Feisal Hanif arrived an hour later.
He rode in the back of a stretched-body silver Mercedes with green-tinted glass, and when a bodyguard opened the rear door for him his face was cruel. He had been trying to raise Hassan on the shortwave radio that was never more than a meter away from him wherever he went, and the failure to make contact boded no good for those whose job it was to carry out his orders.
Despite the heat and the humidity of this overcast day he was wearing a pale gray double-breasted suit of sober cut, and the sternest fashion commentator could have found no fault with the knot of his tie or the smooth, uncreased appearance of his shirt. He was in his mid-fifties but he had the body of a thirty-year-old: tall, upright stature, lean flesh, well-exercised muscles. His skin was exceptionally fine: very dark, the color of rich Christmas cake, and as moist. He allowed his body and the simple clothes with which he covered it to speak for themselves: not for him the flash of gold at the cuffs, the diamond tie pin or designer sunglasses. Indeed, he regarded the last as the hallmark of the truly unremarkable and refused to wear them.
People meeting him for the first time—especially women—would come away swearing that this man must have sold his soul to the devil, for there was no other way of combining health, looks, wealth, and charm. Somehow, nobody ever attributed his sterling collection of plus points to God and the angels. He had quite extraordinary presence: even when he was not speaking, one always felt a touch stifled, a little deaf.
Feisal picked his way across Emil’s unconscious form while he surveyed the wreckage, piecing the story together in his mind. Hassan sat outside on the terrace propped up against the wall, caterwauling still, but more quietly now, and Feisal’s two bodyguards stood with their hands clasped in front of them, the way he liked it. At last he turned to one of them and he said, “Fahim, would you please be kind enough to stop that noise?”
The man addressed as Fahim came briefly to attention before leaving the house. Feisal listened to the sounds of a brief scuffle on the veranda, followed by silence. The silence went on for a long time, but Feisal continued to stand there with his head ever so slightly off vertical, as if he were still listening, until two distant shots put an end to his contemplation.
“Do you think you can wake him up?” he murmured. The second bodyguard shook Emil. After a few minutes he managed to return to a semblance of consciousness, so that by the time Fahim returned to the house there was almost a coherent conversation in progress.
“Where did they go?” Feisal was asking as Fahim entered. “Which direction did they take?”
Emil shook his head. “I don’t know. I am sorry.”
Feisal had been squatting down beside him; now he rose slowly to his feet and stood in thought for a moment more. The two bodyguards never took their eyes off him. In a moment he would tell them what needed to be done and they would do it. Things were always thus.
“Two women,” he said at last. “Two elderly, unarmed women against you and Hassan.” Feisal heaved a long sigh. “I find a delicate element of comedy in all this, Emil, but the fact remains that when my mother offended me, and believe me it was for the last time, you let her go.”
The driver did not look at Feisal. A tic appeared at the side of his mouth.
“You are discharged from my service, Emil. They will take your identity card and turn you loose on the airport road. If you make it as far as your home in Mousseitbe, you will be safe.”
Sentence of death had never been pronounced with greater dignity.
Andrew Nunn arrived to find them all hunched around a TV set in the back room of the Lloyds agency, trying to make the video player work. A phone was ringing. No one answered it. After a while the ringing degenerated into a kind of intermittent death rattle and stopped of its own accord. Andrew tiptoed across the room and unplugged this phone, substituting his portable fax machine’s plug in the wall jack.
The machine was a Japanese prototype, not yet on general sale, but it had proved itself time and time again to the point where Nunn would not travel without it. Although aware of Selman Shehabi examining him through critical eyes, he ignored the Iraqi while he adjusted the settings. Only when he was satisfied did he look up and murmur, “Anything your end?”
“There are no Israelis on board that plane. No Israeli passports, anyhow.”
Andrew understood the distinction. At this stage he did not think it worthwhile disturbing Shehabi with the rumors of Tel Aviv hit teams that had begun to circulate uneasily through the international insurance community. Nunn had got word of this through a contact in Alexander & Alexander’s New York intelligence section, backed up by London War Risks Reinsurers: reliable enough sources, in ordinary circumstances. But Shehabi did not need to know about rumors. He was perfectly capable of manufacturing his own.
