Some thanked him for his consideration, others ignored him, and he saw those who had not lasted and had already fouled themselves, staining their trousers and dresses and who were ashamed and hated him. They will dance on my body should they kill me, he thought. Dance and sing as if it were a holiday. From the furthest row at the end of the plane came the one who seemed the farmer, he would be the last. As he passed Isaac he spat noisily and with rare force on to the carpet. One at last with balls to him! Isaac laughed loud and smacked the old man on the back, and saw his face twist in astonishment that the gesture he had spent many minutes thinking over and which was the only protest he could muster should be taken so lightly.
When the man went back, with his bowed shoulders and his worn summer coat and the boots that were heavy and foreign to the isle carpet, Isaac returned to his seat. He could hear David sleeping. What a mercy sleep was. The time of safety, when all is forgotten, when the dreads and fears are shut out. Lucky bastard. The one that brought us here, and who does not know the cold and the chill and the death that surrounds him. Lucky bastard, David. Dream yourself away, conjure up the wide streets of Israel, the sunshine, green trees that carry oranges, people who laugh and would make you welcome. Lucky David, always the lucky one. And the escape is yours, not ours. You sleep, content in your warmth; and we are left behind with the stink of our own bodies and of another sixty, and the odour of the lavatory.
'What will happen tomorrow?' She was drowsy, eyes half- closed, shoulder against his chest, head against his cheek.
'We will ask for the fuel for the aeroplane.'
'And they will give it to us.' Faint voice, and he could not recognize whether she had asked a question or made a statement.
'No.' He saw her start and stiffen, her mind turning, hopelessly competing with the need for sleep.
'The fuel, will they give it to us?' A question now, no room for doubt.
'No.'
'But we must have fuel to reach Israel.'
'They will not give us the fuel. They will not give it to us just because we ask.'
' B u t… '
'But nothing, Rebecca. They are all around our plane. They have machine-guns that I have seen, and there are soldiers and light tanks. They are not waiting there to see the fuel loaded at dawn. They are waiting for us to break, Rebecca. They are waiting for our will to snap, fracture, so they can take us.'
'What can we do?' Trying to wake herself, trying to throw off the sleep that had near-engulfed her, bright wide eyes. 'What can we do?'
'We have to surprise them, convince them that we are hard, that we are serious, that we are not easily deflected.' Bored with the sound of his own words, attempting to communicate on a different level. Not something that you can express, only that you can feel. She had no comprehension, the words meant nothing to her. They have given in before. They sent the Arab girl back. Leila, Leila something… I do not remember her name. They sent her back to her people. If the threat is great enough they will bend. Have we the power to make the threat great enough?
Too many questions, Rebecca, and past time you were sleeping.'
Impatience cutting through, and there were too many questions. Too many questions that Isaac himself could not yet summon the answers to.
From behind the barricade of petrol tankers Davies watched the unloading of the equipment that had been brought to him from Science and Forensics, Scotland Yard. Four metal- encased crates, with warnings of 'Fragile' and 'This Way Up' stencilled on their tops and sides, boxes that were handled gingerly and with respect as they were carried from the rear doors of the van. The SAS unit crowded round the cargo, noted the crudely-drawn eye with grotesque lashes that had been painted on the smallest box with the title of 'Cyclops'. Seen it all on exercise, never in the buff, the altogether. Had been at the Spaghetti House and Balcombe Street, but the SAS hadn't been called for-left it on both occasions to the police. But they'd seen the results and reckoned it would make their job way easier if the storm order came.
The Yard had sent their own operators, senior grade men from the civil service union, grey flannel trousers brigade, with buttoned collars and ties that carried the emblem of the single piercing eye, out of place among the denimed soldiers. No contact, no common ground, and a mutual suspicion between those who would operate the equipment and those who would take the risks in placing it in position where it could best be utilized. Some among the new arrivals sought out Davies and closeted with him over diagrams of the Ilyushin interior, fingers stabbing at the cockpit area, at the porthole sections on the flanks, at the windows set into the rear of the aircraft.
They had brought from London three pieces of equipment.
Primary among them, pre-eminent was the 'cyclops', the fish- eye lens with its 180-degree visual capability. Relegated to secondary importance by those who now unwrapped the components from their padded cells were the suction adhesive audio devices. It was 'cyclops' that the experts swore by; a lens no bigger than the nail of a man's little finger and that was triggered to a camera via a flexible fibre cable. Had introduced it into the sealed basement of Spaghetti House, down the ventilation shaft, clandestine and silent, to provide the crystal-bright pictures of the siege room, removed the incessant anxiety because you knew what was happening behind the locked and bolted doors. But a greater problem here-the root of the discussion between Davies and the men from London-where to place it, where to gain maximum advantage, where it could be secreted against the outer glass of a window and face the minimum chance of detection? Couldn't just plaster it across the centre of a porthole. And had to go in soon, before it reached dawn.
'We don't know the scene inside,' said Davies. 'They've pulled all the blinds… what I'd have done in their boat, but I'd hazard that their central area is towards the front, close to the cockpit.'
'You can have it for the cockpit, or the forward cabin, one or the other,' said the Yard man tetchily. 'We don't have a dozen of them.'
Davies ignored the edge in the other man's voice. 'What's the lighting factor, if we have it forward, outside corner of a window?'
Happier ground for the technician. 'Pretty fair with video. You'll see the faces clear enough.
Not into the cockpit, just the passengers and the aisle. Most of that.'
They compromised. 'Cyclops' and one audio circuit at the front of the passenger cabin, the second audio for the cockpit. Further briefings for the soldiers, reminders of how to fasten the suction pads, the angle the camera required, how the cables should be laid. As if the troops hadn't handled the gear before.
'Pretty useless the audio will be,' said one who loathed to see the apparatus out of his personal control. 'With the doors closed you'll hear fuck-all. And the pictures not much better, not going to show through for you. It's not bloody magic.' And the sergeant that he spoke to was patient and explained that though the blinds were drawn now they would probably be raised during the daylight hours. That the people inside weren't fools, that the blinds were down because they needed the lights on in the cabin, and it would be different in daylight, wouldn't it?
Past two in the morning when Davies and four NCOs began their slow and time-consuming leopard-crawl out across the smooth surface of the tarmac. Davies leading, his sergeant the work donkey with the canvas bag that held the fish-eye and the audios and the lightweight nine-foot aluminium ladder, the other three in close fire support. Coordinated advance with the searchlights tilting their beams to new elevations, playing on the windows to dazzle and blind any who might look out.
They felt no excitement when they rose to their feet at. the belly of the fuselage beneath the various indecipherable words of the Cyrillic alphabet that were printed on the hatches.
Professional soldiers, with the emotion and fervour of their youth long dissipated. Calm and efficient, master artisans, working the pracised procedures. Ladder in position, foam rubber upper protection denying the sound of scratch or scrape against the metal of the fuselage. The sergeant climbing and as he went bending the fibre attachment, moulding it to the curve of the plane's exterior, planting the lens itself, upper right corner, third porthole starboard, suction pad and beyond it the shallow protuberance of the cobra head, the lens in place, reaching over the hp of the window fitting, need to be searched for, cursory look insufficient for discovery. The audio close to the next window forward but reservations there, waste of bloody time till the doors were opened. Second audio at the cockpit windows, low down and wrapped among the arms of the rain wipers.
They ran the cables quickly and with discretion across the fuselage, bringing them together where the starboard wheel rested, camera case fastened in the interior of the undercarriage flap.
Began to pay out the cables away from the plane, running them in the cracks that separated the concrete
