Authors: Gerald Seymour
For the man it was instant nightmare, too consuming for him to question Jimmy's identity, and there was the gun. Meekly he led the stranger to the back room and pointed to the telephone. It was an automatic response that led him to subdue the volume of the television programme he had been watching. Fingers spun the dial.
Jones's direct outside line number.
'Jimmy here, Mr Jones. They're holed up in Richmond.
Chisholm Road, just by the park. One's in difficulty, not fatal, but he'll have a hard time. They've rifles and grenades, same stuff as earlier. Police aren't here yet, but they'll be coming when the local worthies report gunfire up and down their discreet little track. First impression is that they know what they're at, taking all the basic precautions . . . '
Through the house Jimmy heard the penetrating wail of a police siren. He put the telephone down without explanation and ran back through the house and front door, careering into the centre of the road to wave down the patrol car. He saw the officers inside flinch away, then remembered he still held the PPK. He showed them his plastic-coated identity card - the answer to all problems -
with the black and white mug shot from the days before his face filled out with age.
'Don't go any further,' he snapped. 'First thing, one of you get round the back, the other clear the street. Boyos from the London effort tonight are in the end house, one on the right side. They're littered with hardware, so go careful.' As an afterthought he asked the obvious. 'Have they issued you with firearms?'
The policemen were both young, not out of their twenties. They shook their heads, apprehension running deep.
'Well, don't just sit there. If you haven't got them it's tough. Showbiz. One of you'll still have to shift round the back, the other call up the bloody cavalry.'
Within a quarter of an hour the house was sealed to the outside world. Police marksmen with FN rifles had taken up positions outside across the street facing the house.
Others lay in the garden at right-angles to its front door.
Four were against the back fence and with them were the local force's two attack-trained alsatian dogs. A portable searchlight, short and tubular, erected on a tripod, and powered by a noisy insistent generator, projected its high intensity beam against the face of the house. The building itself was eerily still, as if contaminated by plague, quar-antined, no movement and no noise around it, great shadows thrown on the brickwork by the roses that the family had so carefully nurtured. At the bottom of the street were the fire engines, motors ticking over, blue hazard lights circling perpetually, and further back the ambulances with their rear doors opened and the red-blanketed stretchers laid ready at the roadside. This was where the other residents of the street had gathered. Adults still dressed, children in their night clothes and wrapped in anoraks and overcoats against the chill of the evening.
There was little talk among them, just the overwhelming sensation of shock that such a thing should happen in their street, in their private preserve.
The order had already been issued that no instruction concerning reaction operations should be broadcast over police short-wave radio, and no information issued to the press unless from authorized police public relations at Scotland Yard.
'We have to cocoon them,' the station superintendent said. 'Cut them right off till the VIPs arrive and announce the Great Plan. In the meantime no sense letting them just twiddle a few knobs on a radio set and have an earful of what we're up to.'
'Who's coming down?' asked Jimmy.
'Half bloody London. They're leaving the PM and the Queen in charge, far as I can make out. The rest are hot-footing it over here. Assistant Commissioner, Home Secretary, Defence people, a man called Jones from your crowd, scores of them.'
'Let's hope they bring some changes of socks,' said Jimmy. 'They can take a long time, these things.'
it can take a long time or it can take five minutes.
That's a political decision.' The superintendent walked away.
In the back of the official car that sped south-west out of London toward Richmond Jones felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Had the pair of them boxed up: that had been the gist of the message from the Scotland Yard Operations Room. Would just be a matter of sitting it out, waiting for them to get tired of their predicament once they'd been convinced of the hopelessness of their situation. Might lose a hostage or two - unlikely though, and anyway they were expendable, weren't they? Probably get everyone out alive; it was reasonable to assume so on past performance. That would tie it up neatly, avoid the martyrdom that Jimmy would want to award the Arab.
