“Developments,” he said diplomatically, “could occur at any time.”
He’d already spent a long time on the phone to Philip Trewin, briefing him on his contact with Halib Hanif the night before and discussing how much they ought to tell Shehabi. Nunn and Trewin were agreed on the significance of what Halib had said; both men wanted a quick, clean end to the hijack, and they were prepared to recommend concessions in the interests of speed. Selman Shehabi would not see it that way.
In the end Trewin had agreed that Nunn should decide how much to tell the Iraqi and how much to hold back. At this juncture, Nunn still wasn’t sure.
The TV screen cleared. There were pictures of the murdered South African lying on the gravel, accompanied by an Arabic sound track. One of the men standing around the set started to improvise a running translation; Nunn heard a hoom and recognized Dr. Milner’s voice.
“… Disobedience will attract further reprisals…. Ah, now the, the—presenter? God knows what to call him—now he’s giving us the Iranian prisoners’ names and calling … what’s he calling for? He’s calling for them to be released at once, or more passengers will … no, that’s too definite … are likely, more passengers are likely to die…. ”
The image dissolved into a fuzz of colors, to be replaced by the standard start-of-clip representation of a clock face.
“That was yesterday,” Major Trewin commented. “Here we go with this morning’s episode. Shortly after dawn; I must say, their communications are bloody efficient.”
The “presenter” was the same man. The sequence opened with a close-up of the plane. A hooded figure could be seen in the doorway. He stood there without moving, his gun held at waist level.
Trewin froze the tape. “We’re working on him. There are five names in the frame, the consensus at present being for a man called Fouad Nusseibeh. Three years ago he was operating out of the Beqaa Valley as part of Arafat’s Hawari Group, but with most of his targets in European cities. Born Jaffa, 1947, resettled to Lebanon; there’s the usual file. Our people would like it to be Nusseibeh, because he ties in with the Hanifs: part of their gang.”
“How did he join the plane?” Nunn asked.
“Fouad, if it is him, boarded at Bahrain, along with one other suspect. We’re reasonably certain that three more were on the plane when it left London: they all originated from ‘safe’ airports, Manchester, Glasgow, Amsterdam, on feeder flights, which meant they wouldn’t be faced with anything like the security they have at Heathrow check-in.”
“Any sign of Leila yet?” Nunn wanted to know.
“Positive ID of her in Bahrain, from airport staff. And"—Trewin began to advance the tape frame by frame—"watch the door, behind the man’s left shoulder … there! See it? Movement, something white, just for a second.”
“Run it through again, please.”
Trewin obliged. Nunn squatted down with his face inches from the screen, but he was damned if he could make out anything.
“Our technical bods have been futzing around on that since the tape came in, and they swear that what you can see is in fact a human figure wearing long dress of some kind, and they’re inclined to say it’s a female.”
“Inclined … what does that mean?”
“It means they desperately want it to be female and so they’re clutching at straws,” Trewin said equably. “Any other questions?”
Nunn stood up, though he continued to stare at the screen. By now the woman Leila Hanif had gotten a grip on his imagination. He kept recalling last night’s phone call to Anne-Marie. All the way to hell to refuel and then on. Anne-Marie understood Leila in a way he never would; how much, then, did he understand Anne-Marie?
How far would Andrew Nunn be prepared to go for his child?
“What about that other helicopter?” he said thoughtfully. “The one that caused all the trouble?”
“Allied source,” Trewin said. Butter could safely have been stored in his mouth until well past its sell-by date.
Nunn nodded, but a time was coming when he would take Major Trewin up on that. He knew that the U.S. Navy had unofficially permitted Israeli Air Force Intelligence to fly the second chopper, the one that had prompted Van Tonder’s murder, from a destroyer cruising the Arabian Sea. Other people were starting to know it too, thereby increasing the difficulty of Nunn’s task tenfold. For now, however, he merely cursed the helicopter and all connected with it before inquiring, “And what does your allied source have to report?”
