nice shiny Armalite and shoot a copper in Belfast, you get dished out an AK and blow a Brit squaddie to kingdom come in Crater, you get an RPG and cuddle up to an airport fence to bag yourself an El Al jumbo. They're waiting for you, Charlie, so go slowly, and don't use long words.
'There have been two confirmed hi-jack attempts out of the Soviet Union in the last few years.
A family took a light aircraft to Turkey. Insignificant and a one-off incident.
Then there was the Leningrad plan that aborted and never got off the ground, a group of Jews who wanted to take over a plane, unarmed, and fly it to Finland. It was a short haul flight and the whole thing was a disaster, the group hopelessly infiltrated by KGB. All arrested ait the airport, and some still inside. There is a third incident but it's less hard and we have fewer details, even through 'I' channels – Israeli announcement that a hi-jacked internal flight was coming out, and it never came, '74 or '75, I think. From the East bloc there have been a series of chaps jumping a plane and coming over, but not Russians. There hasn't been a major Russian one before, so that's the first bit of new ground. Now the second one: these people up there are apparently Jews. In the past the Jewish dissidents have for the most part contented themselves with media protests, clandestine interviews, press conferences, civil disobedience where they'll be noticed by foreigners and it will get reported, trying to get pressure on the local authorities and most of their efforts beamed at the United States. Chief contention has been emigration either to Israel or to the West generally, followed by complaints of racial discrimination. That's very broad and very brief, but probably sufficient.'
There was the click of a cigarette lighter, the noise of nibs scratching on paper.
'These people however are different. We've had a policeman shot in Kiev, wounded, apparently seriously and nothing in the media. That indicates it was neither criminal nor casual.
The one thing that would really concern the people over there is if they consider this a target shooting, an attempt at a gesture, though a botched one for all that. A gesture they will equate with conspiracy and organization. That would concern them. There have been terror attacks put down to minority nationalist groups but nothing that we have been able to identify as internally aggressive and specifically Jewish. As I said we had the shooting of the policeman. We've also heard of rumours round the university site that a Jewish student was arrested a few days ago, and that militia reinforcements were seen moving into the city. Perhaps he talked, the one they picked up, and the assumption has to be that the security people were on the point of staging a large- scale arrest sweep. And then we have a hi-jack.'
Charlie paused. Not for effect, just to clear his mind again.
He didn't make speeches – not in his line of work. The difficult bit starts now though, he thought, where we lose the facts, where we start jogging along with the theory.
'There are two types of hi-jacking or hostage-taking operations. When the Palestinians do it, along with the people associated with them, it's usually what we call a 'leverage operation' – designed to get some of the comrades out of prison, and usually an Israeli prison. Doubled with that is the publicity factor of attention being turned on their operation with all the attendant explanations as to who they are and what their grievance is. That was Dawson's Field in Jordan, OPEC in Vienna, the Air France to Entebbe. All well documented. That's one type, then there's the other sort -what we call a 'break-out job', which is what I think this one is. Kids who felt that time was running out back at home and were looking for the fastest and most successful bolt they could manage. Difficult place to go underground, the Soviet Union, especially if it all starts falling round your ears quickly. You'd need months to set an underground situation up, just for the paperwork of changed identity. They didn't reckon they were capable of that, so they've tried the bunk. I doubt if it was planned more than a few hours before takeoff, and their major success was very simply to get the guns on to the aircraft. They're probably young, early twenties at the most, naive politically by the standards that we are familiar with, and by this stage they'll be frightened and dangerous.'
Waiting for someone to interrupt, get him off the hook, but nobody did.
'Keep going, Mr Webster'-the gentle rebuke from the Home Secretary – 'Please remember that if we have any advantages at this stage time is not one of them.'
' I say 'dangerous' because they will have believed that they would be permitted to put down anywhere in the West. They've tried twice now, and as you explained this is their last chance.
