Authors: Gerald Seymour
The messages went out, coded and fast. Thirty-five minutes after the Prime Minister's advisers had taken their leave, and still short of midnight, the SAS anti-hi-jack force had been lifted by Wessex helicopter from their base camp in Herefordshire. They represented some of the most highly trained and resourceful troops in the British armed forces.
There was little equipment stowed on the floor of the helicopter, just an awesome variety of firearms.
The spasms in his shoulder came and went with increasing frequency as McCoy moved about the house, so that he needed to steel himself for the onset of pain that caused him to stop and lean against the nearest wall. There was much movement, much that he had to do, aggravating the wound, but his persistence was uppermost. Structure had to be built, the rest would come after that. He took the parents upstairs, one at a time, and laid them face down on the beds, one in the main sleeping room and the other in the spare bedroom. It required great effort for him to rip up the top sheet of the front room double bed into the narrow strips that he sought. Using his undamaged hand and his teeth he tore at the lengths that he needed to tie them. Neither of the elderly people was in a state of mind to resist him, too horrified by the suddenness of the incursion. But if they had then one well-placed blow would have won them their freedom. As it was they obeyed meekly and followed exactly the orders that he gave. When they were prone on the beds he bound their hands behind their backs, threatening to each that he would be watching the lifetime partner, and that if heard the sound of attempted escape then he would kill.
When he had finished he felt his strength drain until he was totally weak. Mingling now with the pain was a rising nausea. He flopped back against the wall behind the headboard, on the sparse single bed in the girl's room, his feet on the yellow coverlet, smearing it with street dirt. He angled his body so that his weight was borne on the left side, and in that hand he held the rifle, pistol-like, the shoulder support still folded. Like a grotesque interloper he dominated the tiny room, blond hair dishevelled and lost in a myriad of Medusa patterns, his face, with its colour from the fields of South Armagh now vanished, showing only the anger of the eyes and the ferrule lines of exertion. The stains on his jacket were not rich and red but stark, damp and soiled. He had laid the rifle across his lap and pulled from his pocket the grenades, which he placed beside his hip. The good hand, the one he now relied on, resumed hold on the trigger guard of the M1.
Till she followed him into the room the girl had not seen the wounds, but when he shifted on the bed, awkwardly and seeking the comfort that the pain denied him, the blood run was visible, and she saw too the twin holes in the cloth. She sat on the end of the bed.
'Why have you come back here? What do you want of us?'
'Time, my little girl. Time for a friend.'
'For the Arab?'
'Time for the Arab. Time for him to stretch his legs, get on his wings.'
'He has gone?'
'You saw him, he's moved on. Further to go than I have.
This is where I finish; his post is a long way yet. It's as if he hadn't left the starting line. He's the whole course to run. I'm his handicapper. Big Ciaran ensures he starts in front, out ahead of the bastards. That's the way it is, my little cash-machine girl.'
No need to talk to her, nothing could be said that mattered, just an empty face and fingers that punched a till. Meaningless. Time to think of yourself, Ciaran-boy.
Famy off on course, but the fences are higher and the ditches are deeper and they've extended the track, the bastards. We held all the cards, he thought. Now we've none of them, and the silly bugger's gone on, and to his death, and he's taking you with him. His eyes were open, but he did not see the girl, just stared to the darkness of the ceiling. He wondered how he'd go, how death would close in on him. Had thought it might be in a ditch, or in the mess of a farm yard as the cordon tightened, or on the high wire of the Kesh, or being pulled by the legs from a sniper pit by a para. But never thought of it like this, not in a room eight by ten with rabbits and daffodils on the wall, and the smell of scent and a folded nightdress under his arse.
But even as the barometer of pain circled to hideous levels, so the preciousness of life remained hard to pass up.
His eyes closed, clamped shut, his upper teeth hard down on the bottom lip, and he waved with the rifle barrel for her to come closer. He put the gun down beside the grenades and began to drag with his left hand at the jacket.
