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.