staring down at their new hostage while Mrs de Frackas raised a drunken head from the kitchen, took one look at the amazing sight and passed out again. Eva heaved herself to her knees. Her hands were still tied above her head but her concern was all for the quads.
'Now don't worry, darlings. Mummy's here,' she said. 'Everything is going to be all right.'
From the safety of the kitchen the two terrorists surveyed the extraordinary scene with dismay. They didn't share her optimism.
'Now what do we do?' asked Baggish. 'Throw the children out the door?'
Chinanda shook his head. He wasn't going within striking distance of this powerful woman. Even with her hands tied above her head there was something dangerous and frightening about Eva, and now she seemed to be edging towards him on bulging knees.
'Stay where you are,' he ordered, and raised his gun. Next to him the telephone rang. He reached for it angrily
'What do you want now?' he asked Flint.
I might ask you the same question,' said the Inspector. You've got the woman and you said you'd let the children go.'
'If you think I want this fucking woman you're crazy,' Chinanda yelled, 'and the fucking children won't leave her. So now we've got them all.'
What sounded like a chuckle came from Flint. 'Not my fault. We didn't ask for the children. You volunteered to...'
'And we didn't ask for this woman,' screamed Chinanda his voice rising hysterically 'So now we do a deal. You...'
'Forget it, Miguel,' said Flint, beginning to enjoy himself. 'Deals are out and for your information you'd be doing me a favour shooting Mrs Wilt. In fact you go right ahead and shoot whoever you want, mate, because the moment you do I'm sending my men in and where they shoot you and Comrade Baggish you won't die in a hurry. You'll be...'
'Fascist murderer,' screamed Chinanda, and pulled the trigger of his automatic. Bullets spat boles across a chart on the kitchen wall which had until that moment announced the health-giving properties of any number of alternative herbs, most of them weeds. Eva regarded the damage balefully and the quads sent up a terrible wail.
Even Flint was horrified. 'Did you kill her?' he asked, suddenly conscious that his pension came before personal satisfaction.
Chinanda ignored the question. 'So now we deal. You send Gudrun down and have the jet ready in one hour only. From now on we don't play games.'
He slammed the phone down.
'Shit,' said Flint. 'All right, get me Wilt. I've got news for him.'
Chapter 20
But Wilt's tactics had changed again. Having run the gamut of roles from chinless wonder to village idiot by way of revolutionary fanatic, which to his mind was merely a more virulent form of the same species, it had slowly dawned on him he was approaching the destabilization of Gudrun Schautz from the wrong angle The woman was an ideologue, and a German one at that. Behind her a terrible tradition stretched back into the mists of history, a cultural heritage of solemn, monstrously serious and ponderous Dichter und Denker, philosophers, artists, poets and thinkers obsessed with the meaning, significance and process of social and historical development. The word Weltanschauung sprang, or at least lumbered, to mind. Wilt had no idea what it meant and doubted if anyone else knew. Something to do with having a world view and about as charming as Lebensraum which should have meant living-room but actually signified the occupation of Europe and as much of Russia as Hitler had been able to lay his hands on. And after Weltanschauung and Lebensraum there came, even less comprehensibly, Weltschmerz or world pity which, considering
