The quotes he had taken down were recorded as of major significance, an indication of the British policy.
By telephone the contents of the interview were conveyed from the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem to the Prime Minister's office. And by messenger a photocopy of the nine-inch- long text was taken from News Department to the Foreign Secretary.
It seemed to stun him, the flimsy sheet of paper, the crudity of a coiled fist. Those around him had to wait, unwilling to badger him for the contents. In his own good time he would tell them.
The Under-Secretary nearest heard him muttering as if on a loop of tape: 'The swine… the swine
… the swine… the swine.' He threw the paper half-crumpled across his desk, available to whoever wished to straighten it out. 'They've taken us for a big ride, those damned people. You have a private conversation. Leave it at a delicate point, nuance and innuendo, nothing signed and sealed, and he walks out and tells the whole damned world about it. Read that and you'll think the British are hand in glove with them. It makes a nonsense of what I told the Secretary of State.'
'Aren't we hand in glove with them, Minister?' queried the Under-Secretary currently in possession of the text.
'Not till they were safely in the air. After that we could be hand in hand, arm in arm, whatever cliche you want, but not till then. That was the deal, and they've reneged…'
'And reduced your freedom of action, Minister. Difficult now to change tack. Would seem very strange.'
He realized he'd been outwitted, out-thought. And that all around him knew it.
The 'freedom of action' so beloved by Foreign Secretary and Under-Secretary alike was to be further eroded in the following hour. Home Office press desk telephoning their opposite numbers in News Department: Thought you'd like to know, old boy, that we've had the press chaps on from the Street. Seems they have transcripts of tower to cockpit conversations, have translated the Russian, and are asking Us for reaction on a hi-jackers' ultimatum scheduled to expire at ten in the morning. Didn't take a brain to work that one out: threats meant government had to respond with, the hard line, hard line meant send them back, as the Soviets wanted. Cannot go soft on little blighters who're throwing their weight about.
Can't you have them under Wireless Telegraphy, criminal offence tapping authorized radio channels? asked News Department. Tried it, old boy, responded Press Desk. Told us to get stuffed – more politely, of course, but that was the gist of it.
Explicit instructions had been given: corral the journalists and photographers somewhere where they see nothing, hear nothing, give them a view of the plane and nothing else. The order had been carried out to the letter. A pen was provided, but in such a position that the Ilyushin blocked any view of the SAS command post, and there was an ill-briefed press officer who could in truth report nothing of substance to the hungry observers. But a farm backed on to that section of the perimeter where the press were held, and at dawn the owner's wife, out of a sense of charity and pity, had sent her eldest son with three full Thermos flasks of coffee and a plastic bag of sandwiches to the newsmen. The boy brought with him his radio set, an advanced Japanese model, on which he was in the habit of tuning to the conversations between the tower and incoming aircraft; a hobby that he shared with hundreds of other youths who lived close to the noise of the country's major airports.
When the farmer's son returned home with the empty flasks and plastic bag, he was without the radio, but in his hip pocket were five newly-printed five-pound notes and a promise of the same for each day that the worn, sleep-short men borrowed the set. The family themselves had listened to the talk-down of the Ilyushin the previous night, and the tuning had not been altered. There was disappointment at first when it was realized the early morning exchange was to be conducted in Russian, but these were men paid their monthly salaries for their enterprise. The conversation was recorded on a cassette tape player, and the spool sent back to London by despatch rider to await translation.
It was a sombre gathering in the Foreign Secretary's room. Some standing, some sitting, some watching the window and the crowded pavements, some waiting for the next intervention of the telephone. And the old man in their midst, paled face in his bone-ribbed hands. Poor devil, thought the PPS. Too old for learning new tricks. Should have been out to grass years ago and togged up in his waders and dumped in some river with a hat full of flies to keep him warm. Days that started badly didn't get better, and this was going to be a long and bitter one, and carefully compiled reputations could be demolished by the late summer dusk. And all because of three little bastards from the other side of Europe. Made him want to weep, but there'd be enough tears to be mopped up, enough without him adding to the flood.
