The explosive, the timer, and the detonator had been supplied to a plump-faced Jordanian called Nezar Hindawi by senior officers of Syrian Air Force Intelligence. It was intended that the pregnant Miss Murphy would be blown out of the sky along with all the passengers and crew, that the disintegrating aircraft would crash in the mountains of Austria, that all evidence of guilt should be destroyed.
Holt's mind was dead to his surroundings. His head ached from the excess of alcohol that he had consumed the night before. But sitting in that same departure lounge should have made him think of those events. In reprisal the government of the United Kingdom had broken diplomatic relations with the Syrian Arab Republic. Sir Sylvester Armitage had gone into the folklore of Foreign and Commonwealth with his booming "Bloody Nonsense". Sir Sylvester Armitage had been targeted, and Miss Jane Canning had walked in front of him onto the steps of the Oreanda Hotel in Yalta. The beginning of this story was in this departure lounge, leading to Gate 23 of Terminal One, months before. Holt sat with his chin on his chest and the throb in his temples. Crane sat and slept. Percy Martins sat and pondered the final elusive clues of the day's crossword.
A little before 5.00 a.m., in a deep grey dawn haze, a British Airways Tristar slammed down onto the tyre-scarred runway of the international airport east of Tel Aviv.
It was just 29 days since a trio of British diplomats had boarded an aircraft at Moscow's Vnukovo airport for a flight to the Crimea.
10
In the same jeep, with the same silent driver, Abu Hamid escorted his two chosen recruits to the Yarmouq camp.
Both were 17 years old. All of the way back from Damascus the previous day he had considered which of his sixty he should proposition.
Mohammed was the most obvious choice because he was always the loudest to complain at the boredom of the training, to harangue his fellow recruits of time wasted when they should have been carrying the war into the Zionist state, he would eat, chew, choke on his words. The second, Ibrahim, had been brought to Abu Hamid's notice by the murmured accusation that he was a thief, that he pilfered the paltry possessions of his fellow recruits. Well, he could thieve to his content in the state of Israel. The choice had been made by Abu Hamid alone. He had found Fawzi gone when he had returned to the camp. Gone smuggling, the bastard, gone to organise the early summer cropping of the hashish fields, to gather his cut from the merchants who traded in transistor radios and Western liquor and fruit and vegetables out of the Beqa'a. He had seen both men separately in his tent. He had spoken to them of the glory of the struggle against Israel, and of the love of the Palestinian people for the heroism of their fighters, and of the money they would be paid when they returned. Both men, separately, had agreed. Easier for Abu Hamid than he could have dared expect. The exhortation and the bribe, good bedfellows, working well together. He had wondered if they were frightened, if they dreamed of death. He wondered if the one guessed that he had been chosen because he had made a bastard nuisance of himself in the tent camp, the other because he was whispered to be a thief.
Abu Hamid cared not at all what they knew.
The jeep was stopped at the entrances to the Yarmouq camp: the sentries radioed to Administration for an officer to come.
Abu Hamid whistled quietly to himself. He had the statistic in his head, their chance was one in 100. A one in 100 chance of his seeing them again.
It was the Brother who came to the gate. Abu Hamid saw the loose empty sleeve of the Brother's jacket. He told the Brother the names of the two men that he had brought, he watched as the Brother peered inside the jeep at the two men, weighing them. The Brother gave Abu Hamid two sealed envelopes, then politely asked Mohammed who was the boaster and Ibrahim who was the thief to come with him.
He watched them go. He watched the barrier lift for them, fall after them. He saw the camp swallow them.
He tore open the first envelope. The form carried the heading of the Central Bank of Syria. It told him the number of an account in which the sum of 5000 American dollars had been lodged in his name. His chortling laughter filled the front of the jeep. Abu Hamid owned nothing. He had no money, no things even that were his own. He felt his chest, his lungs expand with the excitement; his head sing. He ripped open the second envelope. A single sheet of paper, a handwritten address.
He pushed the form of the Central Bank of Syria into the breast pocket of his tunic and buttoned it down, he thrust the address into the driver's face. The driver shrugged, started the engine, turned the wheel.
When Abu Hamid looked back at the gate he could no longer see the backs of the Brother or of Mohammed and Ibrahim.
He was driven into the centre of Damascus.
The jeep driver seemed to pay no attention to traffic lights at Stop or to pedestrian crossings. Away from the wide streets, into the warren alleys of the old city. Past the great mosque, past the colonnade of the Roman builders, past the marble Christian shrine to John the Baptist. Through the narrow roads, weaving amongst the cymbal clashing sherbet sellers, past the stalls of spices and intricate worked jewellery, past the tables of the money changers, past the dark recesses of the cafes, inside the vast sprawl of the Souq al Hamadieh. Only military vehicles were allowed inside the tentacles of the souq lanes, and only a military vehicle would have had the authority to force a way through the slow shuffling morass of shoppers, traders. He supposed he could have bought a street, he thought he could have cleared a table of jewellery, a shop window of stereo equipment, a clothing store of suits, he had in his tunic breast pocket a bank order form from the Central Bank of Syria for 5ooo American dollars. He could have bought flowers for Margarethe, champagne for Margarethe. He could take her to restaurants, the best, and order a feast of mezza and the burgol dish of sweet boiled crushed wheat and the yalanji dish of aubergines stuffed with rice and the sambosik dish of meat rissole in light pastry and unleavened bread and as much arrack as they could drink before they fell.
He could buy her what she wanted, he could buy himself what he wanted. He had been paid for the success at the Oreanda in Yalta.
The driver stopped. He pointed. He pointed down an alley too narrow for the vehicle. He wrote on the paper beside the address a telephone number to call for transport back into the Beqa'a.
Abu Hamid ran. Shouldering, pushing, shoving his way through the throng.
He saw the opened door, the stone steps.
He ran up the steps. The wooden door faced him.
The handle turned, the door swung.
"Well done, sweet boy, well done for finding me."
His Margarethe, in front of him. Her fair hair flopped to her shoulders, her body sheathed in a dress of rich wine-coloured brocade. His Margarethe standing in the heart of a quiet oasis, in a room of cool air, standing in the centre of a faded deep sinking carpet, standing surrounded by hanging dark drapes and the heavy wood furniture, intricately carved. He thought it was the paradise that the Old Man of the Mountains had spoken of, the paradise of the Assassins.
"Wasn't I good to find it, wasn't I good to find such a place for us?"
No questions in his mind. No asking himself how a foreigner with only the handout crumbs from the table of the regime could find paradise, quiet, clean comfort, amongst the alleys of the souq. He was kissing her, feeling the warm moisture of her lips, scenting the hot skin of her neck, clutching the gentle curves of her buttocks then her breasts.
The news was bursting in him. He stood away from her. He beamed in pride. He pulled the form from the Central Bank of Syria from his pocket.
"A piece of paper…"