be, neat and tidy and packaged. He called Rebecca forward, so that she could stand in the stewardesses' province, away from the passengers and close to the rear exit door. He pulled the soft drinks trolley across the aisle where the rear row of seats ended and the galley area began. This gave a free space in which Rebecca could stand, and a degree of protection if he left her there. It made a barricade for her to shelter behind, the bottles rattling and chinking together in protest as he moved the obstacle into position.
'You're going to be at this end, Rebecca, and for much of the flight. I'll be at the front with David, him in the cockpit, and me mostly watching the passengers. If they turn round to stare at you order them back, to look at the front. Don't talk to them; don't start speaking to them-nothing at least till we are over the West.'
'What's at the front… David was shouting?'
'Nothing now. The shot that he fired to get the door opened, it's killed the pilot. The co-pilot is flying now.'
'Oh, my God, oh, God..
'He didn't mean to, it was an accident.' Her head was down on her chest. Exhausted, all in, beaten. And David half out of his mind and screaming up there in the front. On your own, Isaac, and where to turn to for the reinforcements? 'Take a grip, Rebecca,' he snarled at her. 'Remember why we are here, what we came for, and if another of the pigs gets in the way, tries anything, attempts what the pilot did, then you shoot him. You understand?' Saw his failure, and the unreasoned rejection of what he said. And then more gently, and with the smile. 'It's not long from now, just a few hours, two or three, and then we land. Then its the petrol, the refuel and on to Israel.' He took her left hand, closed it in his own, small and buried and cold and without response, trying to impart his own strength, trying to hide his own fear, then walked down the length of the aisle again towards the cockpit. Forty-eight paces, that was the length of their castle, battened down and with the hatches fastened, wondering again how David was. He turned to face the passengers.
'Ladies and gentlemen, you have nothing to be afraid of from us. We are taking this plane to the West. We will be there soon, and then you will be rid of us, free to return wherever you may wish. I must tell you that my friends and myself have no life left inside the Soviet Union-we have nothing to return to except a death sentence. I must tell you that because you have to know that we will die in this plane rather than return to Kiev. If there is any resistance, any attempt to disarm us, we will shoot and that will endanger the safety of the aircraft – and of you, of all of you. Later in the flight we will tell you more. For now you must remain seated, your hands on your heads, and you must not talk. That is all.' Another speech, Isaac, another audience. Seemed so inadequate, so divorced from the wood hut, and the faint light of evening when they met there, and the plans to conquer the system that they hated. But then there were so many things that had not been prepared; free-wheeling really, with the engine disengaged, but the hill was steep and there was no braking now.
No murmur greeted his words, not of appreciation, not of condemnation; the passengers just soaked them up, as they stayed in their seats, hands on their heads. Nothing to please him, nothing to anger him. Nothing.
A brisk little face she had. Pale and smooth-skinned, with a pittance of make-up, a severe bobbed cut to her hair and eyes that flitted over her instruments and that were sharp and a deep honey brown. When Anna Tashova smiled the lines at her mouth were clearly drawn, not a smile of pleasure nor of satisfaction but a smile of triumph. David saw it, saw the way she half – turned, and broke his concentration on the hazed horizon to the front, turned instead to follow her glance to the starboard cockpit window. They were flying very close, the Migs. The nearest were some fifty feet from the Ilyushin's wing, had crept their way forward with a stealth that had deceived him, and beyond the nearest of the fighters lay another, so close that the two seemed to nestle together. They were near enough for David to see the pilots, to identify the numbers of their machines painted on the slender nose, to witness the menace of the rockets hung beneath their wings.
The pilot officer pushed the microphone mouthpiece away from her hps. 'They are on the other side as well. They have come to take us home.'
David could see the gestures of the nearest pilot on the port side, the motions of his gloved hand, that they should swing again, retrace their path towards Kiev.
'They will have orders,' Anna Tashova said. 'They will bring us down if we do not comply.
What do you want? A plane full of dead passengers? Does that serve your cause?'
