Charlie.'
He bad stopped seven, eight feet away, separated by the mingled blockade of bodies of Rebecca and Arie Benitz. He did not look down, but instead fastened his eyes on Charlie.
'Charlie, you have to do it.' Faint, hard to hear, the first trace of anxiety winning through the trance that had becalmed him since he had killed Rebecca and the Israeli. 'Charlie, you cannot leave me to them. I'm not strong enough, not to be sent back, not to do it here. .. not without Rebecca. Charlie…'
'Animals', they called them in the pub where he went at lunchtime from the Department.
Swine. Murderers. Communists. Fanatics. All the usual slogans as they chewed at their pork pies, and mouthed through their fat beef-filled sandwiches, and swilled the pints of warmed beer.
Should come and face one of their animals, see him at three paces.
'Just keep coming, Isaac. It's all over. You need some food, some sleep. You need to rest.
You're not going back, they told me that. Just keep walking.' Nothing else to say, Charlie thought, away from what he knew, away from the papers that would be piling on his desk high in the tower block half a day's drive away.
Now the scream.
'Charlie, you're lying to me. You have to shoot, you have to. You cannot send me back there.
Charlie, we believed in you. You were the one we trusted…'
There was a scuffling sound behind him, and Charlie spun to see the first of the SAS troopers emerge from the doorway into the interior of the plane. A fast, trained man whose speed was electric and fear-inspiring; the line of the little gun, the Ingram, up to his face traversing with his body. More noise, louder and closer, and Charlie turned back to see the wheeling of the door behind Isaac and the flood of men intervening, scrambling aboard in their camouflage uniforms.
The lead man of the group that came from the rear of the Ilyushin was half over the fastened-down drinks trolley when the implications of what was happening swirled through Isaac's dulled comprehension. He seemed to launch himself forward, not at Charlie, but at the space beside the body of the Israeli, the few vacant inches of carpet where Rebecca's gun lay, Charlie knew the meaning of that last gesture of defiance, could have swung his foot towards the pistol, kicked it clear or trapped it beneath his shoe, and he did nothing. All of the alternatives were there, available to him, but he stayed back, rooted and detached.
Edward R. Jones Jr had understood not a word of the screaming appeal that Isaac addressed to the Englishman. His ears still sung from the explosion of the bullets, and he had seen the entry of the troops from the forward door, was unaware of those who moved behind him. To his own mind the situation was clear-cut. Elbowing his wife hard in the stomach he heaved his considerable frame out of the seat, pitching himself into Isaac's path. Much of his weight landed on the back of the young Jew, sufficient to deter his momentum, cause him to flinch from his target, lose sight for the fractional and vital second of the gun that he stretched for.
Alone the American and the Jew wrestled on the floor, and then, as if a signal had been given, the passengers that flanked them rose from their seats and threw themselves into the melee.
Charlie lost sight of Isaac. He saw the face once, one that held terror and shock and surprise, then could not find it. Fists from the teachers; the dark, flying boot of the farmer; the pummelling of a straight arm that wore a suit and had buttons at the cuffs. He was brushed aside, a quick, fast push, and his view of the writhing scrum was obscured by the trim blue uniform that he knew was worn by Anna Tashova. Her flat-soled shoe in her hand, beating without aim, without direction into the melee. He made a feeble attempt to pull some of the bodies clear, but he created no impression and soon sagged back on to the armrest of a seat.
The SAS men cleared the aisle. One bellowing into a megaphone that all should stay in their places, the rehearsed drill, others dragging and tearing at the passengers – Russians, Italians, and last of all the American.
His face blooming with a mouth-breaking smile, Edward R. Jones Jr held out his great fist to Charlie. Enveloped in it was the pistol.
'I think I was just about in time for you. Perhaps you'd care to look after it.'
