The Glory Boys

TWENTY

It had been four years since the British had first awoken, and then tardily, to the threat confronting their premier airport. The familiar continental backdrop of patrolling troops and armed para-military police on the runways and in the terminals had been thought just another European eccentricity, until the Guards and their armour had deserted Windsor and rolled into Heathrow for the first time. Many had seen that as an erosion of something peculiarly British, a departure from a way of life long established, a further weakening of the nation's aloofness from the violent habits of its neighbours. But times changed, and the troops came more often, the frequency of their alerts reducing the bizarre appearance of their initial arrival. And the British Airports Authority, the managing body for the 2700 acres of billiard-flat grass and concrete that played host on a summer's day to close on a thousand aircraft, had called its charge a 'national defence priority', and written in an annual review of the 'formi-dable tasks posed by the new warfare' of terrorist attack.

Familiarity, though, dulled the fascination of the armed men, the excitement died its death. Twenty million passengers came and went each year, and few could boast to their friends of having seen a rifle, a semi-hidden pistol handle at the hip of a policeman, let alone a light tank.

So on this Wednesday there was again a refreshing novelty about it all, and enough sunshine to bring out the crowds. Those who were flying arrived earlier than they otherwise would have done. Those landing lingered in the anticipation of an event. Around the army, the work of the airport continued uninterrupted; but ears were cocked listening for sirens and gunfire, and above all the ceaseless drone of uninformed and ceaseless rumour.

The turban felt strange and unfamiliar on Famy's head.

Not that it was heavy or ill-fitting, but as a constriction, the mark and uniqueness of an identity that he had not fully taken over. The overalls were right, loose and baggy, presenting no pressures on the shape of his body, and masking the rifle now pinioned, barrel down, in the belt at the front of his trousers. It was one of the small pieces of advice that they had given to him: secrete a barrelled weapon in the very front of your body. The hands always search at the sides, examine the flanks. The grenades would have been harder to dispose of on his person had the Indian not carried the small, yellow lunch box in the pocket of his trousers. The V40S wrapped well in the greaseproof paper that the nameless and faceless wife packaged round her man's food.

Famy walked toward the security check-point between the two giant structures that formed Terminal Three.

'Departures to Right', 'Arrivals to Left', and straight ahead the pendulum bar, unmistakable in its red and white message, with the notice slung beneath, large and decisive,

'Stop'. Beyond was the inner world that he had to join, the realm of the loaders and mechanics and airline personnel, passengers excluded unless they moved in their corralled herds on specific walkways. The BAA security man, blue uniform, white-rimmed cap, operated the movement of the bar from a glass-cased booth at the side. A soldier had crammed in beside him, and there was a Land-Rover behind daubed with the standard NATO camouflage parabolas. More soldiers beside the barrier itself. They were relaxed, confident, safe in the knowledge of their numbers and their firepower. Briefings had passed that down to them. Battalion commander to company commander, company commander to platoon commander, platoon commander to section leader. The word had been spread, circulated. One man was the risk. They had his picture in their minds, the description of his clothes.

An Indian in British Airways livery went no way toward fitting the requirement for vigilance and care that had been stressed on the Guardsmen. They looked in the bag, but cursorily and laughed when he asked in a voice, high-pitched by nerves, but which they took to be the flavour of his homeland, whether he should remove his turban. As they waved him through he shouted to the men in the booth.

'Good luck.'

And their smiles turned to the sneers of the young. A thousand against one. So who needed luck? With those odds half a day more and the rifles would be back in the armoury and they'd be in the pub under the castle wall.

They watched him go, and their attention was taken up by the next vehicle. An airport catering van, and there was the need for the tedium of climbing inside and searching.

