wrapped it tight into a bundle and tucked it under his feet. A tradesman's tool, and he had finished with it.
Holt lay on his bed.
He had heard the whispered talk in the corridor outside his room. He had already been into Ben's room and into Jane's room and he had packed their belongings. Ben's case and Jane's were at the foot of his bed.
He presumed the low voices outside were of a guard posted there. For his protection? To keep him inside the room?
Each half hour he rang reception to see if the line to Moscow was open, and each half hour he was told that it was not. Each half hour he requested a call to KGB headquarters in the city, and each time he was told that all KGB numbers were engaged.
There was no other explanation. Of course they had killed Ben and Jane. He lay on the bed, her blood still on his hands and on his shirt.
Simferopol is in the centre of the Crimean peninsular.
The city, with a population of close to 300,000, is the hub of the Crimea and from this regional capital the roads snake out to Yevpatoriya and Sevastopol and Yalta and Feodosija and Dzhankov. It is an old city, dominated now by industrial estates, its university, several research institutes. At Simferopol is also a military academy.
For the colonel commandant (foreign cadre training) that Saturday was a hell of a good day at the military academy. His best day in six months, in fact. The colonel commandant would this day wave goodbye, without a shade of regret, to the delegation of Palestinians. For the Ethiopians, the Cubans, the Angolans, even for the North Vietnamese, he could find some words of praise. Nothing good could be said for the animal Palestinians, not even as a courtesy at the farewell airport parade before the animals filed onto their aircraft. When the doors closed on the fuselage they would get the sharp index finger Nightly in the mess, to his brother officers, he catalogued their abuses.
Three of the animals caught trying to climb over the walls after curfew hour to hitch into the city. One with the insolence to complain that a prostitute in Simferopol had stolen his wallet. One returned to the academy by the militia after being arrested when trying to sell counterfeit American dollars. One brought back to the academy by the militia dead drunk and violent. Four who would be in solitary confinement right up to the last minute for attacking a senior instructor. One accused by a fine Party man of getting pregnant his fine daughter.
Not much sympathy from his colleagues in the mess, and rudeness to his face from the odious commander of the animals. One rifle lost, damage done all over the camp, and throughout the course an atmosphere of indiscipline that was insufferable to the colonel commandant. He would cheer their going, every last one of them from their ridiculously named groups. Popular Front, Sai'iqa, Democratic Front, Liberation Front, General Command, Struggle Command – idiot titles.
He was a career soldier. He despised these animals.
Through the colonel commandant's office window came the blast of Western music, loud and decadent, cassette players turned to full volume. The animals taunting their instructors, because the animals were going home.
His telephone rang.
The animals were in the gymnasium with their baggage waiting for transport to the airport. A fighter from Sai'iqa had argued with a fighter from the Struggle Command, and knifed him. The fighter from Sai'iqa was in the academy military police cells, the fighter from Struggle Command was in the academy sick bay.
'Where is their commander?'
Their commander was off base,
Too much. He slammed his fist onto his desk in fury.
This was too fucking much.
The teleprinters linking Moscow and Yalta murmured through the afternoon, on into the early evening. Questions and demands for more information from Moscow.
Scant detail relayed from Yalta.
A crisis committee sat at Dzerzhinsky Square feeding from the teleprinter material, and going hungry. No workable description of a gunman, no getaway car identified. Cartridge cases that were from the Kalashnikov family, and there were more than two million weapons in the country that could fire such bullets. The files on dissident elements in the Crimea were being studied.
In his office, the Foreign Ministry Embassy Liaison was left to clean his nails and watch his silent telephone.
The commander drove his jeep through the main gates of the military academy at Simferopol.
He waved cheerfully to the guard. He braked to allow a squad of Soviet conscripts to march across his path.
All the conscripts were marched wherever they went in the camp, a difference in attitudes, he reflected, between the training demanded by the Red Army and the training required for the fighting in Lebanon. He checked his watch. He thought they had made good time, he thought the Antonov transporter would now be approaching Simferopol airport. He stopped by the gymnasium, punched the shoulder of Abu Hamid. He was too concerned with the tightness of his schedule to take note of the three military policemen standing outside the main doors of the building.
The commander did not have to tell the young man to hold silence, to play a part of relaxed indifference when he was inside the gymnasium. His Abu Hamid would know. He drove away, drove to the office of the colonel commandant.
He breezed into the inner office. On any other day he would have waited more respectfully at the door, but it was the last day, and it was the day that was the brilliant culmination of a difficult and dangerous mission.
'Later than I thought, Colonel. Profuse apologies… '
He laid the jeep's keys on the desk of the colonel commandant.
'… One last expedition for shopping in the city, an opportunity to purchase merchandise that will remind me for the rest of my days in the service of the Palestinian Revolution of the warmth shown to us by the Soviet people…'
He saw at once the barely controlled fury of the commandant.
'… I trust my lateness has not inconvenienced you, Colonel. Shopping in the city is not always as fast as one would wish.'
'You have been gone seven hours.'
'Some shopping, a good lunch, time drifts…' He saw the clenched fist, the white knuckles. 'There has been a problem?'
'A problem!…' the colonel commandant snorted.
'While you took lunch and wine and shopped, your hooligans have been brawling. I have one in the sick-bay, I have one locked in the guard house.' The colonel commandant slapped a small double-bladed knife down onto his desk. 'A knife fight while you were lunching and wining and shopping. I will tell you the military crime code for such an offence. Assault by one service person on another in the absence of any subordinate relations between them, that carries a minimum of two years confinement and a maximum of twelve years…'
'My abject apologies, colonel. I will deal with the offender at once…'
The colonel commandant stood. 'You will do nothing of the sort. You will get it into your head that I have the authority to detain the entire cadre until a full investigation has been carried out.'
The commander thought of Abu Hamid coming panting to the Volga car. He thought of the Kalashnikov in the sacking, hidden in the large shopping bag of the Simferopol beryozka souvenir store, and, hanging from his hand, the rifle listed as 'lost on manoeuvres'.
'But our aircraft…'
'Fuck the aircraft. A serious breach of discipline has taken place amongst unsupervised personnel.'
'We have to take the aircraft.' The bombast gone from the commander. Nervous and wheedling now. 'It is of critical importance that we take the aircraft.'
'A fortnight's delay, a thorough investigation, will teach these hooligans the authority of discipline.'
'It cannot happen.'
'Don't tell me what can or cannot happen. It should happen and it will happen.'
Out of the confusion in Yalta would soon come order.
The commander shivered. The trap would close.
