GORDON STEVENS
Peace on Earth

COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd 1987

Copyright © Gordon Stevens 1987, 1997

Gordon Stevens asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ reproduced by kind permission of J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd from The Poems by Dylan Thomas.

‘I Believe in Father Christmas’ lyrics by Greg Lake, Peter Sinfield. Copyright © 1977 by Leadchoice Ltd, administered worldwide by Campbell Connelly & Co. Ltd, 8/9 Frith St, London WIV 5TZ.

Used by permission. All Rights Reserved.

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Source ISBN: 9780006473152

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008219369

Version: 2016-11-03

DEDICATION

For Emily and Joe, who do not know.

And Souraya and Dyala, and the family

in the photograph, who do.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Peace on Earth describes situations and events in the mid-1980s. Since then, some things have changed. The Soviet Union, for example, no longer exists.

Sadly, other things remain the same.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

Prologue

Book One

Book Two

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Book Three

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Book Four

Chapter One

Book Five

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Book Six

Chapter One

Epilogue

Keep Reading

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

The boys were nine, almost ten.

They sat on the rock, the man beside them, watching the sun rise over the valley of the Jordan, the sweep of light spreading from the east and the shadows of the night disappearing.

‘When will you tell us the story?’ they asked.

‘What story?’ replied the man.

He remembered the morning he had sat on the rock and waited, the morning he had sat on the rock and wished he had never been born, the morning he had sat on the rock and wished they had never set him free.

‘The story that began with a verse from a poem.’

‘The story that began with a dream.’

‘The story that began with the family from the far-off land.’

They knew that he was playing the game with them, that he always played the game with them, and wondered why he would not tell them. The sun was growing warmer.

‘When will you tell us the story?’ they asked again.

‘What story?’

One day, he knew, he would no longer be able to hide the truth from them. One day he would tell them.

‘The story about the little boy.’

‘The story about the little boy who was born in Bethlehem.’

He knew what they were going to say.

‘The story about the little boy who died to save us all.’

He thought about the boy, about what the boy had done when he had grown to manhood, what the boy had done when he had been their age. The shadows had gone from the land. He knew that they were old enough to know, that they were too old not to know.

‘Today,’ he said at last. ‘I will tell you the story.’

Book One

The verse from the poem

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

from Dylan Thomas

‘Do not go gentle into that good night’

The dream

The tunnel was long, filled with smoke, the flames coming at him. He was moving down it, eyes sweeping from left to right. Not his eyes, she dreamt, it was as if he was behind his eyes, as if he could see the destruction around him through the sockets of his eyes. His breathing was deep and rasping, as if it was not his breathing. She heard the voice, guiding him, telling him where to go, what to do. Protecting him, committing him. She tried to wake from the dream, to take him from the tunnel, saw the death around him, unsure whether it was his death or the death of another. He was moving on, the smoke and flames coming at him, engulfing him, as if he was descending into Hell. She heard the voice again, saw the death again. His death or someone else’s, she was still not sure. He was moving on, deeper into the tunnel. She could no longer see him.

The family from the far-off land

The weather that morning was cold, even for Moscow.

Yakov Zubko knew what it meant – that the winter would be long and hard. He rose, moving quietly and carefully so that he did not disturb his wife and children, and left the flat. The streets were still empty. By the time he reached the metro station at Sviblovo it was twenty minutes past five. He paid his fare and hurried down the stairs. There was only one other man on the platform. Yakov Zubko tried not to look at him and wondered if the man was waiting for him. Somewhere they were waiting for him; somewhere the men from Petrovka would always be waiting for him. Him and the likes of him.

He remembered the other man, the man in the house on Dmitrov, and stepped onto the train. There were three passengers already in the compartment, Yakov Zubko heard the doors shut behind him and chose a seat close to them. Never sit in a corner, never sit where they would look for you, where the men from Petrovka would think you were hiding. He looked to see what the man on the platform was doing and counted the kopeks in his pocket.

