigator waited for them. He did not interfere, sensing perhaps that at this moment they relied heavily on him and that in their dependence on his skills he might exert, subtly and imperceptibly, at least some influence. If he antagonized them or disputed with them then the relationship could be destroyed. He knew that at this moment there was no possibility of abject surrender, that it was not the time for him to begin the gentle and clandestine process of wearing down the resolve of the two men who shared the cockpit with himself and the pilot officer, knew that that time would come later when the lives of the passengers were not at such direct risk. He was just past his twenty-seventh birthday, tanned from his holiday on the Bulgarian coast, engaged to be married and flush with the confidence that came from the knowledge that he did his job well, that he would advance. The men who stood behind him and looked over his shoulder at the air routes and tried to decipher the meaning of his lines and paths and to assess the distances he talked of and weigh them against their scant knowledge of the different implications of reception in the north, in the south, or the west, were only a little younger than himself. They were similar to the people he saw in the streets of Moscow and Leningrad and Kiev when he was on stop-over. A great ordinariness about them, he thought, nothing to distinguish them from the wallowing, compliant herd, nothing in their faces, their hands, their clothes, nothing to make them stand out… only the guns. He suppressed the slow smile, their only claim on him, on his interest, his attention, his curiosity… the guns, and the fact that if they were fired then a planeload of people would perish. But such ordinariness surprised him, and he wondered how they could have chosen this course, and why, why they were there, why they had started, just why.

'We will go to Britain.' David speaking, evenly and in his own voice, calmed now. '1 want it made clear that this time we land. You must tell them of our fuel position, but not till we are near their airfields, till they cannot move us on, parcel us up, send us elsewhere.' He was going to say more, but clamped on his tongue. He had to talk to Isaac more, had to have consensus, had to draw again on the strength of his friend.

Again the nose of the plane rose, climbing once more.

Out in the passageway between the cockpit and the passenger cabin, where there was storage space and the cupboards and the forward toilet and privacy, the two men huddled together.

David stood facing the flight deck crew, Isaac the passengers, both studying their charges and speaking from the sides of their mouths, bodies close, and still the guns aimed at their charges.

' I had thought it would be finished by now,' said David.

'They have made it difficult for us. They will not change now.'

' I did not think it possible…*

'And we do not make it easy for them. It is not they alone who can hurt'

'You have heard the stories of the Arabs on the radio.,. l

' It will be difficult, but they can be made to soften.'

They give in to threats.'

'We have to take the philosophy of the Arabs, David,'

"And we have hostages, and we must use them.'

'If we want to see Israel, David.'

" If we are to force them, if they must bow to us, «, but then it will be a long road…'

' It has been a long road already.'

'You know what it means, Isaac? If we are to go on, if we are to succeed?'

' I know what it means. I understand, 8

'We must use the passengers…'

' I understand that.'

How docile they sit, how quiet, and they do not know what I have talked of, what David has accepted, what I know. Like the Jews of old. Do not know they are no longer just human beings, that their destiny has forsaken them, that they have become casualties that will fall if our will does not rise supreme over that of the people that we will face. Ex-pendable… and how many of them? How many to be taken before we convince the people on the ground that we are travelling to Israel? One? Perhaps the Italian, the man who sits in the middle of the front row of the group, who cannot look at me, who has the capped teeth and the silk tie; would he be enough to convince them? Perhaps the schoolmaster – perhaps we will need two? With his glasses that do not hide the way he stares back at me, not because he is brave and has courage but because he is afraid to lose face in the presence of the children. If we kill him as well, will that bend them?

Take a third, and why not? The American with his bleeding head and the handkerchief that his wife has wrapped around it, who seems like a farmer now in the field with his hay who must stop the sweat coming from his scalp to his eyes. Why not him also, if they hesitate, if they wish to test us? And the children, what of the children, Isaac? A wave of nausea rose up from his stomach. A terrible shame, a humiliation that the thought should even come to him. He had made David say it first, led him to the cliff face, defiled him, nagged him, pressured him, till they had come together to the ultimate – the children. And what if their will is stronger than ours, if they do not bend? How many do we kill to find out the temper of their resolution? He seemed to shrug to himself, disengaging from David. It will not be so, we will have the fuel. They will give us the fuel.

