Then he gave an order and the cordon let me through and I walked across the tarmac under the hot sun,
my right foot trying to buckle over because the heel of the shoe had been worn away by the tyre of the DC-6.
Satynovich Zade hadn't yet recognized me: he had known only that someone in the crowd not only spoke his tongue but knew his name and he wanted to find out who it was. He was still standing at the top of the flight steps as I climbed them, and when I was halfway up he stopped me with a jerk of the machine-gun. I took off the sunglasses and looked up at him.
His own eyes were still concealed by the smoked lenses, so that I couldn't see their expression; but I noticed his mouth give a slight jerk as he recognized me.
'She didn't succeed,' I told him carefully in Polish.
Then I caught movement and looked higher, beyond him, and saw Shadia staring down at me with her face dead white.
Zade had been keeping the sub-machine-gun aimed steadily at my heart, and now I saw his finger go to the trigger.
'Don't do that,' I said.
The sun was reflected on his smoked glasses as he stood above me with his head perfectly still. It looked as if his eyes were blazing, but of course it was just the reflection.
This was why Ferris had taken his time thinking about what I'd said, when I'd told him I was going aboard: it wasn't a terribly good move and I'd probably get killed; but something had to be done and if I could do it and get it right it'd mean a lot to that bastard Egerton. There was of course the ghost of a chance that I'd get away with it, and that's all we ask, when despite all we've done there's nothing more we can do to save the mission, when the only choice is to abandon it and try to live with our pride or make the final throw and hope for the only thing that can get us through:, the ghost of a chance.
I watched his finger.
'Don't do that,' I told him again. 'I'm working for Burdick, didn't you know? That gets you another hostage for nothing, and you can use me to negotiate the exchange. So don't throw away good material — you might be glad of it later,'
He didn't move.
Shadia had gone inside the aircraft.
Pat Burdick looked down at me but I don't think she was taking anything in: her skin was yellow and her eyes dull and I could see why they'd wanted a doctor on board.
Carlos Ramirez watched me with his gun steady, Zade watched me, his finger curled.
I heard the cry of sea birds in the distance.
Some kind of aircraft landed and reversed thrust, sending out a rush of sound that diminished slowly.
I watched his finger.
It'd be a quick pressure, then off again: with shells that size he only needed one shot to blow me right off the steps.
'Work it out for yourself,' I said. 'It makes sense.'
There wasn't anything else I could do now, because I didn't want to oversell the idea: it'd look as if I were worried. It was his decision to make, entirely his decision, with nothing on my side to help me. Except the ghost of a chance.
Chapter Sixteen: BOEING
'I told you,' I said. 'It makes sense.'
He didn't answer.
I watched the reflections in his sunglasses.
He kept very still.
Sunglasses are effective in two ways: they disguise the face and they conceal the thoughts in the eyes of the wearer, and in a poker-type situation that can offer a critical advantage.
I couldn't see what he was thinking.
'Find out,' he said at last, 'where we are now.'
He was talking to Shadia, not to me.
She turned away and I watched her reflected back view in his sunglasses as she went forward to the flight deck.
We were still over the ocean: the glare still lit the mouldings above the windows. I hadn't been told anything but I assumed Zade would try for Washington: Flight 378 was originally scheduled for Miami so it would carry enough excess fuel.
Shadia came back.
'We're a few minutes north-east of Miami.'
'All right,' Zade said.
She looked into my face for a moment before she turned away and went aft to where Pat Burdick was lying on a tilted seat. Sometimes during the flight from Belem I'd found Shadia staring at me from a little distance, as if she still wasn't sure what had happened. I think if I'd suddenly sprung up with a fiendish cry she would have passed straight out. I don't use a gun so my experience with them is academic but I suppose when you pump six killing shots into someone's body it must do something to you as welclass="underline" there must be a kind of rapport between you, in the giving and receiving of so much hate. For several hours Shadia had believed she'd lulled me and when she'd seen me standing there on the flight steps a: Belem it must have been psychically traumatizing.
'Do you think he would take your advice?' Zade asked me.
He meant Burdick.
'Yes, he would.'
We spoke in Polish most of the time, but he tried out some weird English phrases now and then to impress me, though I hadn't actually heard them used before. We sat facing each other: he was on the inside seat of the front row in the first-class section and I was on the steward's jump-seat I'd been searched and everything and they'd calmed down during the flight, though Zade and Sassine were still rather nervy and I had to watch what I said or they'd begin firing questions at me and I didn't want to tell them some of the answers.
Kuznetski was the quietest: his dossier had mentioned something about scientific training in Prague University and he was probably some type of bent boffin. He'd only spoken twice during the flight out of Belem and now he was sitting alone, preoccupied.
Sassine was across the aisle from us, reeking the place out with pot Zade had told him to shut up a few minutes ago and Sassine had come off his high in a swallow dive. I'd noticed on other occasions that when Zade said anything, people really listened.
'Then you can advise him not to make any trouble for me,' he said, watching me with his sunglasses.
'I don't think he wants to do that' I leaned forward. 'He wants his daughter back with him, and I'm ready to advise him to do precisely what you say. From my personal observation that is the only way he can save her.'
I tried to sound like a smooth Civil Servant, using that bastard Loman for a model, because the showdown might involve a modicum of close combat and I didn't want these people to think I was any good at it. Similarly I was trying to persuade him that me Defence Secretary was also a pushover because a determining factor in any confrontation with an adversary is the degree by which you can get his guard down in the preliminary stages.
'You have had contact with Burdick?.'
'Yes,' I said.
I hadn't.
'So you know what we are demanding from him.'
'Yes.'
I didn't.
He looked away from my face at last, turning his dark head to the window. I could now see part of his left eye, but couldn't judge the expression at this angle: he was just staring into the distant sky.
'We know that Israel has the bomb, and we know that the United Arab Republic is building one. That is the key factor in the imminent Israel-Egypt accord, already outlined by Kissinger.'
I looked beyond him to the pallid face of the Burdick girl.
Dr Costa was sitting alongside her: he was the short man who'd been pushing his way through the crowd at Belem: the "brave humanitarian". I hadn't known, until now, how slight her chances were.
A group like Kobra wouldn't come together from the ends of the earth to acquire a single nuclear bomb. They'd want more than that: fifty or a hundred of them.
'Yasser Arafat published his manifesto in Al Thawra, two months ago, in Beirut.' His head swung back. 'Did you read it?'
'I read the Newsweek interview.'