There were twelve stops to Marx Prospekt, he watched at each to see what the man who had been on the platform would do, and counted again the kopeks in his pocket. Each day he counted them, telling himself how the kopeks became roubles, reminding himself how precious was every single rouble. Precious enough now, while he had work, while the tourists were still in Moscow and he could trade with the man in the house on Dmitrov. Even more precious later when the winter froze the streets, when the hotel found out about him and threw him out, when he and Alexandra could barely afford the kasha and the vegetable soup which scarcely kept them and the children warm. Precious, too, as he and Alexandra sat together each evening and estimated how many roubles they would need, how many roubles they had managed to save since they had applied again to the office on Kolpachny Lane.

He remembered how much was in the tin they kept under the bed, remembered how much to the last rouble, and thought again of the man in the house on Dmitrov. He did not give the best prices, Yakov Zubko could have got more in the streets behind Begovaya, but the man on Dmitrov was reliable, and no matter how much he and Alexandra needed the extra roubles it was a risk even he could not afford to take.

The train arrived at Marx Prospekt. He left the station and crossed to the hotel.

Alexandra waited till he had left the flat, then crossed the room and watched him making his way along the street. He was a good man, a good husband and father: the way he played with the children, took them to feed the swans in Gorky Park, the way he left the flat each morning without waking them, not knowing that she was awake, listening to him, telling him to be careful. Even the way he did not tell her about the man in the house on Dmitrov, or the faceless men from the building on Petrovka.

She stood at the window till she could no longer see him, then turned back into the room, feeling the cold and knowing it would soon bring the winter, wondering what else it would visit upon them. He was a good man, she thought again, remembering what he did for them, how he sought to protect them from what he did, from the inevitable day when he would be betrayed and caught, how he tried to hide from her the secret of the house on Dmitrov. She knew the secret anyway, had heard him talk about it in his sleep, even knew the name of the man, had heard her husband work out in his sleep how much Pasha Simenov would pay him.

She felt the cold again. Not today, Yakov Zubko, she asked him, please not today.

The unmarked Zhiguli left the building overlooking Petrovka at six and was in position by six fifteen. Iamskoy let the engine run, keeping the car warm, and instructed the militiaman at his side to make the first entry in the day’s log. The operation was routine but important, the sort of assignment that had been gathering momentum since those with political connections at Petrovka had begun to prepare for the tide of change that would sweep from the Kremlin now the new guard had taken control there. Big enough to make the statistics look good, especially if they netted someone deemed undesirable by the state, even more so if they managed to ensnare a foreigner upon whom they, or someone else, could exert the usual pressure, but small enough not to interfere with the private lives and arrangements of the big boys, the bolshaya shiska, for whom the statistics were intended.

The street in front of him was beginning to get busier, not busy, just busier, there was still no movement from the house under observation. He looked at his watch. There were two shifts on the operation, six to two and two to ten; he had organised it that way, using his authority to get the early shift, not so that he would be off-duty by mid-afternoon, but because that way he could exercise more control over who made the arrest. Not today, he had thought as they left militia headquarters that morning, not enough contacts noted in the log book for the arrest to be made today, probably tomorrow, certainly the day after. Routine but important, he had seen it from the moment the surveillance had been first planned. Which was why his superiors had chosen it, why it would look good in their statistics. Why he, in turn, would make sure it was a success, why he had arranged it so that it would be he who made the arrest.

In an upstairs room he saw a curtain move and wondered who would be coming to buy, who, more importantly for the statistics, would be coming to sell. He checked again the name of the black marketeer in the house on Dmitrov.

Pasha Simenov.

The letter arrived at eleven.

Each morning Alexandra waited for it to come. Each morning after she had taken their son to school and settled their daughter in the flat, she waited for the sound of the postman on the landing outside. Each morning she heard him as he put his bag down, knowing that he was only regaining his breath, that he would pick up the bag and walk on.

She heard the noise on the stairs, the silence as the man paused outside and searched in his bag for the letter that was bound to come, then heard the next noise, the sound of the man lifting his load and continuing his climb to the floors above. The child was looking at her; she sat back at the table, trying to concentrate, disappointed that the letter summoning them to Kolpachny Lane had not come but relieved that they had not yet been rejected again.

