by Adam Hall
His tired eyes went dead.
'Kuznetski?' Ferris asked.
'Yes.'
None of us spoke for a while.
From here I could see some of the marksmen ranged along the roof of the main building. Others were deployed in unmarked cars at regular intervals, their dark barrels poking towards the Boeing: these would fire last of all and only then if the situation became fluid and mobile. A dozen Air Force vehicles stood near the end of the main hangar and a group of uniformed officers were talking together, some of them with field glasses raised to watch the aircraft.
A Sheriff's Department helicopter stood just beyond the emergency bay with a pilot leaning against its door and an Air Force man talking to him, and I could see two DPS vehicles over by the tower, their lights still rotating.
There was very little noise. The sun was fitful behind high cloud patches and the ground wind sometimes whipped the lanyard of the flag against its pole, over the main building, making a ringing sound because the pole was metal.
Mentally I wasn't too occupied. I'd done all the thinking there was to be done and the situation hadn't changed because the Defence Secretary was carrying the material I'd expected him to be carrying: Zade had come here for nuclear arms and they were in this briefcase in the form of blueprints and equations. It was known that the PLO had the technical capability of producing medium-yield weapons and all they needed were the designs and that was what Zade had asked for and wasn't going to get: because Burdick couldn't let him have them.
They should have known that.
All Burdick had been able to do was to bring his daughter back on the soil of her homeland and close to him, and then hope for a miracle.
I didn't have one for him.
Nobody had.
'I was in signals,' Ferris told me, 'with London.' They'd taken their bloody time, I thought, finding out about Kuznetski. Not that it mattered; a man like Zade would know his operation depended on the expert evaluation of the material for exchange, and if he hadn't brought Kuznetski he'd have brought someone else.
'So what does London say?'
Ferris looked at his feet 'It's over to you.'
I was listening carefully. The final directive Ferris had given me from Manaus was to go out for the Kobra cell: the life of Patricia Burdick was an incidental factor. So the mission had ended here. Kobra had to be eliminated and that could now be done, as soon as someone gave the signal. It didn't have to be me. It would have, finally and perhaps after days of bitter and useless negotiation, to be James Burdick. He would be given the exclusive right, presumably, of condemning his daughter to death.
I glanced at him. For the moment he seemed to have forgotten us: he was just looking at the ground, his tired eyes narrowed, the wind moving a lock of his greying hair. I didn't think he had any constructive thoughts in his mind: he'd lived with this thing for days on end, and nights on end, and he must have considered every possible solution, and drawn blank.
I looked away from him to Ferris.
'London says I've got discretion?'
'Yes.'
'Total?'
'Yes.'
I turned back to Burdick.
This man Kuznetski,' I said, 'is probably quite good. How good are those designs?'
His head had 'come up and he hadn't immediately understood what was being said to him: he'd caught it about halfway.
'Oh.' He looked at the briefcase. 'Not good enough for an expert to read.' He raised his head to watch the Boeing. 'These people are terrorists, and terrorists aren't normally very intelligent. So I thought maybe they'd just-' he gave a slight shrug — 'accept this stuff without looking at it too hard. There wasn't anything else I could do, was there?'
'No,' I said.
'But we have to try. Don't we?.'
'Of course.'
He was looking at me steadily now. 'I'd like it right on the line, Mr Wexford. You've been in there with them and you know them better than we do. And you don't think there's a chance, do you?'
'No.'
He looked away.
The silence came in again.
A few ideas had occurred to me during the flight from Belem and I'd had enough time to treble-check them for feasibility and none of them had stood up, not one. The only thing left was a technical last-ditch action, with the odds so steep that I'd got it out of my mind.
But I thought about it now because there wasn't any choice.
'Ferris,' I said quietly, 'I want to talk.'
He looked up at me quickly.
'Mr Secretary,' he said, 'will you excuse us for a moment?'
'Of course.'
I walked with Ferris across the tarmac, halfway to the emergency bay. Burdick wouldn't like the proposal and I was going to leave Ferris to persuade him to give me a completely free hand.
'Look,' I said, 'if I'm going back in there I'll need something a bit more useful than that ersatz stuff in the briefcase. I want something I can argue with — something they can understand.'
He was looking towards the Boeing.
'What do you need?' he asked me.
'I need to break their nerve.'
Chapter Seventeen: ZERO-ZERO
I went aboard the Boeing at 14:55.
Zade was unarmed, waiting at the top of the flight steps.
Ventura and Ramirez were on each side of him with a submachine-gun trained on me as I came up.
Zade took the briefcase from me and went into the aircraft.
The other two lowered their weapons and I followed Zade aboard, telescoping the antenna of the walkie-talkie.
I saw Patricia Burdick at the rear of the main passenger compartment with Dr Costa, and went along the aisle to talk to them.
At this point I had the urge to turn back and get out of the Boeing and stay out, stay alive. But then I would have to live with myself afterwards.
'Your father sends his love,' I said to the girl. 'He wants you to know you'll be home again soon now.'
She stared up at me without saying anything for a moment, as if she were repeating what I'd said to herself a few times to find out if it were true, whether she could trust me.
'How's he taking this?' she asked.
'Very calmly. He knows you'll soon be home.'
Quietly she murmured, 'Sure,' and closed her eyes.
I wondered how much she'd be able to do for herself, if she had the chance; her skin was waxen and wet with perspiration. Dr Costa looked at me with his mournful eyes but said nothing; I thought that inside he was praying, and to the most powerful of his gods.
I moved across the aisle and pulled down the table for the end seat and opened the zip of the walkie-talkie case and took out the bomb and put it on the table.
'Zade,' I called.
I set the dial to 5.
The chronometer began ticking.
Zade looked along the aisle. He'd given the briefcase to Kuznetski, and Kuznetski had taken out the batch of varicoloured papers and was going through them.
I leaned against the seat squab with my arms folded, 'In five minutes this plane's going up.'
They were all looking at me now.
Zade came slowly down the aisle. He still wore his dark glasses and I couldn't see what he was thinking but that didn't matter because there was nothing he could do about this.
He saw the bomb.
'Carlos,' he said over his shoulder.
Ramirez followed him along the aisle. He was down in the dossier as an explosives expert. I had known that, and would use the advantage.
Zade stood over the seat, looking down.
He'd been patient, so far, They'd taken almost an hour and a half to get this thing for me and I'd talked to Zade with a two-way radio, saying we didn't trust him, we wanted him to bring his hostage to a neutral zone for the exchange, accepted practice, so forth. I'd made it sound genuine, and the FBI had taken over and used all the correct phrases; I thought they'd sold it to him, once, then he'd got worried and said if I wasn't back in the ai
rcraft with the material they were going to start with one of her fingers.
Ramirez stood beside him, looking down; then he instinctively edged away a fraction and I noted this, Zade moved his hand and I said:
'Don't!'
I put a lot of expression into it and he drew back. I didn't have to work up any spurious alarm: I just let it show, so that he'd get the message. Nothing would happen if he picked the tiling up but he might go and drop it and it was omnidirectionally percussion-triggered and that would be that.
Zade watched my face. I could feel the blood receding and the first of the sweat coming to the surface and presumably he saw this and stood away slightly, not moving his hands any more.
'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.
'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.