Pier 7, they had said back at the camp, was the one where the El A1 would come to rest. Right at the extremity of the glass and prefabricated buttress down which the passengers would walk to the aircraft. Some days they would board through the tunnel that billowed out from the main construction, sometimes they would walk a few yards across the tarmac. One thing was constant, they had said, always the El Al was removed and remote from the other aircraft. Nearer to him was Pier 6, clogged with its quota of Jumbo 747s… British Airways, Pan American, Trans World Airlines, Japan Airlines, Middle East Airlines.

He skirted them, measuring a distance that would cause no offence, draw no attention to him. Neither too close to the machinery nor so far out on the tarmac that his basic unfamiliarity with the surroundings would be exposed.

There were more soldiers to his front, and an armoured car dwarfing them. Awaiting an arrival. Sitting and crouched among their packs, close to the one who had unslung the burden of the radio. Watchful, but not yet on alert. They had been right at the camp, and he praised their thoroughness, wondered where they accrued such information. This was where Sokarev would come. There were police standing in separate groups, distant and unwanted by the soldiers, a lesser force, while dogs sat with patience beside their handlers. As he crossed beyond Pier 6 more of the reception group came into his view.

Two more armoured cars sheltered under the raised flooring of the further and final pier. Big, ugly, powerful. Huge engines. Mounted machine-guns silhouetted against the sky. Firing power, hitting power, killing power. All there for Abdel-El-Famy. Twice he had seen the wounds on McCoy, seen his man's blood flowing from his body, seen the pain take his face. But they were pistol shots, not fatal, not lethal. Different to the force and velocity of the weapons that were now arrayed in front of him. These were stopping guns. Men did not climb up again, did not drive cars, did not see another day-break, not when they were struck by this power. The M i, difficult to forget, pressed against his groin, was unequalled. Only the Kalashnikov could compete — superior perhaps. The rifle he had been trained on, a soldier's rifle, a rifle of war. Trained?

Trained for what? So easy in the dry heat of the camp to talk of war, and to wave the farewells to the men who went without hope of return and whose places at the trestle tables would be filled by others with the bright eyes and the solutions and the unquestioning confidence. But what war was this? In an alien, hateful world. Reviled. Hunted. A war with only one victory, consummated only with the death of Sokarev. And if toward that victory Famy died it was of no consequence. Erased without trace if the big rifles took him. That Famy was prepared to die for Palestine was not important. An aggregate of irrelevance. Forgotten with the last tremors of his heart-beat, as if he had never been.

But in the camp, would they not care there? Only from success can the martyrdom come. Success and only success, no other criteria. As in a dream he walked, argument and counter-argument punching and confusing him, seeking answers his intellect could not provide. Why knowing the forfeit did he strive so willingly to be remembered? Why, when we know we will be dust, worm fodder, do we seek so hard to be recalled in friends' minds and in their voices?

Famy did not know, did not have the comprehension. He yearned only to be mourned. But understood the currency.

To be remembered with tears, then Sokarev must die. Only then would they weep for him, the boys with the abyss-brown eyes who shared his tent in the camp.

'Where the bloody hell do you think you're going?' — strident, beating in through his fantasies. The voice was rough, aged and foreign to him. 'Get out the bloody way.'

Famy was rigid. Horror at discovery, disaster. His eyes flickered, body still. The fork-lift cargo transport was five feet away from him, directly in his path, painted strident yellow and blue. El A1 colours.

'You want to look where you're bloody going, mate.'

'I'm sorry,' Famy stuttered the words.

'Not half you won't be sorry, not if this lot runs over you. What do you think those bloody lines are for, the white ones? 'Cos it's for trucks, right? Trucks' corridor.'

'I was watching the soldiers.'

'Stupid buggers, goofing about because of this Arab and the Yiddisher. If you worked for El Al you'd see enough of them. Troops, police and their own crowd and they're right bastards…'

Famy had recovered, was steadier. He was not one of them, this man. An employee, but not of their blood. it will be a big show this afternoon, all the troops and things, when the Israeli comes.'

'Not here it won't.'

'But when he boards there will be great security, surely?'

