must not allow-them to be sent back. The humiliation would be unacceptable.'
'What then do you think I am suggesting? Do you believe I look towards a craven retreat? This is why I offer to send a man.'
He broke off, thankful for the softened knock at the door that precluded further argument and would only take them deeper into confusion. A single sheet of paper was handed over to him, and while he read it he took in the sound of the door closing behind file messenger. A deep sigh, from far down in his chest, then the Prime Minister shrugged, irritated, as if to throw off the constriction of a burden.
'Gentlemen, there is little time now. The Dutch government has informed our Embassy in The Hague that they have decided-and they say it is with regret-that they have made certain conditions which must be met if the plane is allowed to land. They must have the word of the three that they will disarm themselves and surrender. I note that our Ambassador makes no mention of what would happen to the three should they comply with the instructions. But it would seem that the question is irrelevant. The demand has been rejected, the plane is flying on.
They will be over the United Kingdom in less than three-quarters of an hour, they have enough fuel to get there, but not for a further diversion. It seems it is the British with whom we have to deal.'
The Defence Minister leaned across the table, his hand outstretched, and reaching for that of the Prime Minister. I agree to what you propose. It is right for the first step. We must win more time to talk of alternatives. You have my support. You have my word.'
There was a pale moon of gratification at the Prime Minister's mouth. He said, 'You must find a man that you think well of, who could talk to the three, someone young, someone they will admire and accept, who can convince them. A man of our strength, of the strength of our people.'
And then he added, as an afterthought, half to himself and yet not caring who heard, ' I would prefer it had not been the British.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
The closing of Schipol Airport represented a huge task to the dozen Air Traffic Controllers on duty in the tower. All flights on the ground were to be indefinitely delayed – simple enough that, with only the passengers' fury and the carriers' frustration to contend with – but harder and more complex to handle the fifteen aircraft in various stages of final approach. Diversions to Brussels for those closest, to Rotterdam for those that came from the North, and for those that were further afield there were requests for information on fuel loads and suggestions that they put down at Lille or Charles de Gaulle and Orly on the outskirts of Paris. Short haul flights coming from North Germany and Heathrow were advised to delay take-off until the situation had clarified.
Within a matter of minutes of the order being given the intricate and complicated process of planning the controlled flights of some scores of aircraft across Northern Europe was in apparent chaos. In the terminals there was confusion, passengers struggling into queues at the check-in counters where the abused staff could neither accept their baggage nor award them with boarding cards.
Out on the runways of Schipol Dutch troops had taken to their lumbering armoured personnel carriers. Blue- uniformed members of the police airport squad with steel helmets and Ml carbines drove their jeeps alongside them to augment the effect of the APCs. The blocking programme successfully used by the Germans was aped till the runways offered no scope for landing, only for disaster. But the Dutch government faced greater emotional problems than the Germans. Ever since the Yom Kippur was of 1973 when the support of the Netherlands for Israel had been unqualified through the clouds of bitter invective from the Arab oil producers, the small nation had acquired a reputation of providing a solid staff on which the Zionist State could lean. For this reason the Dutch cabinet had felt the need to offer landing permission to the Ilyushin, but had attached such riders that they felt confident they would deflect the Aeroflot's route beyond their airspace. It was by now academic what line the cabinet would have taken in response to the demand of the Soviet Union that the three should be returned to their jurisdiction. The plane had circled the airport twice, watched by huge crowds of transistor-toting passengers and mechanics and ground staff, before heading towards the dykes and the sea wall and the cold evening waters of the North Sea.
Although on their circuits of Schipol David and Isaac had been able to identify the faint and indistinct shapes of the blocking vehicles their feelings were much changed from those above Hanover when they had first realized that the West was reluctant to play host to their errant migration from the East.
The navigator had provided them with the piece of paper on which was written in his neat hand the brief message from the Dutch authorities that listed the conditions of landing. They had studied it, read it perhaps three times each, trying to win the nuances of the carefully prepared government statement of policy, and known, both of them, that they would fly on.
'Where can we go?' David had asked the navigator, quietly and with respect, as if accepting that in spite of their guns and their proven willingness to kill they had still needed the man's expertise.
'We can go south. Try Belgium, perhaps, or the French.
We can go north towards Denmark, or back into the Federal Republic. If we continue we will reach Britain. But if they make us circle, if there is more waiting, then we have no further alternatives. We would not be able to regain the European continent. If we go to Britain that is where we must land.' The pilot officer supported him, wordlessly pointing to the quivering fuel counters that now edged past the vertical towards the wing of the measurement arc and that hustled closer to the red warning line.
The navigator waited for them. He did not interfere, sensing perhaps that at this moment they relied heavily on him and that in their dependence on his skills he might exert, subtly and imperceptibly, at least some influence. If he antagonized them or disputed with them then the relationship could be destroyed. He knew that at this moment there was no possibility of abject surrender, that it was not the time for him to begin the gentle and clandestine process of wearing down the resolve of the two men who shared the cockpit with himself and the pilot officer, knew that that time would come later when the lives of the passengers were not at such direct risk. He was just past his twenty-seventh birthday, tanned from his holiday on the Bulgarian coast, engaged to be married and flush with the confidence that came from the knowledge that he did his job well, that he would advance. The men who stood behind him and looked over his shoulder at the air routes and tried to decipher the meaning of his lines and paths and to assess the distances he talked of and weigh them against their scant knowledge of the different implications of reception in the north, in the south, or the west, were only a little younger than himself. They were similar to the people he saw in the streets of Moscow and Leningrad and Kiev when he was on stop-over. A great ordinariness about them, he thought, nothing to distinguish them from the wallowing, compliant herd, nothing in their faces, their hands, their clothes, nothing to make them stand out… only the guns. He suppressed the slow smile, their only claim on him, on his interest, his attention, his curiosity… the guns, and the fact that if they were fired then a planeload of people would perish. But such ordinariness surprised him, and he wondered how they could have chosen this course, and why, why they were there, why they had started, just why.
'We will go to Britain.' David speaking, evenly and in his own voice, calmed now. '1 want it made clear that this time we land. You must tell them of our fuel position, but not till we are near their airfields, till they cannot move us on, parcel us up, send us elsewhere.' He was going to say more, but clamped on his tongue. He had to talk to Isaac more, had to have consensus, had to draw again on the strength of his friend.
Again the nose of the plane rose, climbing once more.
Out in the passageway between the cockpit and the passenger cabin, where there was storage space and the cupboards and the forward toilet and privacy, the two men huddled together.
David stood facing the flight deck crew, Isaac the passengers, both studying their charges and speaking from the sides of their mouths, bodies close, and still the guns aimed at their charges.
' I had thought it would be finished by now,' said David.
'They have made it difficult for us. They will not change now.'
' I did not think it possible…*
'And we do not make it easy for them. It is not they alone who can hurt'
'You have heard the stories of the Arabs on the radio.,. l
' It will be difficult, but they can be made to soften.'
