The radar specks had grown into two bright green blobs that were now converging on the centre of the screen. The floor bucked downwards and sideways, the blond man braced himself against the back of Duhamel’s seat and studied the second-hand of his watch. He glanced at the navigator. ‘Twenty seconds. How far now?’
The navigator frowned. He was very pale. He said something in Russian, and Prokovsky repeated, ‘We are in Finland water in ten or fifteen seconds.’
The green radar blobs had swollen into a large amoeba, and the first MIG 23 flashed overhead a couple of seconds later, followed by the other in close dovetail formation. Their lights broke apart, swirled upwards in opposite directions, and vanished.
This time there was a furious crackle from Prokovsky’s earphones, and the blond man ordered: ‘Tell them we are losing height and have engine trouble. But no Mayday. Just break contact.’ His gun still rested against the Russian’s cheek, as the man spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece, this time with what sounded like a note of panic; then he wrenched the earphones off his head, switched off the R/T, and lay back against the headrest. He was grey and sweating.
‘We are in Finnish territorial waters,’ said Duhamel, as the lights of the two MIGs came swooping down again, very close this time, and peeled away in the last second. The Troika-Caravelle’s altimeter needle was trembling on the 200-metre mark. ‘We will be over Haapasaari in about thirty seconds,’ Duhamel added. ‘If we keep at this altitude, we have a good chance of hitting one of the islands.’ His face was suddenly taut with anger. ‘How many milliards of francs are you asking, you dirty gangster?’
The hijacker nodded at the controls: ‘Pay attention to your work. As soon as we are over Hudofjörd, take us down to one hundred metres.’ He went on, grinning: ‘I heard that you are one of the best there is, Capitaine. You can do it. They might even give you the Order of Lenin.’
Duhamel sat very straight, staring through the Perspex shield into the blue-black darkness. There was cloud now, and a trace of ground-mist; but still no wind.
Four minutes later a cluster of lights swept up into view, alarmingly high on their port side. Duhamel pulled back the stick and the floor rose with a shrill screaming vibration. For a moment the blond man almost lost control, lurching back against the French gunman who had not stirred from the rear wall of the cabin. The gun in his hand scarcely moved; it remained pointing between the heads of the two pilots.
A red glow now appeared directly ahead; then another; and beyond, a double row of orange flares, dully reflected off the frozen water. There were more lights from a village, racing past almost level with the plane as Duhamel now edged the stick forward, then pulled a lever and there was a shuddering howl as the nose-cone came into line with the centre of the flarepath, with the ground glowing red and green under the landing lights.
There was a bump and a soft scraping sound as the wheels ploughed into the fresh layer of snow, then gripped the ice with a grunt, slewing to both sides as the weight of the aircraft settled, before pulling up with a long roar within less than a hundred metres of the last pair of beacons.
‘You will remain here, you will not move,’ said the blond man. Duhamel was still staring stiffly ahead, his hands moving levers, touching switches, as the engines died with a slow moan through the Arctic night. The blond man turned and went back into the passenger-cabin.
One of the French gunmen had already opened the outside door at the rear of the plane, and a draught of freezing air swept up the cabin. Another of the gunmen had stopped beside Fielding, who had undone his seatbelt and was already pulling on his coat and musquash hat. The American, Ken Roskoe, stared up at him: ‘Hey, you going?’
‘Yes, I’m going,’ said Fielding. He stepped into the aisle, with the gunman behind him, and walked down towards the open door. Five rows from the end there was a tiny click through the silence. A man in a suede jacket had snapped a Minox camera. He was just dropping it into his side-pocket, when the blond man leapt out and seized it from his hand, and in the same movement slashed the barrel of his gun across the man’s mouth. The man screamed something that sounded like German, and sat down holding his face in both hands, with blood seeping between his fingers.
The only people in the cabin who now moved were Fielding and the French gunman. They reached the door where the emergency chute had already been dropped out. The gunman was the first to go, holding the canvas taut, at a gentle angle, to take Fielding’s weight. But at the last moment Fielding hesitated; he glanced at Pol, sitting almost opposite him, and the Frenchman gave him a quick grin, covering it almost at once with a red silk bandana with which he began to mop his face.
Fielding turned and clambered into the mouth of the chute. A moment later he slid out and sat down heavily in the snow. As he did so a pair of headlamps flashed on and off out of the darkness, then came crawling towards them with a clank of snow-chains. Behind them, beyond the last flares, lay a second pair of lights, dipped and stationary.
The car was a Volvo saloon with Swedish number plates. There were two men inside. They drew up just beyond the wing-tip