Charlie took the gun without response and looked past the American, already busy manoeuvring himself back over his wife's legs while she reached up and clung with linked hands around his throat. Isaac was there, uncovered now, visible and violated. Angry blotches on his temples, weals Where there would soon be blood at his cheeks, his shirt ripped open to expose the reddened patches against his ribs, trousers at his knees to expose the particular vengeance of one. But he was alive, and conscious, and his chest heaved as he struggled to replace the air lost to his lungs.
Nausea rising through him, welling from his stomach, Charlie found he couldn't take his eyes off the boy. He strained to hear what Isaac tried to say.
'Charlie, for the last time, you have to do it. Don't let them send me back. Please, Charlie.'
' It's not like that, Isaac. You're not going back, that's what they told me.*
The boy tried to laugh-bitter and shrill, till the sounds merged with 'his tears.
'Don't give me that crap, Charlie. Shoot me, for fuck's sake do it '
The last cry, the last plea, the last moment of faith for a stranger. Charlie felt the pressure of the gun handle where it rested against the softness of his palm, his fingers twined round the trigger guard. He tried to think back to what the control tower had told him, the way the response had been phrased, the words of the policeman, whether they had been specific, whether there was room for interpretation. He couldn't remember the exact words, the phrasing, but the impression had been there: that they wouldn't send them back. Or was that just what you wanted to hear, Charlie? And the little bastard didn't believe him anyway. So what now? He saw that Isaac had closed his eyes, clamped his lids together. It's what he wants, begging you, cringing to you, because he thinks that you alone among all the army of enemies can rescue him. He believes in you, Charlie, believes you can do it. Don't hide, not behind what the control tower told you, don't shelter there. Do you kill him or not? Can't pass the buck any more, no one else to catch it Do you kill him, Charlie? He seemed to see a boy in handcuffs pulled by the troops towards a prison wagon and the death cell of Nicosia Central, same height, same youth, same hopelessness, and you'd fingered him, Charlie. And another in Aden who was dead in the gutter with the rubbish, shot in the temple and quivering, and you fingered him, Charlie, told the squaddies where to look.
And there are more, who are pushing the weeds up, that you could make a living, earn your shilling. Haven't there been enough, Charlie, haven't you finished sending the bright-eyed kids on their way? But if it isn't Charlie Webster it will be someone else, a bloody Russian, and only that after all he'll go through first. Don't know, do you, Charlie? And you've not time to find out The gun was at his side, held loosely, unmoving.
The SAS hauled Isaac to his feet, one on each arm, not unkindly and with only that amount of force that was required to shift him, unprotesting, to the back of the aircraft. He looked back once at Charlie, before the caged face had turned, to be replaced by the matted black hair highlighted by a tremor of blood.
A set of motorized steps were driven to the forward door of the Ilyushin. By the time the first of the passengers clambered uneasily down to the oil-streaked concrete supported by a line of soldiers, their rifles dung, the corpses of David and Luigi Franconi had been covered with the scarlet blankets of the ambulance stretchers.
Anna Tashova, her right shoe still adrift, hobbled the first few steps on the tarmac on the arm of her navigator, before seeming to collect herself, disengage and walk unaided.
The teachers, like worried sheepdogs, penned the children together in a single cohesive group that stood and watched with fascination the bulging heaps that were covered all except the footwear; the one of polished leather still shining and immaculate, the other a tainted, dirt-torn canvas.
The Italian delegation of the Party subdued their traditional ideology and made the gesture of the cross over their chests as they reoogniized what the blankets hid.
Edward R. Jones Jr had his arm around Felicity Ann and had readjusted his 'handkerchief bandage so that the coagulation of the scalp blood showed clearly. He remembered to adjust his camera to compensate for sunshine of the exterior.
The man who might have been a farmer was triumphant.
As best they might they scrambled on to an airport apron bus, and one of the Foreign Office interpreters told them there would be hot meals and beds and baths at a nearby hotel, and that an official from the Russian Embassy in London was waiting there to greet them. There was no shouting, no cheering as the bus pulled away, none believing there were grounds for self – congratulation, and the very smell and filth of their bodies humiliated