A full-measured, slowed, leaden-paced hour since they last came to the back of the plane to see her. Only the seat tops to look at, and the hands on people's heads, and the occasional stolen glance over the shoulder to see that she was still there – that the pistol was in her hand. There was hatred on some faces when they looked back, something they would not dare when Isaac was watching them, not since he had struck the American. But that was an hour back, and they looked differently at Rebecca, because she was a girl, just a girl, and had no right to be feared. But they do not come and talk with me, leave me here, isolated, ignored, searching the length of the plane to lip-read their whispers far away as they meet in the corridor outside the cockpit. Because I screamed, is that why I am not to be trusted? she thought. Have I less strength than the others, and is that the only currency they value, strength whatever that may be, man's strength, their stupid, ignorant puerile virility? David has screamed too, and I heard it, heard it the length of the plane, heard it with all the passengers and seen their heads jump up like those of jerked marionettes and subside cautiously again when calm returned to the cockpit area. They loathe me, these people, they would like to stamp and kick and pummel the life out of me, beat and beat till each bone is broken; that is the revenge they seek, and only the gun prevents it. Only the squat and polished security of the gun holds them back, because that is what they fear.

The head teacher's hand raised.

Like all the teachers she'd ever known. In his best clothes because he was taking the children somewhere, would have polished his shoes, selected his best shirt. A compilation of Soviet virtues, preaching the Love of the Motherland, Indus- triousness and Frugality, Friendship and Comradeship, Love of Studies and Consciousness. Teacher's hand raised. Ludicrous, the classroom table turned.

The children want to relieve themselves, Miss.'

Of course they do. Don't we all?

The children have been very patient, Miss. They have waited a long time.'

Just like the American. Called her 'Miss' because she had the gun, put his sharp bony knee in her crutch if she didn't have it, and kick her, and kick her, and kick her. She looked for Isaac, but he was lost from sight again. Lost in the bloody cockpit where with David he spent all his time, time when he should have come and told her what was happening, what the descents had meant, why they had not landed, why they had flown on. Was it like the American had said – that there wasn't a red carpet, that nobody would want them? What was the word he'd used? 'Pariah', that was it. A beast that fed off the scraps, that turned the nose of people, an outcast, something set aside. Could have called her a Jew, couldn't he? Same thing, what he meant, but nobody said what they meant, not while she held the pistol.

'Miss, the children have been very patient, most patient. There can be no harm in their going to the lavatory.'

No sign of Isaac, and anyway what harm could there be from it? That was what they had left her there for, because they had problems to wrestle with in the cockpit. It was not out of choice that they had left her there, but for a reason. David must have had a reason, Isaac too. She was being stupid, playing the idiot, and they had left her in charge and given her responsibility. Above the droning power of the engines that permeated the insulated cabin she shouted her answer to the schoolmaster.

'They can come in threes. Just the children to start with. They must come from each block of seats at a time, and the next will follow only when the previous three have finished'

She pushed the soft drinks trolley end-on to the aisle so that there was a gap through which the children could pass, and the first three rose and hurried towards her, relief written on their faces.

Thank you, Miss,' the head teacher called to her from his seat, craning round, watching the procedure, watching her.

Disciplined children. The product of the System and the Pioneers, taught at school to conform and to show respect, bobbing their heads with acknowledgment as they passed her on their way to the three rear toilets, and another conveyer- belt expression of gratitude when they came back into the cabin and moved to their seats. Bright faces, scrubbed with soap and short hair for the boys, neat ribbon-tied pigtails for the girls. A few years back, and that's what she had been, not different, not separated – until she had met David, before she had known Isaac and learned the power of a polioeman's pistol, the pistol that was in her hand. They regarded the gun as she passed but were too well-mannered to stare at it, too well-schooled to give it more than a glance.

Eleven years old most of them, twelve a few, and now regimented and able to hide their fear of the gun under the umbrella of childish curiosity. Doing what they had been told to do.

The head teacher was out of his seat and walking towards her holding loosely the hand of a child, leading him and coaxing him towards the gap between the trolley and the galley wall.

He said quietly, a voice that would not embarrass and attract attention. This one, Miss, he has a kidney problem. There is equipment under his clothes, and I must help him.'

She let him pass, scenting the damp perspiration of his body under his suit as he pushed through the narrow entrance that was available. She turned to watch them disappear inside the toilet door, saw the 'Engaged' sign light up, and twisted herself back again, easy and relaxed so that she faced the front, dominating her passengers.

She was not aware of him as he came close to her back, had no sense of his proximity, was concerned only with the woman and the mewling baby who was rising from her seat far to the front. She understood nothing of his plan till his hands were on her.

