Never far from his mind was the image of the darkened, cloaked figure he had seen in the room. He felt a sense of frustration that the Irishman had not taken what he had said more seriously, and felt affronted by the casualness with which his revelations had been greeted. And when the sun was gone, and McCoy still showed no sign of moving, Famy had just squatted down on the sleeping bag and waited for him to get up.
'You can go downstairs if you want to,' McCoy said.
Famy shook his head, irritable at his own reluctance.
'They won't eat you, you know. They're just ordinary kids.'
'I'll wait.'
'Please yourself,' McCoy said. He lit a cigarette, smoked it with consideration while Famy silently watched, flicked the ash successively on to the floor, and then when it was spent ground the tip out on the boards. Then he climbed out of the bag.
Standing in his underpants and vest, he stared directly at Famy.
'Have you done this sort of thing before?' he said, not much more than a whisper, but demanding an answer.
Famy wavered, avoiding the other man with his eyes, reluctant, hurt.
'No. No, I have not before. It was planned that I should have moved into Israel, that I should fight there, a mission over the fence into the North. Then they had the information on Sokarev, and his visit, and all was changed for me. I was taken from the original plan.'
'Have you been in action before? I mean, have you fired a gun — in anger?'
'Only in training. I have never fought.'
Famy struggled to control what he thought were the inadequacies of his answers. it'll be difficult to get near the bastard, you know that?'
'With preparation, there is always a way.'
'You don't mount a thing like this on wishful fucking thinking.' McCoy showed his impatience. 'You have to know what you're about. You can't just breeze in… ' it is unnecessary to talk to me as a child.' Famy cut McCoy in mid-sentence. His speech was clear, soft, almost sing-song. The Irishman retreated.
'Don't get me wrong. I wasn't suggesting… '
'Well, don't speak to me as if I were a fool. If you want no part in the rest, say so now. We can separate — your role forgotten.'
'There is no question of that.' McCoy stopped. The voices and music carried up to them. Neither spoke for four, five, six seconds. Then McCoy said, 'I say there's no question of that, I'm under orders. From the Army Council. They've made a decision, and they'll stick to it. They won't go back on it. Our Chief of Staff has given his word.' He smiled, weak at the side of his mouth, feeling the cold on his skin.
The relief flooded through Famy. He reached out and patted McCoy's shoulder, girl-like, but a gesture meant as affection and gratitude.
'What do we do today?' There was excitement in his voice.
'I thought this afternoon we'd take a look at the university. Can't do that on a Sunday, all the students are back in their digs, in their lodging houses. There won't be many of them about, but a few. Would have been better yesterday if you'd showed up on time. Don't worry, I'm not blaming you. You were a bloody genius to make it here at all. I've got a car, and tomorrow we go down into the country. Where the guns are. I've got some grenades.
We don't use those much, but I was told to bring them.'
'We know about them,' said Famy.
'We'll try and hit at the meeting. It's a public place.
Should offer the best hope.'
'In Lebanon they thought there might be two opportunities. The meeting and at the airport — not as he is coming in, but when he leaves.'
McCoy said, 'The airport will be sealed, it's difficult there. The best chance has to be at the meeting. How close do you need to get to him?'
'As near as is necessary.'
'There has to be a way out.'
'We have not come here to escape. We have come to kill Sokarev.'
McCoy fumbled with his socks, turning them inside out, trying to decide which one belonged to which foot. He felt the chill of the moment. Could see again the pictures.
Those arching bodies spilling from the windows of the flats at Beit Shean, crumbling on the paving below and welcomed there with knives and axes and tins of petrol, and then the smoke and the flames; the sack-like shape pulled from the wreckage of Tel Aviv's Savoy Hotel.
Palestinians who had gone 'as near as was necessary'.
'There has to be a way that leaves us a chance of escape,' said McCoy.
'Perhaps,' said Famy, and the Irishman left it there. He was a madman, this Arab, a suicide merchant. Well, good bloody luck to him. But what to do about it? Couldn't back out, couldn't fade away from it. Orders too implicit.
Just at the time, he'd hold him back. Make his presence felt then, and when the shooting came do it with a bit of skill, with an aimed shot, not close in and blasting over open sights.
But they were not a team, and both men longed for the companionship of their own.
When he had dressed McCoy led the way downstairs.
They saw no one till they came to the front hallway, when McCoy opened the door into the main room that faced out on the street. The conversation in the room, carried on in a series of separate huddles, went on uninterrupted, but eyes and heads and bodies turned to look at them. Like the bloody zoo, thought McCoy. He stood in front of the open door, staring back, waiting for someone to speak.
They had little resolution against his gaze, and one by one the sitting, standing, crouching youths returned to their own groups. All except one girl. Famy noticed her before McCoy, then the Irishman saw her. Not pretty, rather plain, McCoy thought. A long, loose black dress, and a heavy woollen jersey pulled over her shoulders, shapeless, protection against the cold but nothing else. Ugly witch clothes, accentuating the dullness of her skin — devoid of make-up, empty of anything feminine.
Doris Lang had noticed that the two new arrivals were out of place from the moment they had come through the door of the house the previous night. She was trained to observe and make deductions from what she saw. These two did not fit the pattern that governed the other young people in the commune. She had seen the Irishman's complexion — too bright, too countrified, too healthy for life amongst the drop-outs — had noticed that his stature and bearing were divorced from those of the hand-to-mouth hippies.
There was too much command in his face for him to belong to those who could not cope with the pressure of the life outside. This one, she had decided, was strictly a transit traveller, on his way through, and using the commune for a particular purpose.
She could also sense the nervousness and unease in the movements of the willowy, dark-skinned man who stood a pace behind. He too did not belong there. His hands must have been sweating, because twice he rubbed them against his trouser-legs. He had cold, purposeful eyes, that roamed without settling across the room, always coming back to her. It surprised her that she had found nothing in their possessions last night to give her any indication of their business in the house.
She felt the two men's eyes boring into her, and turned away, unwilling to appear too curious. There was marijuana smoke drifting, cool and gentle, from the far side of the room. Smoking today had started early.
EIGHT
The car of the Israeli Ambassador came to the back door of the Foreign Office.
It was a Mercedes, low on its wheels because of the armour plating that was standard for senior members of the country's diplomatic corps. Unlike the principal transport of other embassies it carried no suggestion in the number plate as to the identity of the passenger. There was a large radio aerial attached to the rear of the bodywork at the side of the boot, and this maintained communications with the embassy building set back from the private Kensington Palace Road. Most ambassadors accredited to the Court of St James travelled with just a chauffeur for company, but in this car there were two other young men, both of whom had been issued with licences from the Home Office to carry Uzi sub-machine-guns. These lay on the floor, one in the front beside the driver, one in the back beside the Ambassador and covered from careless gaze by coats. As it had made its way through the traffic the Mercedes was shadowed by a powerful three-and-a-half-litre Rover, unmarked, and in which sat two men from the Protection Division of Special Branch.