The Kobra Manifesto

'Ramirez,' I said, and began speaking Spanish. 'You understand explosives. This device-'

'Speak in Polish!' Zade cut in.

'He'll tell you what I said,' I told him. 'I want him to know the precise situation and his Polish isn't very good.' I switched back to Spanish. 'This device is produced exclusively for the Central Intelligence Agency and is made to very exacting specifications. It has an electronic blasting cap and booster and the main charge is composed of ammonium nitrate closely confined to increase the detonation wave, which will reach 14,000 f.p.s. The secondary stage is provided by the plastic case, which is chemically sensitized Composition C-4 with a detonating temperature of 290 °Centigrade.'

I was watching his face.

Zade spoke to him sharply: 'What did he — '

'One more thing,' I told Ramirez. The device has a protective circuit, and I'd be glad if you would warn Zade on this point. It has a clock arming-delay, two pressure-release micro-switches — here, and here — a mercury tilt switch and a vibrator activator. Please tell your friends that we don't want any undue movement inside the aircraft. Now report to Zade.'

I moved across the aisle and sat on the arm of the end seat. The sweat was a problem now, making my scalp itch and reminding me that I was frightened. It's often a chain reaction unless you can control it: you know when you're frightened but you want to feel you're at least not showing it and can keep on top of the situation. The reason why the sweat was an actual problem was that I had to keep it off my hands.

Ramirez was speaking slowly to Zade, using an English phrase when he could think of one. His eyes were very serious and I believed I'd convinced him. Most of it was the truth, in any case: there was no mercury tilt switch or vibrator but if anyone picked that thing up and dropped it the Boeing would blow.

It would have been nice to tell the girl not to worry, that we still had a chance. But she wouldn't believe me because I'd said she was going home soon and now she could see there was a confrontation: and if she believed me the relief would show in her face and they might notice it.

It was very quiet in here now.

The ticking was discreet and fairly rapid and we could hear it when nobody was talking. Ramirez had stopped, and Zade was standing perfectly still, looking at the bomb. He didn't seem afraid of it, but he wasn't the unbalanced type of revolutionary who would take a chance for the sake of blood and glory. If he had been that kind of man I couldn't have brought this thing in here.

The others were farther along the aisle, their faces turned this way. I noted Kuznetski particularly. It was Kuznetski I was relying on.

'Shoot him,' Shadia said suddenly.

I saw her face and I knew I was right about her: she was superstitious. She was frightened of ghosts and I owed her a death and she wanted it 'We don't need him now, Satynovich.'

His dark head half-turned towards her.

'Be quiet,' he said, and it sounded worse than if he'd screamed it out. I saw her face freeze.

He looked at me.

'What is the object?' he asked me.

'I want the girl out of here.'

'She can go, as soon as we have checked the materials,'

'I don't trust you,' I said.

'I can do nothing about that.'

'But I can.'

He was holding himself very still.

I hadn't known him long but I'd seen the way he tended to use more and more control over himself until he went over the edge. His attack on Sassine was an example: he'd been much calmer just afterwards.

He was now having to increase the control over himself again and I hoped I could get the girl out of here before he broke. The bomb was predictable: Zade was not.

Sassine was also a risk: his head was full of hashish.

And I must watch Shadia.

'As soon as we've checked the material,' Zade said, 'we've no more use for the girl.'

'That's not true. You'll need her as a hostage until you've recalled the aircrew and landed in Mexico or Cuba. Then you might release her, but we don't trust you and we don't want her in Mexico or Cuba: we want her in a hospital as soon as possible. Please note that we have three minutes and thirty seconds left.'

He looked down at once at the dial of the chronometer.

I suppose this was what had taken them such a time: I'd asked them to rig the thing so that the dial was visible.

It had a light rapid tick, the sound of an aviation clock of a few decades ago, with sufficient mass to provide precision. We listened to it in the silence and I watched Kuznetski, farther along the aisle.

'Don't you want to live?' Zade asked me.

'Very much. But I'm prepared to die.'

'So are we.'

'Of course.'

He drew a slow breath and I noted this.

'Then there's no point,' he said.

'Yes, there is. It's a question of nerves.'

'How so?'

'I think yours will break, before mine.'

He smiled. He had quite a pleasant smile.

But the tic had begun jerking his mouth again. I'd seen it before.

'Satyn,' said Ramirez, 'I think you should — '

'Be quiet, Carlos.'

Ramirez knew his explosives and he had the imagination to be afraid of this thing on the table. He wasn't a man to brave it out, as Zade would try to do. 'Three minutes,' I said.

My hands were moving very slowly against my clothes, wiping the sweat off the palms. But it kept coming again. I had to keep them dry, or as dry as I could.

Zade turned away and went along the aisle. Ramirez with him.

'Go on checking the papers,' he told Kuznetski.

'Satynovich, I-'

'Check them.'

'Yes.'

Ventura was leaning against me bulkhead, the sub-machine-gun in the crook of his arm. He felt happier like that, and perhaps pictured himself in the revolutionary pose, as so many of them did.

Sassine began talking and Zade put a hand on his arm and he stopped at once. I saw him light another reefer and put it between his swollen lips.

Shadia was perched sideways on the arm of a seat, watching me as she'd been doing for minutes. The only difference now was that she was holding an automatic, the same model as Sassine's. I didn't know how stable she was. That was the major disadvantage I had to contend with: the situation was increasing the tension to the point where even a normal temperament would become prone to irrationality.

The papers scuffed as Kuznetski studied them.

I couldn't tell what was in Zade's mind. He wasn't just missing the point, I knew that. Whether the papers were false or genuine, we all had to get out of this aircraft within the next two and a half minutes because this thing had a protective circuit and no one could switch it off. If they'd put a manual cut-off switch on it, Ramirez would have seen it.

'Do it carefully,' Zade told Kuznetski and came back along the aisle for a few paces, swinging his bead up to look at me.

'You want to know the time?' I asked him.

'I want to know the terms.'

I'd thought he was never going to ask.

'There aren't any terms.'

He stood perfectly still, his black glass eyes watching me.

I said: 'Didn't you know that?'

Kuznetski looked up from the papers.

'There must be terms,' Zade said.

'Oh, basically, I suppose. It's your lives for the life of the hostage. Or your death for hers.'

He said nothing.

I would say that from this distance he could hear the ticking.

'Satynovich,' Ramirez said, 'I'm not going to-'

Zade swung on him and ripped out a series of words in Polish I couldn't follow: his voice was hoarse, as it had been on the flight deck, earlier. Probably Ramirez didn't understand either: his Polish was worse than mine. But when Zade turned back to me I saw his face was white.