'Not putting him on here. Stands to reason. They're not bloody fools, these people. Load up here, taxi on to 28L, across to the VIP suite, lift him on, and up, up and away, and the squaddies and coppers can go home.'

'I didn't know there was a VIP area there.' Fishing, Famy. Deep, black water, unable to detect what is nibbling at the bait, uncertain of the reward.

'The new one. The one the old girl uses when she's off to Balmoral, where they put Kissinger down, right beside Cargo.'

'I'm sorry that I was in your way.' Famy smiled, and turned and began to walk toward the nearest British Airways plane.

A fleet of company trucks hovered underneath the fuselage belly. There would be a lift there. He would say he was urgently required at Cargo. It would only take a man a few minutes to drive him, and he would be close then. As close as he needed. Within range, within the range even of his M1.

The fleeting relief to which Jimmy had succumbed was broken by the arrival of Jones in the hotel room. He was aware of the voices, dim and thudding through his consciousness before his eyes reluctantly took in the scene, lids prised apart in protest to the sounds. Elkin looked to have benefited from the rest. He stood now on the far side of the room and close to Jones. They were examining a sheaf of typewritten sheets. The security attache was with them, and before he let his presence back with the living be known Jimmy accepted that the conversation was between Elkin and Jones, attache on the outside, present but not partaking of the feast. No sign of Sokarev. Poor bugger, thought Jimmy, still holed up in his patch and waiting to be consigned. Wonder they don't give him a waybill, stick a number on his arse and freight him home. His head still hurt, not as acutely as before, but intermittently. Take the bloody pledge, man. Your age, and still don't know better.

Jones acknowledged him. Not with friendship, not with warmth, just recognition. Doesn't really like me, after all these years, tolerates me around. Accepts he needs me today, knows he won't have to go through the charade tomorrow. That'll be the ditching time, usefulness used up.

Quick handshake it'll be, then piss off and don't show your face till it's been under the long-term tap and washed the bloody booze out. No obligation, not till the next time, till there's a bit of filth that needs scooping off the carpet, a drain that needs cleaning that stinks too much for him to put his pure white hands down.

'Glad to have you back with us, Jimmy,' Jones said. 'I was summoning the courage to kick you, you've been snoring like a sow in labour.'

'Why didn't you wake me when the confab started?'

'Nothing too complicated there, and you were much too pretty to disturb. Mr Elkin and I have gone over it.'

Pompous bugger. Wasn't like that when he wanted McCoy talked to. Means he thinks it's a piece of cake from now, all sewn up and can't go wrong. And it had to be. He'd be a gutsy bastard, the Arab, if they saw him again. If he puts his nose into this crab hole, then you'd have to hand it to him.

'What's my part in this show from now?' Jimmy asked, still slumped in the chair.

'You travel with him to the airport. Hold his hand all the way. Take him carefully up the steps, fasten his seat belt, and last thing before they shut up shop you vamoose down the ramp again. Very simple, very straightforward.'

'Where's he going from?'

'South side, the VIP area. The plane will taxi across from Terminal Three and lift him up right under our supervision. For once it's all planned, nothing for your right index to get twitchy about.'

'What news of Famy…?'

Jones was growing irritable. Not pleased at being spoken to with such lack of deference in public, in front of foreigners, strangers.

'No word of him. But the airport's sealed. Troops, police, armour, no need for you to be worried.' it's not me that's worried. It's not my job that hangs on knowing where the little runt is.'

Six thousand men work at the Heathrow Cargo terminal, there to despatch and unload more than a thousand tons of freight a day. That an outsider, an alien, should be in their midst would not be noticed.

Famy squatted low on his bag in the sunshine in the front of the big British Airways transit shed. There were others around him, watching the soldiers in the distance, statuesque and guarding a circle of empty tarmac. He spoke to no one, nor received any words of greeting or inquiry. It was of no concern to him, he did not seek communication and conversation. More troops on the corner of the building before the open ground that stretched to the white wooden fence that shielded the bungalow VIP lounge from his sight. The presence of the turbaned stranger would not arouse comment; freighters were traditionally the veterans of the fleet, converted as their passenger days were exhausted, and it was accepted that maintenance was in frequent demand.

