worried by Tafak's extremist views.
^ But that was only part of the reason. The other part was more simple and human – Tafak was frightened that he might be assassinated. There had been too many rumours that Israeli gunmen were on the move; there had even been a whisper that British and American secret service men were cooperating with the Israeli intelligence service. In Baalbek, a place he had never visited before, he felt safe.
^ The first message he received at his new headquarters was from Winter. Within thirty minutes of seizing the ^ Challenger ^ a brief radio signal was transmitted anonymously to the United Arab Republic consulate in San Francisco. ^ Avocado consignment has been delivered. ^ Inside a locked room in the consulate Talaal Ismail reached for the phone and put in a call to a Paris number. From here the message was transmitted to Athens and on to Beirut. The man Ahmed Riad had placed in a flat in Beirut made one bad slip when he phoned Tafak. He referred to him as 'Excellency' while he was reporting the message confirming the tanker's seizure. 'No titles,' Tafak snapped and slammed down the phone as soon as he had heard the message. Not that he really believed the phone would be tapped.
^ The girl who worked as switchboard operator in the block of flats on Lafayette Street in Beirut waited until both receivers had been replaced before she turned down the switch. Then she started attending to the incoming calls she had kept waiting.
^ She was nervous. It was the first time she had listened in to calls for money. To pass the time of day, to listen to a woman making a furtive and erotic call to her lover while her husband was out; that was another thing. Most switchboard operators did that, or so Lucille Fahmy consoled herself. But this, she suspected, could be dangerous. And who was 'Excellency'?
^ 'Good evening, Lucille…' He greeted her like an old friend, leaning close to make himself heard above the racket of the juke box which was playing the latest Tom Jones record. At six in the evening the place was filling up with Lebanese teenagers. Despite the chill in the air outside it was hot and stuffy in the Cafe Leon. Plenty of oil for 'heating here; oil coming out of their ears. The mournful-faced man ordered coffee and cakes.
^ He patted his breast pocket. 'I have the fifty dollars with me. Was it a local call?'
^ She hesitated, then opened her bag and took out a folded banknote with the number written inside which she handed to him. Anyone watching would have assumed he was short of cash, that his girl friend was paying tonight. He slipped the folded note into his wallet, next to another note he had folded earlier. He would pay with that note – just in case someone was watching him.
^
^ Again it showed nervousness – she was talking for the sake of talking. Of course he could trace any number in the Lebanon, and find the address – because it was the address which interested him. She waited until the waiter had brought the coffee and cakes and then leaned towards him. 'It was about some avocados – he just said the avocado consignment has been delivered. Oh, and he called the man at the other end Excellency…'
^ 'He might…' The man who had told her his name was Albert appeared to know all about it – or this was the impression he deliberately gave her – and now he understood her nervousness. Like so many people in the Middle East she was frightened of the powerful. He went on sipping his coffee, hiding his shock, his hope. It looked as though they had found Tafak.
^ One Fleet Street newspaper in London caught a hint of a whisper of a rumour – and had a 'D' notice served on it – an edict it could not ignore, so the story went unpublished. As it happened, the story was true.
^ The British Prime Minister had driven secretly to Lyneham air base in Wiltshire, one of Britain's remoter airfields in the Salisbury Plain area. His timing was good: as his car sped towards the airfield buildings a Trident dropped out of the grey overcast and cruised along a nearby runway.
^ When the machine had stopped, the Prime Minister was driven close up to the aircraft, so close that it pulled up at the foot of the mobile staircase which had been hastily rushed into position. He waited inside the car as a man appeared at the top of the mobile staircase, ran briskly down the steps and climbed inside the rear of the waiting car.
^ Had a photograph been taken of the man who stepped out of the plane he might well have been mistaken for Gen. Villiers; he was bearing a black eye-patch. But at that moment Gen. Villiers was many thousands of miles away from Britain. The secret visitor, therefore, had to be someone else. He did, in fact, look very like another general whose picture had often appeared in the pages of the world's press, a certain Israeli general.