“Lots of highly technical data concerning terrain and so forth.”
“What chance of a home run?”
“Sweet bugger all. They didn’t stay long, but long enough to detect the presence of explosive substances aboard the plane.”
“How the devil can they do that?”
Trewin shrugged. “God knows. X-ray cameras, perhaps; long-range telephotos: they’re not saying.”
“Home run?” Shehabi had been showing signs of impatience, and now he interrupted. “What is this home run, please?”
“Our jargon for an assault on the plane.” Trewin turned to Milner. “Tell me, doctor … how, in your view, would the Yemenis be likely to react to a proposal that the SAS, say, be sent in to rescue the passengers?”
“They’d probably take it as a declaration of war. They’re Marxists—hard-line unreconstructed Marxists.”
“What about the area where the plane went down?” Trewin asked. “What’s there?”
“Al Mahra’s scarcely inhabited; just a few Bedouins, that’s all. It’s got no asphalted roads, not even in Al Ghaydah, that’s the provincial capital. It’s the most underdeveloped part of the country. No one, and I do mean no one, gets permission to visit.” Milner shook a finger for emphasis. “You’ve no conception of how bleak, how desolate, that area is.”
Nunn could see that this led nowhere. “What have we got on these six Iranian prisoners?” he interrupted, “the ones being held"—a sideways glance at Shehabi—"allegedly held in Baghdad.”
“Top army men, captured in the gulf war.” It was Trewin who answered. “Plus one air force general. Extraordinary behavior. There’s a war going on. If some of your chaps get taken prisoner of war you don’t bluff out a hijack, you wait for hostilities to end or bring in the Red Cross, Red Crescent, that kind of thing. Or you negotiate an exchange.”
Nunn recognized a cue when he heard one. Trewin was inviting him to make up his mind about Halib. Best to come clean … but as he prepared to speak he felt a wave of that stomach-rippling thrill associated with roller coasters.
While he recounted the previous night’s meeting he allowed his gaze to float around the room, noting reactions. Shehabi seemed to be taking it remarkably well. When Andrew had finished, however, he was first off the mark.
“Why have you waited until now before telling us this?”
It was, of course, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, and Andrew could hardly say, Because I don’t trust you an inch, m’dear fellow; there were limits to the effectiveness of abstract truth. So instead he gave the Iraqi an explanation that sounded reasonable, if not compelling.
“Hanif’s a terrorist, pure and simple, despite his business front. I wasn’t about to waste time, commit resources, without first making a few independent inquiries of my own, particularly since I felt he was holding back on me.”
“We know for sure that Leila Hanif’s son was on the plane. What other inquiries could you make?”
“About her likely mental state, and the consequences for the passengers. I’ve spoken to a psychologist, and I’ve used independent sources to try and verify her movements over the past few years.”
This was true—he’d been hard at work all morning—though the last thing Nunn wanted was to be forced into identifying those “sources.” Shehabi looked dissatisfied. Fortunately, at this juncture the MI6 man, who hadn’t yet opened his mouth today, now seemed disposed to make a contribution.
“It would explain a lot,” he said slowly.
“The whole thing’s struck me as odd from the beginning. I mean, why the South Yemeni desert? Why not a major airport, with press and TV? A hijack’s worthless without publicity. With all due respect to Dr. Milner here, why isn’t the South Yemeni government taking a hand? Jolly useful to be seen acting responsibly, I’d have thought; increase their chance of foreign aid no end. But it all starts to make more sense if the hijack’s of secondary concern to Leila Hanif.” He was growing steadily more excited. “I’d say Halib’s right to be worried. And so should we be.”
Nunn found his mind diverting into unfamiliar byways. He’d fallen passionately in love with Anne-Marie and proposed to her shortly after they’d met while holidaying in Nice. Their son had been a love child. She would go all the way to hell, she said, but had there ever been a time when she would have resorted to violence for Michael’s sake? Would she have stolen a plane, just to be with him? No, it was absurd. And yet women stole to feed their starving children, killed in order to protect them….