There was a warmth in the air, and in the distance the shapes jumped and bounced and faded, made hazy by the heat. He had to blink to hold his concentration on the big plane in full view across the tarmac. The sheen played and gleamed on the outline of the El Al jet less than six hundred yards from him. He could make out the armoured cars, black in shadow against the light, and occasionally the figures of the soldiers around them would press into focus. Beneath the upright zip of his overalls the rifle worried against his body. It hurt, and would continue to hurt. There were many minutes before the plane would be ready to take Sokarev on board. He felt a curious calm now. No anguish and no stress. The desire to dream and fantasize was conquered. All so very clear. In limbo, sucked into a void, and awaiting the inevitability of the rendezvous. It was beyond interference.

Sokarev was past complaining or feeling any degree of independence as they led him through the kitchens of the hotel and then into the delivery area where food and provisions were unloaded in built-up bays. The escort seemed to the scientist to be too preoccupied with their problems and anxieties to explain or justify the departure plan that had been decided on. The van that waited was painted blue, unmarked and with the windows smoked to prevent those on the outside looking in. There were five men with him to share the two rows of seating behind the driver. The security attache, still defensive and introverted.

Jones, who ignored all around him. Elkin, fidgeting, willing the journey over, the Uzi across his knees and constantly referring to his wrist watch. Special Branch convoy co-ordinator, talking all the while into his handset, and then fiddling with the dials as his answers came back in differing volume. And there was Jimmy, picking with a matchstick at the dirt under his nails, with his coat open, and his gun exposed, and his head down thoughtful and concerned, and not sharing his mind. Behind was a car, more Branch men, and with them the replacement for Mackowicz, unhappy and pained at being separated from his man.

It is as if they are punishing me, thought Sokarev. As if I am in some way culpable for what has happened. He was still tired, not rested by the capsule that the doctor had given him. They put me out of their way while they worked out their plans, needed me absent, and the easiest way was with the pill, he told himself. But it does not bring real sleep. And he recognized that the men with him were tired, had seen it in their faces, and in their clothes, the way they snapped at each other, their impatience. The equation for him had often been proved in the work at Dimona; tired men operate at reduced efficiency, and that frightened him. He felt a shortness of breath and searched for air, loosening his collar and slipping off the suit jacket he had put on for the journey. All the ventilation slats in the van were closed. He would have liked one open, to release the engine fumes and the body smells, but did not feel he had the authority to ask for it. Incapable of soaking up more humiliations he sat in his seat and suffered till he felt a shiver in his limbs and deep under his clothes, and a feeling of cold and sickness. There was nobody to tell.

In the yard of Hammersmith police station, a third of the way to Heathrow and behind closed doors, he was transferred to a car. There were escorts front and back, but nothing for the casual observer of the convoy to recognize.

The security attache now drove, Jones and Special Branch crowded into the front beside him. Sokarev was sandwiched between Elkin and Jimmy.

As they climbed on to the pillared flyover that they had crossed two days ago Sokarev felt a tug at his sleeve and looked at Jimmy.

'Don't take too much notice of these buggers,' Jimmy said, for all the car to hear, 'they're all as shit-scared as you are. And will be till we've waved you on your way.'

Famy's whole being was riveted to the movement of the big jet. Three hundred and fifty tons of it, making the solemn progress from the end of Pier 7 toward the axis of the runways. Two Saracens came in front, where he could see them, dwarfed by the huge concentric lines of the nose.

Small cockpit windows, high above the ground, where the pilot and his crew were sitting. All of them able to see him, but not capable of recognizing the face of their enemy.

Remember Dani, remember Bouchi, remember McCoy.

