'David, this is Charlie. I have a very important statement for you from the British government.
I want you to hear it right through, and I don't think you should interrupt me, not till I've finished.
Is that understood?'
'We will hear what you have to say.' Concession and a fragment of subservience.
'David, this is the reply of the British government. You are ready to listen? There will be no refuelling of the aircraft. There is no possibility, whatever your reaction, that the plane will be refuelled in order that you can fly to Israel…' There was a fast and angry explosion of shouting from the loudspeaker, explanatory, aggressive, yet difficult for Charlie to follow in detail. 'You said you'd hear me out. Shut up and listen. There will be no fuel, there will be no negotiation about flying this or any other plane to Israel. The journey is over, David. Your plane is surrounded by a military force that includes specialist troops of the highest calibre. There are two ways that you can leave the aircraft. You can come off dead, or you can come off alive with your hands over your heads, unarmed and after you've released the passengers. There are no other options. We will sit here as long as you need to make up your minds, but we think that you are all intelligent people, we think you will realize that there is no point in continuing, that you will understand your situation. Look out of any windows and you will see the armoured cars.
There is nowhere for you to run to, David. That is what the British government says.'
Charlie sat back in his seat, heaving his chest in relief, then half-spun in the chair and gave the men who waited behind him a precis of what had passed. Then he swung back and was writing hard on his pad.
New voice, different accent, devoid of subservience.
'That is all you have to say to us?' Like meeting a pen friend for the first time. Had to be Isaac, and Charlie pointed without comment to the photograph for the benefit of those who watched.
'Yes, Isaac, that is all. There is no room for negotiation, no scope for it. Your position is a hopeless one from any military or physical point of view, and you must surrender unconditionally. If you do that, and have first released the passengers and crew, then I guarantee that no harm will come to you when you give yourselves up.'
'You know what the consequences will be?' Too fast a reply for him to relay an English translation to what he had said, had to hang on, keep up the momentum, hopeless if he broke the spell now.
'There are no "consequences" as you put it, Isaac, that will alter the decision of the British government.'
'You believe that?'
' I know it, Isaac. They will not change their stance.'
'Wait till ten o'clock, ten this morning. Then tell me again.'
' Isaac, there is no point in threats. There is nothing to be gained from them, only the worsening of your situation…' No one listening, the empty, unresponsive echo of discarded headphones far away. Charlie looked up at the digital clock immediately above, saw the numeral flip over – four fifty-two. Five hours till Isaac turned his words into action. More explanations to the men behind and a graveness in their faces as they heard the final stages of the exchange.
Assistant Chief Constable put it with the bluntness that was needed. 'They're threatening to start shooting passengers, executing their hostages, murdering…'
'That's about it,' said Charlie, matter of factly. 'And it's Isaac who's coming across as the hard boy. Moved on from the one we have as David.'
'Military wont want to be messing about,' the Assistant Chief Constable went on, as if in ignorance of the interruption, 'not in the light, and that's what we'll have in twenty minutes.
Wouldn't have mattered an hour ago when they had some cover. But they have to have cover, cover or it's bloody difficult for them and dangerous for the passengers. If we'd played it straight last night, said what we meant, and they'd reacted this way, then we could have put the military in
…' In full flow, the staff officer of Agin court, of Waterloo or Passchendaele, and back from the front with his gunpowder burns.
'The decision was taken by everybody.' Clitheroe rose to his own defence. 'We agreed that they would be more susceptible to the logical working out of their situation and position if they had had some sleep. The first one who spoke, David, he's obviously rested. But his sleep had to be paid for. Presumably the man Isaac has not slept, therefore he is exhausted and temporarily he is the irrational one, but there is much time for the others to work on him and for him to reflect on the measures that he has blurted out to us.'
It was not a new problem for Clitheroe. Early in his working life he had come to accept that the science of psychiatry was not an exact one, that the ill-informed were sceptical and dubious about his expertise.
'We should not take the threat too seriously, there is much time yet.'
Charlie, his attention away from the medical man, focused on the senior policeman, said: 'If it's not vulgar to ask, Sir, what's to happen to these people? Assuming we talk them out, or we storm and take them alive, what happens to them?'
The raw nerve. Stamped on it. Pinched it. Off-the-cuff question, and he hadn't thought it out beforehand. The civvies from London looked away. Colour at the Assistant Chief Constable's cheeks.
' I don't think it's been decided yet.'
'They could ship them back, that has to be one of the options?'
'That's only your assumption, Mr Webster.'
'Bad news if they get a wind of it. Not going to come waltzing down the bloody steps and into our own arms. Stands to reason they're going to try and push us about a bit first.'
'Outside your province, Mr Webster.' Putting the clamps down, hiding behind the medal ribbons, climbing on the silver of his epaulettes.
' If I can't put that one out of their minds then not much chance of it all ending in sweetness and light.'
'Don't extend yourself, Mr Webster. You do an excellent job as an intermediary. Quite excellent, and be so good as to confine yourself to those limits.' Bloody martinet, thought Charlie, why can't he come clean, take a dose of the honest johnnie, accept he's outside the confidential circle.
The sun was playing on the aircraft now, burnishing its sides, beating up from the tarmac.
Made Charlie squint his eyes together just to look at it. Lonely-looking now, sort of lost and strayed off its path, and doesn't know how to get in the air again. Didn't suit it as well, the daylight, not like the night with its magnification and the floodlights. Seemed to have become shrunken as the sun crept up on it. Didn't have the look of anything deadly, shorn of the melodrama, just another bloody plane sitting on its wheels, waiting for its orders. Blinds were up and some of those behind him had binoculars and gazed intently at the portholes and pointed and passed the glasses from hand to hand, but Charlie couldn't see anything beyond the darkened shapes of the windows – nothing living, nothing moving.
More movement at the back of the control area. Men with cables and a portable television set, the type used by industry with the innards gaping and uncased as the domestic set would be. It was placed on a bench close enough for Charlie to see the screen, far enough for others to watch without disturbing him from his communications on the radio. Further along the controller's work bench they fitted the tape recorders with their attendant headsets and the floor was a net of crazily inscribed wires and junction boxes.
Some twenty seconds of frosting and snow storm as they tuned the set before the clear image came. Not bad, not bad at all, and Charlie joined the others who pressed shoulder to shoulder to identify the greyed soft-shaded shapes of the heads of men and women and children, some lolled as if still in sleep, others alert and darting with their eyes around them. He could see some of the children, and across the aisle and in a single-tone suit a man who sat with them and whose face was set and steady and did not waver.