The baby crying, always that bloody child crying… and then the sudden, panic-stricken fear, coming alive in a single moment. One hand across her mouth and fingers squeezing against her lips so that she could not scream, shovelling the ends with the clipped dirt-tasting nails between her teeth so that she could not bite, and the other hand clawing for her right wrist and seeking to break the grip that held the gun. Had to get the hand from her mouth, had to scream, had to give warning, tumbling through her mind the need to arouse the others who were at the front, and all the time the fingers in her mouth choking at her, denying her air, and the grip on her wrist was vice-tight and closing so that the blood could not pass, her muscles not respond. Others in front of her, coming from their seats, gigantic, looming, fearsome… and she was falling… another of the schoolmasters, one that she took for a farmer, and a boot caught her flush to the bone of the shin causing her to buckle and collapse to the carpet of the aisle.

It was the fall that broke the headmaster's grip on her arm, the jerk with which her body collapsed was not anticipated, the sudden shift of her balance and weight was too great for the pliant fingers, not used to physical action. When she hit the floor the gun exploded in a blast of noise and cordite fumes, and she winced from the flash burn to her chest that seemed to sear a way through the fabric of her dress. Hands all round her now, pummelling and driving to reach under her body to where the gun was, pulling at her thighs, at the slight softness of her breasts, frantic in their haste now that the noise of the discharge bullet had sounded the alarm.

And then there was no one. Liberation. The hands withdrawn. She wiped the hair from her face front and looked up. She saw the feet that were edging back from her, moving away, and tilting her head further. Their hands were on their heads again, faces of guilt and fear, the boys found out, and halfway down the aisle was Isaac with the submachine- gun at his shoulder and far past him and guarding his back was David. Just the droning pull of the engines and the fractional swaying in the air currents of the plane on steady course: no words. The men who had left their seats making their way back, ashamed, caught out, a girl to disarm and they had failed, and now they faced the wrath of the young man with the chill in his eyes. He would not have made the mistakes that she had, and their faces showed their concern at the retribution he would exact, the toll he would take.

Deep throbbing pain in her leg where the man had kicked her, and an aching through her shoulders where a knee had pressured downwards against her spine, and a place on her forehead where there would be a bruise from the impact against the metal stanchion of a seat support.

Interrogation in Isaac's voice, questioning. 'How were they out of their seats?'

Difficult to speak at first, had to get the air back into her pinched lungs.

'They said the children should go to the toilet, they said their was one who needed help, who was ill, that was how they came behind me.'

'Nobody was to move.'

'But they said the children wanted to go..,*

'You were given an instruction. You disobeyed it. You jeopardized the whole of our mission.'

'But the children have to pee, Isaac. It was not.,. how was I to know?'

If they wanted to pee they could have used their knickers. You nearly destroyed everything, the whole plan, and you alone could have destroyed it.' No anger, not the burning in his eyes, but something else. She had never seen him like this before, not with the contempt turning the lines of his mouth and the single reddened patches on the high points of his cheeks, and the hands that were white and bloodless in their grip of the machine-gun.

'Which one was it? Which one attacked you?'

As if in a limbo of loyalties she hesitated, the struggle warring inside her as to whether she should identify the headmaster. What would Isaac do? Would he kill him? Had she the power to sentence the man, to cause his execution?

He was closer to her than to Isaac, with his head bowed, and she could see the bald top of his scalp, and the places where the grey hair still grew, and the places where the revealed skin was blotched and discoloured, and… and he had tried to kill her, that man, that was why he had struggled with her, to kill her and to kill David and Isaac.

' It was the one in the aisle seat, four rows from you, on the left."

'Louder,' said Isaac, but his voice was hushed and low, competing with the aircraft's power.

'Do not be afraid. Do not believe that these people will save you. They'll cut your throat, Rebecca, bleed you like an animal. If they could they would have bludgeoned you to death, if the gun had not fired, and I not come. Which one was it?'

' It was the one in the aisle seat, four rows from you, on the left.' She looked away as Isaac advanced up the aisle between the avenue of passengers, no heads turning to watch him, just the shuffle of his canvas shoes on the carpet.

'Listen to what I say,' Isaac said to the headmaster. His voice as in a conversation, a tone of mutated friendship, bizarre to her, obscene. 'The Germans have prevented us from landing, and the Dutch too. They have driven lorries and army trucks across the runways of their airports to make it impossible for us to land. And now we are going to England. We have fuel to get there and no further, and they will let us land for that reason. But we have not come this far to finish in England: we go to Israel. Perhaps we will have to show the English that we have the will to fly to Israel, that we are not as the Jews were, that we are a new generation, as the "sabras" are. If it is necessary we will shoot you, one by one, to prove to the English that we have determination. If that should happen then I make a promise to you, a promise that I shall keep. If anyone dies on this plane to convince the English of our will then it will be you, you will be the first, you will be the one that we call for.'

