Kingfisher

by Gerald Seymour

  'Find an excuse, put him off, tell him the people necessary to make such a decision are not here, and won't be till the morning.'

  Finger back to the console, Charlie speaking again to the flight deck.

  'David, this is a very important request that you are making, and one which would have to be considered very carefully by the British government. The problem is that we're in the middle of the holiday season here. Many of the most senior men are away on their vacations. There is no one here who could give that sort of authorization. Probably we won't be able to get a decision till the morning.'

  'Don't make a fool of me.' The inanimate, detached voice cracked back from the loudspeaker high on the back wall of the control tower. Pitch rising, and hostility communicated.

  ' I'm not making a fool of you, David.'

  'Don't take me for an idiot. The Germans were able to make a decision that we should not land, the Dutch were able to offer us impossible conditions knowing that we would not accept. We are not peasants. Your people facilitated this landing; that was not authorized by a junior official. Do not tell me that the responsible people cannot now be contacted. Do not play a game with me. We are very tired, we are impatient now. Do you know why I say that . . .?'

  'Of course you are tired, and that is the more reason why you should sleep, and the pilot too must have a chance to sleep, and then we can talk in the morning.'

  'Not in the morning. We want the fuel tonight. In the morning we fly.'

  "It is not possible ..

  'It must be possible. Tell your people that, whoever they are. Tell them.'

  Clocks ticking, a subdued cough, the shuffling of feet. Charlie sighed, loosened his collar further and turned once more to his audience; but they didn't need him - not to give them the bones, at any rate. They'd picked that up from the voices - David's anger, Charlie's wheedling.

  But he went through the drama and the explanation.

  The Assistant Chief Constable had manoeuvred till he was at the Home Secretary's shoulder.

  'With respect, sir - and I acknowledge that there are others better qualified in these matters than myself-but it's dangerous this way round, codding them along. I suggest we make it plain, right from the start, that they are not flying on, that it's not negotiable.'

  ' I want to lead them to the realization gradually.' Clitheroe held his ground, not seeking proximity to their political master, aloof and with his hands in his pockets. 'You have heard the man's voice; it didn't need Mr Webster's translation to tell you he's near-hysterical. He is exhausted, and may

  become totally irrational. If you push him you could have a suicide situation, at best a collapse, at worst mayhem among the passengers.'

  First conflict, Charlie thought to himself. Haven't been here forty-five minutes and they're swapping punches already. Always the same when you try and do things by committee.

  'You have to take a firm line ,. .'

  sNot for its own sake, only if that helps the end result.'

  The Home Secretary looked beyond his protagonists. Then he went to the man who had impressed him in London, who seemed to know and who had the humility of caution in his assessments.

  'Mr Webster. Stall them, or give it to them straight?'

  Charlie closed his eyes, tried to think, to see his way into the minds of the three young Russians; lust photographs and distant voices. How in God's name did you answer that one? ' I think I'd go with the doctor,' he said, noting the anticipation of the Assistant Chief Constable blend into his set, uniformed, clipped moustache face. 'With respect to all who might disagree with me, we should not underestimate what they've been through, to put it crudely. The stress they've been under, the strain . . .' What do you know about strain, Charlie? Well, more than any of these buggers. "They could go mad if we wrapped them down right now.'

  Clitheroe didn't acknowledge Charlie's support, just walked away and jangled the coins in his pocket. The policeman was gazing through the windows.

  'Stall them, Mr Webster,' said the Home Secretary. He looked hard at Charlie, seeking rapport, trying to share the loneliness of taking decisions on conflicting advice. Sorry, can't help you, sir.

  You say what happens, I just march up and down and do as I'm told.

  'David, it's Charlie here. Now you've got to listen to me.' Trying to get colloquial, trying to find the phrases that create understanding. 'David, listen. We've spoken to London by telephone, and we are told that the ministers of the British government will be meeting later tonight or in the early hours of the morning. They have to talk about this thing, David.. You have to believe me, they must be allowed some time. We'll have an answer by dawn. That's the best I can offer you, David. It's a very important matter, this. They must have time to talk about it. They promise an answer by the morning.' They'll have an answer by the time you've had a good night's sleep, by the time you've calmed yourself, by the time the SAS boys have it all worked out.

