Kingfisher

by Gerald Seymour

  Alone on the plane, bound in his own deep and introverted mood, was the headmaster. No one had spoken to him since his attempt to disarm the girl. He was shunned by those who had not matched his one unreasoned moment of courage.

  And as the aircraft dipped and the pressure levels changed and the engines throttled their power so too increased the fevered screaming of the baby, unnoticed, irrelevant to all on board as the ground slipped and lurched towards them.

  CHAPTER EI GHT

  Remember that she'll be close to exhaustion, nerves frayed on a hacksaw, that she doesn't understand English, that everything must go through the navigator. Nurse her down, not condescending, not patronizing, but take it ever so gently. Those were the instructions given by telephone from London to the air traffic controller in the Stansted tower who would talk Anna Tashova on to the runway. Encourage them to query anything, make it a hundred per cent certain, hundred and one. No risks, not at this stage. Policemen, army officers, airport manager, senior air traffic supervisor, all crowded into the dim-lit space behind the young man who was now in direct contact with the Ilyushin. Full runway lights blazing out in the half-gloom of the evening, marking the tarmac that stretched three thousand yards beyond the battery of red 'line-up' lights upon which she would straighten trim, make the final calculations.

  'We'd like you to tell her that everyone here is with her, that everyone thinks she's done very well, that it's nearly over.'

  'Roger, I will explain to her what you say.' Voice of the navigator booming inside the glass cased tower.

  'About a hundred too high. She should drop 20 knots. Otherwise she's fine. We'd like to see her landing lights.'

  'Roger. She is making the adjustments you require.' Pause.

  'The pilot officer apologizes for the lights.'

  Just like they are in the books you read, thought the Controller. Not an iota different. Formal, correct, like it's a training run, as though there isn't a submachine-gun six inches from her.

  Apologizes for not having switched her lights on. Pilot dead beside her, or on the floor somewhere, planeload of people to think about, three mad bastards with guns, and she's saying she's sorry.

  'Just tell her not to worry. She's doing fine. We're all with her.' Pause again. Silence in the tower, all eyes peering at the sky for the lights. 'No wind problems, surface westerly fifteen knots, you'll be landing right into them. There is no other traffic, nothing else to concern yourselves with. Still a little high, drop the speed down ten. Call at the outer marker.'

  'Roger, thank you, 927 outer marker, inbound. Your instructions are very clear. We appreciate your help.'

  'You're not going to need them, but there are emergency services ready. Everything is prepared.'

  The Controller wondered what it must be like in the cockpit, checked the flight plan they'd given to him, saw the takeoff and mentally equated it with the British time difference. Five hours the girl had been flying the bloody thing now. He knew about the Migs, knew about Hanover and Schipol. Poor little bitch; must be like having a guardian angel all dolled up in halos and wings and white sheets hovering alongside to have a sympathetic voice talking from the control tower to her. Not that she'd know what he was saying, just get the feel, the togetherness . . . Could see the lights now, the men behind him pointing out to his right. He looked away from the green-tinted radar screen from which he had been working, turned for a moment from the bright grass- green blip that was the Ilyushin. Two huge and powerful beams scything into the night from the elevated angle of the aircraft's approach.

  '927, we can see you, and you're doing very nicely. Take it calmly. No problems. Speed's right, height's right, line's right. Doing very well.'

  Nothing more to say now. Time just to watch and pray that the tiredness of the girl did not force her into error. No reason why it should, only male chauvinism that made him worry, he thought. Chance of a woman flying a plane in the West was next to minus nil. One or two of them, of course, but so extraordinary that they had their pictures in the papers each week -

  nothing like the Russian system, where the girls had the same opportunities as the men.

  Wondered what she'd look like. Funny not being able to talk to her, only the distant voice of the man who sat behind her, and who switched off his radio each time he relayed the instructions to his pilot, as if they didn't want anyone else to hear the backchat of the flight deck. Meant you couldn't evaluate her state of mind, didn't know what her condition was.