Endless, indistinct, faces played through his vision, sometimes blotting out and obscuring the reality of the plane.

The faces of his friends, of those who believed in him.

The plane was waved inside the cordon of soldiers.

More armoured cars were awaiting it, policemen beginning to scurry, and the wind brought the talk of their radios, faint but recognizable. The soldiers faced out of their arc, stern-eyed now, keyed up, expectant. The nearest was barely twenty feet from Famy. A corporal, two blackened V-stripes on his tunic arm, self-loading rifle, water bottle, emergency field dressing strapped to his webbing belt.

Famy saw his hands as they cradled the rifle. Finger on the lip of the trigger guard, thumb for the safety catch, a movement of a second and the gun was armed, deadly.

The soldier did not return his stare, gazed through him, used to being looked at. The Guards always were. And his position, the square of concrete on which he stood, had chosen to stand, made him Famy's opponent. As inconsequential as that, where a man placed his feet. That decided whether he would kill or be killed.

'Juno turning into Hatton perimeter entrance, sir.'

Corporal on the Land-Rover radio set to his company commander. The major raised his hand in acknowledgement. Bloody stupid names they always gave these affairs.

'Sunray getting it on the net?' the major asked.

'All getting it, sir, not just the CO, the convoy's hooked into all stations.'

'Put out the Instant Readiness.'

'Roger, sir.'

The major saw beyond his cordon a line of civilian trucks and cars and lorries held back a quarter of a mile from the plane. Have to wait till the show was over. No non-involved persons inside his line, perfect field of fire around three-sixty degrees. Just about perfect, anyway.

Only the corner hangar of the British Airways cargo complex jutting in and breaking the geometry of his protective circle. Saw the loaders there, standing and sitting and watching, anything for a chance not to work.

Shouldn't have been there, but no harm done. The corporal dominating them. No need to throw his weight about, make a scene, have them shifted. Saw the turban, creased and clean. It stood out in the light, the sun playing on it.

He turned toward the VIP suite past which the convoy would come.

The cars came fast down the straight line of the inner perimeter road, motorcycles in front, and all oncoming traffic blocked far ahead. Sokarev saw the arrowed signs to the right marking the route to the VIP suite.

Jimmy said, 'Just about there now, sir. No farewells out on the tarmac. The car goes right up to the steps and you're to be straight on to them. Don't stop. Don't hesitate. Just go straight on up. Inside don't look out of the windows, just get into the seat. They're not going to hang about, you'll be straight off.'

Sokarev did not reply. Jimmy could see the nerves on his ageing face, wrinkles accentuated, eyes wide open, staring, but at nothing, and the lips clamped fractionally apart, breathing coming in irregular sucked heaves. Poor sod, not taking it well. Ten to bloody nothing his legs will freeze half-way and we'll have to carry him on.

The convoy swept past the low-built lounge with its decoration of hot-house plants. Marigolds and snapdra-gons and embryo rhododendrons. In front was the Jumbo.

'Goodbye, Elkin,' Jimmy leaned across Sokarev, hand outstretched. It was not taken. The Israeli's attention was outside his window, fingers clamped on his sub-machine-gun.

The cars spattered through the gap in the fencing and raced toward the jet. Jones found himself reflecting at the vulgarity of it all. Big men, hunched and crammed together on the seats. All so difficult to take seriously, just a game for grown-ups. Only Sokarev playing, though. We're all in with the spectators, thought Jones, it's only the old man who goes on to the field. No dignity in the moment, nothing of the third floor at the department, and Jimmy lording it over everybody. Intolerable, really, and he'd have to be spoken to. The plane was huge now in its silver closeness, dwarfing them, a fortress in its own right. And the steps were there, in position, waiting for them.

The stiffening of the soldiers, the way their hands quickly changed the grip on their rifles, fingers to the trigger guard, telegraphed to Famy the imminence of the arrival.