The footsteps came down the stairs and past the flat, quicker, lighter, fading till she could no longer hear them. Alexandra smiled at her daughter and thought of her husband and son, heard the footsteps again, slower, more laboured, the sound of the postman climbing back up the stairs. The man stopping on the landing outside, the first corner of the envelope beneath the door. Thin, she thought, crossing the room, suddenly not knowing what she was doing, it was so thin, just as before. She knew what it meant, opening it, ignoring the time and date of the summons, realising that they had lost again, that they had lost for ever.

The words were a blur. She put the letter on the table and looked at her daughter, wishing suddenly that she and Yakov had not tried again, had never tried. Not for their sakes, but for their children’s. The girl was still playing. Alexandra picked up the summons again and saw the date and time of the appointment, realising it was for today and knowing that they had delayed the letter so that she and Yakov would miss the appointment, so that she and her husband would give them even more reason to refuse, them again. No time to contact him, she was thinking, no way she could contact him at the hotel in any case. There was just enough time, she was thinking, looking at the clock. If she hurried, if the trams weren’t delayed.

Five minutes later Alexandra left the flat, her daughter wrapped against the cold, and began the journey. The trams seemed even slower than usual.

Alexandra reached the building in Kolpachny Lane five minutes before the appointed time and was told to wait till after lunch. She sat in the waiting room and tried to stop her daughter crying; after seventy minutes she was ushered in and instructed to sit in the chair she had sat in last time and the time before, facing the official who had spoken to her the last time and the time before.

There were two stacks of files on the desk in front of him. He confirmed her name and selected a folder from those on his left, reading through it then checking the details against the information on the summons she had received that morning.

‘Why is your husband not with you?’ she knew he was going to ask, knew that it would be a trick, that they had already found out where her husband was, that the faceless men from Petrovka had been waiting for him as he had feared in his dreams.

‘I don’t know,’ she would lie, holding her child tight to her, ‘the summons arrived only this morning, he left before it came.’

‘And you don’t know where your husband went?’ There would be the first note of an interrogation in his voice.

Be brave, Alexandra Zubko, she would tell herself, do not let them frighten you. Remember that they have refused you twice, that they have already decided to refuse you a third time.

‘It doesn’t matter where my husband is,’ she would wish already that she had not answered the official in such a manner, would know it was too late, ‘the invitation is to me, I am the one you must tell, not my husband.’

The man began reading from the file, not bothering to look at her, reading the words he would forget the moment she left, the words she would remember for ever.

Fifteen minutes later Alexandra left the office on Kolpachny Lane and turned for home.

Not today, Yakov Zubko, she knew now why she had pleaded with her husband that morning, why she had been afraid of the sudden cold, of the winter it would bring, of what else it might visit upon them. For God’s sake not today.

It was twenty three minutes past one.

The American family lunched at twelve. Yakov Zubko watched them from the side of the foyer: the mother and father, the two children. They had been at the hotel eight days and he had seen them on the third. Each day after that he had made a point of meeting them, of helping them with their bags, each day after that he had smiled at them. On the fifth day one of them had smiled back. Then and only then had he risked checking their names on the hotel register, noting both their nationality, which he had already guessed, and their date of departure.

By the time they finished it was twenty-five minutes to two. Yakov Zubko saw them waiting for the official bus and remembered where all the tourists went on their last day in Moscow, began to plan his afternoon so that he could make his approach to them when they returned.

At fifteen minutes to two the unmarked Zhiguli left its position overlooking Dmitrov and returned to the militia headquarters on Petrovka. By two fifteen the next shift had taken over. Although there had been two visits to the black marketeer that morning, Iamskoy had instructed the militiaman to log only one: a further visit that afternoon was almost certain, two probable, three remote but possible, and a total of five visits on the second day of the surveillance was the point at which the team on duty could close their snare. Routine but important Iamskoy had decided. The following morning, he had therefore decided, he would arrest the suspect Simenov and those who brought their goods to him.

