With more powerful binoculars than they possessed the journalists and cameramen might have been able to distinguish the lifeless body of Luigi Franconi where it rested close to the starboard undercarriage wheels. But at the distance between where they stood and the Ilyushin the wheels only merged, shimmering in their stillness, with the unnoticed corpse.
A sound recordist, a large man who prided himself equally on his wit and the perfection of his trimmed beard, made a joke, weak to those that heard it, but his own chorus of laughter was picked up by all in the pen; a palliative to the suppressed tension carried by the unexplained shot.
The zephyr of laughter swept out across the scorched concrete, rippling its way towards the aircraft and the control tower till it settled on the far away ears of those who lay in the grass with their rifles and machine- guns.
There were a score of impotent obscenities from the troops who had watched the small Italian die.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Charlie had not looked back towards the tarmac. He knew what he would see if he turned his head, could picture the exact position in which the body would be lying. No need to look, not when death no longer held a fascination. He'd seen many before: the corpses of men who had
'died well', who had 'died badly', whatever that meant – of men who had been killed judicially, and those who had gone without the solace of legality, of men Who had screamed and of men who had prayed. It made little difference to the poor bastards, not now, not when it was over.
And this one, this nameless one down by the wheels, why had he taken the trip? Pretty straightforward, when you think about it, Charlie. One was going to go. Those were the rules they were playing by: take a mouse from a cat and she'll go find another. Made you wonder whether it was worth it, worth all the adrenalin surge, the scream and the gunfire. Can't play heroics seventy times, Charlie.
He could hear the approach of the ambulance, creeping carefully forward, low gear, on the outer perimeter road. It stopped a full hundred yards from him, as if nobody had told the driver the range of an SMG. Couldn't blame him, couldn't blame anybody who didn't want his head blasted. Not an ambulance driver's quarrel. Jews and Israelis and Russians, so where did a driver from Bishop's Stortford on forty-five pounds a week and struggling fit into that pattern? Charlie raised his right hand and gave the thumbs-up signal – put the poor blighter out of his misery and let him know he didn't have to come closer.
Gently Charlie pulled the Russian to his feet and eased him into a position where his own body still gave protection from the aircraft. Together they shuffled forward, slowly and without precision because the headmaster's legs were still weak and unresponsive.
'We're well clear of range. We'll just get to the truck, then you can forget it.'
Without turning, the Russian said through the tremor of his voice. 'The last shot. They have killed another?'
' I think so.' Charlie knew the inadequacy of his answer. Brusque and with a suggestion of authority, he said, 'There's nothing we can do. Not our problem any more.'
'They have killed him because you have taken me from them.'
'Perhaps.'
' I had not thought it would be that way.'
Close to the ambulance now, a few more steps, and the moment for Charlie to conceal his impatience. But he led with his tongue, lashing and aggressive.
'Well, what do you want to bloody-well do? Do you want to go and stand by the door and shout, 'Hey, there, I'm sorry I escaped. I've come back to ask you to forgive me. I didn't want the other bugger killed. It was all a big mistake, and if you shoot me can we have the other guy back, give him his life again, because I want to play the bloody hero'? Cut the crap out and get down on your knees and thank whatever God you have in uptown Kiev that an idiot like Charlie Webster was sitting on his arse on the tarmac with nothing better to do on a sunny morning than stick his neck on the block so that if anyone has to go in the box it wouldn't be you. Course you didn't know it would happen like this, no bugger did. The whole lot may go on that plane, every last one of them. You may be the only one that walks out of it, and if that happens don't be in a corner and blubbering that you wanted to share it with them.'
Charlie loosened his grip around the waist of the Russian as they reached the twin rear doors of the ambulance, and the other man turned and faced him.
' I am sorry, truly sorry. I have to thank you because of what you have done for me. But it is frightening for a man to know that he has lived and then another… In the war..
'Get in and shut up,' Charlie said.
' In the war there were endless columns of men who went to their deaths, with no hope of rescue, nothing to help them beyond the comradeship of dying together.'
Charlie opened the doors, pushed him into the interior, so that he stumbled and tripped forward across a red-blanketed stretcher bed.
'Shut up, forget it.'
The ambulance swung through one hundred and eighty degrees, causing Charlie to grab at a wall-attached oxygen cylinder, then he leaned out to pull together the two flapping doors. Before he fastened them he saw again the bright and unsullied lines of the Ilyushin, the neatness of its airframe broken only by the opened hatch. In the half light of the ambulance interior, shaded by the smoked glass, he held out his hand.
' I'm Charlie Webster.'
'Dovrobyn, Nikita Dovrobyn, and I am grateful.' Their hands locked together, and Charlie could feel the bony, clasping pressure of the grip.
'Like I said, forget it. Cant ever be as bad again.' They spoke no more on the brief journey to the control tower.
When the ambulance stopped he unfastened the doors and helped the Russian back down into the sunlight. There were other hands now to help and uniformed arms that linked under Dovrobyn's armpits, and one that carried a rug to drape over his back. Bloody stupid, that, thought Charlie, with the temperature where it was. All getting in on the act, fussing round the star turn of the day. Cat with the cream satisfaction on the driver's face, the man who had driven out to the aircraft, who'd done nothing and who would revel his way through a line of pints in the canteen bar at lunch- time on the strength of it.
There was a quiet voice in Charlie's ear.
'What sort of condition is he in, Mr Webster?' Bit of bloody deference there, and not before time.
'He's fine,' Charlie said, looking at the pink-faced, cleanshaven police inspector with his uniform and neatly knotted half-Windsor black tie.
'Will he be able to sustain a de-brief? They're anxious..
'God's sake, how do I know? He's not dead, is he? Not been shot?'
Kill it, Charlie, you're shouting and they're staring at you. Doesn't fit the proper image, not of a hero. Supposed to be calm and collected and organized, and above all modest. Not yelling because an earnest little prig asks a sensible question.
'He'll be fine, just find him some tea and a drop of brandy.'
'There's a great deal of admiration for what you did, Mr Webster.'
Charlie nodded. Would they only leave him alone, stop humiliating him? What did they think it was, a conscious decision? Didn't they know, any of these people, that there weren't risk appraisals and evaluations? You just jumped off your backside and ran. If you were lucky you were a hero, if you were unlucky they'd be scraping you up and wondering how you could be so bloody stupid.
They formed a little cavalcade up the stairs, the Russian in his ridiculous blanket at the front with the retinue around him, Charlie at the tail. As they climbed he leaned forward and tapped the inspector on the shoulder and said, 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to shout.'
That's all right, Mr Webster,' said the policeman. 'I know how you must feel.'
A grey transit van brought George Davies to the control tower. It had driven slowly round the outer road in
