a hostile, friendless world,' Arie Benitz smiled, not from humour, but a deep sympathy, 'you have found that, you know it as I know it. When you were in the air over Hanover, that was when you would have known it, and when you woke to the dawn this morning and found the guns that circled you. It is a hard and savage place that you have come to.' His hand had slipped from the girl's shoulder, and his fingers played now with the sun-dried skin of her upper arm where it was bared beneath her sleeve, pulled gendy and squeezed it, and played patterns with his nails. Winning her, comforting her, and all the time edging down towards the limp-held pistol. 'The British have told you that you will not fly on from here. If they say that I believe them, and I have no power to alter their decision. And if you surrender the British will send you back… back to Kiev, back to the courts..
He felt the girl stiffen at his side, and his hand now gripped her arm, tight, pinioning, pressing it against her body, denying her movement.
'What do you want of us?' The peace clearing from Isaac's face, the weariness returning. 'What is the message that you bring us?'
'There is only one course for you, only one that you can contemplate, and I have come to help you.' Said firmly but with resolution, the man who has loved his dog, which now is in pain, and must be killed. 'I will help you. It will be at the hands of a friend.' Benitz's hand had sunk far on Rebecca's arm, below the bony elbow, and his fingers brushed at her waist and close to the butt end of her pistol.
'That is what you came to tell us?' Isaac laughed, throwing back his head. 'That was the message that they flew you here to deliver? Be good little boys, kill yourselves nicely, and we'll send a man to do it with you, to hold the hand, make certain it's a nice clean shot, that it's not messy…?'
'You cannot go back, Isaac. Neither of you can go back/
Isaac now sank to a crouch, the gun barrel up. The passengers fidgeted in their seats.
'There is no other way, Isaac,' Benitz shouting down the aisle.
'From these people, yes, from the British we could expect this. From the Russians, yes, we could expect them to send a killer to us. But that it should be you, of our own people, who can offer us nothing
…'
'There is nothing else.' The calmness gone, the soldier in uniform. Benitz's fragile patience diminishing.
Slowly and with emphasis, pointing each word, Isaac said, 'But that it should be you.'
' I said it was a hard and savage place that you had come to. I offer you the best, the only way.'
And there was a shame in his voice, a humiliation. And banging in his ears the words of the Ambassador. A detestable job. T was not ordered to bring you this message, not by my government. They wanted to save you, but you have destroyed yourselves. When you took the man to the doorway, that was when you died, Isaac. Whether at my hand, your hand, or a Russian hand, that was when you died. I only came to make it easier. I can give nothing more. When you took the man to the door you went beyond our reach.'
One hand at the pistol jerking it from the girl's wrist, the other jack-knifing her arm behind her back, so that she shuddered from the pain of the movement. He pulled her across in front of him, protection against Isaac's submachine-gun that was now at his shoulder, aimed clear and straight down the length of the aisle.
The urgency of his voice scything over the heads of the passengers, Charlie shouted, 'What are you saying, Benitz? What are you telling them?'
'Whalt I have to say. What is obvious to a fool/
'What is it? Tell me'- the rare anger that Charlie was unused to.
'Keep out, Charlie. This is not your quarrel. Come back here, to behind me/
A command, spoken with unarguable authority, and Charlie obediently edged his way down the aisle, all the time watching the face of Isaac, watching for the steeling of the eyes that' would mean he was preparing to shoot. Backed past the children, past the woman with the baby, away from the American, away from the pilot officer. Benitz's arm came to meet him, grabbed his collar and half-guided, half-hurled him sideways among the legs of the passengers. As he stumbled, trying to regain his balance, pressing into a lap for support, Benitz went past him, using the girl as his protection, advancing with a slow and strange circumspection towards Isaac.
Arie Benitz forced his thighs and knees into the back of the girl's legs, melting their movements into one, compressing his body against hers, and all the time talking in the language that Charlie did not know. Softer now, and using the tactic of persuasion, the same message all the time, till Charlie had no doubts. He wanted the submachine-gun, wanted it thrown down, wanted it abandoned and harmless. Had the pistol that would be the weapon of execution, raised and cocked and ready.