The light that poured into the cockpit left Isaac undisturbed. He had curled his sparse body into the seat that had been Anna Tashova's and settled his legs with care so that they would not brush against the floor pedals or the instrument switches of the flight deck. His sleep was dreamless, the exhaustion permitting neither the pleasure of fantasy nor the horror of nightmare. He had checked the safety catch of his gun, made sure that the weapon could not fire if he lurched or reached in a spasm of movement and now held it tight across his chest. The lines of tension round his mouth and on his forehead had softened, as if he had discovered a peace and understanding with himself. He had pulled his knees up to his stomach, and his breathing was calm and regular, marred only by the trace of catarrh from the passing summer cold that had dogged him his last week in Kiev. Not a dangerous-looking creature, not a psychopath or a manic depressive; just a youth who had become extremely tired, and who tried now to regain his strength, to recharge the batteries that powered him. Slight and ineffective he would have seemed if the fish- eye could have found him, far from worthy of all that his actions had brought to Stansted. His stomach rumbled in its desire for food, but even the aching far down behind the stomach wall was insufficient to break the hold of his sleep. The first traces of a beard were showing through, a shadowy mess on the whiteness of his skin. His shirt was dirty now and creased from his own sweat, sleeves carelessly rolled; hands dirty from the oil of the gun that had not left his grip, fingernails too short and clipped to retain the filth that otherwise would have been theirs.
Difficult to see as a figure who had created fear, even terror, difficult to take seriously, this boy who had spat his threat into the microphone now idle and propped on the back of his seat. Two hours he'd promised himself, then David should wake him. He was terrified of not sleeping, of not resting and being found inadequate when he sought his best; right from the days of Secondary examinations, and of the tests and interviews for university places. Had to sleep that he would not go pallid and yawning before the tutors. David had promised to wake him. Would rouse him at eight, long before the deadline. He could rely on David,
It was the stench that woke Rebecca.
The heavy, all-invading stench of the forward toilet. The wall of the lavatory was behind the crew seats on which she had slept, small enough to make a bed of, an arm becoming a make-shift pillow. The toilet queue had formed again, but not like the one that Isaac had controlled: people standing up from their seats, and in a line in the centre of the cabin, something different and less fearful than it had been the night before. She lay still, her head motionless, one eye half open, acclimatizing. She had dreamed, she could remember that, images of her home and of her mother and family, nothing vicious in the images she had conjured, soft and warming. But then the harshness of the smell had forced the sleep from her. It was difficult at first to realize where she was, and why, but then she recalled the plane, its traplike compactness, its arched prison walls.
The passengers walked to the toilet, heads erect as if the tumbrils delivered them, and behind her came the constant routine sounds, punctuated by the flushing of the pan and the squirting of water into the basin. One after another they came, edging their way past David as he stood at the entrance of the cabin, some five feet in front of her, showing him deference. He held his gun lightly in his right hand, and that was the termination of her rest, that was reality, the gun and the asymmetry of its magazine from which the old paint had worn and which still showed the oil slicks of its preservation.
David did not see that she was awake, concentrating on the passengers and every minute or so breaking away to move to the portholes and peer out, searching for a sign, like someone looking through the windows of his home when a guest is expected but is late.
David, sustaining and comforting, giving strength and help, keeping the wolves clear from the encampment. Ever since she had known him, the bigger boy in the higher class, this had been their point of contact and togetherness. From when he was in short trousers and she in frocks with white ankle socks and they had gone to the Pioneer camps, and he had sought her out, he had been protective and all-knowing. With maturity had come the cementing of the friendship, brother and sister, colleague and comrade. Different to Moses and Isaac, outsiders who had joined: they were the nucleus, the kernel. Always a shoulder to lean on, a chest to rest against, an ear for confidences. Should have loved him, now that he was a man and she a Woman. No denial of opportunity, frequent occasions, didn't understand why it had never happened. Seemed to spill through her, the nausea of the awful
