smarting that no one had informed him of the Israeli's arrival and his role.
' I mean, why don't you go and finish the thing?'
'And have half the passengers shot up, have a bloodbath on our hands?'
' If that one is anything to go by it would be over in ten seconds, and you have solved your problem.'
'You can't attack in daylight…'
'Rubbish. We had daylight in Tel Aviv when we freed the passengers of the Sabena jet. Even the Egyptians can do it- Luxor two years ago when they took out the Libyans. At Tel Aviv we had four to cope with, grown-ups compared with these children, and the hard one by your own admission is sleeping. Of course it can be done.'
The Assistant Chief Constable fastened on the luckless lieutenant who was Arie Benitz's escort. Fighting for self- control, Charlie saw, hating the eyes that were on him. ' I think we should see if Colonel Benitz has been allocated a room in the building. Certainly he would not want to impede our work in this already crowded space.' Embarrassment, and plenty to spare, hands masking faces, discreet coughs as the Israeli left. Smiling, wasn't he? And a half wink at Charlie.
'What does he think we are, a load of butchers, that we get kicks out of turning machine-guns on people?' The policeman had waited till the door was closed tight against further intervention.
'Shortens the agony if all we're going to do is to send them back where they came from at the end of it,' Clitheroe said, playing the marionette, exasperating, and knowing it 'If all we're here for is to talk them into facing a Russian firing squad…'
' It's a politician's decision, not ours, what happens to them.' The Assistant Chief Constable cut short the argument, preventing further contagious growth.
Charlie slid back into his seat. Nothing moving out at the plane. Not a vestige of life, the sun climbing and the plane shadow diminishing, and soon the tarmac would shiver and glaze in the heat.
Then from behind, and a sure sign they didn't take to the waiting. ' Is there any way we can start talking to them on the radio again?'
Charlie shook his head. 'No way at all. It's their privilege, and we have to be patient.'
From his room in the Moscow Hotel Freddie Smyth was shouting at the full range of his voice into the telephone that was connected with the office of the commercial attache of the British Embassy.
Four days he'd been hanging around to sign that contract, worth three and a half million quid, didn't they know? Jobs of five hundred men depending on it. He'd a bloody good expert record behind him, and a CBE medal to prove it. So what happens this morning, when he's all dressed up and ready to head to the Ministry with Sales and Technical? Had the phone call, hadn't he?
All off, wasn't it? Not using those words, 'course not, 'need for further analysis of the project'.
Could cut through that lot, couldn't he? Being fucked about, and they'd gone as far as telling him why. Because of some plane load of bloody hi-jackers. The attache should get off his arse and get on to the Ambassador and tell him to get talking with whoever was responsible in London.
Tell him that Freddie Smyth, Managing Director, Coventry Cables, stood to have wasted four bloody days in Moscow, and if the factory went broke with half a thousand guys on the dole then Freddie Smyth would make sure every bloody newspaper in Britain knew the reason why.
The commercial attache avoided the Ambassador's office, but went instead to the room on the same floor of the First Secretary. Freddie Smyth's outburst that morning was not unique, only the most vivid. Three other relatively prominent British businessmen had telephoned to report cancellation of morning meetings with Russian officials.
'Just the start of it,' said the First Secretary, flashing the sad smile of a diplomat who has already served two long years in the Russian capital and knew its ways, and had another twelve months of his sentence to run in which to learn them better. 'There'll be a few more of them too.
Broad enough hints dropped by their people at the Cuban reception last night, found us out and bashed our ears, and played it coy about the Chancellor's visit – and that doesn't even have a firm date on it. But the factory ought to know about it, and we'll sling them a cable.'
It was a long time since the Kremlin had publicly shown its displeasure with Britain, he reflected. Back to the Lyalin defection and the expulsion from Britain of all the KGB chaps, all the trade men and the chauffeurs, and that was a fair few years back. Taken their time about thawing that one out. Difficult enough to work here, even when relations were comparatively normal, but damned near impossible when you made them angry. He would put a 'priority' on the cable to Whitehall.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
With a sharp, spruce step the Russian Ambassador emerged into the sunlight from the darkness of the Foreign Office corridors. His immense black limousine was at the pavement side, door held open by a uniformed chauffeur. A policeman and a detective from SB Protection Group stood in the background, watching, relaxed and comfortable in the gentle heat. Be a pig of a day later. The Ambassador looked about him and saw the television crew and the reporter struggling to get clear of the camera car in which they had awaited his exit. The cameraman and sound man jogged across the street, connecting the cables as they went, the reporter faster and more anxious lest the quarry should elude him and disappear into the fastnesses of the car. The Ambassador slowed, then stopped, and saw the gratitude on the reporter's face. Lens focused and the recordist asking for sound level, and the reporter explaining the need for it, as if the Ambassador had never seen a camera before, never previously been interviewed. The diplomat smiled, sensing his opportunity. The cameraman called, 'Running. Go in five.'
Q. How would you describe your meeting with the Foreign Secretary?
A. Very fruitful, and I think we have a large measure of agreement on a mutual policy of what our reaction should be to these murderous criminals.
Q. The Russian government has demanded that the hijackers should be returned to Russia if they are captured. What are the British saying?
A. The British government and the Soviet government are both determined to put an end to the evil of aerial piracy. I have the impression that the British would wish to return these three to the courts of the Ukraine where they would stand trial for their crimes committed before and after they took over the Aeroflot flight.
Q. If they were returned to Russia, would they face the death penalty?
A. In your country there is no death penalty, and we are most sympathetic to the emotion that the subject arouses. In the Soviet Union we have the death penalty, but it is rarely applied and then only to hardened criminals. I was able to assure the Foreign Secretary that people as young as those concerned in the hi-jacking would be most unlikely to face the supreme penalty of the law.
Q. Are you saying that you have given a guarantee that if these people were returned they would not be executed?
A. We discussed this matter at some length. It was not a guarantee that I gave, because sentence is a matter for the courts. But I was able to indicate that my government would look with great sympathy at this matter. And now you will excuse me. Thank you.
The reporter was astonished at his good fortune, and because of his inexperience unable to assess the extent to which his microphone had been used as a bludgeon upon the Foreign Secretary now sitting in his first-floor office and weighing the results of his most recent conversation beside the transcript of his talk with the American Secretary of State, and the latest digests of world opinion on the issue being fed to the Foreign Office from British Embassies abroad.
Though the camera crew had what they regarded as a minor scoop they had no outlet to broadcast it before the mid-day news bulletin, but standing beside the interviewer had been a young journalist from the Press Association. Recently arrived in the capital from a Midlands evening paper he had felt too shy to intervene and ask his own questions. He had contented himself instead with taking a verbatim note of questions and answers, and within minutes he had found an unvandalized telephone kiosk and had read his copy to his news editor in Fleet Street. The sub-editors quickly packed the story into shape and context and prepared it for the teleprinters. All the big selling newspapers in Britain, television and radio studios, the Foreign Agencies- Reuters, Associated Press, and United Press International – all had received it before the young man stepped from his taxi at the door of his offices.