The flat was quiet. Alexandra looked around it, knowing what she was about to do, sensing that Yakov Zubko would understand. The furniture was sparse and functional; three of the chairs round the table had been bought over the years, but the fourth was a family heirloom, a wedding present from a beloved grandfather, now dead. Carefully, taking care not to damage it, she carried the antique down the stairs, perched it on top of her daughter’s push-chair, and tied it in place with a piece of string. Then she gathered the girl in her arms, and went to collect her son from school.

He was ten minutes late. When he came out she kissed him then set off, still carrying her daughter, along the route her husband had taken that morning. The walk took twenty minutes, Alexandra managed the child for the first ten before she became too heavy.

The men outside the shop saw her coming, nudging each other to look at her, scarcely bothering to hide their amusement. They were all young, dressed in fur coats and lounging against the estate cars parked outside the shop. One of them was helping another man, someone she took from his clothing to be a foreigner, to load a desk onto one of the cars. She had heard about the shop, that it was where the foreigners came to buy the equipment for their offices and the furniture for their homes, one of the places to which the authorities turned one of their many blind eyes. The foreigner turned to watch her, slightly fascinated, slightly embarrassed by the image of the woman pushing the pram with the chair on top, the two children walking bravely on either side of her. He had been a correspondent in Moscow for six months, and had learnt sufficient Russian in the time to understand what the young men in the fur coats were saying, enough to understand the sexual innuendo of their remarks. The driver he had hired to take the desk to his office was becoming impatient. He told the man to wait, watching the woman as she struggled to push the pram and its load through the door, no one moving to help her, and followed her inside, calculating how much the man in the shop would charge him for such a chair, was not surprised when the man gave the woman less than a thirtieth of what he estimated it was worth. Outside it was getting dark. He watched the way the woman folded the notes into her purse and tucked the purse carefully into the pocket of her coat, the way she lifted the girl at her side into the pram and pulled the boy close to her, the way she disappeared down the road, wanted to know what she was doing, why she was doing it, wanted to wish her luck, tell her that one day all would be well for her. Behind him he heard his driver start the engine of the estate car; he turned away from the woman and went back to his office.

The American family returned to the hotel at five, their arms laden with parcels wrapped in the colours of the Beryozka shops. Yakov Zubko watched them from the side of the foyer. The official guide was laughing and joking with them, for one moment he feared that she had already arranged the same thing he had been planning since he had first seen them, then she turned away to talk to another group. He crossed the foyer, arriving at the lift as they did, holding the doors open for them and helping the children with their parcels, then followed them in, pressing the button to close the doors before anyone could join them.

‘Good afternoon,’ his English was formal, almost mechanical, from the books he had studied since he had lost his job as an engineer. ‘I hope you enjoyed your stay in Moscow.’

The husband looked at him suspiciously. ‘Yes, thank you,’ he replied carefully.

The doors were shutting.

‘Everyone goes to the Beryozka shops on their last afternoon,’ Yakov Zubko explained, trying to relax them. He had only one chance, he thought. The doors were almost shut. ‘How old are the children?’

An elderly couple pushed forward and tried to step into the lift. The husband saw them and jerked the doors open for them. Yakov Zubko understood why he had done it, that the man knew why he had joined them, what he was going to ask them. One chance, he told himself, already slipping away.

The elderly man thanked the American and asked for the fourth floor. The Americans were in rooms 607 and 609, two floors above the others, Yakov Zubko remembered. The chance not quite gone. The lift stopped at the fourth floor and the other couple stepped out, the doors closing and the lift gathering speed again.

‘How old are the children?’ he asked again, looking at the denims they were wearing, not disguising the fact, letting the parents know there was a reason.

‘Twelve and ten,’ said the mother, not looking at him.

He nodded, looking back at the denims, hoping he was right but fearing he was wrong. ‘Mine are the same age.’ They all knew he was lying. ‘May I buy the children’s denims from you before you leave?’

The lift passed the fifth floor.

‘No.’ It was the third time the husband had rejected such a request that day. Be careful, his company had advised him when he informed them where he was taking a holiday, the Russians were always looking for people like him, especially in a profession like his, always seeking ways of entrapping them. ‘No,’ he said again emphatically, turning away.