Isaac walked on till he reached Rebecca. Held out his hand for her to give him the pistol, checked the mechanism, ensured there was a bullet in the breach, that the gun was live. 'The mistake must not be repeated, Rebecca.' He turned on his heel and strode back down the length of the cabin. And the Ilyushin continued its course across the smooth unruffled waters of the North Sea towards the coastline of England and the Kingfisher's landfall.

The news that the Dutch landing conditions had not been accepted was sufficient for the summons to Charlie Webster to attend the Emergency Committee meeting in the offices of the Home Secretary in Whitehall.

The Home Secretary was in the Chair, flanked by one of his junior ministers, two civil servants of the Department both with the grading of Principal Under-Secretaries, a lowly Foreign Office minister in order that the deliberations of the two giant bureaucracies could be dovetailed through liaison, and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from Scotland Yard. At the far end of the polished mahogany table was Parker Smith, whose suggestion it had been that they call for the man in his section who specialized in the study of Russian dissident groups. The windows were open because it was a warm and windless evening, and the murmur of the London rush hour traffic came up to them from the courtyard. Coffee cups on the table, and filled ashtrays, and the paraphernalia of the meeting – torn up scraps of paper, others crumpled and discarded, some with the artistic and intricate doodles of the Foreign Office man, briefcases and maps, and telephone on an extended wire at the Home Secretary's elbow.

A messenger in the blue livery of the Home Office had been waiting in the wide and high-roofed lobby for Charlie to arrive. They hadn't bothered with the formality of signing him in, and together they had taken the sweeping staircase two at a time till they were on the first floor and walking briskly along the central corridor flanked by the uncleaned oil portraits of the Minister's predecessors in office. A brief knock and the messenger opened the door. Charlie spluttered involuntarily as the smoke wall hit him, fugging his nostrils and his eyes.

'Mr Charles Webster, gentlemen. 8

The Home Secretary waved him towards a seat, the only one vacant and halfway down the table on the right-hand side. Interest on the faces of all except Parker Smith. Different type of fellow to the ones that the politicians and civil servants of rank were accustomed to doing business with, suit not pressed as keenly, and shirt looking as though it had done service the day before by way of bonus, the shave wearing fine because he had not slipped to the men's room at lunchtime as these more public men were accustomed to do.

Parker Smith, sitting easily in the company, anxious to put Charlie at ease, and overdoing it, sounding patronizing, sort of speak-up-boy-they-won't-bite. 'Charlie, I've told the Minister and his colleagues here of your background. Told them of your experience overseas and in Dublin, and I've sketched through the work you do no w, with emphasis on your predictions of last night.'

The Home Secretary cut him short

'Mr Webster, the Aeroflot flight is perhaps a quarter of an hour off our coastline. We can keep it circling for a bit, but there will not be much opportunity for prevarication. We are advised that it has enough fuel for perhaps a further forty minutes' flying time, three-quarters of an hour at the most. It is our intention to put it down at Stansted in Essex. We do not have the luxury of our European colleagues of being able to pass the buck. The buck stops here; the fuel load of the plane determines that. We will obviously attempt to persuade the hi-jackers to surrender without further recourse to needless and stupid bloodshed, but we have to know from the time that the wheels hit the ground what sort of people we are dealing with. We want you to put some flesh on them, Mr Webster. I don't mind conjecture, provided that it's based on very sound background, but what you tell us may have to be acted upon very quickly so I'd prefer caution in your analysis.'

Civil servants and junior ministers with their sharpened pencils and gold-coated pens poised, only the Home Secretary and Parker Smith looking at him. And what do they want to hear? What can you give them, Charlie? Tell them about the kids who have learned that you don't walk through Hyde Park shouting any more; you get yourself a nice shiny Armalite and shoot a copper in Belfast, you get dished out an AK and blow a Brit squaddie to kingdom come in Crater, you get an RPG and cuddle up to an airport fence to bag yourself an El Al jumbo. They're waiting for you, Charlie, so go slowly, and don't use long words.

'There have been two confirmed hi-jack attempts out of the Soviet Union in the last few years.

A family took a light aircraft to Turkey. Insignificant and a one-off incident.

Then there was the Leningrad plan that aborted and never got off the ground, a group of Jews who wanted to take over a plane, unarmed, and fly it to Finland. It was a short haul flight and the whole thing was a disaster, the group hopelessly infiltrated by KGB. All arrested ait the airport, and some still inside. There is a third incident but it's less hard and we have fewer details, even through "I" channels – Israeli announcement that a hi-jacked internal flight was coming out, and it never came, '74 or '75, I think. From the East bloc there have been a series of chaps jumping a plane and coming over, but not Russians. There hasn't been a major Russian one before, so that's the first bit of new ground. Now the second one: these people up there are apparently Jews. In the past the Jewish dissidents have for the most part contented themselves with media protests, clandestine interviews, press conferences, civil disobedience where they'll be noticed by foreigners and it will get reported, trying to get pressure on the local authorities and most of their efforts beamed at the United States. Chief contention has been emigration either to Israel or to the West generally, followed by complaints of racial discrimination. That's very broad and very brief, but probably sufficient.'