Trewin was speaking.
“I’m not convinced. If she wanted the boy back, all she had to do was arrange a snatch in England any time over the past two years.”
“After the mess in New York the Raleighs were subject to surveillance,” MI6 said. “I checked. Halib would have guessed that.”
Trewin tossed his head. “Well, maybe…. Tell us, Andrew, have you had any luck this morning?”
Nunn forced his mind back onto the main highway. “Well, so far it seems as though things are much as they appear to be. The people I’ve spoken to are all agreed that it’s a commercial contract organized by the Hanifs. Probably a Hezbollah connection in there somewhere. I’m told, reliably I think, that since our meeting Halib’s gone aboard that Iranian frigate, the one backing up the chopper. Stalemate; unless our friend here"—he waved his hand at Shehabi—"can magic some Iranian prisoners out of the air.”
On the spur of the moment he decided not to tell Shehabi of Jerry Raban’s latest update: that Feisal Hanif was in Cairo, but booked on every flight into Bahrain for the next seventy-two hours.
Shehabi hitched himself onto the nearest desk and folded his arms. He stared at the floor. Nunn studied him with suddenly renewed interest. He’d been expecting the usual heated denial of the prisoners’ existence. This reticence was unexpected. Perhaps he’d been influenced by Nunn’s account of his meeting with Halib after all. But before Shehabi could either satisfy or confound expectations, the fax machine emitted a click and its receive indicator light began to blink.
Andrew digested the message line by line as it appeared through the slot, so that by the time the guillotine severed the sheet he already knew the worst.
“Oh, dear,” he said quietly. “Oh dear, oh dear.”
“I gather,” said Trewin, “that we’re none of us going to like this, but could we have it anyway?”
“Originating from Teheran … the latest videotape has just been delivered.” He kept up a smooth, unhurried delivery, not wanting to be quizzed on how he got his information before Trewin and MI6 received theirs. “I think I know what Halib was holding back, now. My contact says that on the most recent tape the hijackers have issued a demand, a deadline, and a threat. One of each. First, the demand. The six Iranian prisoners of war are to be flown from Baghdad to Cairo, where they’ll be handed over to representatives of the Red Crescent. This must be done before midnight Egyptian time tomorrow night, the twenty-third, which is the deadline.” He looked at his watch. “Egypt’s one hour behind us, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Trewin said. “Gives us, what? Thirty-six hours, more or less. What’s the threat?”
“The threat is that, unless their demands are met, sixty minutes after the deadline expires they will blow up the plane with everyone aboard.”
22 JULY: EVENING:
AL MAHRA, SOUTH YEMEN
DANNIE Neeman, the Mossad agent who occupied seat 24H, waited a long time before taking a look at the paper napkin Robbie had forced into his hand. It wasn’t simply a matter of waiting for the hijackers’ attention to be focused elsewhere. That, by itself, would have been simple. There were only five gunmen to cover nearly two hundred passengers. Five people couldn’t be looking everywhere at once; they didn’t have eyes in the back of their heads.
No, Dannie wasn’t afraid that the hijackers would detect him; he feared betrayal by his fellow prisoners.
He knew something about hijacks, how they turned. He’d watched the videos and studied the manuals. After a while, passengers came to assume that the outside world had forgotten them. Because they were constantly afraid, they constantly felt the need for reassurance. They began to identify with their captors. Gunmen were hardly sympathetic figures, but they represented the only other visible force in play. And they were better than those on the outside, the ones Leila mentally styled “the chess players,” because the gunmen sometimes smiled, or let you go to the toilet, or said you could have a glass of water.
They might shoot you, too. So passengers on a hijacked plane tended to be wary of anything that could upset the men responsible for their plight. Oddballs who resisted were, after a while, viewed with suspicion by their fellow victims. And from suspicion it was but a short step to hostility.
By the grace of God, no one had seen Robbie deliver the message. If another passenger had noticed the Israeli reading it, he might have told the hijackers. That was the way to win the strong men’s favor—you might secure an extra meal for yourself or a seat nearer the open door and fresh air.