Yakov Zubko sensed that the man would not change his mind and told himself there would be other families, other people who were not afraid, admitted to himself that it was already the beginning of winter, that there would be few other tourists before the weather set hard and the hotel found out about him.

The wife was still looking at him. ‘I understand,’ he was saying to her, the lift stopping and the husband and children getting out. ‘Thank you anyway.’ His finger was drawing the pattern on the wall, the woman still looking at him, at the pattern. He knew it would not work, that he should not do it, should not risk so much, the words coming anyway, telling her who he was, what he was. Telling her everything.

‘B’shavia Haba a b’Yerushalaim,’ he spoke slowly, quietly, committing himself.

She was looking at him, knowing what he was saying, what he was telling her, knowing who he was, what he was, what he was trying to do, her finger repeating the pattern on the wall, the six lines, two triangles, one inverted upon the other. The star of David. ‘B’shavia Haba a b’Yerushalaim,’ she replied.

‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ confirmed Yakov Zubko.

In the corridor the husband was waiting for his wife to join him and the children. ‘We leave tomorrow,’ said the woman, ‘could you collect our cases at ten forty-five.’

Alexandra finished the matvah at six and placed it in the oven, then she laid the table and bathed the children. When they were dry she took their best clothes from the wardrobe they all shared and dressed them, then she went to the bathroom along the landing and washed herself. It was six thirty. From the same cupboard she took her one good dress, the dress she had worn when she had married Yakov Zubko eleven years before, and put it on. The night outside was dark, the cold penetrating the glass of the windows; she pulled the curtains tighter and wondered what she would say, how she would tell her husband. At nine his brother Stanislav, Stanislav’s wife Mishka and their two children would join them, would share the food for which she had sold the chair that afternoon; before that, Alexandra had asked, before that, they had insisted, she would have one hour alone with Yakov Zubko and their family.

It was almost time. From her handbag she took the forms she had been given that afternoon by the man in the office on Kolpachny Lane and placed them on the table, laying the food around them. The matvah, there had been no time on that dread night for the women to prepare anything other than unleavened bread; the single roast egg for new life; the salted water for the tears of the slaves and the horse-radish for their bitterness; the extra plate and wine glass for the stranger who might come alone. The last thing she placed on the table, in a position where Yakov Zubko must see them first, were the haroseth sweets, then she called her son and daughter to her and stood facing the door, a child on either side and an arm round each.

The children were frightened, unsure what was happening; Alexandra herself had no tears left to cry.

She had waited another ten minutes when she heard him on the stairs: the same pace, the same slight delay as he searched in his pocket, the same scratching noise as he turned the key in the lock. She leant forward and lit the candle. He was a good man, she thought, a good husband and father; she did not yet know how she would tell him.

Yakov Zubko pushed the door open, carrying the small plastic bag of food he had brought from the hotel, and entered the room. He felt tired and cold, glad Alexandra would be there to welcome him, hoping that the children would not be asleep so that he could kiss them goodnight.

He saw the shadow on the wall, the flame of the candle on the table, the dishes around it, his family waiting for him, his wife in her wedding dress and the children in their best clothes. He did not understand, did not know what to think, looked again at his wife, at the table. Saw the matvah, the roasted egg, the bowl of salted water beside it, the place for the stranger. Saw one thing above all, the haroseth sweets.

The beginning of the festival, he was thinking, the commemoration of the night the Angel of Death passed over the land of Egypt, the beginning of the Feast of the Passover, the celebration of the delivery of his people.

The haroseth sweets, he could not help think, the symbol of the sweetness of freedom.

Alexandra reached to the table and handed him the papers she had been given in the office on Kolpachny Lane. ‘B’shavia Huzu a b’Yerushalaim,’ she said the words, did not know she had said them.

The same words he had said to the American woman in the lift in the hotel, the words she had understood and said back to him.

Not quite the same words. One word of difference for which they had been prepared to sacrifice everything. Not ‘Next year in Jerusalem’, not the saying which kept Yakov Zubko and the likes of Yakov Zubko in hope through the long Russian winters, the other saying, the saying for which so many longed but which so few now heard.

