The hand sunk into the roof of his jacket collar, gripped at the well-woven material, and pulled him upright, splintering his reveries. It was an irrevocable strength that drew him from the seat, dragging him without explanation from the safety of his fellow passengers. Fleetingly he saw the faces around him, saw them twist and turn, aware of their shame and degradation.
The one with the curly hair, the short one, that was the one that held him, propelled him out into the aisle, and now there was the thrust of steel against his backbone. The dreams were losing ground, the warmth of the flesh receding, the softened arms on him no longer gave hope. A cry came, hoarse and splitting into his consciousness, his name shouted at the pitch of hysteria, and the voice was Aldo's. Just his name, and an agony in the voice, and the sound of it hammered at him till his knees buckled and his bowels weakened, till his eyes glazed to a mist and he was blinded by the flood and could not tell where he was going, only reacting to the pressure at the nape of his neck that drove him forward.
It came late, but there was a moment of total clarity before the brightness of the intruding sun through the opened aircraft door obliterated all images in front of him. And there was the memory of the face of the headmaster who had taken the similar path minutes before, as he had been led down the route that separated him from the rest, from the bovine accepting herd. Had Luigi Franconi looked like that? Had he showed the broken fear, the collapsed chin, the nerveless sagged cheeks, the faltering walk? Had he screamed inside without sound as the other must have done?
The power of the gun barrel was no longer at his back. Gone, lost for a moment, giving the fractional hope of salvation, before he found it again, found it where he knew he must, found its chill and symmetry against the gentle skin that slid back from his earlobe towards the base of his neck.
They all heard the single, echoing refrain of the shot.
The reverberations were fierce inside the aircraft, quieting the frenzied shouts from the remaining members of the PCI delegation; an empty hollowed thud where Charlie Webster lay on the shortened grass, that caused the man he still protected to shudder underneath him and squirm as if trying to bury himself in the hardened soil; a faint popping noise, a distant car door slammed to those immured inside the plate glass of the control tower windows.
Inside the press corral where the journalists were screened from the open door of the Ilyushin the solitary report was noted. Quizzical eyes, a margin of excitement, a switching- on of cameras, that their synchronized sound systems would record any further gunfire, a scribbling in notebooks.
'What time do you make it?' A man from the Agencies asked the reporter who stood next to him; he was required to log the day's events with accuracy.
The other kept his eyes fastened on that flank of the aircraft that was visible. 'Just on ten o'clock.'
'Not much we can say then. At ten o'clock a single shot was heard from the far side of Aeroflot 927. That's it. Nothing else we can say.'
With more powerful binoculars than they possessed the journalists and cameramen might have been able to distinguish the lifeless body of Luigi Franconi where it rested close to the starboard undercarriage wheels. But at the distance between where they stood and the Ilyushin the wheels only merged, shimmering in their stillness, with the unnoticed corpse.
A sound recordist, a large man who prided himself equally on his wit and the perfection of his trimmed beard, made a joke, weak to those that heard it, but his own chorus of laughter was picked up by all in the pen; a palliative to the suppressed tension carried by the unexplained shot.
The zephyr of laughter swept out across the scorched concrete, rippling its way towards the aircraft and the control tower till it settled on the far away ears of those who lay in the grass with their rifles and machine-guns.
There were a score of impotent obscenities from the troops who had watched the small Italian die.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Charlie had not looked back towards the tarmac. He knew what he would see if he turned his head, could picture the exact position in which the body would be lying. No need to look, not when death no longer held a fascination. He'd seen many before: the corpses of men who had
'died well', who had 'died badly', whatever that meant – of men who had been killed judicially, and those who had gone without the solace of legality, of men Who had screamed and of men who had prayed. It made little difference to the poor bastards, not now, not when it was over.
And this one, this nameless one down by the wheels, why had he taken the trip? Pretty straightforward, when you think about it, Charlie. One was going to go. Those were the rules they were playing by: take a mouse from a cat and she'll go find another. Made you wonder whether it was worth it, worth all the adrenalin surge, the scream and the gunfire. Can't play heroics seventy times, Charlie.
He could hear the approach of the ambulance, creeping carefully forward, low gear, on the outer perimeter road. It stopped a full hundred yards from him, as if nobody had told the driver the range of an SMG. Couldn't blame him, couldn't blame anybody who didn't want his head blasted. Not an ambulance driver's quarrel. Jews and Israelis and Russians, so where did a driver from Bishop's Stortford on forty-five pounds a week and struggling fit into that pattern? Charlie raised his right hand and gave the thumbs-up signal – put the poor blighter out of his misery and let him know he didn't have to come closer.
Gently Charlie pulled the Russian to his feet and eased him into a position where his own body still gave protection from the aircraft. Together they shuffled forward, slowly and without precision because the headmaster's legs were still weak and unresponsive.
'We're well clear of range. We'll just get to the truck, then you can forget it."
Without turning, the Russian said through the tremor of his voice. 'The last shot. They have killed another?'
' I think so.' Charlie knew the inadequacy of his answer. Brusque and with a suggestion of authority, he said, "There's nothing we can do. Not our problem any more.'
'They have killed him because you have taken me from them.'
'Perhaps.'
' I had not thought it would be that way."
Close to the ambulance now, a few more steps, and the moment for Charlie to conceal his impatience. But he led with his tongue, lashing and aggressive.
'Well, what do you want to bloody-well do? Do you want to go and stand by the door and shout, "Hey, there, I'm sorry I escaped. I've come back to ask you to forgive me. I didn't want the other bugger killed. It was all a big mistake, and if you shoot me can we have the other guy back, give him his life again, because I want to play the bloody hero"? Cut the crap out and get down on your knees and thank whatever God you have in uptown Kiev that an idiot like Charlie Webster was sitting on his arse on the tarmac with nothing better to do on a sunny morning than stick his neck on the block so that if anyone has to go in the box it wouldn't be you. Course you didn't know it would happen like this, no bugger did. The whole lot may go on that plane, every last one of them. You may be the only one that walks out of it, and if that happens don't be in a corner and blubbering that you wanted to share it with them.'
Charlie loosened his grip around the waist of the Russian as they reached the twin rear doors of the ambulance, and the other man turned and faced him.
' I am sorry, truly sorry. I have to thank you because of what you have done for me. But it is frightening for a man to know that he has lived and then another… In the war..