"My abject apologies, colonel. I will deal with the offender at once…"
The colonel commandant stood. "You will do nothing of the sort. You will get it into your head that I have the authority to detain the entire cadre until a full investigation has been carried out."
The commander thought of Abu Hamid coming panting to the Volga car. He thought of the Kalashnikov in the sacking, hidden in the large shopping bag of the Simferopol beryozka souvenir store, and, hanging from his hand, the rifle listed as "lost on manoeuvres".
"But our aircraft…"
"Fuck the aircraft. A serious breach of discipline has taken place amongst unsupervised personnel."
"We have to take the aircraft." The bombast gone from the commander. Nervous and wheedling now. "It is of critical importance that we take the aircraft."
"A fortnight's delay, a thorough investigation, will teach these hooligans the authority of discipline."
"It cannot happen."
"Don't tell me what can or cannot happen. It should happen and it will happen."
Out of the confusion in Yalta would soon come order.
The commander shivered. The trap would close.
"I make a deal with you."
"You are in no position to offer me a deal, military regulations are not subject to negotiation."
"Give me a pistol…"
"For what?"
"And a mop and bucket…"
"For what?"
"And access to the guard room."
"For what?"
"So that I can shoot your hooligan and clear up the mess and remove your problem."
The colonel commandant blanched, sat down. "You would do that?"
"With my own hand. Give me the pistol."
The knife was returned to the drawer. "Take him with you, then. Take both of them and punish them at home."
"An admirable solution. The injured man is fit to travel?" He was told that the injured man could certainly fly.
The commandant regarded the Palestinian with disgust – and with awe.
He told his duty officer to send the bus to the gymnasium.
Even in the crowded interior of the bus, 58 seats for 61 personnel, and the luggage filling the rear boot and the aisle between the seats, the commander thought that Abu Hamid was a man apart, dreaming his own dreams in his own privacy. The man from Struggle Command sat pale at the back of the bus with his left arm in a sling. The man from Sai'iqa stood in the aisle at the front, beside the commander, in handcuffs. They drove out of the gates. Only the commander and Abu Hamid and the man from the Struggle Command and the man from Sai'iqa refrained from cheering as the barrier was lowered behind them. Through the drab city where a greyness hung that even the sunlight could not lift, past the Ukraina Hotel, and over the wide bridge spanning the Salgir River, and past the museum and the terraced parkland and the railway station, through the industrial estates, out towards the airport.
Around the perimeter of the airport fence. Waved through the gates into the military section. Past the buildings and the control tower, out along the edge of the tarmac.
The sun was low in the west, and it hit the silver lower belly of the Antonov transporter. The Antonov was decorated with the green and white and black roun-dels of the Syrian Air Force. The commander's breath squeezed between his teeth. Military bandsmen were grouped around a rostrum. There were steps in position at the forward door. A fuelling tanker was driving away.
From his hip pocket the commander took a folded khaffiyeh scarf, shook it open and wound it round his head and his face, as if he were a revolutionary fighter for Palestine, not an embarking passenger at the military section of Simferopol airport in the Crimea. As he descended from the bus the commandant's transport drew up. The camp instructors, impeccably turned out, jumped down from their truck.
The 61 men were lined up in two platoon-sized squads. The anthem of the Soviet Union was played by the Red Army band, interminable, and they were a single phonecall from disaster. A phone call from Yalta to Simferopol. The band struck havoc with a fighting march of the Palestine revolution. In his ears the bell of a telephone screamed.
The colonel commandant, cold and contemptuous, scarcely pausing for the interpreter, addressed the men.
If they had been seen transferring from the Volga to the jeep in the car park… In the mind of the commander the bell of a telephone clamoured.
"Our Party supports and will continue to support peoples fighting for their freedom. We will never agree to the unacceptable American demands that the Soviet nation should cease to support its friends."
The commander stood at attention in front of his men. Only the major who was his friend, only Major Said Hazan, would have dared to launch the plan. Such daring, such brilliance. He pleaded for the speech to end.
"I wish you good fortune in your war for the regaining of your homeland. Long live Free Palestine. Long live the Soviet Union. Long live our friendship of i r o n… "
The final words were drowned by the starting of the engines.
A ripple of applause from the two ranks of instructors behind the colonel commandant was lost in the aircraft's engine roar. The colonel commandant and the commander exchanged salutes, shook hands without warmth. The Palestinians gathered their luggage, and then scrambled to get aboard.
The commander came last, gesturing that Abu Hamid should be ahead of him. They threaded their way around the wooden crates that filled the centre of the hold and looked for the canvas seats, their backs to the fuselage. The light from the doorway was blotted out, a member of the aircrew turned the locking handle.
A terrible tension in the commander as the Antonov inched forward and started to swivel. He seemed to hear in his mind the ring of a telephone in the colonel commandant's office, and the squawk of a radio in the control tower. His stomach was knotted – they could still be brought back. The member of aircrew was yelling at him above the drive of the engines for his belt to be fastened.
Four hours and three minutes after an incident in Yalta, the Antonov transporter lifted off the long Simferopol runway. It took a course, as it climbed, to the south west and crossed the shore line of the Crimea close to the old battlefields of Sevastopol and Balaklava, then swung south over the darkening Black Sea. The aircraft had prior permission to overfly Turkish airspace, a standard arrangement. Ahead of it was a flight of two hours and 20 minutes, cruising speed 450 miles an hour, altitude 25,000 feet. Within 18 minutes the four giant Kuznetsov NK-12MV turbo-prop engines had carried the Antonov beyond Soviet jurisdiction.
The captain made the announcement. The excited yelling rang inside the aircraft. The commander sat slumped, drained of the energy to celebrate. Beside him he saw that Abu Hamid sat back in his seat, swaying with the motion of the aircraft. The commander thought the killer was at peace, and marvelled. Moving down the aisle towards them, steadying himself against the lashed-down crates, came Major Said Hazan.
The question was in the smooth child's stomach skin around the major's eyes.
"It was successful," the commander said. "The target was destroyed."
Abu Hamid saw that the major wore smart Syrian Air Force uniform, but his face was hidden by a wrapped wool scarf and his head was hidden by his wide peaked cap. Only the eyes were for him to see. Abu Hamid leaned forward. There was pride in his voice.
"There was a girl, with the ambassador, she too died."
Major Said Hazan ducked his head in acknowledgement, clasped the shoulders of the two men each in turn, with a leather-gloved hand. He made his way back to the cockpit.
The landfall would be high over the Turkish town of Samsun, the flight path would be above the central Anatolian mountains, the Syrian frontier would be over-flown east of Aleppo, and then the long descent to Damascus.
The words as taught him in the camps of Damascus before the journey to Simferopol were soundness in the throat of Abu Hamid.