Kingfisher

'A reasonable chance of success, yes, sir. Shouldn't be too difficult. We know all we're going to.'

'When would you attempt it?'

'First light is ideal. But if there's deterioration we could have a go at dusk tonight. We could get in during daylight, but the risk all round is greater.'

A moment of consideration, as if the Home Secretary were rehearsing the sentence, then he said, 'Make the preparations that you deem necessary, Major.'

Thank you, sir. There's a DC6 over on the far side. Height to the doors is right, width of fuselage about the same, wing cover on approach matches. We'll do a bit of work with it, and you'll be contacted as soon as we're happy.' 'Thank you, Major.'

The session was concluded. Davies bustling on his way. Conversation mounting. A lightening of the atmosphere now that the crucial decision had been taken. Charlie sought out Clitheroe, tugged at his shirt sleeve and took him to the far corner, away from the crowd that now sensed blood and waited for the chase.

' It's a bit early, isn't it?' Charlie urged. 'We've hardly talked to them yet, and now we're ready to plunge in.' ' It wasn't my advice.'

'But the tactic is to wear them down. Nag away at them, starve them out That's the way it's done. What the Americans do, the Dutch, what we've tried in the past.'

'Correct. That is the traditional way of handling these affairs. As I told you the present course of action is not the one that I recommended.' 'What are you going to do about it?' 'Mr Webster, I'm not here to do anything. I'm here to give opinions when they are requested. My brief goes no further.' 'So what's changed, what's put the balls into them?' 'You have, Mr Webster. Your little games out on the tarmac have changed all that. Don't stop me, don't look aggressive. You asked me a question and I'll give you an answer. They were sitting in here watching Mr Dovrobyn, believing he was about to die. They didn't like it, they didn't like the helplessness and impo tence

– that was a word that was flying round this room a fair bit – and they saw what you did. Probably you shamed them, shamed them into showing what they now regard as courage. They had been led to understand that there was no intervention they could make, and you demonstrated that there are occasions when a physical course of action can be both justified and successful. Now they wish to follow your example. Virility, I suppose, comes into it, they wish to match your virility. Don't look pained, Mr Webster, don't regard me as an idiot. We've been through all this while you were bringing your rescued princess back from the dragon's castle, we've ah had our say. Myself, the policeman, army liaison, the civil servants. Mine was a lone voice because I cannot offer exact solutions. I can only surmise what a state of mind will be, given certain deprivation factors. I understand a smattering of Russian, Mr Webster, from my college days. I gather you told Mr Dovrobyn that there was a 'science on these matters', referring to the. question of storming the aircraft. A 'science' implies a solution if a correct procedure is followed. I cannot supply a 'science', only an opinion, and that is why I am not listened to. And you must allow for the death of the second hostage: it has deeply shocked our masters. They were not prepared for it, and therefore their anger is all the greater. And they are fearful now of seeming weak.'

' It's bloody nonsense,' said Charlie quiedy.

'Not so much nonsense as cowardice, Mr Webster. They are unwilling to repeat an experience.

They do not have the courage. The previous two occasions when they have been confronted with this type of situation there had been no killing of hostages. Neither in Knightsbridge nor in Balcombe Street. They could afford to be patient then; there were no corpses for the world to see, to bear witness to their inability to intervene with a strong hand. You have to comprehend and perhaps you do already that the basis for the respect held by the Western democracies for the urban guerrilla is that so few persons can appear to ridicule the power of an established and elected government. By your own assessment only one of the persons on the aircraft is, as we would say, the hard-liner, with the other two his followers. Yet look around and count up the effort, the ingenuity, the technology, the striking power that has been assembled to eliminate this threat. All of this concentration was sitting on its collective backside, wondering what to do.

They think now that unarmed, unprepared, you showed them a course of action.'

' If they go in there shooting then there has to be risk to the children, like the headmaster said, and he's right. What do they want? Another bloody Maalot?'