The lead port side plane, the one whose pilot had made the arm movement, inched its way forward. Strange really, and the effect upon David was hypnotic, compulsive, the way it could move so delicately, a beast of such power yet held to a fingertip control that permitted it to nudge, foot by foot, into the airspace almost immediately in front of the Ilyushin.
'He will slow now, force me to lose thrust and altitude if I am to avoid him. It is an accepted procedure.' Jet interceptor and airliner, the gap closing between them. An inevitable course they were following, collision course, mid-air, fragmentation, break-up. Fascinating for him to watch, crawling towards the impact. A distant shriek, then Isaac beating at his shoulder.
'David, what are we doing? What are you telling the pilot? The Migs have come.'
A deeper, more general noise from behind, that took him a moment to understand and then was clear as the hysteria of the passengers. Predictable, and he knew the course he would take.
'You fly on,' flat and without emotion, speaking to the pilot officer, ignoring Isaac.
Then you have collision, is that what you want?' Strain in her voice – the first time. Turning hesitantly from the cockpit window and the great shape that masked her view to the pallid, closed features of the young man at her back, with the gun loose in his hands.
There will be no collision. Fly on. Remember your responsibilities, and they are to your passengers.' He turned to Isaac. 'They are trying to force us down, and we will not respond. I believe they will not risk more, and soon we shall see.' They were so close now both men could see the huge chasm of the interceptor's rear exhaust, blackened and flame- charred. And the distance narrowing the whole time, second by second, foot by foot, and the pilot officer's hands beginning to waver above her controls. 'Do not touch them. Touch them and I shoot.'
If they have orders to bring us down that will be sufficient. They have rockets, you can see for yourself. They can bring us down if
'
'Who is listening on our radio? Who can hear us?' The lustre back in his voice; he, too, rejoicing in the power he had accumulated, as Isaac had done moments before, drinking deep in the new sensation of being at the centre of events.
She paused. 'Half the world can listen to you when you talk from an airplane cockpit.' The moment of triumph lost, dissipated by her assessment of the man with the gun, and of his fanaticism, his determination. At the briefings in Moscow, the anti-hijack briefings, they had spoken of the two types, those seeking a ride out, those yearning for a wider audience. The second grouping they had said was the one to be feared. 'At this speed we collide; ten seconds more, that is all. I must reduce speed. I have to '
'It will be they who increase speed. I want to use the radio. I want to speak.' Radio silence so far, he had noted that much, not even talking to the navigator. No conversation with the airliner from the jets – serve to make it all public, wouldn't it? Confirmed what she's said, that half the world could hear him now, half the world listening, and wondering why a plane was off route, out of the air lanes. One hundred and fifty feet in front and fractionally above was the tail of the lead Mig, and the escorts closer to the wings, crowding them, boxing them in, and at three hundred and thirty miles an hour as they flew four clear miles above the Russian plains.
Headphones pushed down into his hair, microphone across his mouth, he instructed her to activate it, all the time the barrel of the gun close to her side and his finger by the trigger.
'This plane is now under the command of a Jewish Resistance Commando. We have taken the Aeroflot Flight 927, Kiev to Tashkent, and we go to the West. Our final destination is Israel. The pilot of the aircraft is dead, and his colleague, Pilot Officer Anna Tashova, is flying. I hold a submachine-gun to her body. We have an escort of Mig 23 fighters who are trying to make us land.
We have told Miss Tashova that if she follows their instructions then we shoot her. We are prepared to die, and if we shoot her then the plane will surely crash. There are many passengers on board. We call this flight the 'Kingfisher'- that is our name for it. There will be no more broadcasts from the aircraft until we are beyond the borders of the Soviet Union and her Socialist allies.' Short and staccato sentences, but the whole spoken slowly, mindful of radio operators bowing over their sets in many countries, ensuring the message was clear – understood.
The Mig immediately ahead abruptly surged clear of their path, climbing beyond David's vision, and the wing-