There was the click of a cigarette lighter, the noise of nibs scratching on paper.

'These people however are different. We've had a policeman shot in Kiev, wounded, apparently seriously and nothing in the media. That indicates it was neither criminal nor casual.

The one thing that would really concern the people over there is if they consider this a target shooting, an attempt at a gesture, though a botched one for all that. A gesture they will equate with conspiracy and organization. That would concern them. There have been terror attacks put down to minority nationalist groups but nothing that we have been able to identify as internally aggressive and specifically Jewish. As I said we had the shooting of the policeman. We've also heard of rumours round the university site that a Jewish student was arrested a few days ago, and that militia reinforcements were seen moving into the city. Perhaps he talked, the one they picked up, and the assumption has to be that the security people were on the point of staging a large- scale arrest sweep. And then we have a hi-jack.'

Charlie paused. Not for effect, just to clear his mind again.

He didn't make speeches – not in his line of work. The difficult bit starts now though, he thought, where we lose the facts, where we start jogging along with the theory.

'There are two types of hi-jacking or hostage-taking operations. When the Palestinians do it, along with the people associated with them, it's usually what we call a "leverage operation" – designed to get some of the comrades out of prison, and usually an Israeli prison. Doubled with that is the publicity factor of attention being turned on their operation with all the attendant explanations as to who they are and what their grievance is. That was Dawson's Field in Jordan, OPEC in Vienna, the Air France to Entebbe. All well documented. That's one type, then there's the other sort -what we call a "break-out job", which is what I think this one is. Kids who felt that time was running out back at home and were looking for the fastest and most successful bolt they could manage. Difficult place to go underground, the Soviet Union, especially if it all starts falling round your ears quickly. You'd need months to set an underground situation up, just for the paperwork of changed identity. They didn't reckon they were capable of that, so they've tried the bunk. I doubt if it was planned more than a few hours before takeoff, and their major success was very simply to get the guns on to the aircraft. They're probably young, early twenties at the most, naive politically by the standards that we are familiar with, and by this stage they'll be frightened and dangerous.'

Waiting for someone to interrupt, get him off the hook, but nobody did.

'Keep going, Mr Webster'-the gentle rebuke from the Home Secretary – 'Please remember that if we have any advantages at this stage time is not one of them.'

' I say "dangerous" because they will have believed that they would be permitted to put down anywhere in the West. They've tried twice now, and as you explained this is their last chance.

They'll know that if they are still to get to Israel then they've a fair amount of shouting to get through first. You have to be prepared for them to shift from break-out to leverage, if and when they discover that the fuel wagons aren't going to be beside the plane and filling her up.'

There is no possibility that the plane will be permitted to fly to Israel. Both from the diplomatic side and the question of principle involved that eventuality has not been considered. The basic approach had been agreed long before Charlie had arrived, relayed to the Prime Minister at his holiday retreat in the South of England, sanctioned by him without dispute. So that's the policy, Charlie, taking a hard line. Easy to be tough with this one, he thought; one-off job.

' I cannot be definite,' Charlie said, 'but I would expect these people to go hard once they find that things aren't that rosy. They'll know the case histories of previous hi-jacks, they can take in BBC, VOA, plenty of radio sets that can pick that kind of thing up in the Ukraine, no problem of jamming now, reception's not difficult. I wouldn't think they'll have a stamina fallback, they won't be able to keep the pressure up for long, forty-eight hours or so, but in the meantime expect them to play it rough.'

'Will they be intelligent?' The Under-Secretary with responsibility for co-ordinating and implementing the decisions of the Emergency Committee. The high pitch of the public school and private means that Charlie detested, but it was a good and important question.

'Academically they'll be bright. They'll have an ideology at any rate that won't be political, but will stem from their breeding, their position in Soviet society. Committed people. Probably they'll believe they are prepared to die for it all, providing the moment isn't too close at hand.

They'll be similar enough to all the other groups. When you get down to it – start trading, that is – you'll find them the same breed as all the other groups, same breed as the Palestinians, Baader Meinhof, Tupamaros, Monteneros, Provies. They'll be speaking a different language, that's all you'll notice.'

