'Mr Webster. Stall them, or give it to them straight?'
Charlie closed his eyes, tried to think, to see his way into the minds of the three young Russians; lust photographs and distant voices. How in God's name did you answer that one? ' I think I'd go with the doctor,' he said, noting the anticipation of the Assistant Chief Constable blend into his set, uniformed, clipped moustache face. 'With respect to all who might disagree with me, we should not underestimate what they've been through, to put it crudely. The stress they've been under, the strain…' What do you know about strain, Charlie? Well, more than any of these buggers. 'They could go mad if we wrapped them down right now.'
Clitheroe didn't acknowledge Charlie's support, just walked away and jangled the coins in his pocket. The policeman was gazing through the windows.
'Stall them, Mr Webster,' said the Home Secretary. He looked hard at Charlie, seeking rapport, trying to share the loneliness of taking decisions on conflicting advice. Sorry, can't help you, sir.
You say what happens, I just march up and down and do as I'm told.
'David, it's Charlie here. Now you've got to listen to me.' Trying to get colloquial, trying to find the phrases that create understanding. 'David, listen. We've spoken to London by telephone, and we are told that the ministers of the British government will be meeting later tonight or in the early hours of the morning. They have to talk about this thing, David.. You have to believe me, they must be allowed some time. We'll have an answer by dawn. That's the best I can offer you, David. It's a very important matter, this. They must have time to talk about it. They promise an answer by the morning.' They'll have an answer by the time you've had a good night's sleep, by the time you've calmed yourself, by the time the SAS boys have it all worked out.
'You are trying to confuse us, Charlie. You do not think that we are serious people.' But the doubt was registering – that much was clear from the inflection. Don't know what to do, what to say. Had the set speech worked out for the 'yes' or 'no' answer, and they're thrown by the 'wait and see'.
' I'm not trying to confuse you, David. Just explaining things the way they are.'
'You do not deceive me?'
' I don't deceive you, David. You'll have the answer in the morning, good and early.' Like pinching pocket money out of a blind school. First-timers – no briefing, no plan, just showed up and hoped for the best.
'Good night, Charlie. And you will tell us early the reply of your government. Tell us about the fuel and the onward flight to Israel.'
'Good night, David. We'll talk in the morning.'
Believe that lot and you'll believe anything. Charlie tucked the console button back to the 'off' position, stretched up out of his chair and braced his legs stiff from the long period crouched at his desk.
To no one in particular he said, 'I thought they'd be better than that.'
CHAPTER NINE
The Foreign Secretary would dearly have liked another of his PPS's mixtures from the cabinet, but it was hardly the suitable time for that – not with the night stretching ahead, the threat increasing.
For this senior politician with a lifetime of manoeuvring and negotiating in the fraught and deceptive world of diplomacy the problem was totally straightforward – so clear-cut, indeed, that the area for compromise was minimal. He had a fair idea of the appeal that the Israeli would make to him, knew it would be impassioned and emotional and difficult to deflect. His role would thus not be easy. He still carried the burden of the one-time super-power, one-time member of the Big Five, but the world had moved on, and the weight in affairs abroad of the government he now represented had diminished to a startling degree in the previous two decades.
And if the cloth had shrunk so had the muscle of the wearer. Circumspection was required if he were to avoid the unnecessary pitfalls of winning the hostility of those who had usurped the influence that had once been Britain's. Forget the principle, take the practical way out. And why not, with these silly children to concern himself with? The Russians would want them back, the Israelis would accept almost anything other than that course. Three idiot children, and because of them he wrestled with a dilemma that should not have existed, who to offend, who to hurt – the monolith of the Soviet Union, or the massive voice of the Jewish lobby across the free world.
Damned ridiculous. And both of them, Russians and Israelis alike, would be wanting one thing in common from him that evening, a binding commitment on a course of action. Only card he held, and he'd see both went home without it.
He'd stayed in his armchair after the Russian had gone, musing, turning the problem over slowly in his mind. When he rose to greet the Israeli Ambassador it was with some awkwardness, the legacy of the wartime shrapnel embedded in his hip. It was not usual for the Foreign Secretary himself to greet ambassadors, not when the issue at stake was the future of three juveniles, killers, but then the situation was not usual; no point on an evening such as this in sticking to protocol. Another circumspect bottom sinking into the comfort of the settee's soft cushions, a moment's pleasantries, and then the starting gun.
'Our position is sensitive, Foreign Secretary, in that we do not have any direct connection with these people, we knew nothing of them before their action became public knowledge. I begin with that, but my government believes it carries a responsibility to all the Jewish peoples, not just to those who reside in the State of Israel, a responsibility that we must discharge within the boundaries of acceptable international conduct.' The Ambassador was leaning forward, and having difficulty making his point with the emphasis he strove for as his small body had sufficiently depressed the cushions that he was unable to gain the height and stature suitable for his address. 'That these young people have committed crimes we accept – serious crimes, we accept that also. In our country there have been no executions since the mass-murderer Eichmann was put to death, in Great Britain there have been none for close to fifteen years. We have both abolished the death penalty for humanitarian reasons. Neither of us believes in judicial killings.' The Foreign Secretary raised an eyebrow; an art he had, only the right eyebrow, and its intention was to signify scepticism. He did it very well. A popular vote in either Britain or Israel would, he thought, have endorsed with enthusiasm a return of capital punishment if directed against the IRA men who bombed the British cities, or the Black September gangs that assaulted the northern Israeli settlements. But the Ambassador was not to be deterred by the movement of a hair line. ' In the Soviet Union these three will face the supreme penalty…' and that would be so wr o n g?… ' I would suggest that you could assume with near certainty that these three will be put to death if they are returned to Russia. ..' and would the world be a poorer place in their absence?… 'My government could not countenance the sending of these three young people to a death they would not have faced if their crimes had been committed in your territory or in ours
…' serve the little blighters r i g h t… ' I am instructed by my Prime Minister to ask of you an immediate guarantee that these people will not be returned to Kiev.'
'What would you suggest happens to them?'
' I am instructed by my government that we would accept their appearance before British courts, and that should they be convicted then they would serve terms of imprisonment inside the United Kingdom.'
'And what charges would they face in Britain?'
'They would face the charges that would have been laid against them in Kiev.'
The Foreign Secretary drew a long breath. An audacious approach, but then that was to be accepted. Same as the damned Russians, seeking the propaganda coup – that much was clear to him, even through the pain that meant tiredness and that the fragments of metal still bit at the encasing gristle deep in his body. Concern for advantage, tantamount; concern for the lives at stake, minimal. T am remindedthough I do not have the exact text at hand – of the eloquent statement made recently by your Ambassador to the United Nations General Assembly. It was a call, if I recollect, for a rule of law to combat aerial piracy, a demand that nations should band together to stamp out this contemporary evil. Are we to assume that the religious faith of these three young people excludes them from the type of justice you would wish to see exacted upon men of other creeds?'
The Ambassador did not answer him. It came as no surprise to the Foreign Secretary: diplomats seldom replied to each other's points of debate. It failed to get them anywhere if they did.
'As you know, with the co-operation of your government, we are sending a personal representative of the government of Israel to Britain. This man is a fighter, he holds a substantive rank in those units of our armed forces that deal exclusively with the terrorist threat. If you were to find it possible to commit your government not to return the young people to their deaths then we would order the officer to use his utmost influence to persuade