'Perhaps they consider the risk to the children less substantive than the risk that they will see another man brought to the door of the aircraft, and after him another, and another after that…'

'But that's not your opinion. You know and I know that perhaps they will kill one more, but they're human beings in there. They're not animals, they won't be able to go on chopping like a slaughterhouse foreman. They couldn't sustain it.'

'That's not what you said from the tarmac, Mr Webster.

They took great note of what you told them. They remember your every word,' Clitheroe speaking now in a tired, half- amused drawl. 'As I told you, I have offered my advice and it was not accepted.'

He passed Charlie a cigarette, expensive with a gold- papered covering for the filter. Charlie took it instinctively, leaned his head for the light, and blew the smoke into the murk of the room.

Without giving any particular thought to it, Charlie said, 'So how do we save them?'

' It depends on who you want to save. If it's the children I suppose they stand an equal chance, and it's a good one, whether Major Davies leads a heroic charge or whether we sit it out and people like myself give advice on a long- drawn-out stand-off. The children will be safe. Or is it the others, my friend? If the soldiers assault the plane then we can guarantee – I use your word – that they are unlikely to take time off for the niceties of capturing able-bodied prisoners. Shoot first, questions later is the doctrine of this type of operation. Is that what concerns you? Perhaps it should concern all of us, three young people who through a chain of circumstances stand condemned to die if the army take the plane. Whether they are evil people, or misguided, or those that in another context we would regard as courageous, they will not survive the visit of Major Davies. And I wouldn't criticize that: his men have wives and children, they too want to survive, and they deserve to. If you wish these three to live then you must persuade them to surrender, and unconditionally because then they will go before the courts,' perhaps here, probably in the Soviet Union, and you must believe the words of the Ambassador that were carried on the radio, that they will be unlikely to face the death penalty if indeed they are returned. There can be no happy outcome, yet there was no reason to expect anything else from the moment that the aircraft landed. You've been very patient with me, Mr Webster. I'm not used to such attention.'

Charlie smiled, thanked him and moved without more comment back to the console.

Waste of time trying the radio unless someone was sitting in the cockpit with the earphones on and waiting. Seemed to know that his place was far from here, far from the green- carpeted floor, and the hum of the air- conditioner and the polite laughter, and the deference to seniority. Knew he should be on the tarmac again, sitting on his backside in the sunshine, flicking the flies from his nose and wanting a drink, waiting for something to happen. The pictures were still in front of him, where he'd pinned them in the early morning when the issues had been sharper and the grey fog hadn't blurred the outlines of his faith. Three young faces, ordinary to the point of boredom, and now trapped and vicious and being broken on an anvil by a force they could not combat, only strike against, bloodily and irrelevantly.

Too long on the outside, Charlie, too long living and winning without the back-up of name and rank and number, without legality and authority. As much a terrorist as these little bastards. Had a base camp, sure enough, to come to with the intelligence gained by deceit and stealth, but otherwise a man of his own whims, without a general to direct him and draw lines on his map. Easy for some to hate these three, right Charlie? Easy to label and catalogue them. Easier still if you had a chauffeur and a pennant and a chest of medal ribbons and a swagger stick. But harder if you knew the isolation, and the loneliness and the fear that makes the stomach coil, as you did, Charlie. Disowned if you're caught, that's what they said when he went to Dublin; don't expect the FO to bale you out if the Garda Siochana lifts you – and when you're caught don't cough, that way you'll keep the pension and well see your wife doesn't have to go out to work and the kids get new shoes when they need them. All for a job, all for a way to pay the mortgage. Less motivation than those three. 'Motivation', the fashionable word that meant damn- all, meant you were thick and hadn't thought it out, or too young to know what went on. 'Motivation', the great confidence trick, the public relations target, what they told all the men who formed the starched khaki ranks and lined up to have Herself pin a cross of dulled metal on their chests and went back to barracks to shiver in a corner and wonder how they'd been so bloody stupid.

Years since Charlie had been in uniform, despised it, sneered at the sameness and the identity and the mob instinct of men who needed polished shoes and short haircuts. What did these people know of the three on the