'Do you call the Provos intellectuals, Mr Webster?' queried the Under-Secretary.

'You asked me a different question. You asked me whether these people were intelligent. You don't need a university degree to be good at this game, but you have to be sharp, know your way round and keep your thinking cap on. I say again, these people have done bloody well to get this far; it takes a bit more than luck, you know.'

' Is there anything you'd like to say in conclusion, Charlie?' Parker Smith was filling his briefcase with assorted papers, cigarettes stubbed out, pens removed to inside pockets, ties straightened.

'Only this. They've come a long way, these three. But they think they've a fair old mileage still to come. Don't underestimate them. Take them very carefully to start with.'

Charlie sat back in his seat, felt tired, hadn't the old resilience. The man next to him – there had been no introductions and Charlie didn't know his name – pushed three photographs across the table to where Charlie could see them. Snapshots, and they hadn't travelled well on the photofax machine from Moscow to the Foreign Office. Blurred and creased from the printing apparatus but still the recognizable features. Names printed in Russian and English across the bottom of each picture. Straight out of the bloody bible.

'Mr Webster, I'm going to Stansted now by car. I'd like you to accompany me.'

The Home Secretary had risen, gestured to Charlie to lead through the door, followed him out to the corridor and the rear staircase that led to the car park. The Minister's black Humber waited there, with a chauffeur and his personal detective, and with its engine idling was a three-litre Rover that would drive behind them. Three in the back they managed, Minister, Under-Secretary and Charlie.

Out into the traffic, swinging east from Whitehall towards the City. End of a routine commercial day, and the pavements thronged with the last shifts of commuters, only hesitating for their evening papers, succumbing to the propaganda of the billboards – OUR HI-JACK ALERT – BRITAIN PREPARES FOR RED HI-JACK CRISIS. The Ilyushin would be at Stansted when they arrived, and Charlie pictured again the three faces that they'd shown him. Stupid little bastards, and don't know what they've bitten off, and who'll wish when this is over they'd stayed at home and played kid's games. And now you're deep down in the pit, Charlie, and after you'd said you didn't want to see the ladder any more and wanted a desk job. Should have been franker months ago, told them that you were sick of the killing, of being a guardian of the right of the middle-aged, middle classes, middle-brows to sleep in their beds at night. Should have spoken then and you didn't. Kept your speech till tonight, till you impressed the big men, and they wanted you as part of the team, want you to help screw these three, help con them – help kill them. Stupid little bastards.

Too slow! Too slow! What do you think they'll be doing, sitting around chewing beetle? They'll be ready for you. They know what time we come, can set their watches by it. Always we come at dawn. They know and they are ready for you, and you've got to be quicker than them. If not then it is you that are dead, not them.'

He stood watching the soldiers as they trooped sheepishly back to their starting line, the top of the cement staircase. Eight soldiers, all of them deflated by his criticisms, and the air was heavy with the reek of fumes from the flash grenades they had thrown and the blank cartridges they had fired.

'You must remember this for us is a rehearsed drill, simple and straightforward. You will have experienced it many times so that it has no strangeness to you. But for them it will be the first time. However much they are ready if you are fast enough you will have the time. When you hear the machine- gun fire outside then you must explode. You have to be faster, or you are worm-food. We shall now do it again.'

Thirty-one years old, Arie Benitz, and wearing on his denimed shoulder, black against the olive green, the insignia of lieutenant-colonel. He commanded the most specialized force in the Israeli armed services, the anti-terrorist storm squad. Akin with both his predecessors, who had died leading their men on operations, he was a draftee from the Parachute Brigade. One who had held the rank had died in the assault on the beach-front Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv after Palestinians had sprinted with their hostages to the top-floor rooms, the other from a random sniper during the mopping up stages of the Entebbe rescue mission. Any new commander will insist that the training of his men bears his own hallmark, his own stamp, especially when the expertise called for is the ability to prise out dedicated and determined fighters from the cramped rooms where they had chosen to die, and die if possible in the company of their hostages.

The building that Benitz and his front-line section used for training was a three-floor block of disused sleeping quarters in the big army barracks on the Beersheba road out of Ashdod. They were working on the top floor, because that was where the enemy usually sheltered with their prey of terrified and hushed civilians, where the space for movement of the attack force was limited, the opportunity for varying the direction of assault minimal.

Hand on his stop watch, he gave a blast on the whistle cramped between his teeth. The long hammering chant of the outside machine-guns that would be aimed for the windows of the last bunker the Palestinians would creep to. High fire aimed to pass into the rooms and then impact against the ceilings, fire to make a man hesitate in his desire to win courage, to force him to the floor where he would cringe, to gain the precious seconds that the attackers must Save.