“We have found out how the arms were put aboard the plane,” the Iraqi went on. “They used a bus driver with access to the airport apron. The man identified Halib Hanif, Leila’s brother, as the man who approached him. A cleaner took over once the arms were within the airport perimeter, but he’s run away.”
“What’s new with the plane?”
“Baghdad is monitoring transmissions from Teheran,” Shehabi replied, with a nod toward the TV. “That’s where the videotapes ended up.”
Nunn glanced at the disorganized TV screen, politely saying nothing.
“You bring your fax with you. You are expecting developments?”
Actually, Nunn thought, my gee’s running in the two-thirty at Newmarket, and I’ve got a lot of money riding on a place. Also, things are hotting up in Jak, those ten million Swiss francs are that much nearer finding their way into my pocket, but only if I keep my delicate hand on the tiller. And since I’ll never know, never be allowed to understand my role in all this hijack nonsense, I don’t see why I shouldn’t let my attention wander a little.
“Developments,” he said diplomatically, “could occur at any time.”
He’d already spent a long time on the phone to Philip Trewin, briefing him on his contact with Halib Hanif the night before and discussing how much they ought to tell Shehabi. Nunn and Trewin were agreed on the significance of what Halib had said; both men wanted a quick, clean end to the hijack, and they were prepared to recommend concessions in the interests of speed. Selman Shehabi would not see it that way.
In the end Trewin had agreed that Nunn should decide how much to tell the Iraqi and how much to hold back. At this juncture, Nunn still wasn’t sure.
The TV screen cleared. There were pictures of the murdered South African lying on the gravel, accompanied by an Arabic sound track. One of the men standing around the set started to improvise a running translation; Nunn heard a
hoom
and recognized Dr. Milner’s voice.
“… Disobedience will attract further reprisals…. Ah, now the, the—presenter? God knows what to call him—now he’s giving us the Iranian prisoners’ names and calling … what’s he calling for? He’s calling for them to be released at once, or more passengers will … no, that’s too definite … are likely, more passengers are likely to die…. ”
The image dissolved into a fuzz of colors, to be replaced by the standard start-of-clip representation of a clock face.
“That was yesterday,” Major Trewin commented. “Here we go with this morning’s episode. Shortly after dawn; I must say, their communications are bloody efficient.”
The “presenter” was the same man. The sequence opened with a close-up of the plane. A hooded figure could be seen in the doorway. He stood there without moving, his gun held at waist level.
Trewin froze the tape. “We’re working on him. There are five names in the frame, the consensus at present being for a man called Fouad Nusseibeh. Three years ago he was operating out of the Beqaa Valley as part of Arafat’s Hawari Group, but with most of his targets in European cities. Born Jaffa, 1947, resettled to Lebanon; there’s the usual file. Our people would like it to be Nusseibeh, because he ties in with the Hanifs: part of their gang.”
“How did he join the plane?” Nunn asked.
“Fouad, if it is him, boarded at Bahrain, along with one other suspect. We’re reasonably certain that three more were on the plane when it left London: they all originated from ‘safe’ airports, Manchester, Glasgow, Amsterdam, on feeder flights, which meant they wouldn’t be faced with anything like the security they have at Heathrow check-in.”
“Any sign of Leila yet?” Nunn wanted to know.
“Positive ID of her in Bahrain, from airport staff. And"—Trewin began to advance the tape frame by frame—"watch the door, behind the man’s left shoulder … there! See it? Movement, something white, just for a second.”
“Run it through again, please.”
Trewin obliged. Nunn squatted down with his face inches from the screen, but he was damned if he could make out anything.
“Our technical bods have been futzing around on that since the tape came in, and they swear that what you can see is in fact a human figure wearing long dress of some kind, and they’re inclined to say it’s a female.”
“Inclined … what does that mean?”
“It means they desperately want it to be female and so they’re clutching at straws,” Trewin said equably. “Any other questions?”
Nunn stood up, though he continued to stare at the screen. By now the woman Leila Hanif had gotten a grip on his imagination. He kept recalling last night’s phone call to Anne-Marie.
All the way to hell to refuel and then on.
Anne-Marie understood Leila in a way he never would; how much, then, did he understand Anne-Marie?
How far would Andrew Nunn be prepared to go for his child?