  "Trim's right. Height right. Speed right,'

  'Roger.'

  'No problems, take it steady.*

  'Roger.'

  Don't give anything away, the buggers.

  The shape of the plane eclipsed the lights at the far end of the runway, and in the tower they heard the roar of the reverse thrust being applied: that meant she was down, the big bird had made her landfall. The tower's rotating searchlight caught the Ilyushin halfway down the runway, flooding the white and red and silver of the fuselage as it began to slow for the taxi-ing run, and in a moment as the beam moved on the plane was lost, and there was only the noise and to the front the lights by which the men in the control tower could follow its progress.

  All eyes fixed on the plane.

  Like men who've seen a topless swimmer for the first time, and stare on unashamed - voyeurs, that's what we are, thought the controller. Fascinated by it, and it looks no different from any other plane, not from the scores he talked down each week. But they stared at it, as if hoping by their very persistence to see men with guns, or the passengers, unwilling to accept the shroud of night and that the Ilyushin was still a full six hundred yards away. They'd plotted on the airfield map where they wanted him to direct the aircraft to take its stand; the position had been carefully worked at, not for this flight, but years back when the hi-jack plan for Stansted had first been rehearsed.

  'Turn her through 180, and back the way you came. Two hundred yards up on the starboard side you'll see a "Follow Me" van, with yellow lights. He'll take you to the stand. And well done to the pilot officer. Pass that to her, please, from all of us in here.'

  'Roger.'

  The controller saw the plane turn in the distance and begin a sedate progress back up the runway towards where the truck with the flashing amber lights waited. The searchlight on its pass picked out the two Saracens that crawled in pursuit - invisible to anyone on board.

  'I'll stay with them till they douse the engines, then it's your problem, gentlemen.' Half a minute more, and wringing in sweat and knowing he'd slipped half the procedure rules but feeling for once in his life he'd achieved something, the controller eased out of his chair.

  The Assistant Commissioner of Police for the county had taken his place beside him, looking warily at the equipment. Too bloody right, he thought, now it's our problem. Till the heavies get down from London.

  Three green and white petrol tankers parked close to each other and forming a half-moon barricade. A little to the right of them a squat single-level building. Close to here that the Ilyushin should taxi and come to rest. Simple, logical, as all military plans should be, cover for the troops close to the aircraft, offering no risk of detection. Ten of the SAS team here, with their control radio set, their chests heaving slightly from the exertion of running to their hide with their equipment as the plane was readying for its approach. A hundred yards from it, perhaps less, certainly no more. They wore no badges of rank, were dressed in dark blue, boiler-suit overalls and had covered their faces with the newly-developed lotion that turned the brightness of their skin into an indistinct mess. Stirlings, rifles, machine-guns, an anti-tank rocket launcher, a crate each of the incapacitating CS gas canisters and smoke grenades. Via his elaborate radio net Major George Davies, 22nd Regiment of the Special Air Service, learned that the first stage of the planning blueprint had worked as had been hoped. But he was not a man who suffered from self-delusion, and he could recognize that this was a small bonus, trivial. Out beyond them, quiet, h
idden and silent, lay the cordon of armoured cars and the prone and crouching soldiers of the Fusiliers.

  The passengers' reaction to the successful touchdown was a great and spontaneous burst of applause. Shouts in Russian and Italian, and one in the English language, and all carrying the same message of admiration for Anna Tashova, a desperate gratitude for her skill and stamina.

  As the plane slowed some gave way to tears, noisily, silently, publicly and behind clenched fingers. Others hugged those who sat next to them, total strangers embracing and pressing their cheeks together, and there were smiles on the faces of the children who took their cue from their elders and realized that this was a moment of celebration. The experts who have studied the subject of hi-jacking, and who sit in the offices of the Secret Services or Defence Ministries of those countries that regard the problem with care, would have said that this was a totally predictable emotion for the passengers to be showing. They would point out that the morale of men and women and children who have travelled for many hours at gunpoint and at risk is a very fickle matter, that they are constantly seeking for the sign that their ordeal is over. On Aeroflot 927 there was a general feeling that their troubles were now gone. They had forgotten, because they wished to forget, the words spoken by Isaac in the passenger aisle a bare hour earlier.

