again.
' Isaac, you must listen to us. A man has come from Tel
Aviv. He is the representative of the Israeli government. He is a colonel of the Israeli Defence Force. You have to listen, Isaac, you have to hear what the Israeli government says to you. You must put the past behind you, forget all this rubbish about winning and will power and strength.
You have to talk to this man, for God's sake.'
He could imagine them back in the control tower. Crowded round the television set, picking up his words and searching on the outer camera monitor for the Israeli: be bedlam. Who authorized it? Whose sanction? Deep in now, Charlie, blown yourself, risked the lot, jeopardized the pension, the job, all the same things that mob will be thinking of. No point in saying you didn't reckon it was going to work out like this. Took him there yourself, and you've made it public, broadcast it to the world.
Incessant in his ear were the tribal drums of anger and dissent. 'Come in, Webster. Come in immediately. Webster, respond to your call sign. What the hell is going on out there? Did you take the Israeli to the location? It was expressly forbidden that he should reach the plane.
Answers must be given.' They seemed to be passing the microphone from one to the other. All climbing on you, Charlie, leaning on your back, pummelling you. Tell them to get stuffed.
' I have one message for you. They will start to shoot hostages again in something less than forty minutes. I repeat, the killing starts again in forty minutes. That is why I am here. I have nothing else to report. Nothing else.' There were further bleated demands for clarification, amplification, justification. He reached to his side for the control console, felt with his fingers for the volume button and turned it slowly, anti-clockwise.
Another step forward. 'Isaac, you have to listen to this man. He comes at the direct instruction of the Israeli government. He's no trick, he's not a stooge. You have to hear him out. You have to listen to him before there is more killing.'
The answer was a long time coming. It seemed fainter to their ears, and there was confusion and hesitancy in the voice.
'It is Rebecca Who hears you. Isaac has said that we must have the petrol. Soon he will choose which man stands at the door at one o'clock. You have not much time for the petrol. After one o'clock then perhaps we should hear what your friend has to say.'
Charlie shouted again, and was not heeded. He brushed his hand across his mouth to clear the saliva that had gathered there. They'll have your neck for this, Charlie, right up high they'll swing you. Someone had to get the scene moving, didn't they? But there're ways of doing it, Charlie.
Their way and your way. Your way's a loser.
George Davies was well pleased with the training session, as pleased as he would ever be. Eight men approaching the aircraft from the dead ground at the rear. Four for the back door and needing more time because it must be forced from the outside and they would be unfamiliar with the locking devices employed on the Ilyushin. Four more to the front where the hatch was free, and pausing for the dovetailing of the plan, the synchronization of the triple movement that would come from his direction by radio. Three stages and all simultaneous – the opening of the rear door, attack at the front, and the detonation of flash grenades coupled with sustained machine-gun fire on the port side of the aircraft. As much noise as possible, he had said he wanted, create the diversion, get their heads to the wrong windows and rely on the instinctive reaction to gunfire, take cover. He reckoned that if he could get his men inside the plane while the pair were still crouched down, or looking to the port side, orientating themselves to a new situation, then he stood a good chance. But there were imponderables. If the diversion did not drive Isaac and Rebecca down, if their attention were not drawn across the aircraft. If they were standing and shooting. If the hostages panicked and ran from their seats. There were any number of things that could screw it. But you could go only so far in preparation. They had to realize that back in the control tower, had to know that if the military went in then the picnic was over. He did not give the civilians the benefit of his doubt, thought for the most part they hadn't the slightest idea of the consequences of what they now planned.
Timing was working well, and the movement up the ladders could not be bettered. They had reasonable diagrams of the door mechanism to work off, and good photographs of the boy and the girl to imprint on each man's memory. The soldier who would carry the megaphone could handle the
Russian language commands to order the passengers to remain seated – atrocious accent, but they'd understand him. Vital that – it was the one continual disturbing worry that obsessed him: that the passengers would start moving.
Five times they worked the manoeuvre – more than that and there was a danger of staleness.
Had to keep them hungry, prevent the risk of any blunting familiarity coming into the operation.
When they gathered round him, back on the tarmac after the last run, they discussed equipment.
They rejected helmets and also the armour-plated 'flak' jackets; too cumbersome, too likely to catch on the ladder, the doorway, between the seats. They peeled their webbing down to a minimum, belt and nothing else. Tennis shoes in place of boots, the short-barrelled Ingram in preference to anything that was heavier, larger, whatever the loss of hitting power. Nothing to be taken that could impede the one desperate dash along the aisle.
'Remember,' Davies said to the small group, 'remember, the slightest sign of opposition and you hammer them. Three- round bursts, and angled because we're taking both ends. They have to be bloody fast getting their hands up if they're to live through this little lot. Any chance of them shooting, blast them. If you're impeded, or can't see them, take the ceiling out… they only have to get one good burst off and we've wrecked the whole thing.'
'When does the next ultimatum wind up?' One of the group was anxious to know how soon they might be called on to demonstrate before the live audience what they had mastered in rehearsal.
'A little over half an hour. The civvie guy, the spook, is having another go at them at the moment. If he fails and the gaffers think they're about to start chopping again then we go. We won't be waiting for dark.'
Three men were with the Israeli Prime Minister: his Foreign Minister, the head of military intelligence, and the personal adviser to his office on counter-terrorism. All four wore open-necked shirts and light slacks.
It was an inconclusive meeting with little to report. The Prime Minister was assured that the British seemed adamant that in the event of a successful outcome to the siege of the Ilyushin 18 then any surviving hi-jackers would be flown directly to the Soviet Union. It was unlikely, he was told, that the British would even bother to prefer charges for those offences committed inside the jurisdiction of local courts. It would be, the Foreign Minister remarked, the Iranian precedent rather than the Munich one to which the British would turn. When the Prime Minister had raised his eyebrows fractionally, the signal that he wished clarification, it was explained that the Iranians had sent back a Soviet Air Force pilot who had defected in a light aircraft seeking political asylum. The Munich option referred to the West German refusal to hand over a twenty-six-year-old fugitive who had seized an internal Prague-Bratislava flight at gunpoint and flown it to Munich.
' I had hoped for more from the Americans,' said the Prime Minister, turning to the army reserve general, an old friend, one who could be trusted and whom he had brought out of retirement to sit close by his office. ' I had hoped that their influence on the British would be greater.'
'The taste of this business has not been palatable to them. They will stand by us when the danger is greatest, when they believe we are without defences. But they do not like to think of us, or our people, as having a will of our own. The children have shown their claws, they have killed with them. It does not fit the image that our friends have of us.'
'With the hostage dead, with the Americans unwilling to act, then we have lost. They will go back, these two, and there is nothing that we can…' He broke off, as if reminded of something distant. Clutching at the straw. 'The man that we sent, Benitz. Has there been communication from him?'
'He spoke to the relevant people by telephone this morning. But his opportunities are limited.
The British offer him nothing.'
'They have not used him because they wish to send these people back?'
'But he is a resourceful man.'
'A lion, one of the. best we have.' The Prime Minister agreed. 'But there are impossibilities, I suppose, even for a man such as this.'
'He has made no contact for some time now, not that has been reported by London. Perhaps -'
'That means nothing. In these circumstances, nothing.'
So often like this, the ill-informed back-seat, while the pursuit of policy remained in the hands of the soldiers.