His right hand ferreted down inside the overalls for the safety mechanism of the M1. Already cocked, already a bullet nestled in the breach of the firing chamber. A hundred yards to the steps of the plane. Take twelve to thirteen seconds. The problems were fading, over everything a devastating simplicity. When the cars came into sight that was when to start running. Fast, but weaving, ducking low, and the shot when the man was at the base of the steps. Bank on chaos. However much they have prepared for you, they will never quite have expected the presence, that was what the men had told him in the camp.

There will always be confusion; it is the greatest weapon in your hand, they had said.

Three cars in the convoy, snouting round the corner, braking because of the angle they were negotiating. Famy was on his feet.

Without hesitation, a continuous rippling movement, he pulled the zip fastener down the length of his chest. The Guardsman was barely aware of his action that produced the rifle before the bullet hit him low in the muscle wall of his stomach, throwing him back and clear from the path of Famy's sprint.

In front of him, as if in slow motion, the doors of the car were opening, the men in their suits jumping out.

Unaware, they don't realize. The insane exhilaration that he had achieved surprise. Run, weave, duck, maintain the rhythm, give no one a clear sight. When do the bullets come? How long? The bundle in grey, half out of the car, helped by the darker suits, reluctant to come, slowing them down, impeding them. The first bullet spat into the ground close to his feet. Fools, idiots, crazy men, firing low. Half-way there. Sokarev in sight, his head clear, the body half-shielded by the men around him. The orange groves, upright, regimented, before the spring brings the sun of Palestine to make fertile their leaves and their fruit; merging together the fantasy of the trees and the sharpness of the men as he pounded his way forward.

More bullets now edging closer, the little puffs of nothing in the concrete and the hostile, honed whine of the ricochets off the concrete. And the ranging blast, wide but creeping, of the big machine-gun. Sokarev near the steps, wrestling with the men around him. They taking him toward the plane. Doesn't want to go, the little bastard, wants to crawl and hide and bury himself. The moment to shoot.

In full stride Famy flung himself, arching forward in a swallow dive, with a strange grace, on to the tarmac. His knees and elbows took the impact, ripping at the cloth that covered his body. The gun was at his eye, down the barrel, down the needle sight. Eyes smarting with the pain from the fall, blinking the moisture out. The man in the grey still struggling. He fired, finger released the trigger.

Knew with that deadening instinct that he was wide, high as well, knew it even as he felt the jolt in his shoulder, heard the empty clatter of the discarded shell case. A moment, breathtaking, of silence, then again the machine-gun.

No more to see of Sokarev, so still everything in front of him, no man standing. Gone, all of them, at a stroke.

Disappeared, vanished. At the steps no target.

Four in a burst they teach the soldiers to fire when they feed the belt into the machine-gun. More than that and the barrel waves too greatly for the accuracy to be maintained.

One in the right foot, two in the calf, fourth in his hip. As if a man with a pickaxe was striking him. Not aiming at a rock face, but at muscle, vulnerable tissue, and the delicacy of his flesh. There was nothing in his hands, only the flat oil-smeared concrete for his fingers to grasp at. The rifle was far to the front, pitched clear, beyond reach, beyond his chances of hope and salvation. In the distance, and to his ears the words echoed and had a strange quality, came the ordered shout, voice of command.

'Stop firing.'

Between them Jones and Elkin carried Sokarev up the flight of steps to the plane. The strength he'd summoned earlier to resist them had gone. Elkin at his shoulders, Jones at his thighs. Both men panting, and the narrowness of the steps preventing further aid.

Jimmy rose from his knees where he had taken cover in front of the scientist between the steps and the door of the car, and began to walk toward Famy. Slow paces, all the time in the world now, the end of the stampede. Around him soldiers were lifting themselves from their firing positions, uncertain what to do, and uneasy in the sudden silence. So many of them, and so many rifles and revolvers, and only this one enemy in contention.

He saw the eyes of the prone man still locked on his rifle, tantalizing, out of range, far from the capability of heroics. Jimmy swung his foot, lazily and without care, and kicked it noisily into the middle distance.

