The Kobra Manifesto

'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.

'Two minutes,' I told him.

I heard a murmur from somewhere behind me, in Portuguese.

Dr Costa was praying.

Just in case Zade was missing anything I thought I should spell it out for him. We didn't want any mistakes. 'There are fifty marksmen out there, and when you leave the aircraft you'll walk into a firing squad. Or you can elect to live, and let the girl go free.'

He was silent for what seemed a long time. It was probably for only a few seconds, but seconds were a long time, now.

'Have they guaranteed it?'

'Yes.'

I wished now that I could tell what he was thinking.

Perhaps it was too simple for him: he was looking for something complex. But the only terms were those that governed every hostage-and-demand situation: life for life. He could have accepted them earlier, when the FBI had asked him to surrender. But at that time he saw the Boeing as his refuge: here he would make his stand. He could have held out for weeks, against all argument. Now he could hold out for less than two minutes because that was my argument: the bomb.

It was something he could understand.

Before this point was reached, he could have stayed hi his refuge, refusing all terms that were offered. But now he had no refuge and it could change his thinking radically. I thought the chances of his opting to go out in a Gotterdammerung of martyrdom were rather high but it was one of the risks that had to be taken.

I'd told James Burdick what I'd had to: that I didn't think there was a lot of hope.

'Satynovich,' Kuznetski said. 'The material is genuine.'

I couldn't think what be was trying to do: he must know the papers were no use to them, genuine or false. Possibly he was working on Zade's mind, as I was, but in a different way.

'You're lying,' Zade said.

I saw Kuznetski get up from the seat and stand with his forehead against the panelling, his eyes closed.

'Sixty seconds,' I said.

I watched the thin blued-steel needle pass across the top marker for the last time and begin its final circuit. I had asked the CIA technician what the margin of error was in the firing delay and he'd told me the action was electronic and zero-zero precise.

There was sweat on the palms of my hands again and I wiped them by folding my arms and sliding the palms against the sleeves, because Zade was watching me. They were all watching me.

Then I heard Sassine begin talking rapidly and when Zade stopped him I turned and looked across the aisle at Dr Costa and spoke to him and turned back to watch the dial of the chronometer.

'Forty-five seconds.'

I said it clearly because there wasn't a lot of time left and they were leaving it late. That was because of Zade, I believed: his personality was able to subdue them, especially Shadia and Ramirez.

I turned my head and looked along the perspective of the aircraft. At this point configuration would have to be noted:' I had to see the group at the other end of the aisle as if they were figures cut out of the background, like one of those pictures where people are identified by numbers inside blank outlines.

Zade was standing in the aisle to the left side and he was nearer than anyone else and so his figure was larger. Shadia was on the other side, perched on the arm of a seat with the gun resting on her thigh and her unnaturally pale eyes watching me. Ventura was behind them at a distance of several feet, his configuration carrying the extension of the sub-machine-gun. I couldn't see Sassine: perhaps Zade had hit him again and he was sulking somewhere. Ramirez was almost directly behind Shadia and her configuration made a part of his, because she was sitting and he was standing. Kuznetski was still leaning his forehead against the panelling, behind Ventura.