She slid along the bed to him, and as he levered himself away from the wall she looped the jacket over his shoulders and down his arms. Once he cried out. When the jacket was off and he was free of it she dropped the garment on the fluffed, sky-blue rug. He rolled on his side, doubled up and panting for relief.
'Get some water, and something to clean it.' She barely heard the words. She was gone briefly, and came back into the room with a saucepan, the steam rising from it, and a wad of bright cotton wool. When she switched on the light he opened his eyes again, and then, with his help, she took off his shirt. With care she lifted his vest over his head.
The blood had caked far down his chest - dark, dried rivulets leading to his navel. With the swabs she worked her path closer to the neat, circular wounds in the flesh.
Not much time on the arm, priority to the shoulder. She felt the skin tighten, striving for escape as she neared the place of the second bullet's entry. Instinctively she pulled him forward so she could clean the expected exit wound in his back, and saw only the skin, unbroken and stretched across the tightened back muscles.
it's still in there,' half a statement, half a question.
He nodded, and for the first she saw him smile.
it has to come out. It'll kill you.'
'All in good time,' said McCoy. 'The lad has a long way to travel. I want him far on his journey before the heavies find it's just wee Ciaran McCoy that's holding the baby.'
'What will they do, the police?'
'They'll huff and puff a few more hours, then they'll call for surrender, and we'll do nothing, then they'll have a bash at u s . . . Switch the light off!' His voice was suddenly urgent, incisive. When the room was in darkness again she could listen. Close by, down the road, there was a roar of a heavy engine as if the driver was pumping his foot up and down on the accelerator. Across from the window muffled shouts. She eased the curtain back, giving herself visibility of the road immediately in front of the house.
'There's nothing moving there,' she said.
There was some brightness from a street light, aug-mented by the searchlight beam, and though his face was half in shadow she could make out the line of his features.
'Why is it necessary to do what you have done to my parents?'
He anticipated her. 'They stay tied, and they stay separate.'
'They couldn't do anything, they couldn't hurt you.'
'I said they stay like that. . . '
'You said the police would break in. How soon?'
'Not for a day or so. They'll want time to work out a plan. Take them half a week.' He reached forward with his left hand and took hold of her arm, then pulled her so that she stretched across the width of the bed, and his head sank into her lap where her thighs came together. He remembered the afternoon in the park. Not thirty hours before, yet half a lifetime. In the darkness his breathing slowed and he lay still. Had to rest, had to go back to Cullyhanna, had to climb the hills again.
'Why didn't you use anything yesterday?' she said.
'I don't know,' said McCoy. 'I don't know.'
SEVENTEEN
Once the doctor had gone they left David Sokarev alone in his room.
The tablet he had taken, washed down with tap water from the tooth mug, had taken effect quickly, bringing on the drowsiness that conquered the terror of the earlier part of the evening. After the noise-filled, siren-blasting convoy had carried him to the hotel they had hurried him to his room, aided his undressing and readied him in his bed for the arrival of the Jewish doctor. Elkin had hovered close and maternal as the doctor bent over his patient, but Sokarev could see that his bodyguard's calm acceptance of the situation was waning, to be replaced by a morose silence. The lion had lost its mate. The two men had hunted together, worked, planned, eaten and rested together, bound in their opposites by comradeship. That was all destroyed now, by a pathetic and harmless-seeming grenade.
The assurance and confidence around the scientist when they had left for the university was another casualty of the attack, replaced with a diffidence that alternated with the fraying tempers. The Englishman should have been there, the one Sokarev remembered above all others, the one with only a given name and with the old suit. He was the one who had promised he would be beside Sokarev, who had made a joke of it all, who had laid his professionalism out for all to see in the very relaxation he had demonstrated since they had met. But he was absent, the one who was needed now. The man among all others in whom Sokarev had believed, in whom he had placed his trust.
There had been a promise.
Sokarev felt a great helplessness, isolated and remote when he spoke from his bed, the neatly folded hotel blankets high up against his striped pyjamas and across his chest.
'Where is the Englishman, the one who called himself Jimmy?' It was an interruption and cut across the low-pitched conversations that were being pursued out of his earshot across the width of the room.