  Silly, helpless, laughing tears on the face of Luigi Fran- coni, something they would never have believed in his office in Via Botteghe Oscure; not little Luigi, not the silent one. He found he could barely talk, not with coherence, and felt the muscles of his stomach slacken, his legs lapping hopelessly together. The arm of his friend round him, the comfort of Aldo Genti, who supervised in party headquarters the world of economic affairs, and who was a man who chose not to show his emotion.

  ' I did not believe it possible.'

  ' It is not finished yet, Luigi.'

  ' It cannot be worse than it has been. They will see reason now. The worst must be over.'

  Further back towards the rear Edward R. Jones Jr swivelled his backside in the confines of his seat once more to face Rebecca.

  'What now, Miss? Where do we go from here?'

  'We refuel. Then we go to Israel.'

  It was an involuntary reply, and she knew that she was not supposed to talk, and hated herself for the weakness and loathing the moment because there was no one with whom she could share the joy of the landing that was all around her. An outcast, her link with the general pleasure severed.

  'Might not be easy, Miss. Like I said earlier.'

  She bit at her tongue, stifling the desire to argue. Who was he to tell her what would happen?

  Sneering at her, contemptuous of her.

  'What happens if they don't give you the fuel? What happens then?'

  She did not reply, only stared back at him, trying to outlast his clear and unwavering gaze till she accepted defeat and focused again down the line of the cabin, unable to look back at where he sat. She heard him say to his wife, his voice loud and unrepentant, 'They haven't an idea in hell, these kids. It's what makes them so damned dangerous. If they were a bit more pragmatic about it all you could assess what they were going to do. But they're out of this world, don't know what it's about, and Christ only knows what they'll do when the truth sinks in.'

  The art teacher leaned over from his window seat towards the headmaster, sandwiching the boy who sat between them. It was the first time anyone had spoken to him, first time for a life-span and his face was haggard with the strain of the silence, lines at his eyes, age at his mouth.

  'Headmaster, we will support you. We believe in what you did. It was right what you attempted.' What they would all say. But who had joined him when he needed their strength, who had come to him with anything more than a medley of desultory kicks at the little bitch? Held their ground, hadn't they? Waiting to see the outcome, fearful of committing themselves till they knew who would win, who would stand condemned.

  Forward in the cockpit Anna Tashova sat immobilized in her flying harness, head flopped on to her chest, eyes closed as if she were asleep. A very great tiredness she felt, and a desire only to immure herself behind any barricade that would protect her from the talk of the two men who had dictated her route and from the eyes and fingers of the dials and switches that peered back at her from the control panels. For her too the flight had seemed an infinite nightmare of darkened, cloying turnings chased and harried by endless closing pursuit with the only sedative to block out the images found in the mechanics of the aircraft, the occupation of controlling the insensate instruments. Like the American passenger whose existence she did not know of, she too wondered what would happen next. But unlike him, now that she had shut down the four Ivchenko engines, she cared not a damn.

  The navigator - she had been briefly introduced to him before take-off by the captain because they had not flown together before, and she had forgotten his name - was shuffling his papers and maps. Methodical, a tidy man, and putting them quietly in his briefcase, as if they might be of further use. Yet the scope of the maps had long since been exhausted. To the border of the BDR, and everything after that on instruments and from the chorus of ground controllers who had passed them on, like a ship that flies the yellow flag and cannot find a welcoming port.

