Kingfisher

them to surrender without further bloodshed. We have chosen this man with care. It is not accidental that he is the one who has been sent. In our society were his name and his achievements able to be published he would be a hero among us. We believe he is the man to appeal to these youngsters, to gain much from them, more than you can achieve.'

No longer audacious, damned arrogant now,

'What makes you think we need help..,? 2

'We have the experience.' sAnd no one else?'

'Not to the same degree, no. Ask the Germans who were responsible at Munich, ask your friend the President of Uganda.'

'You know, of course that the government of the United Kingdom does not have an extradition treaty with the Soviet Union.'

' I know that military aircraft can take off under cover of darkness, and that politicians can justify their actions at a future date.'

'The Ambassador of the Soviet Union has just departed after telling me his government required an immediate answer on the same question that you ask. I told him that we were considering the situation.'

'From which he would have assumed,' said the Ambassador, 'that the British require time.'

' If that was his assumption then it would have been a correct one. Your officer will indeed be taken to Stansted, but whether there is any part for him to play, while conditions are attached to his presence, remains a matter of debate.'

Termination of the conversation. The need that was much more pressing was to speak with the Prime Minister. Worthless and predictable this, a mere swapping of words now that the battle-lines had been drawn.

Alone, while the PPS led the Ambassador through outer offices and empty corridors, the Foreign Secretary sat still in his chair. What if they were not his concern, what if the ministry of another country were in turmoil over the problem, what if he were exonerated of anxiety? Would his feelings on the fate of three young people be different then? How many speeches had he made in the constituency… the Russian threat – the need for vigilance-not to lower our guard – persecution – the tanks of the Warsaw pact – how many war planes, how many missiles, divisions, chemical-gas batteries of artillery.. . always went down damn well, those speeches, particularly at the mid-July garden fete. Three children had taken the System to battle, thrown a tatty, unlined glove at it, and looked for a champion to ride to their rescue. Well, they'd have to look elsewhere, wouldn't they? Silly little blighters.

Wouldn't bother the switchboard, dial it himself, the number that was personal and restricted, the Prime Minister's holiday home.

In the forward corridor of the aircraft, where they could achieve privacy, straddled between the cockpit and the passenger cabin, David and Isaac and Rebecca talked of the radio conversation with the man who called himself Charlie. None of them had ever met an Englishman before, which made their attempts at assessing what had been told them difficult, almost impossible.

There had been English students on the campus that both Isaac and Rebecca had seen since they had started their studies at Kiev University, but they had not been In their classes. There had been no point of contact.

David had said it was better to wait till the morning before talking again. Isaac had not challenged him, realized the depth of exhaustion to which his friend succumbed, saw the need he had for sleep and reassurance. Get no sense out of David, not till he was rested. Wished he'd been there, in the cockpit, to hear at first hand the message from the ground, but his persistent, clinging anxiety about their security at the hands of the passengers following the incident with Rebecca had prevented that. While David was talking behind him in the flight deck he had hovered in the doorway of the cabin, attention bound to his charges, watching them, a chicken with its brood when the fox is close to the coop. Told later of the conversation he had laughed to himself, amused at David's faith, convinced of his own suspicions.

Many hours now since either had lain in a bed; the last sleep reduced to a few tossing and restless minutes on the floor of the forest hut. Both were unshaven, and the new growth tickling and irritating at their collars, and their eyes large and reddened, slow and sluggish in their movements. The girl wore worse than both of them, hardly able to keep her lids from closing and vague in what she said when they spoke to her. Had to sleep, all of them, had to devise a rota for resting. And now circling, aimlessly and without direction, around the conversation that David had made with the tower, and him defensive about what he had said, and the girl uncomprehending and repeating only that the man they spoke to was called Charlie, and that he had promised. Had to get them to sleep, both of them, and summon for himself the strength to outlast and outfight his own great weariness. A few more minutes, then they could go, could be excused, could seek the deliverance they needed. But first the passengers, the currency, valuable, without price, first he should concern himself with the passengers. Voice a little hoarse now, but clear and to those who listened these were the words of a man who had usurped command, who had filled the vacuum of leadership.

'We have requested that the English give us fuel. We are told that their government is meeting in London tonight to discuss our request. They will tell us their answer by the early morning. In the meantime we will all sleep on the aircraft.' He paused and there was the vaguest of smiles, a suspicion, and he corrected himself. 'In the meantime you will all sleep on the aircraft There is no food for you, and there will be no drinks. You must not talk and nobody on any pretext must leave their seat. The lights will remain on through the night, and all of you who sit at the windows must draw their blinds. We will shoot if anyone moves. That must be understood.

When I say we will shoot, you should not take it just as a threat. You should not seek to prove me.'

Isaac walked halfway down the aisle to where the leg room was greatest, to the seats by the passage to the emergency doors with the escape route on to the wings. Luigi Franconi and Aldo Genti were on his right, three of the schoolchildren from Lvov to the left. He beckoned to them with his gun barrel, the motioning gesture drawing them from their seats as if he had discarded the possibility that they would understand his speech. The children were simple, absorbed immediately among their friends, but the Italians were harder and he had to lead them down the aisle to where there were vacant places and stifled protests from those who were comfortable and settled. Both had to climb over knees and bags and passengers that were already settled and unyielding and heavy with hostility at the disturbance, Franconi two rows in front of Genti, separated from their camaraderie and nervous and fiddling with their spectacles. Isaac checked the doors till he was satisfied they had not been tampered with, were as secure as they had been when they were airborne. He walked on down the aisle, the submachine-gun swinging easily in his hand, turning neither to right nor left, as if ignoring those who sat to either side of him. He walked to where the drinks trolley still blocked the rear passageway to the far exit, and bent down to rummage under the final row of seats till his hands emerged with two life jackets, brilliant orange and with their straps sagging. A few moments work and he had lashed the trolley to the nearest seat legs, pulling on the knots he had made with the straps till he was satisfied that they would hold. A slight and primitive barricade, an obstruction between the body of the plane and the back exit. He returned down the aisle, now staring his way through the passengers, as if his whim had changed and he sought to force his personality over them, but there were no takers, no heroes seeking a dangerous laugh at his expense. Even the American was not talking. And the headmaster looking straight ahead even when Isaac brushed his hip against the shoulder of the sitting man.

Isaac came past David and Rebecca, not stopping, and went on to the cockpit. Again the gesture with the gun, and the pilot officer and the navigator unfastened their harnesses, climbed up from their seats and moved back towards the main cabin. As she came through the passage entrance Anna Tashova dropped her facade of competence and seriousness and grinned, meeting the eyes in front of her, identifying the heads and faces, seeing on them the broad lines of gratitude and thanks. She had heard the clapping when she had landed the Ilyushin, and it had warmed her, a sweetening and sustaining gesture, and now she saw again from these people the trust and regard in which they held her. They were all too frightened to speak to her – yet who was she to call them cowards? She had been told what it was like in the 'Former Times', as the elderly referred to them, when Josef Stalin, who was now a 'non-person', had ruled, when the secret police were rampant, when the prisons were full and the firing squads busy. She knew why they were quiet, and wondered what more she might do to protect them. She found a seat near the front of the plane, the navigator further back.

Isaac lingered near her, interrupting his continuous movement for a moment. He wanted her to speak to him, as if he believed she was part of their plan in some confused and abstract way.

Twice he was about to move on his mission of bedding down the passengers, but he faltered, staying close, inviting conversation that she was not prepared to offer.