'He left in chase,' said Elkin. 'After Mackowicz was killed he ran for the door. He had been shooting, there is no word of him since then.'
'He said he would be with us. Continuously.'
'Well, he's not here. No sign of him. Running the streets, no doubt, trying to pull back something from the chaos.
But something dramatic it has to be, after what has happened. The security was like a sieve. Disorganized, unprepared. A shambles they made for us.'
He came close to the bed, words barely under control, spitting his anger. 'You can understand, Professor, that from now it will be we who supervise all movements.
There will be no more outsiders making decisions, no more delegation. The Englishman that you want beside you made a grand speech about "responsibility" to Mackowicz. Where is Mackowicz now? Where is the man who gave those orders?'
The Special Branch Inspector, already feeling the ice wall that divided him from the Israelis, made no comment.
Irretrievable situation. No verbal points worth scoring, and short of currency anyway.
With the arrival of the Ambassador the men had withdrawn through the communicating door. The Ambassador, not attempting to disguise his fury, the security attache, Elkin, two more men from the embassy that Sokarev had not seen before but who carried hand radio sets. They closed the door after them, and the English policeman, unwanted and ignored, made his way into the corridor outside. Last to go had been the doctor. Just a specimen to them, thought Sokarev. Like a box of bullion, to be displayed when necessary, shifted when convenient.
Not to be consulted, not to be taken into confidence. In the last minutes before the pill took its action he heard the raised voices seeping through from the next room. Shouting, and Elkin's voice loud and demanding to be listened to, the security attache attempting to act as intermediary and being driven into irrelevance by the deep, clear-cut words of the Ambassador.
The point at issue was simple enough: the movements of Sokarev. Elkin insisted on an immediate return to Tel Aviv. The Ambassador with his superior diplomatic rank but without the specific responsibility for Sokarev's safety, required clearance from Jerusalem before the visit to New York could be cancelled.
it is impossible to justify the continuance of his journey,' shouted Elkin.
It is a way of life in the Israeli community that title and position count for little when the question of security is at stake. He could browbeat a senior diplomat in a way unthought of throughout Europe.
if they can attack here they can attack in the United States. One of our men has died already that this one speech could be made. How many more do we lose protecting him if we go to America? And for w h a t . . . ? '
'He goes for precisely the reason that he came here in the first instance. The threat was known, but we do not bow to threats . . .'
'He was a scientist, not a target dummy.'
'. .. The decision was made at Cabinet level that he should come. We will not be cowed by these people.'
'Before, that was a reasonable risk. Not now. They did well tonight, those bastards. That they missed was our luck. No credit to us. Luck, and Mackowicz.'
'The decision must come from Jerusalem.' The Ambassador spoke with finality.
'The decision is easy, Excellency. Very simple, no doubt you can answer it for me. Which way is the Professor more important? A household name, famous, and dead; a martyr to the cause of the survival of our country. That is one option. Or more important in his office, in his anonymity, with his papers and his tables and his work. It is sad you cannot consult with Mackowicz, he would pick between the options.'
There was a purple, veined flush high on the Ambassador's cheeks. He turned to the door. 'As I have said, the decision must come from the Foreign Ministry. I will relay your comments, and they will have consideration.'
'And what of Sokarev? What of his ability to go on?
Will that have consideration?'
But the Ambassador and the security attache were gone.
Elkin looked at the two new men who were to share the room with him, then twisted away lest they should see the tears that now lapped at his eyelids. Like a brother to him, Mackowicz. An elder brother, protective, dominating. And now without his stomach, intestines splayed to the winds.
He crumpled himself full length on his bed. That Sokarev was alive and breathing heavily a few feet away was an inadequate consolation.
The Ambassador, an experienced diplomat, was well versed in the art of self-preservation. His request to Jerusalem for guidance contained no suggestion of his own, and added with prominence the concern of Sokarev's remaining bodyguard. The coded reply he awaited, a jumble of numbers, arrived in the embassy communications room within two hours. After it had been de-ciphered it was brought to him.