'Good try, boy,' Jimmy said, quietly spoken, a private remark. Famy watched him, awkward from the ground, neck stretched back, face unmarked. 'Good try. Just not good enough.'

Jimmy raised his voice so the Arab could hear him.

'McCoy told us you'd be here. Told us this morning.

We didn't think you'd get this far. But it wasn't far enough, boy. One shot you got off, just one. Way off target. Looked good, looked dramatic, but set yourself too much. Should have been an aimed shot. Never works, all the running around, not with a pop gun like that, anyway.'

He saw Famy smile, overcoming the pain, mouth moving but no sound.

'That was what they gave you, the M1? Not very generous, not very suitable. Would have liked something with a bit more guts, right, boy?'

Famy nodded, slight movement, agreement. As far round as his eyes could see the men were now advancing on him, soldiers and police, their guns no longer aimed.

Pointed at the ground and the sky.

Jimmy put his hand in his pocket, under the cover of the cloth, and when it emerged the PPK was there. He saw Famy begin to squirm away, trying to move, but pinioned by the damage to his legs and his hip. Whimpering, like a dog that expects a beating but is too trained to run from the threat.

'Don't make it difficult, boy. You knew what it was all about when you came on the joy-ride. And you did well, considering.'

Jimmy fired into the centre of the pale brown forehead, below the clear white rim of the turban. Even with a moving target he was usually accurate.

The noise of the shot was drowned by the four fan jet engines of the taxiing 747.

From beside the car, still stationary, still with the engine ticking quietly over and with the front and rear doors open, Jones had watched it all. There had been words that he'd tried to say, some sort of call, helpless and faint, for Jimmy to come back, but the roar of the engines prevented his being heard by any other than those immediately beside him.

He had seen the pistol in Jimmy's hand, small and blurred in the distance but silhouetted as a recognizable shape against the great emptiness of the tarmac. He hadn't looked after that. The plane was turning toward the runway, its power rising into deafening, ear-blasting crescendo as it eased its way clear of the group of men with their dark suits and hardened eyes.

'Bloody good job and all,' muttered the Branch man, whose eyes had never wavered from Jimmy and who now stared over Jones's shoulder.

Jones swung back. Jimmy walking toward him now, the one he knew just by the name of Famy abandoned and unmoving behind the erect and brisk figure that was soon close enough for him to see the almost boyish grin of satisfaction that wreathed the mouth. Cat with the cream, thought Jones, as if he's scored a bloody try at Twickenham.

'Bloody good job, the way it should be every time,' the Branch man said again, and Jones bit on his lip, unable to speak his mind, out of step with the mood.

Well, they'd had their money's worth out of Jimmy-boy this time. Earned his retainer, hadn't he? There'd be a mass of paperwork to be getting on with, the predictable escape mechanism, and Jones went in search of a car heading for Central London. Knifing through his mind the continuous thought… it was what they'd wanted, it was what they'd asked for, those bloody politicians with their directives from on high, and they'd been gratified.

In the first-class cabin, occupying two seats at the rear, were Sokarev and Elkin. The pilot had swung the plane hard round and lined himself on to the 36oo-metre-long Runway 5, given precedence over all other flights. Clearance from the control tower was immediate, and the aircraft hammered its way into the slight wind down 28L.

Just before the moment of lift-off Sokarev whispered, straining to Elkin's ear, that he felt sick.

'Don't worry,' Elkin said, it's all over. It's finished now.

We are going home. There is nothing more to fear.'

They were all going home. Mackowicz in the tin box on the freight deck beneath them, Elkin who had been his friend, Sokarev who had been his charge. The security man noted the pallor of the scientist, and the perspiration on his balding head and the way that he struggled to reach upward to direct the cold air nozzles toward his face.

When they were airborne it would be easier. He told himself that, and settled back, deep, into the comfort of his seat.