They'll know that if they are still to get to Israel then they've a fair amount of shouting to get through first. You have to be prepared for them to shift from break-out to leverage, if and when they discover that the fuel wagons aren't going to be beside the plane and filling her up.'
There is no possibility that the plane will be permitted to fly to Israel. Both from the diplomatic side and the question of principle involved that eventuality has not been considered. The basic approach had been agreed long before Charlie had arrived, relayed to the Prime Minister at his holiday retreat in the South of England, sanctioned by him without dispute. So that's the policy, Charlie, taking a hard line. Easy to be tough with this one, he thought; one-off job.
' I cannot be definite,' Charlie said, 'but I would expect these people to go hard once they find that things aren't that rosy. They'll know the case histories of previous hi-jacks, they can take in BBC, VOA, plenty of radio sets that can pick that kind of thing up in the Ukraine, no problem of jamming now, reception's not difficult. I wouldn't think they'll have a stamina fallback, they won't be able to keep the pressure up for long, forty-eight hours or so, but in the meantime expect them to play it rough.'
'Will they be intelligent?' The Under-Secretary with responsibility for co-ordinating and implementing the decisions of the Emergency Committee. The high pitch of the public school and private means that Charlie detested, but it was a good and important question.
'Academically they'll be bright. They'll have an ideology at any rate that won't be political, but will stem from their breeding, their position in Soviet society. Committed people. Probably they'll believe they are prepared to die for it all, providing the moment isn't too close at hand.
They'll be similar enough to all the other groups. When you get down to it – start trading, that is – you'll find them the same breed as all the other groups, same breed as the Palestinians, Baader Meinhof, Tupamaros, Monteneros, Provies. They'll be speaking a different language, that's all you'll notice.'
'Do you call the Provos intellectuals, Mr Webster?' queried the Under-Secretary.
'You asked me a different question. You asked me whether these people were intelligent. You don't need a university degree to be good at this game, but you have to be sharp, know your way round and keep your thinking cap on. I say again, these people have done bloody well to get this far; it takes a bit more than luck, you know.'
' Is there anything you'd like to say in conclusion, Charlie?' Parker Smith was filling his briefcase with assorted papers, cigarettes stubbed out, pens removed to inside pockets, ties straightened.
'Only this. They've come a long way, these three. But they think they've a fair old mileage still to come. Don't underestimate them. Take them very carefully to start with.'
Charlie sat back in his seat, felt tired, hadn't the old resilience. The man next to him – there had been no introductions and Charlie didn't know his name – pushed three photographs across the table to where Charlie could see them. Snapshots, and they hadn't travelled well on the photofax machine from Moscow to the Foreign Office. Blurred and creased from the printing apparatus but still the recognizable features. Names printed in Russian and English across the bottom of each picture. Straight out of the bloody bible.
'Mr Webster, I'm going to Stansted now by car. I'd like you to accompany me.'
The Home Secretary had risen, gestured to Charlie to lead through the door, followed him out to the corridor and the rear staircase that led to the car park. The Minister's black Humber waited there, with a chauffeur and his personal detective, and with its engine idling was a three-litre Rover that would drive behind them. Three in the back they managed, Minister, Under-Secretary and Charlie.
Out into the traffic, swinging east from Whitehall towards the City. End of a routine commercial day, and the pavements thronged with the last shifts of commuters, only hesitating for their evening papers, succumbing to the propaganda of the billboards – OUR HI-JACK ALERT – BRITAIN PREPARES FOR RED HI-JACK CRISIS. The Ilyushin would be at Stansted when they arrived, and Charlie pictured again the three faces that they'd shown him. Stupid little bastards, and don't know what they've bitten off, and who'll wish when this is over they'd stayed at home and played kid's games. And now you're deep down in the pit, Charlie, and after you'd said you didn't want to see the ladder any more and wanted a desk job. Should have been franker months ago, told them that you were sick of the killing, of being a guardian of the right of the middle-aged, middle classes, middle-brows to sleep in their beds at night. Should have spoken then and you didn't. Kept your speech till tonight, till you impressed the big men, and