“What about that other helicopter?” he said thoughtfully. “The one that caused all the trouble?”
“Allied source,” Trewin said. Butter could safely have been stored in his mouth until well past its sell-by date.
Nunn nodded, but a time was coming when he would take Major Trewin up on that. He knew that the U.S. Navy had unofficially permitted Israeli Air Force Intelligence to fly the second chopper, the one that had prompted Van Tonder’s murder, from a destroyer cruising the Arabian Sea. Other people were starting to know it too, thereby increasing the difficulty of Nunn’s task tenfold. For now, however, he merely cursed the helicopter and all connected with it before inquiring, “And what does your allied source have to report?”
“Lots of highly technical data concerning terrain and so forth.”
“What chance of a home run?”
“Sweet bugger all. They didn’t stay long, but long enough to detect the presence of explosive substances aboard the plane.”
“How the devil can they do that?”
Trewin shrugged. “God knows. X-ray cameras, perhaps; long-range telephotos: they’re not saying.”
“Home run?” Shehabi had been showing signs of impatience, and now he interrupted. “What is this home run, please?”
“Our jargon for an assault on the plane.” Trewin turned to Milner. “Tell me, doctor … how, in your view, would the Yemenis be likely to react to a proposal that the SAS, say, be sent in to rescue the passengers?”
“They’d probably take it as a declaration of war. They’re Marxists—hard-line unreconstructed Marxists.”
“What about the area where the plane went down?” Trewin asked. “What’s there?”
“Al Mahra’s scarcely inhabited; just a few Bedouins, that’s all. It’s got no asphalted roads, not even in Al Ghaydah, that’s the provincial capital. It’s the most underdeveloped part of the country. No one, and I do mean
no one,
gets permission to visit.” Milner shook a finger for emphasis. “You’ve no conception of how bleak, how desolate, that area is.”
Nunn could see that this led nowhere. “What have we got on these six Iranian prisoners?” he interrupted, “the ones being held"—a sideways glance at Shehabi—"allegedly held in Baghdad.”
“Top army men, captured in the gulf war.” It was Trewin who answered. “Plus one air force general. Extraordinary behavior. There’s a war going on. If some of your chaps get taken prisoner of war you don’t bluff out a hijack, you wait for hostilities to end or bring in the Red Cross, Red Crescent, that kind of thing. Or you negotiate an exchange.”
Nunn recognized a cue when he heard one. Trewin was inviting him to make up his mind about Halib. Best to come clean … but as he prepared to speak he felt a wave of that stomach-rippling thrill associated with roller coasters.
While he recounted the previous night’s meeting he allowed his gaze to float around the room, noting reactions. Shehabi seemed to be taking it remarkably well. When Andrew had finished, however, he was first off the mark.
“Why have you waited until now before telling us this?”
It was, of course, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, and Andrew could hardly say, Because I don’t trust you an inch, m’dear fellow; there were limits to the effectiveness of abstract truth. So instead he gave the Iraqi an explanation that sounded reasonable, if not compelling.
“Hanif’s a terrorist, pure and simple, despite his business front. I wasn’t about to waste time, commit resources, without first making a few independent inquiries of my own, particularly since I felt he was holding back on me.”
“We know for sure that Leila Hanif’s son was on the plane. What other inquiries could you make?”
“About her likely mental state, and the consequences for the passengers. I’ve spoken to a psychologist, and I’ve used independent sources to try and verify her movements over the past few years.”
This was true—he’d been hard at work all morning—though the last thing Nunn wanted was to be forced into identifying those “sources.” Shehabi looked dissatisfied. Fortunately, at this juncture the MI6 man, who hadn’t yet opened his mouth today, now seemed disposed to make a contribution.
“It would explain a lot,” he said slowly. “The whole thing’s struck me as odd from the beginning. I mean, why the South Yemeni desert? Why not a major airport, with press and TV? A hijack’s worthless without publicity. With all due respect to Dr. Milner here, why isn’t the South Yemeni government taking a hand? Jolly useful to be seen acting responsibly, I’d have thought; increase their chance of foreign aid no end. But it all starts to make more sense if the hijack’s of secondary concern to Leila Hanif.” He was growing steadily more excited. “I’d say Halib’s right to be worried. And so should we be.”