  'You are trying to confuse us, Charlie. You do not think that we are serious people.' But the doubt was registering - that much was clear from the inflection. Don't know what to do, what to say. Had the set speech worked out for the 'yes' or 'no' answer, and they're thrown by the 'wait and see'.

  ' I'm not trying to confuse you, David. Just explaining things the way they are.'

  'You do not deceive me?'

  ' I don't deceive you, David. You'll have the answer in the morning, good and early.' Like pinching pocket money out of a blind school. First-timers - no briefing, no plan, just showed up and hoped for the best.

  'Good night, Charlie. And you will tell us early the reply of your government. Tell us about the fuel and the onward flight to Israel.'

  'Good night, David. We'll talk in the morning.'

  Believe that lot and you'll believe anything. Charlie tucked the console button back to the 'off'

  position, stretched up out of his chair and braced his legs stiff from the long period crouched at his desk.

  To no one in particular he said, 'I thought they'd be better than that.'

  CHAPTER NI NE

  The Foreign Secretary would dearly have liked another of his PPS's mixtures from the cabinet, but it was hardly the suitable time for that - not with the night stretching ahead, the threat increasing.

  For this senior politician with a lifetime of manoeuvring and negotiating in the fraught and deceptive world of diplomacy the problem was totally straightforward - so clear-cut, indeed, that the area for compromise was minimal. He had a fair idea of the appeal that the Israeli would make to him, knew it would be impassioned and emotional and difficult to deflect. His role would thus not be easy. He still carried the burden of the one-time super-power, one-time member of the Big Five, but the world had moved on, and the weight in affairs abroad of the government he now represented had diminished to a startling degree in the previous two decades.

  And if the cloth had shrunk so had the muscle of the wearer. Circumspection was required if he were to avoid the unnecessary pitfalls of winning the hostility of those who had usurped the influence that had once been Britain's. Forget the principle, take the practical way out. And why not, with these silly children to concern himself with? The Russians would want them back, the Israelis would accept almost anything other than that course. Three idiot children, and because of them he wrestled with a dilemma that should not have existed, who to offend, who to hurt - the monolith of the Soviet Union, or the massive voice of the Jewish lobby across the free world.

  Damned ridiculous. And both of them, Russians and Israelis alike, would be wanting one thing in common from him that evening, a binding commitment on a course of action. Only card he held, and he'd see both went home without it.

  He'd stayed in his armchair after the Russian had gone, musing, turning the problem over slowly in his mind. When he rose to greet the Israeli Ambassador it was with some awkwardness, the legacy of the wartime shrapnel embedded in his hip. It was not usual for the Foreign Secretary himself to greet ambassadors, no
t when the issue at stake was the future of three juveniles, killers, but then the situation was not usual; no point on an evening such as this in sticking to protocol. Another circumspect bottom sinking into the comfort of the settee's soft cushions, a moment's pleasantries, and then the starting gun.

  'Our position is sensitive, Foreign Secretary, in that we do not have any direct connection with these people, we knew nothing of them before their action became public knowledge. I begin with that, but my government believes it carries a responsibility to all the Jewish peoples, not just to those who reside in the State of Israel, a responsibility that we must discharge within the boundaries of acceptable international conduct.' The Ambassador was leaning forward, and having difficulty making his point with the emphasis he strove for as his small body had sufficiently depressed the cushions that he was unable to gain the height and stature suitable for his address. 'That these young people have committed crimes we accept - serious crimes, we accept that also. In our country there have been no executions since the mass-murderer Eichmann was put to death, in Great Britain there have been none for close to fifteen years. We have both abolished the death penalty for humanitarian reasons. Neither of us believes in judicial killings.' The Foreign Secretary raised an eyebrow; an art he had, only the right eyebrow, and its intention was to signify scepticism. He did it very well. A popular vote in either Britain or Israel would, he thought, have endorsed with enthusiasm a return of capital punishment if directed against the IRA men who bombed the British cities, or the Black September gangs that assaulted the northern Israeli settlements. But the Ambassador was not to be deterred by the movement of a hair line. ' In the Soviet Union these three will face the supreme penalty . . .' and that would be so wr o n g ? . . . ' I would suggest that you could assume with near certainty that these three will be put to death if they are returned to Russia . . .' and would the world be a poorer place in their absence? . . . 'My government could not countenance the sending of these three young people to a death they would not have faced if their crimes had been committed in your territory or in ours

  . . .' serve the little blighters r i g h t . . . ' I am instructed by my Prime Minister to ask of you an immediate guarantee that these people will not be returned to Kiev.'

