'A little over half an hour. The civvie guy, the spook, is having another go at them at the moment. If he fails and the gaffers think they're about to start chopping again then we go. We won't be waiting for dark.'
Three men were with the Israeli Prime Minister: his Foreign Minister, the head of military intelligence, and the personal adviser to his office on counter-terrorism. All four wore open-necked shirts and light slacks.
It was an inconclusive meeting with little to report. The Prime Minister was assured that the British seemed adamant that in the event of a successful outcome to the siege of the Ilyushin 18 then any surviving hi-jackers would be flown directly to the Soviet Union. It was unlikely, he was told, that the British would even bother to prefer charges for those offences committed inside the jurisdiction of local courts. It would be, the Foreign Minister remarked, the Iranian precedent rather than the Munich one to which the British would turn. When the Prime Minister had raised his eyebrows fractionally, the signal that he wished clarification, it was explained that the Iranians had sent back a Soviet Air Force pilot who had defected in a light aircraft seeking political asylum. The Munich option referred to the West German refusal to hand over a twenty-six-year-old fugitive who had seized an internal Prague-Bratislava flight at gunpoint and flown it to Munich.
' I had hoped for more from the Americans,' said the Prime Minister, turning to the army reserve general, an old friend, one who could be trusted and whom he had brought out of retirement to sit close by his office. ' I had hoped that their influence on the British would be greater.'
'The taste of this business has not been palatable to them. They will stand by us when the danger is greatest, when they believe we are without defences. But they do not like to think of us, or our people, as having a will of our own. The children have shown their claws, they have killed with them. It does not fit the image that our friends have of us.'
'With the hostage dead, with the Americans unwilling to act, then we have lost. They will go back, these two, and there is nothing that we can…' He broke off, as if reminded of something distant. Clutching at the straw. 'The man that we sent, Benitz. Has there been communication from him?'
'He spoke to the relevant people by telephone this morning. But his opportunities are limited.
The British offer him nothing."
'They have not used him because they wish to send these people back?'
'But he is a resourceful man.'
'A lion, one of the. best we have.' The Prime Minister agreed. 'But there are impossibilities, I suppose, even for a man such as this.'
'He has made no contact for some time now, not that has been reported by London. Perhaps -'
'That means nothing. In these circumstances, nothing.'
So often like this, the ill-informed back-seat, while the pursuit of policy remained in the hands of the soldiers. Many times the scene had been enacted; the directions given, the orders made clear, and then the waiting for the cipher cable, the telex, the radio message, always the same men in the room, the same frustration.
Abruptly the Prime Minister curtailed the meeting. Nothing to be gained from further dallying, talking round a situation they no longer directly influenced. The delegation of the Histradut had been waiting more than twenty minutes in the anteroom outside his office. He should not delay them longer. The problems of the trades unions would be with him long after the affair of the taking of the Ilyushin to Stansted was forgotten.
That he should have closed and refastened the door Isaac knew. He should have shut them in again, barricaded the gate, prepared his defences. But he could not bring himself to return to the bright hole through which the sunlight dazzled, nervous of the danger there. Yet it was weakness not to go to the big lever, plunge it downwards the semicircle of its locking mechanism, it was a weakening of his will that he recognized but felt unable to correct. Not many hours since he had slept, four perhaps and not much more, but the passing of time had been concentrated and had ravaged both his strength and his thinking ability – the escape of the teacher, the killing of the Italian, the death of his friend. Great and cataclysmic events, all far beyond any previous experience he had had, each diluting the importance of the other, till they had taken a toll that he would not have believed possible.
You should have fastened the door, Isaac, if you mean to fight on. The door must be bolted and locked, Isaac. Their entry point. Through there that they will come with machine- guns and rifles.
They'll be laughing, unable to believe their luck, a door actually left open… But the tiredness swept over him, overwhelming, compulsive. If he could only close his eyes… A dreamless sleep, without the desperate fear of watching and waiting, and hoping…
But the door must be open for one o'clock. Right, Isaac? That was when you told the man Charlie to be watching and waiting if there was no petrol. He allowed himself a slow smile as he remembered the fever in the voice of the Englishman, the anxiety that he sought to suppress. It brought a quiet grin to the side of Isaac's mouth. That was why the door should be left open: so that they could see it, and count the minutes that passed on their watches.
Strange not seeing David ait the far end of the aisle, not following his bowed silhouette the length of the aircraft as he had hovered in the cockpit. Had made an abscess in their group, his going. And what for? What for, any of it? The policeman back in Kiev, the captain in his cockpit seat, the passenger (misshapen on the tarmac – didn't even know their names. So what for? The path that David had led them to, the road that he had shown them. A road that was safe and secure with the darkened shadows of esoape, no blocks, no armed men, no uniformed sentries, David had told them of Babi Yar, and of Potma and Perm, lectured them on the diet of seventy-five grams of black bread a day and cabbage soup with which to wash it down, harangued them on the young men of their faith who languished in the cells, the injustices, the cruelties, the interrogations. A blow for freedom, David had promised. And where was freedom? Not here, not in this stinking cell, with these animals to be watched and guarded and shepherded. You ran well, David, ran early, and you left us, left us to face the wrath you had brought down. But what if there can be no survival for the fighter, what if he is made for martyrdom? Isaac seemed to laugh to himself, and there was the slow, gentle, smiling shake of his head. Not what you came for, Isaac. Not why you bought the tickets – just to purchase a grave plot. Good enough for David, but not for Isaac. Rambling, you fool, deep in your self-pity. Wonder what they'd said that morning in the lecture hall as they gathered for the first class of the day, the ones he studied with. Would they know now where was the one who always sat in the fifth row, three seats in from the door, the one with the spidery writing, good at practical and poor at theory, who asked no questions and took the 'B' marks, and who was quiet and had nothing to say in the canteen queue at morning break? Would they know? And if they did what would they say? Those who liked him, what would they say if they had stood beside him at ten and watched his finger tighten on the trigger bar, seen the disintegration of a man's skull, the way he wiped the spattered bone and brain tissue from his arm? Would they have embraced him, or have cowered beyond his reach?
His hands gripped the narrow barrel of the gun. Hurting yourself, Isaac, wounding yourself.
But you have to decide now, cannot stall and pass the parcel any longer. Have to close the door if you are going to fight them, Isaac. It's your guts that are fleeing you, draining through the open door, spilling out, splashing on the tarmac, ripening the time f o r surrender.