heard her say that the key would be under the front door mat if he'd forgotten to take his own yesterday morning, and there'd be some food on the kitchen table, and please to be quiet when he came in because the children had exams at school tomorrow.
He stayed a long time in the control tower, way after the others had gathered their papers together and made noisy and exultant farewells, after the cleaners had been through with the stiff brushes for the carpet and the complaints about the stubbed cigarettes and the big plastic bags for the debris of rubbish that had accumulated; they worked around him, subdued in their normal exuberance and chatter and gossip by the hunched figure who held his hands over his eyes and who did not move, who had not even a nod of recognition for them.
Tried to blot it out of his mind, the thought of the small jet landing at Templehof, West Berlin.
The waiting car and the few courtesies that would be exchanged. Bundled into the back seat of one in the convoy that would not be at the front nor the back, but would be sandwiched against any intervention – not that there were men and women in that city who could even have begun to organize a rescue attempt. Play it by the book, wouldn't they? Because that was easiest, the simple and tried way, and that said five cars for maximum security. Through undefined channels that existed for communication word would be sent that the prisoner was on his way, and a time of arrival would be given. Half an hour, not more at the speed the cars would travel and the column would be at the checkpoint. Barriers would be raised and two groups would meet in the centre of a barren, floodlit road. Brief handshakes and the package handed over. Won't be your checkpoint, Charlie, too public; one of the remote ones, just in case anyone should witness the exchange, ask why, and have no bugger there able to answer. Wondered whether he'd struggle, the boy Isaac, whether he'd be pleading? Didn't think so, wouldn't be his style. He'd be thinking about you, Charlie, stands to reason. Thinking as he stepped forward and alternated captors, thinking why Charlie hadn't fired, thinking of it as the new hands held him. They'd spin on their heels and there'd be a new fleet of cars and a new airport divided from the first by the gorge of ideology, and the wall and the mines and the wire. Should have known, shouldn't you, Charlie, should have seen through the crap they gave you? Would have done if you weren't so bloody stupid. And if you had known would it have been different? Would the boy have been obliged?
Can't blot it out, can you, Charlie?
The air traffic controllers were less susceptible to his feelings than the cleaning ladies had been. Had to shift now, reopening the airport, needed the chair, all the holiday flights queueing up, Faro, Malaga, Naples, Valletta, Crete. And it was outside regulations f o r an unauthorized person to remain in the control tower. Mustn't keep the vacationers waiting any longer, sir, put them to enough inconvenience as it is. Polite enough about it, but they wanted him out, and left him in no doubt as to their priorities. None knew who he was, different shift coming on, and some reckoned after they'd seen him through the door that he'd been drunk.
Below a police control post was being dismantled. Charlie put his head round the door, stopping the conversation, cocking the heads inquisitively, and asked whether there was any transport going to London.
' I've been with the Foreign Office people here,' he said.
There'd be a car in about fifteen minutes, Special Branch, he could go with them. He should wait in the canteen, and they'd fetch him when they were ready to leave. So he passed the time with a cup of cooling coffee in front of him till the summons came.
They drove fast and without talk for the first hour along the All, out through Bishop's Stortford, hammering along the deserted road. It was the driver who broke the long silence.
'Did you see the little bugger?' he asked chattily, un- involved, wanting to start the dialogue.
'Yes,' said Charlie.
'Didn't look much, did he? Like we could have had him for breakfast'
They usually are,' said Charlie. Oncoming headlights lit up the faces of the driver and his companion beside him, relaxed, at ease with themselves.
' I saw him in the cells,' the driver said. 'Meek as they come. Reckon I'd have been going spare if I'd been in his shoes, going back home to face the music and all that. Fair old reception he'll have when they get their hands on him.'
'Yes,' said Charlie.
'Wouldn't care to be in his pants. Shitting myself I'd be.*
Too right,' the front passenger chimed.
I don't know why we didn't bump him off on the plane. Would have been the easiest thing. His mate's bought it, the girl's dead, could have finished the whole bloody thing then and there. Save the old RAF a mess of trouble. Did you see what he went in? Only a bloody executive jet, like old Onassis, the real red carpet treatment. No, they should have shot him on board.'
'You can't just do that,' the front passenger said. 'It's not as simple as that. We have to show we are prepared to stand up to this business. And the best way to stamp it out is to pack the blighters off home again, let them sort it out there. We don't owe the little rat anything, not a thing. Cost a fortune, this business. Cost the life of the Italian, and he had damn-all to do with what this mob are shouting about. Italian, right? So how does he get his pecker into the state of the Jews in Russia? Doesn't, does he? All he'd done is buy a ticket for a plane flight. You've got to sit on these people. Sit on them hard, that's the way you end it So the Russkies give him a rough time? Well, that's his problem, not the rest of the world's. Should have thought about that first.'
'You're a hard man,' the driver said, and they both laughed. 'What did you think about sending him back then, squire?'
' I don't know,' said Charlie. 'I just don't know.'
'Keep it tight, you Foreign Office people, don't you?'
' I don't mean that. I'm not avoiding you. I just don't know.'
'Served him right,' said the front passenger. 'If he doesn't like it he should have stayed at home.
Should have watched his telly.'
'You're right,' said the driver. 'Course you're right. But doesn't make it any nicer. Not sending him back there. Different if he was a Yank or something, but where he's going, then, that's different, that's something else.'
The car sped on, taking Charlie back to what he knew. His home. His family. His office and his work. Going back to all that was familiar where his attitudes would not be cuffed by a boy half his age. Going back to all that was safe and secure. He wondered what Parker Smith would say.
Probably be a sherry on the house, and a slapped back and the word that he'd done the section's name a power of good, and didn't we always know you still had your balls in the right place, and be making damn certain you don't get pinched again by 'operational' after all this.
' I didn't ask you, squire, but where did you see him – in the cells?' the driver, bored with the quiet, had decided to resurrect the conversation.
' I saw him on the plane,' said Charlie.
'I thought it was the SAS blokes that took him off.'
' I was on before them,' Charlie spoke woodenly, without pride, claiming no victory.
'You were the FO guy then?' The front passenger had turned eagerly in his seat, excited, something to tell the lads back in the pub behind the Yard if they made London before closing.
'Were you the one that pulled the hostage clear, then went on board and wrapped it up?'
' I was on board when it ended.'
'Jesus-that must have been something, quite something, when he blasted and all that, when all the heavy stuff was flying about. He shot the girl himself, didn't he?'
'Yes,' said Charlie. He looked at his watch, another hour at least. Felt the noose tightening.
'And the Israeli, he was killed then, was he? When the Jew fired on the girl?'
Where would he be now? High over the north German plains, or perhaps beginning to hear the descent of the engines, the lowering of the undercarriage, feeling the gusting turbulence as the air brakes were applied. Wonder whether they're talking to him, or whether he's just a parcel of bloody freight.
'Shut up, Bill,' said the driver, and as an afterthought that ignored Charlie's presence. 'Pack it in. The poor sod's had enough on his plate today without having to go through it all again with us.'
They talked among themselves for the rest of the journey. Only once did they break into Charlie's private world, when they asked him where he wanted to be dropped. He told them that Waterloo Station would do very well, and that was where they left him. They stayed in the car as he walked across the concourse fumbling in his pocket for a return ticket stub he had bought the previous morning. When he was past the barrier and disappeared