No more killing, no more slaughter, and a finish to this lunatic hysteria that had been gripping everyone in the department the last five days. And the department had done well; that would have been noticed.
The Prime Minister sat at the end of the table, the cigar nestling in the fingers of his right hand. It was unlit and little more than a theatrical prop, but he liked to have it there, particularly when decisions had to be made. There were four other men at the table. On the Prime Minister's right the Commissioner of Police for the capital and the Permanent Under Secretary for the Ministry of Defence.
On his left the Director General of the Security Services, and further away a middle-ranking Civil Servant from the Home Office.
The Prime Minister had opened the meeting - begun as his dinner guests were still finding their way on to the pavement outside Number Ten — by asking the Commissioner to report on the latest situation at the house.
A detailed, clipped account. Without waste, no adjec-tives for effect, rhetoric removed. The policeman concluded, it's basically a classic siege situation, of which we have some experience of our own but on which there is much international information to fall back. They have three hostages, they are proven killers, one of them is confirmed injured. As yet we have no demands, but it's early for that.
They'll follow, and when they do they'll be wanting a plane out. These men are liable to be in a highly unstable condition after their failure earlier in the evening. In my submission, time as much as anything else will calm them down. Otherwise you have a potential bloodbath.'
The Prime Minister shifted his weight, faced the Director General.
'I've not much to add to that. Except that we believe that our man has wounded . . .'
'Your marksman,' the Prime Minister interrupted, 'the one that you put such faith in.'
'. . . our man has wounded the Irishman, McCoy. Our assessment is that McCoy would probably be the more skilful of the pair, in the tactical sense, that is, but that his resolve may not equal the Arab's. We would believe that if it came to a shoot-out in the house then the greater threat to the lives of the hostages and of the storm party would come from the Arab.'
So ridiculous, thought the Prime Minister. Intelligent men, all of us, people to see, work to be done, beds and families to be getting to, and all sitting round a table in the seat of Government discussing the form, the betting card on who kills best - the Celt or the Oriental. Nonsensical.
'Mr Dawson, we move into your realm. What are the considerations we have to weigh in contemplating the storming of the house?' The Prime Minister was looking past the Director General to the young, lean and shadow-pallored man who had to that moment taken no part in the discussion, only scribbled comprehensive shorthand notes on a small lined pad.
'With respect, sir' - Dawson spoke at a speed that matched his writing, not looking up from his papers, but in a low voice so that the others had to strain forward to hear him - 'the business we face is not that different to the proceedings of the Lord Chief Justice's Court. We can only deal with previous case histories, with other judgements. It is unlikely that there will be special circumstances that will give us an option that has not faced other authorities here or on the Continent or in the United States when challenged with the same problem. I submit that we have to look at the solutions that have been attempted or discarded in the past. First, the best documented: the Olympics attack. In Munich the Germans were confronted with an end-of-terrace building, but they were dealing with a larger group of hostages, and many more men in the attack squad. The Police President of the City considered the use of incapacitating gases and eliminated them as too slow.
They also considered gaining access to the house next door and placing explosive charges against the common wall and blasting an entry that way. This was rejected, too: potentially dangerous to the hostages and also unsatisfactory if their exact location in the building could not be pin-pointed. So they relied in the end on luring the Black September team into the open and assaulting them with selected marksmen. Result: a fiasco. In the United States, in the Washington Court House siege, the authorities took their time, stalled. After many hours they managed to provide a key to the hostages, secreted in the supplies they were permitted to send in, but they had some high-quality people imprisoned who were able to make decisive use of the help given to them. I think that is unlikely to apply in this case. The Israelis themselves - and they believe they have a certain unmatched expertise in these matters — stake all on heavy frontal assault backed by diversionary fire, heavy fire. They risk everything on speed and finely worked-out timing. You will be aware, sir, that the terrorists die, but they take a high proportion of the hostages with them. Probably unacceptable in our circumstances.'