  'What would you suggest happens to them?'

  ' I am instructed by my government that we would accept their appearance before British courts, and that should they be convicted then they would serve terms of imprisonment inside the United Kingdom.'

  'And what charges would they face in Britain?'

  'They would face the charges that would have been laid against them in Kiev."

  The Foreign Secretary drew a long breath. An audacious approach, but then that was to be accepted. Same as the damned Russians, seeking the propaganda coup - that much was clear to him, even through the pain that meant tiredness and that the fragments of metal still bit at the encasing gristle deep in his body. Concern for advantage, tantamount; concern for the lives at stake, minimal. T am reminded- though I do not have the exact text at hand - of the eloquent statement made recently by your Ambassador to the United Nations General Assembly. It was a call, if I recollect, for a rule of law to combat aerial piracy, a demand that nations should band together to stamp out this contemporary evil. Are we to assume that the religious faith of these three young people excludes them from the type of justice you would wish to see exacted upon men of other creeds?'

  The Ambassador did not answer him. It came as no surprise to the Foreign Secretary: diplomats seldom replied to each other's points of debate. It failed to get them anywhere if they did.

  'As you know, with the co-operation of your government, we are sending a personal representative of the government of Israel to Britain. This man is a fighter, he holds a substantive rank in those units of our armed forces that deal exclusively with the terrorist threat. If you were to find it possible to commit your government not to return the young people to their deaths then we would order the officer to use his utmost influence to persuade them to surrender without further bloodshed. We have chosen this man with care. It is not accidental that he is the one who has been sent. In our society were his name and his achievements able to be published he would be a hero among us. We believe he is the man to appeal to these youngsters, to gain much from them, more than you can achieve.'

  No longer audacious, damned arrogant now,

  'What makes you think we need help .. ,?2

  'We have the experience.'

  sAnd no one else?'

  'Not to the same degree, no. Ask the Germans who were responsible at Munich, ask your friend the President of Uganda.'

  'You know, of course that the government of the United Kingdom does not have an extradition treaty with the Soviet Union.'

  ' I know that military aircraft can take off under cover of darkness, and that politicians can justify their actions at a future date.'

  'The Ambassador of the Soviet Union has just departed after telling me his government required an immediate answer on the same question that you ask. I told him that we were considering the situation.'

  'From which he would have assumed,' said the Ambassador, 'that the British require time."

  ' If that was his assumption then it would have been a correct one. Your officer will indeed be taken to Stansted, but whether there is any part for him to play, while conditions are attached to his presence, remains a matter of debate.'

  Termination of the conversation. The need that was much more pressing was to speak with the Prime Minister. Worthless and predictable this, a mere swapping of words now that the battle-lines had been drawn.

  Alone, while the PPS led the Ambassador through outer offices and empty corridors, the Foreign Secretary sat still in his chair. What if they were not his concern, what if the ministry of another country were in turmoil over the problem, what if he were exonerated of anxiety? Would his feelings on the fate of three young people be different then? How many speeches had he made in the constituency ... the Russian threat - the need for vigilance-not to lower our guard -

  persecution - the tanks of the Warsaw pact - how many war planes, how many missiles, divisions, chemical-gas batteries of artillery . . . always went down damn well, those speeches, particularly at the mid-July garden fete. Three children had taken the System to battle, thrown a tatty, unlined glove at it, and looked for a champion to ride to their rescue. Well, they'd have to look elsewhere, wouldn't they? Silly little blighters.

  Wouldn't bother the switchboard, dial it himself, the number that was personal and restricted, the Prime Minister's holiday home.