  Both of them in their various ways ignored David's presence. The pilot officer who had not spoken since the landing, and the navigator who did not meet his eyes and who busied himself with trivia. And the captain too. Not a movement from him. Five hours dead now, and not a wavering of his posture; the ultimate act of defiance, sitting there, trapped, head bowed down.

  Face whitening, the mouth clamped fast as if in determination not to show the pain that would have come too fast for him to know it.

  Isaac stood behind him at the end of the corridor, the mouth of the cabin, studying the passengers, relentless and with total concentration after the attempt to overpower Rebecca.

  Suspicious and hostile and watchful, seeming to crouch his body as though among the facing mass of people there was a missile or weapon that could damage him if he presented the broader target. He stood out in the centre of the aisle where all could see him if they stretched up from their seats and take note of the rock-firm grip on the handle of the submachine-gun. The passengers would know that the inhibitions of the pressurization of the cabin had now deserted him. The plane was on the ground: he would have no hesitation in shooting now.

  ' I am going to talk to the tower on the radio. I want all the people to remain in their seats. No one is to move, not for any reason.'

  Isaac did not look away. His eyes were sweeping over the passengers like a prison tower searchlight, and nodded his agreement.

  It seemed natural that David should resume the initiative, take up the leadership again. David waved-an afterthought -to the girl at the far end of the cabin, caught her attention and waved again and stayed long enough to see the thankfulness on her face.

  'When you are ready, Isaac, take her place. She has been away from us too long.'

  Inside the cockpit the navigator made way for him, but David declined the small, low-set seat, not wishing to box himself in, seeking the freedom of movement from which he could dominate.

  He held the gun in his left hand now, away from the pilot officer and the navigator, and with his right he began to pull at the headset that was fastened to the ceiling of the flight deck.

  'You waste your time,' the navigator said. 'Unless you speak in English there is no one there who can talk to you.'

  The navigator saw the disappointment cloud over the young man's face. So far, so much at stake for him, and no one to speak his bloody language. Half a smile, little more than a suspicion, and covert, as David backed out of the cockpit, petulant anger rising.

  He strode down the corridor, almost marching in his speed when he reached the passenger cabin aisle. For many of them it was their first clear glimpse of the man they took to be the leader of the group, the man most directly responsible for their position. Good-lo
oking, those who could be remotely objective would have conceded, but they were few and from the majority there was only loathing, hidden in their turned-away faces. Edward R. Jones Jr took a surreptitious picture but doubted whether it would expose well in the dull, interior light. All the way to Rebecca, pushing past the drinks trolley, till he reached her and took her slowly and gently in his arms, the greeting of a brother, of a friend. An arm round her shoulders, and another pressing her head against his chest, the one that held his machine-gun, and the gesture was awkward till he sensed the intensity of her response.

  David felt the ripple of her breath playing on the skin of his neck, heard her say, 'Are we free now, David? Is it over, is it finished?'

  'The crewman says there is no one there who will speak in our language. You can speak some of their English; in a moment you must talk to them.'

  'How will they be to us, after the Germans and the Dutch? How will the British be?'

  He found that all he wished for was to hold the girl, keep her close, continue 'the contact. Her words now a distraction. He sensed the softness of her body, the pliant pull of her weight.

  'Was it a great crime, the shooting of one policeman, and him not dead?' she continued. 'They know why we fight, they have told us on the radio of their sympathy. Does the wounding of one policeman outweigh all their statements?'

  Tighter, closer, pressing her frailty against him. Silly, stupid girl. Lovely girl. Squeezing, hugging her to him.

  'You forget, Rebecca, you forget the captain in his cockpit. You have put him from your mind.

  But they know of it. At Hanover they had the knowledge, and at Amsterdam, and these people here will know of it. I have killed the captain, and to these people he will be the martyr and we will be the animals. One shot only I fired. One shot. It was I who fired it, not Isaac. The door would not open, and I fired. I did not angle the gun, Rebecca, I did not fire for the floor. I killed him, Rebecca, and to them that will be murder . ,.'