‘B’shavia Huzu a b’Yerushalaim.’

‘This year in Jerusalem.’

‘We are going home, Yakov Zubko.’ Alexandra closed the door behind him and shut the family Zubko off from the rest of the world. ‘We are going home to Israel.’

* * *

Yakov Zubko had been born in the Ukraine in 1951; despite the poverty of his parents he had shone at school, both as an athlete and as a mathematician. His record, whether at the University of Kiev where he graduated as an engineer or during his compulsory military service, had been impeccable. He had twice been promoted in the precision tool factory where he had first worked. In 1973 he had married Alexandra, then a teacher, the following year they had moved to Moscow, where he had secured a job in the ZIL car works; within six months of his new appointment he had again been promoted.

Yakov Zubko was a model of the Soviet system. He was also a Jew.

In 1977, after considerable soul-searching, he and Alexandra had applied to leave Russia for Israel. The request was rejected, partly on grounds of state security, Yakov Zubko having served in the Red Army, partly on grounds which were not specified, and they had joined what would shortly become the swelling ranks of the refusniks. Within three months Yakov Zubko had first been demoted then lost his job totally; since then they had survived on Alexandra’s salary during the period she worked as a teacher, and whatever he himself could earn whenever he found casual work. Each month since then they had sold a possession in order to eat, each month since then they had also tried to place a few more roubles in the tin they kept under the mattress for the day they would be called to Kolpachny Lane and told they could leave. Increasingly, not through design, simply to help his family survive, and to save the money for their journey home, Yakov Zubko had been drawn into the fringes of the black market.

The following year Alexandra had borne him their first child, a son whom they called Nicholas. The boy was delivered late at night in the maternity wing of the local hospital; partly as a joke, partly as an act of defiance, they referred to the place where he had been born by the name of the place they thought they would never see, the town called Bethlehem. In the winter of 1978, as they carried their son home, in the later years when they told him, there was no way they could know the awesome inheritance of that family secret.

Their second child, a daughter, had been born in the same hospital three years later.

In 1979 his brother Stanislav Zubko had applied to leave Russia with his wife Mishka and their son Anatol; like Yakov and Alexandra they were refused. Later that year Mishka bore Stanislav’s second child, a girl whom they named Natasha after her great-grandmother. Like her great-grandmother, who only saw her once, Natasha was small and pretty, with large eyes, and like her great-grandmother, to whom she was the most precious creature in the world, she was cursed with asthma. Even on the hot summer days when the two families walked in Gorky Park or went in the car which Stanislav was sometimes able to borrow to the fields outside Moscow they could hear her suffering.

Just as there was no way of knowing the consequence of the secret of the birthplace of the boy called Nicholas Zubko, so there was no way of knowing the devastating legacy of the illness of the girl called Natasha.

In 1980 Yakov and Alexandra Zubko applied again to leave Russia and were again refused. The next year the distant uncle who had met the formal requirement of inviting them to Israel had passed away and they had spent the next two years finding another relative to meet the requirement. In 1984 Alexandra had been officially invited by a third cousin to join him: when she left the office in Kolpachny Lane that afternoon she and Yakov Zubko had waited three months, two weeks and six days over seven years.

* * *

The night was darker, colder,

Yakov Zubko kissed the children goodnight and returned to the kitchen; Alexandra had made coffee, they sat together at the table and read again the authorisation from the OVIR office on Kolpachny Lane.

‘They can’t change their minds,’ she asked, ‘they can’t stop us now?’

‘No,’ he lied, ‘they can’t stop us now.’

‘How much do we need?’ They had already worked it out, worked it out every week as they counted the roubles they had saved in the tin beneath the mattress: the rail fare to Vienna – it was quicker and safer by air, but cheaper by train – the cost of the exit visas, the money they would have to pay to renounce their Soviet citizenship.