At the first echo of the firing he screamed at the pitch of Ms voice. 'Go, you bastards, go!' First man raking the door, flattening himself against the wall adjacent to its hinges. Number Two crashing into it with his weight, a second's fraction after the firing stopped, Number Three with the grenade pins already pulled and hurling them into the opened space. Fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh and eighth, bullocking through the smoke in the moments after the explosions and firing for the corners as they entered each room, where the man who already knows that he is doomed will hide for an illusion of protection. When the next group came from Fatahland Arie Benitz would be fourth in line, fourth man, but the first through the door. It was traditional that the commander led from the front, not in practice when the men worked on the drills, but when it was for real.

'Better,' he said, as they emerged. Smiles now from proud men who valued his accolade.

'Better. Three and a half seconds from the machine-gun fire to the grenade explosions. Seven seconds till the last of you was inside. At that speed you have a chance, perhaps only two hairy arses shot off.' Low murmur of laughter from the squad. Hard, battle-tested young men all of them, born and raised inside the State of Israel. Helmets covered in camouflage cloth and netting, denims that were not encumbered with any webbing that might encumber the rash forward, and on their backs a weird and incomprehensible series of fluorescent strips, all in varying patterns, the one different to the other, but which told the trained soldier which man was in front of him, what was his job, essential in the demi-light in which they would fight

'We do it once more.'

He went inside the rooms beyond the flapping and damaged door, rearranged the target dummies of beaten straw wound about with sacking and adorned with the grotesque masks that his men had fashioned, moved them from where they had been the last time – placed them under beds, behind chairs, deep in shadow – and lit a candle in the inner hallway that would serve as the only illumination for the soldiers. This was the way it was learned, the killing game. None of the long-range marksmen crap that the Germans had tried at Munich; but close-quarters work, body to body, point- blank range, near enough for the nose to find them, the eyes to see them, the ears to catch the sob for mercy as you fired.

When he came back out of the flat and slammed the door shut behind him he saw the stranger among the troops. Not one of the unshaven, dirt-smeared soldiers gangling and lolling in apparent semi-sleep but a ranking officer in office uniform. Could have cursed the men, not one of them stiffened, not one of them erect, not a salute among them. No recognition of the deputy-commander of the barracks. Because they were paratroopers and had now been elevated to anti-terrorist standby, and the outsider was just an admin man.

'Colonel, my apologies for the interruption. There are men from the Ministry of Defence, from Tel Aviv. They are in my office to see you.'

'We have one more run, then we are completed. My respects and I will be with them in ten minutes.'

' I do not think, Colonel, they would appreciate such a delay.'

Pleasure on his men's faces. Knowledge that the shouting and hectoring was over for another day. Time for a shower and something to eat, time to get out of the sweat-sodden fatigues they had worn through the day and half the night.

'Don't look so bloody lively,' the Colonel snapped at them as he followed his escort to the stairs. 'Tomorrow we're back here, and all day, till we lose at least a second off the entry time.'

But for the men of the storm squad stationed in the Central Military Zone of Israel there was waiting a long sleep, no early call in the morning, no immediate repetition of the assault techniques. From a briefing by two military intelligence officers and a senior official of the Foreign Ministry Colonel Arie Benitz was driven to an Israeli Air Force base. Under the mantle of darkness he was strapped into the navigator's seat of a Phantom fighter bomber and flown at many hundreds of miles an hour to the Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri, Cyprus. At the airfield, denuded of activity by successive Defence White Papers, he was transferred without formality to a VC10 of Support Command. He was sat far to the rear of the aircraft and separated himself from the small groups of service personnel and their families. During the five and a half hour flight to Brize Norton, the transport base in Wiltshire, he would have a chance to mull over, to evaluate, the direction that had been given him, to concern himself with the role that the Prime Minister of his country had asked him to play. No passport, only his IDF identity card, and the uniform still splendid with the twin flashes of fluorescent fight on the back. At Akrotiri they'd assured him that he'd have five minutes in the wash-house at Brize Norton before the helicopter flight to Stansted, enough to change into borrowed and less conspicuous clothes.

At the time that the Colonel was flying out of Israel Aeroflot flight 927 scheduled for Tashkent was beginning its final approach to the Essex airfield of Stansted.