  In the forward corridor of the aircraft, where they could achieve privacy, straddled between the cockpit and the passenger cabin, David and Isaac and Rebecca talked of the radio conversation with the man who called himself Charlie. None of them had ever met an Englishman before, which made their attempts at assessing what had been told them difficult, almost impossible.

  There had been English students on the campus that both Isaac and Rebecca had seen since they had started their studies at Kiev University, but they had not been In their classes. There had been no point of contact.

  David had said it was better to wait till the morning before talking again. Isaac had not challenged him, realized the depth of exhaustion to which his friend succumbed, saw the need he had for sleep and reassurance. Get no sense out of David, not till he was rested. Wished he'd been there, in the cockpit, to hear at first hand the message from the ground, but his persistent, clinging anxiety about their security at the hands of the passengers following the incident with Rebecca had prevented that. While David was talking behind him in the flight deck he had hovered in the doorway of the cabin, attention bound to his charges, watching them, a chicken with its brood when the fox is close to the coop. Told later of the conversation he had laughed to himself, amused at David's faith, convinced of his own suspicions.

  Many hours now since either had lain in a bed; the last sleep reduced to a fe
w tossing and restless minutes on the floor of the forest hut. Both were unshaven, and the new growth tickling and irritating at their collars, and their eyes large and reddened, slow and sluggish in their movements. The girl wore worse than both of them, hardly able to keep her lids from closing and vague in what she said when they spoke to her. Had to sleep, all of them, had to devise a rota for resting. And now circling, aimlessly and without direction, around the conversation that David had made with the tower, and him defensive about what he had said, and the girl uncomprehending and repeating only that the man they spoke to was called Charlie, and that he had promised. Had to get them to sleep, both of them, and summon for himself the strength to outlast and outfight his own great weariness. A few more minutes, then they could go, could be excused, could seek the deliverance they needed. But first the passengers, the currency, valuable, without price, first he should concern himself with the passengers. Voice a little hoarse now, but clear and to those who listened these were the words of a man who had usurped command, who had filled the vacuum of leadership.

  'We have requested that the English give us fuel. We are told that their government is meeting in London tonight to discuss our request. They will tell us their answer by the early morning. In the meantime we will all sleep on the aircraft.' He paused and there was the vaguest of smiles, a suspicion, and he corrected himself. 'In the meantime you will all sleep on the aircraft There is no food for you, and there will be no drinks. You must not talk and nobody on any pretext must leave their seat. The lights will remain on through the night, and all of you who sit at the windows must draw their blinds. We will shoot if anyone moves. That must be understood.

  When I say we will shoot, you should not take it just as a threat. You should not seek to prove me.'

  Isaac walked halfway down the aisle to where the leg room was greatest, to the seats by the passage to the emergency doors with the escape route on to the wings. Luigi Franconi and Aldo Genti were on his right, three of the schoolchildren from Lvov to the left. He beckoned to them with his gun barrel, the motioning gesture drawing them from their seats as if he had discarded the possibility that they would understand his speech. The children were simple, absorbed immediately among their friends, but the Italians were harder and he had to lead them down the aisle to where there were vacant places and stifled protests from those who were comfortable and settled. Both had to climb over knees and bags and passengers that were already settled and unyielding and heavy with hostility at the disturbance, Franconi two rows in front of Genti, separated from their camaraderie and nervous and fiddling with their spectacles. Isaac checked the doors till he was satisfied they had not been tampered with, were as secure as they had been when they were airborne. He walked on down the aisle, the submachine-gun swinging easily in his hand, turning neither to right nor left, as if ignoring those who sat to either side of him. He walked to where the drinks trolley still blocked the rear passageway to the far exit, and bent down to rummage under the final row of seats till his hands emerged with two life jackets, brilliant orange and with their straps sagging. A few moments work and he had lashed the trolley to the nearest seat legs, pulling on the knots he had made with the straps till he was satisfied that they would hold. A slight and primitive barricade, an obstruction between the body of the plane and the back exit. He returned down the aisle, now staring his way through the passengers, as if his whim had changed and he sought to force his personality over them, but there were no takers, no heroes seeking a dangerous laugh at his expense. Even the American was not talking. And the headmaster looking straight ahead even when Isaac brushed his hip against the shoulder of the sitting man.