That way they might not choose you when next they needed a corpse to be videoed.
Dannie Neeman waited until his nearest neighbors had fallen asleep before unfolding the paper napkin Robbie had brought. There was no signature, but he recognized Raful’s writing. His orders were to wait until one of their team was chosen to die, then act “as arranged.” He understood. It was a worst-case scenario, but he knew what he had to do when the time came.
Something was going to break. It wouldn’t be much longer now.
He swallowed, trying to pump a little saliva up from empty glands; it was a long time since the last water ration. He found it hard to hold his head level, and his feet were full of sluggish blood. Aboard the plane, things had deteriorated to the verge of critical. The hijackers kept small amounts of food and water coming, but things like diapers and medicines and tampons had run out. Babies’ little bodies couldn’t cope with the sweltering atmosphere. Women were bleeding into their seats, and it sapped them mentally more than physically. Soon the souls aboard NQ 033 would no longer be able to cope with kids wallowing in their own shit, perpetual thirst, cloth rubbing against raw skin, pools of vomit, ulcers, mouth sores … the devil would have loved the interior of this plane, and perhaps only Hieronymus Bosch could have done it justice.
Another scruple in the scale, only one, and the balance would tip. One more death, that was the thing, Dannie decided; and across the other side of the plane someone was dying. A few hours ago, the hijackers had asked anyone aboard who was a doctor to identify himself. A man had come forward and diagnosed diabetes; now he was kneeling beside his patient, a youth slumped in row 20 on the port side. Yes. When the diabetic boy snuffed it, that would be the flashpoint. The cue.
22 JULY: EVENING: YARZE, LEBANON
At first Celestine and Azizza could not decide where would be the safest place for them to lie low. In the end they took a circuitous route back to the house at Yarze, reasoning that Feisal wouldn’t waste manpower keeping a permanent watch on Kharif. Even when he discovered her escape from Damour, why mount guard over a dilapidated house? Once he’d satisfied himself that his mother wasn’t there—and before returning home they gave him plenty of time to do that—he would leave it alone. At least, that’s what they hoped.
By the grace of Allah they reached Kharif safely. There, a crisis conference speedily resulted in a decision that Azizza must go back to Chafiq Hakkim’s. Earlier in the day she had begged time off, but someone
had to find out what was going on and Hakkim was likely to know. Besides, they needed food.
Celestine, alone again, collapsed into a chair, finally able to admit how ill she felt. Previously she’d put it down to a poisonous combination of anxiety over Robbie, old age, and physical exertion that would have taxed a teenager, let alone a woman in her seventies. Now, however, as she sat in the gloom counting her irregular heartbeats, she knew that the only thing to keep her from crumbling was willpower, and it couldn’t last forever.
She took a photo of Robbie from her bag. It had been taken in the restaurant at the top of New York’s World Trade Center. Twelve-year-old Robbie was staring solemnly into the lens, his shirt turned stark white by the flash. The last time she’d seen him; dear God, she prayed, let it not be the last time she ever would see him.
“Robbie,” she whispered. “Hold on, darling. Celestine loves you, Robbie. She’s coming to help you. She is. She is.”
Tears crept up on her by stealth. She fought them, for a while. But the more she resisted the more her distress deepened, until at last she blurted out everything in a convoluted expression of terror and pain.
“I’m just a poor widow woman … no good to anyone … not wanted, not needed, oh, God, not needed. And I can’t do anything. I can’t save him. Oh, God, Allah, help him, help my poor lovely Robbie…. ”
At sunset Azizza came back to find Celestine rocking to and fro in a chair.
“Izza,” she cried, “what am I going to do, what am I going to do?”
The old servant ran to the table and grabbed both of Celestine’s hands between her own. “Keep calm,” she said, her voice more of a snap than a consolation. “Stop your weeping and listen. I need your help. Celestine!”
Blood Rules Page 25