^ It was the afternoon of Sunday January 19, the day when Winter seized control of the ^ Challenger.
^ Winter took his decision to let Betty Cordell move freely round the ship immediately after the incident with LeCat. He had been appalled to find a woman on board, knowing the character of some of the ex-OAS terrorists, and now it struck him she might be safer wandering round the ship rather than locked away in her cabin. He came to the cabin to tell her his decision. 'You can roam round the ship as much as you like, but you are to report to the officer of the watch on the bridge every hour. Understood?'
^ She stood quite still, studying his unusual face, the boniness of his hooked nose, the wide, firm mouth, the steady brown eyes which were so remote and disconcerting. 'Why are you doing this?' she asked quietly.
^ He left her abruptly and a few minutes later she started moving about the ship which was still proceeding through a gentle swell. It was a nerve-wracking experience which she never got used to -walking down an alleyway while a terrorist in the distance watched the fair-haired girl coming with a pistol in his hand; turning a corner into what she imagined was a deserted passageway beyond, only to find another terrorist guard just around the corner; being followed down another alleyway by a man with a gun, who, it turned out, was merely checking to see where she was going.
^ Her mind was working at two levels – noting everything that might be copy for the story she hoped to write one day – ^ Eye-Witness Account of Terrorists' Hi-Jack – ^ and noting the precise position of all the guards, information she intended to pass to Bennett at the first available opportunity. There were no signs that the British crew were planning any resistance; outwardly they seemed still stunned by what had happened. But she detected an odd atmosphere, particularly in the engine-room.
^ A guard with a blank expression stood aside to let her go inside the engine-room – Winter, with his usual efficiency, had passed the word to the entire terrorist team that she was allowed to move round the ship freely. Stepping over the coaming she stood on the high platform, already sweating a little in the steamy atmosphere as she gazed into the bowels of the ship. The noise was appalling, like the thunder of steam-hammers, and everywhere things moved; pistons chomping, machinery which meant nothing to her. She went down the vertical ladder.
^ The steep, thirty-foot drop behind her as she descended didn't worry her – she had climbed near-precipices in the Sierras – and then she was threading her way among the machinery, seeing men she had earlier met and chatted with before the seizure of the tanker. Monk, a burly, thirty-four year old engine-room artificer, a very tough- looking character indeed, his dark hair plastered down over his large skull, nodded to her as he wiped his hands on an oily rag but he seemed abstracted, as though his mind was on something important.
^ Bert Foley, a small, bald-headed man of forty, another artificer, did speak to her after glancing up to make sure the guard on the high platform couldn't see him. 'Things might turn out better than you imagine, Miss. Have patience…' Feeling better in the presence of the British seamen, she explored further. There was something here she couldn't put her finger on, a smell of conspiracy in the air. It didn't seem possible: Winter had severed all communication between one part of the ship and another. Then she saw Wrigley, the steward, coming down the ladder into the engine-room.
^ The steward, carrying a tray with one hand while he used the other to support himself, reached the floor, hurried to the control platform where Brady, the chief engineer, was directing operations. Brady, a stocky, grey- haired man in his early fifties, took a mug of tea from the tray, helped himself slowly to a ham sandwich. Nothing strange there that she could see. She checked her watch; soon it would be time to report to the officer of the watch, to tell him the present position of every terrorist guard aboard the ship. She still couldn't rid herself of the feeling that something was going on under the surface. She climbed up on to the platform beside Brady, then pointed to a black box embedded into the control panel. 'What does that do – or do you keep your sandwiches inside it?' She was smiling; it was something to say. A man in trousers and spotless white vest standing close to the chief swung round with a startled expression.
^ It was unfortunate. The black box she had pointed to was the only outward evidence that Ephraim existed, and by now the chief had realised that the mechanical man was their only outside contact with the world – even if the communication was purely one-way.
