his head; as if his wife was shopping on the other side of Woking High Street and he wanted to attract her attention.
Rebecca had spotted him first and called David from his favoured position between cockpit and the passenger cabin. He hurried to where she craned forward across the unprotest- ing lap of a passenger, her head rammed against the window. With a roughness that was calculated he pulled her back to clear the space and the vision for himself. One man walking towards them, a faint and distant figure, small against the building from which he came, coming with a directness and purpose, his shadow preceding him, running to the front. The man kept far from the armoured cars and chose a path that was not impeded by any obstacle.
'Will you wake Isaac now? Tell him that the man is coming?' Rebecca spoke from behind his head.
' I did not think he would come so fast. I wanted to let Isaac sleep on.' He did not turn from the window.
'You are afraid to wake him. It is because of fear-'
'There is no fear.' He hissed the words from close to the window. 'When I need to wake him, then I will-'
'But the man is coming now.'
' I have eyes, I can see.'
'But are you going to leave Isaac sleeping? Will you let him sleep while you talk with this man?'
This was a moment when both David and Rebecca could have been overpowered without difficulty, for both were so engrossed in Charlie Webster's approach that they had no thought for the passengers. Rebecca was close to David's back, pressing against the muscles beneath his shirt, trying to share the window with him, transfixed by the advance of the lone figure. Several of those who sat behind them were aware of the opportunity but none had the stomach to steel himself and rise out of his seat. The long hours had dulled their initiative and the threat of the guns that now seemed so casually held was too great to encourage those who were closest to take action. Luigi Franconi was within reach, but his courage had wasted since the time he was in the mountains with the partisans. Aldo Genti had the advantage of an aisle seat, but was further back.
The navigator considered the question for a few seconds and then rejected it. The headmaster was too far to the rear to be able to offer effective intervention, and the thought of it faded from his mind when he saw the tousled, shambling, sleep-laden Isaac silhouetted in the cockpit doorway.
Rebecca said again, with greater persistence, 'You will have to tell him, you have to wake him, now that their man is coming.'
'But it was you that asked for the contact to be made. It was you that posed the question that had to be answered. It was you that wanted to know what they would do if we surrendered…'
Nobody spoke in the control tower; all were gaping at the television monitor, the flickering twelve- inch grey-blue screen.
In the centre of the picture the back torsos of the ones they knew as David and Rebecca – predictable enough that they should be at the window to watch the coming of Charlie Webster. It had been the eyes of the hostages that had drawn attention to the extreme right-hand corner of the picture, as they switched from their two concentrating guards and took on the nervousness and hesitancy of people who have fear and are uncertain, looking only to the entrance from the corridor to the passenger cabin.
A small figure Isaac seemed to those in the control tower, and when they first saw him his face seemed wreathed in sadness, but the change was abrupt and the chin came forward, and the face muscles tightened as the submachine-gun rose to his shoulder. When the weapon was there he paused for a moment as if to adjust to the comfort and stability of the tubular, extended shoulder rest, then raised the barrel to the low ceiling. He seemed to jolt back fractionally and strangely because it was all enacted in complete silence, and the passengers flattened themselves in their seats while David and Rebecca catapulted back into the aisle.
'We should pull Webster off,' Clitheroe shouted.
'Leave him there'-the sharp response from the Assistant Chief Constable.
The noise of the single shot was ear-blasting inside the confines of the cabin. It burst through the inner thoughts of Rebecca and David, tearing them from their vision of the solitary man who approached across the tarmac; the screaming of the passengers dinned its way into their consciousness, and when they spun to face the centre aisle it took them time to adjust.
The gun was Still at Isaac's shoulder, his head steady behind the gunsight and his left fist clenched tight on the upper barrel, his right index finger entwined inside the trigger guard. And there was a depth to his eyes, far down to a blazing molten fury. Rebecca sought an explanation that would justify what was happening, and unable to find it slipped back across the passenger's lap till she stood half-cowed, half-defiant upright in the aisle. David was slower, it taking more effort for him to disentangle himself from among the unmoving and unco-operating legs that held him back. Isaac waited with a humiliating patience until David freed himself.
The passengers' eyes wavered between the seared hole in the cabin roof, close to where the forward life raft is stored, and the man in the passageway. All recognized the crisis, and were afraid to permit themselves even to clear their throats or move their feet. The baby, too, close to suffocation so tightly was it held against its mother's breasts, was silent. An endless, bottomless quiet as they all waited for the resolution. When Isaac spoke his voice was controlled and they had to strain to hear his words – even David and Rebecca to whom they were directed.
'You did not wake me. You said that you would wake me at eight, and it is past that. You promised and yet I had to wake myself.'
David let out a great sigh, the air in his lungs released in a huge and noisy gust. 'We were going to come, in a few minutes we would have come, believe me, Isaac.'
But Isaac went on as if oblivious to David's words. 'And I wake myself, and I see from the cockpit window that a man is walking close to the plane, and I come to the doorway and I hear the words of surrender.' The sneer and the contempt, scything through the frail and unprepared defences. 'Talk of surrender while I slept, after I stayed the night watch that you might rest, because you begged for it, could last no longer. And when you are refreshed and I take my turn for sleep, what is it that you talk of? What is it that you plan? The talk is of surrender 1 '
'It was not like that, Isaac, you have to believe us!'
David wondered whether Isaac was about to shoot him. Almost natural, almost logical if he were to. He was not afraid, hoping only that it would come quickly, that he would be spared the games and the play.
'Tell me then. If it was not like that, how was it? Tell me.'
They are sending a man to talk to us. They say they want to explain things that cannot be said over the radio, but there are too many people in the tower, and they want a more private negotiation with us. We asked them a question, Isaac, a question that we have the right to know the answer to.' Gabbling, believing that with each word he spoke so diminished the chances of his summary execution at the hands of his friend and his comrade.
'What was the question that could only be asked and answered if I was asleep, if I was not a party to it?'
'We have to know what they do with us if we were to release the passengers and follow their demands. We have to know what they would plan for us, where they would send us…'
'And that is not talk of surrender? Humiliating, crawling surrender? Don't hurt us, don't kick us, don't punch, and please, please don't send us back from where we came. That is the substance of your negotiation? And all this while I was sleeping?'
' It is finished, Isaac.' Rebecca pushed her way in front of David as if to protect him, provide a shield behind which he might shelter. 'You know that. You know that we go no further. You told me yourself last night that there would be no fuel for the engines, and this morning they have proved you right They will not let us leave. There will only be killing, killing that leads to nothing. More blood, Isaac. That is what we are talking of, and whether more deaths would advance us.'
Isaac took a firm step forward, all that was necessary for him to be a foot from the girl. With his free left hand he swung hard and sharply. The blow was short and took her without warning, cuffing her semi-stunned to the floor. Had he not worn his grandmother's ring he would probably not have broken the soft skin, but the metal caught against her cheek and by the time she had recovered to stumble upright again a crimson rivulet was flowing towards her neck.