The original course plotted by her navigator had taken Pilot Officer Tashova towards Heathrow, London's principal airport and one of the busiest in the world. Paris, thankful that the ultimate responsibility was not hers, had guided the plane in accented English along Green One, leading her to the fan markers, the radio beacons that drove a high, shrill whistle into her earphones and flashed sharp lights at her control panel. Paris signed off, with gratitude, offering as final consolation the London airways frequency of 128.45. The Ilyushin should begin to call for further instructions. That the navigator had brought the plane south before beginning the short drop across the English Channel was not out of error but deliberate. There was a determination that whatever authorities now had jurisdiction over the plane should have no doubts from their calculations that the fuel tanks were drying out and parched, that the flight time was exhausted.

From the cockpit on the eastern approach to London they saw the distant hazed lights of the lit-up city that merged into the ink-dark horizon, and then the instruction had come for the diversion to Stansted, an airfield that neither Tashova nor her navigator had heard of. There was no reason why they should – it was not an international strip, but dealt with the trade of holiday charters and offered facilities to virgin British Airways pilots and crew on their take-offs and bumps.

The instructions on flight level, squawk ident, course degree numerals, VOR locations were incomprehensible to David – a foreign tongue, a foreign science. It was not possible for him to know that Stansted had been chosen as the airfield in Britain most suitable to receive a hi-jacked airliner – that the studies had been made by Security and Board of Trade a full three years earlier.

It was remote, could easily be sealed, and if it had to be shut down because of an alien presence on the runways then the disruption to the massive traffic using British airspace would be minimal.

As the Ilyushin headed away from London, its red indicator lights flashing the message of its traverse over the Essex countryside, three companies of the Third Royal Regiment of Fusiliers were beating a path down the country lanes from Colchester, the barracks town to which they had returned thirty-six hours earlier from four months' duty in Londonderry. Leave abruptly cancelled, and orders to the commanding officer to provide a military cordon. The Fusiliers travelled in the high-powered whining Saracen armoured cars and in the clumsy three-ton Bedfords; men disappointed in the cancellation of the reunions with their families, but for all that thrusting the adrenalin through their bodies at the prospect of seeing for themselves, watching, guarding over the plane that had come from Russia, the plane that dominated the television…

Further away, but closing with greater velocity on Stansted, were a formation of Puma troop-carrying helicopters, bringing a Special Air Service detachment from their distant camp on the Welsh borders. These were the men specifically trained in anti-hijack operations, and the lack of talk among the eighteen being ferried across Southern England reflected their frustration at being summoned late, due to arrive only minutes before the airliner, little time for reconnoitering, preparation, before they slipped to their planned and practised positions. I From divisional police stations in the county FN rifles and Smith and Wesson pistols were distributed to men of the Regional Crime Squad. Uniformed police were dispatched to set up road blocks on the approaches, on the roads from Saffron Walden and Thaxted and Great Dunmow and Bishop's Stortford. Keep the rubberneckers back, hasten the arrival of the various agencies, civilian and military, now speeding towards Stansited to greet the arrival of the Ilyushin.

David knew none of this, just watched the cold, unspeaking skills of Anna Tashova as she alternately cudgelled and caressed her controls, followed her instructions that came from over her shoulder. He knew nothing of the guns and the armour and the tensions that were amassing and that would await him.

Flaps moving again, change in the engine pitch, deep-throat rumble of the undercarriage dropping, and the passengers were craning at the cabin, windows searching out the lights on the ground.

Would take more than a blow from a gun barrel to depress the inherent cheerfulness of Edward R. Jones Jr, and besides his wife had managed a picture of his head and the bloodstained handkerchief, right after she'd attached it, when the blood was really red, before the wound dried out.

'Hey, Miss,' he said, turning again in his seat, looking back to Rebecca, 'and you don't have to get that gorilla to belt me this time, but is this it? Are we really going in this time?'

She did not understand the American with his bright plumage clothes and his bravado, could not come to terms with the man, and so said nothing.

'Have it your way, Miss. But I hope you know where the ball game goes from here. It could be awfully disappointing, Miss, awfully messy.'

Still no response, and he smiled at her, two-and-a-half thousand dollars of capped teeth, and turned back to the window.

The Italians, talking fast and excitedly among themselves, tightening their seat belts, leaning sometimes forward, sometimes backwards to spread their conversation among the whole group.

The children sat subdued in their seats. They were tired and hungry and had not been taught what their reaction should be to this situation. They had looked for a lead and received none, and were unable to digest the new noises of the engine and closing lights of the farmhouses and villages below.

Alone on the plane, bound in his own deep and introverted mood, was the headmaster. No one had spoken to him since his attempt to disarm the girl. He was shunned by those who had not matched his one unreasoned moment of courage.

And as the aircraft dipped and the pressure levels changed and the engines throttled their power so too increased the fevered screaming of the baby, unnoticed, irrelevant to all on board as the ground slipped and lurched towards them.