Ten paces from Isaac now, the Israeli and the slight Jewish girl. Ten paces and closing. Charlie could anticipate the way Benitz's mind would run. Work himself close enough to propel the girl against the boy, and in the medley hope for the chance to snatch at the submachine-gun, or just simply shoot into the chaos he would have created. Still closing on Isaac and staring him out all the time. The advance of the predator on the rabbit, and no bolt-hole for Isaac.
One sentence Rebecca shouted.
'Shoot him, Isaac, shoot him!'
Banal, silly, words… not those she would have chosen for her epiltaph, not the final words she would have wanted to speak to Isaac, the last she would say in her life to the boy who had kissed her lips.
Breaking through Charlie's thoughts – the endless bleating of the machine-gun, spitting out its bullets, a single drumming cacophony of noise, on and on, an unbroken rhythm of flashes. It was a low-velocity weapon and the first shots stayed with the girl, beating at her body, hitting, wracking her till she pitched forward. Still the gun fired, as Benitz made a last and forlorn gesture towards the saving of his life. Alone now and without the human wall for security he seemed to try to aim the girl's pistol at the source of his pain. There was a half-face for Charlie to see, bemused and irritated that he had been found out in such trivial company. A man of Entebbe, and the Savoy Hotel, and of Maalot and Kyryat Shmona; a man who had fought with the storm squad against the best of the Palestinians, and now undone by a boy and a girl who knew nothing but the dream of a country they would never see.
Benitz was a long time falling. Even as the bullets hit him he sought to steady himself, holding grimly on to a seat. Raising the right hand, the fist that held the pistol as each succeeding shell threw back his resolution, forced him to begin again, a man who fights the tide and cannot win.
When he was still, on the rumpled carpet of the aisle that his feet had racked and that soon would be stained by the coursing of his blood, then Isaac pulled his finger from the trigger and lowered the gun barrel.
Scrambling along the aisle, Charlie reached Benitz, knelt by his head, Isaac forgotten, lifted him at the back of the neck as he had been taught to do. Precaution against a man drowning in his own blood, standard and automatic reaction however grave the wounds, however small the chances of salvation.
' It was rubbish you talked, Charlie, silly deceitful rubbish. They go back, and you know that.'
A gurgling, panting chant. Charlie's hands under his head, tilting it. 'The little fools did not know, did not know which was the easy way. Dead whatever they do, better at my hand… better at the hand of a friend.' The death of Arie Benitz came in a last shaking spasm that lifted his head sharply; the cough was barely complete before his life fled him. Charlie eased the weight back on to the carpet, and looked up at Isaac, still motionless, the gun at his knees.
The baby was crying.
' I prefer to believe him, Charlie. Not your new-found promise for us. And we were going to do as he wanted, we did not need to be told. Not by the man that you brought to us, not by anyone. We knew. But it was to be in our time – not with these bastards sitting round us, counting us out. Can you understand, Charlie, Rebecca and I, we were going to do it? We trusted you and you brought this animal to kill us and hang us up by the ankles. You brought him, and because he was with you, because of what you said, we wanted to hear him. He came to execute us, here among the crowd. Not even in Kiev is the firing squad public, Charlie.'
Isaac started to come forward. Lightly, almost delicately, slightly-built and on the balls of his feet. He swung his arm in a lackadaisical way so that as he released the gun it made an arc in the air, almost brushing the roof before Charlie caught it.
'Do it for me, Charlie. Do it quickly.'
In three fast, trained movements Charlie removed the magazine, ejecting the shell in the breach so that it flew from the weapon sideways, falling on to a passenger's trousers. Then he pulled the trigger with the barrel aimed at the ceiling. Harmless.
'No, Charlie, no!' Isaac, curious that his request had not been observed. 'You have to do it. You owe it to me,