There was no shuffling of papers, scraping of feet, stifled coughs. Dawson was the expert, with a mastery of a vague and untested subject. It was easy to see that on his ability and conclusions rested the lives of many.
'The Dutch faced a different type of situation in the prison siege at Scheveningen in the autumn of 1974. They determined to enter one heavily locked door, the only point of access to the prison chapel. But they had certain knowledge through eyewitnesses and electronic aids of the precise positions of hostages and captors. They waited till they were satisfied the terrorist faction had been lulled into false confidence, then used a laser beam to burn out the lock, accompanied by massive diversionary noise. That operation was completely successful. I should stress that British experience is in the field of the waiting game. It is the tactic most generally advocated. As a strategy it is probably applicable more to the domestic problems of criminals or IRA-type terrorists, less useful in dealing with international groups — Palestinians or Red Army of Japan.
If you freeze the latter type out you are then faced with the legal processes and the probability of reprisals with the aim of freeing your prisoners.'
'How soon could we mount an effective attack on the house?' The Prime Minister wanted it over, completed.
The other men could see that. Easy to recognize, the fear of a drawn-out bartering for life. Endless negotiations as they had witnessed in Germany and France and Greece and Italy, and then government capitulation to the power of the automatic rifle, the primed explosives.
Dawson said, it's well documented that the most favoured time for assault is just before dawn. Give or take a few minutes, but it's round four o'clock. Doctors will tell you that medically this is the time of least resistance -
it's when the elderly die, the blood gets colder then. And we start with the advantage that these men will be tired.
They have been under pressure for many hours now, since the weekend. They need to rest. If one is hurt then that puts greater stress on the other, but he too must relax at some stage. So tomorrow morning — it could be done then, as soon as that. But the earlier you attack the greater the risk. Whatever their capabilities these two men will still be attempting maximum performance. You would be leaving no time to wear them down, blind-alley them.'
The idea of the laser appealed to the Prime Minister. He talked frequently in his public speeches of the need for technological advance in the country; his opponents said he was obsessed with gadgetry, more interested in the machines of industry than the men and women who manipulated them. He was close now to the decision for which the four men waited.
'Two questions, Mr Dawson. Could we produce the laser by the time tomorrow morning that you have specified? And what sort of diversions would you think necessary?'
It was William Dawson's value to those that he advised that he seldom answered unless certain of his information.
The availability of the cutting beam caused him to hesitate before committing himself.
'Probably we could get a laser from industry, certainly from Imperial College. It does not have to be a particularly refined or sophisticated model. Whether the necessary authorization and personnel could be obtained in the next five hours . . .? As for the diversions, I would suggest considerable noise for five-minute periods, every twenty minutes or so. Engines revving, fire brigade sirens, shouting radio chatter. Build it up, then let it fade, but keep it up in the pattern through the night till the small hours. They'll be accustomed to it, familiar, by the time we want to use the laser, its noise covered, it would take about fifteen seconds to open the front door, not more.'
'You have the authorization, Mr Dawson. Get the damned thing.' The Prime Minister was bubbling now, effervescent, decision-taking, the broth of politics. Facing the Civil Servant who sat beyond the police commissioner, he said, 'Mr Harrison, I want the Special Air Service to assault the house in the small hours of tomorrow morning.
I would be unconcerned if the Arab should not survive the entry.'
The commissioner reacted quickly. 'With respect, this is a Metropolitan Police district. Several serious crimes have been committed in that overall responsibility area, and we are quite capable through our Special Patrol Group of mounting the necessary assault. It's a slur . . .'
'Commissioner,' said the Prime Minister coldly, folding his spectacles, the discussion completed. 'I am interested in results, not sensibilities. If you ask Mr Dawson I am sure that he will explain in great detail that one of the few successful legacies handed down by the Munich police after Furstenfeldbruck was the certain knowledge that in future all similar operations should be placed squarely in the hands of the military.'