The lookout positioned beside the main door was the key which, once turned, would open up the stairway and the approach to the sitting room. But they could afford no shots, no noise which might cause the lock to jam. The panelled oak door from the dining room opened silently. Darwin smiled grimly. The theology student-turned-liberation fighter had been spending too much time on theory, his practical skills proving woefully inadequate. While he dragged at a cigarette his machine pistol lay on the chair a good pace away from the window, a pace he would never get the chance to take. Before he'd even turned a sergeant had the point of a bayonet pressed against the jugular and a hand forced over his mouth. The lookout froze, his eyes filled with fear, the bayonet point breaking the skin on his throat as he swallowed. Then he fell to his knees as though in prayer. One down.
In his heart, Darwin knew that the assault on the sitting room couldn't be as simple. The position of the hostages was critical; if they were all set apart from their captors, an exchange of fire might be risked. He glanced through the crack in the door, cursed. One of the guards was seated directly beside the hostages, facing the window where, silhouetted against the bright light, standing shoulder to shoulder and struggling for a better view, two others stood. There should have been three.
The male hostages were tied in a row, also facing the windows, but the young woman was behind them and turned towards the door. One cheek was raw red and two buttons on her untidy blouse were missing, torn away. Yet there was a light in her dark eyes which ignited as she saw Darwin's sooted face. He raised a finger to his lips; she closed her eyes, managed a small smile.
The rubber-soled boots made no distinguishable noise upon the carpet. The seated guard was felled with a blow from a rifle butt, offering nothing more than a low moan as he crumpled to the floor. Still there was no response from the men standing at the window, so overpowering and obliterating was the noise. Two soldiers stationed themselves as a wall of flesh between the guards and the hostages, another pair approached those at the window. Barrels to their backs. The captors stiffened in alarm. One accepted his fate in a flurry of raised hands and dropped weapons, but the other swung round, determined, hate in his eyes, his arm sweeping at the short barrel of the automatic rifle. All he got was the butt in his face, a blow which broke his nose and left him covered in blood. He fell to the floor, groaning. The briefest of checks on the hostages assured Darwin that all were alive, although Martin in particular, captive for almost two weeks, appeared wan and exhausted. Any attempt to elicit from them the precise whereabouts of the Bishop and the other targets was frustrated; they didn't appear to know, the noise prevented any useful exchange.
It was while he was questioning the High Commissioner that Darwin's attention was aroused by the look of alarm which suddenly was drawn across the face of one of his men. He turned to discover that the freed woman had picked up one of the many small arms left lying around and was standing over the fallen guard with the busted nose. She kicked him to attract his attention. He stopped moaning, looked up, saw a special look in her eyes, held out a bloodied, pleading hand.
Elpida let him grovel until she could see fear stretched tight across his face like a piano wire. Then she fired and blew Dimitri's right knee cap into a mush of skin and bone fragments. 'Next time, you bastard, you'll come crawling to me.'
Dimitri's body began to jerk, trying desperately to get hands around his shattered leg while every movement sent a thousand volts of agony shooting through his body. He was screaming at the top of his voice.
As though she were handing out refreshments during a hot afternoon on the lawn of the Presidential Palace, Elpida gave the gun to Darwin and went to tend to her father.
The Captain felt sick. He'd lost control, the game plan was unravelling. It seemed certain that the gunshot and Dimitri's cries of agony would have been heard by those still unaccounted for. He had the hostages secure, but the job was not yet finished. And he'd have to do the rest on his own.
As he contemplated the stairs, his mouth went dry and his finger stiffened around the trigger. He had little idea what to expect – Urquhart's briefing had only extended as far as the ground floor – and there were too many doors leading off the landing, any of which could leap open in a blaze of gunfire. Like O'Mara Street near the river in Derry, a dishevelled terraced house with peeling wallpaper and no carpet, on a miserable November day when he'd been sent to pick up an IRA suspect. At the top of a short flight of stairs there had been only two doors, but one of them had opened, just a fraction. He had hesitated – was it an innocent civilian, a child perhaps, coming from the bathroom? Or the suspect about to surrender?
The answer had come in the form of a 5.56 mm bullet fired from an Armalite which had sliced clean across his collar bone and through the throat of the corporal giving him cover from behind. They had both ended up at the bottom of the stairs, Darwin curled in a ball of pain, staring directly into the lifeless eyes of his fellow soldier. The corporal's widow had got a pension, Darwin had got sick leave and a commendation, and the IRA murderer a sentence of life imprisonment when eventually he had given himself up. That was eight years ago; he could be paroled and out on the streets in less than another two. In Darwin's dreams the eyes of the dead soldier had stared back at him for months afterwards. That wasn't going to happen again.
All the Bishop's men with the exception of the still writhing Dimitri had had their hands wired behind their backs; he grabbed the nearest and thrust him forward. Up the stairs. A shield. Insurance.
They climbed, and Darwin's senses were ringing; the nearer he came to the tin roof and the beating of the blades, the more insistent became the pounding inside his head. Even the wooden floor trembled. A sheet of metal roofing was working loose, beginning to bang methodically in the down-draught. Deafening. Like volleys of artillery fire.
Left at the top, the hallway dark and decorated like some Victorian boarding house. Prints, oil paintings, lamp shades with gently vibrating tassels, antique-stall bric-a-brac. And doors, too many bloody doors.
'You speak English?' Darwin had to shout directly into his prisoner's ear. 'I have a Masters from Bristol University.' 'You want to die?' The prisoner shook his head.
'Then you open the doors. Very slowly. And start praying your friends recognize you.'
He rebound the prisoner's hands in front of him, and they crept along the corridor, Darwin pushing his human shield, until they reached the first door. Gingerly the brass knob was turned, the door swung open – to reveal nothing more threatening than a linen cupboard. For a moment Darwin felt a fool, until he reminded himself that at least he was a fool who was still breathing.
Onward. Behind the second door was a bathroom, behind the third an unoccupied bedroom. A sense of urgency grew, he had to get on with it. Darwin wiped away the sweat that was dribbling freely into his eyes.
The next door unlatched in faltering fashion, the prisoner's damp and bound hand slipping around the polished brass. It opened a fraction, then a few more inches. And before them, back turned, looking out of the window in the pose of a statue dedicated to a Latin American warrior, stood the Bishop. Three respectful steps to his rear, attention also focused out of the window, was the missing guard. They hadn't heard a thing.
With rising confidence Darwin pushed forward behind his shield, ducking down for protection, but as they crossed the threshold his prisoner stretched out with a boot and caught the leg of a chair, enough to send it toppling. The guard near the window swivelled, his mouth opened to shout, his gun levelled. He saw the human shield, recognized his companion, and fired. As Darwin fired back, the man in his hands flinched, grew heavy and slowly toppled to the floor. Darwin could see two bubbling craters in his chest and could feel the spatter of warm blood on his own cheek.