Yakov Zubko took a single sheet of paper and began writing down the figures, carefully and neatly, not looking up, not able to look at his wife, both knowing they did not have enough, both knowing they would never have enough, even with the money in the tin under the mattress. He glanced round the room, aware of what Alexandra was thinking.

‘Twenty for the chairs,’ he began, ‘twenty-five for the table. Forty, perhaps forty-five, for my watch.’

‘Don’t forget my ring,’ said Alexandra, sipping her coffee.

‘Your ring,’ he said, writing it down, ‘we should get thirty for your wedding ring.’

In the hotel overlooking Marx Prospekt the American family finished their dinner and went to bed, the wife lying awake and thinking of what her husband had said, knowing that he was right, yet remembering that she had known from the first day who the man in the lift was, what he was. Thinking of her loyalty to her husband but thinking of the man with whom they shared a faith.

‘There’s an American family at the hotel,’ Yakov Zubko was unsure whether he should tell his wife, sensing she had known for a long time what he did, ‘they are due to leave tomorrow morning, they said for me to collect their bags.’ He realised that she had known from the beginning. ‘The children always wear denims, the wife has perfume, nice perfume, the husband always carries a camera.’ Alexandra waited, afraid to hear. ‘I think,’ he said cautiously, ‘that they are Jews, I think they will give me something.’

He turned the paper over and began another list, guessing what the American family might give, calculating what he might get from Pasha Simenov, and adding it to the money in the tin under the mattress. ‘We might do it,’ he said at last, not looking at his wife, wondering how much he was lying for her, how much he was lying for himself. ‘We might just do it.’

He looked at Alexandra, seeing the way she was smiling at him, recognising, not for the first time, how strong she was. ‘We will do it, Yakov Zubko,’ she said, ‘we will go home.’

In the hotel the American woman thought again about her husband, thought about the Russian Jew who wanted only to take his family to Israel.

In his apartment on the other side of the city Iamskoy switched off the television and telephoned militia headquarters. The afternoon shift had been back an hour, he was told; they had logged one firm suspect, one possible. He thanked the desk man and went to bed. Definitely tomorrow morning, he thought.

* * *

Yakov Zubko rose at four thirty, not needing to be quiet, he and Alexandra having lain awake all night. She pulled a coat over her shoulders and sat with him at the table. At five o’clock he kissed her goodbye, left the flat, and made his way to the metro station at Sviblovo; at a quarter to six Alexandra dressed the children and prepared them for their last days in Russia; at six precisely Major Valerov Iamskoy left the militia building on Petrovka. The morning was cold, even colder than the day before. At six thirty Yakov Zubko began work, at eight thirty the American family took breakfast. He made sure he was in the foyer as they went to the restaurant, made sure the woman saw him as they left, hoping for a sign, any sign, of confirmation, seeing none. At twelve minutes past ten the militiaman accompanying Iamskoy noted that the suspect Pasha Simenov had appeared at his door.

At fifteen minutes to eleven, as the woman had told him the previous afternoon, Yakov Zubko made his way to the rooms of the American family; there were four large suitcases, he took two, remembering that the entire possessions which he and Alexandra would take with them when they left Russia would fit into one. Please may he have understood the woman correctly the previous afternoon, he prayed, please may Pasha Simenov be at home.

The husband was at the reception desk, the wife talking to the guide. Yakov Zubko waited for her to turn and say something to him, the first doubts creeping up on him. He went back to the bedroom and collected the remaining cases. The family was almost ready to leave; he loaded the cases onto the coach and saw that the woman was still talking to the guide, knew then that she had not been able to disobey her husband, that he and Alexandra would not go home.

‘There’s one more bag by the children’s beds in 607,’ the woman turned to him briefly, not smiling. Watching him turn away from her, feeling the sense of betrayal. Seeing him for the last time, knowing that one day she would see him again. He cursed her under his breath and returned to the sixth floor. A maid was already cleaning the parents’ room; he went past, hearing the sound of the vacuum, into 607. The room was empty. He knew why the woman had told him to go back, knew it was because she could not face him, but began to check the wardrobes anyway, looking between the beds. Beneath one was a Beryozka bag; inside were three pairs of denims, new, unused, the manufacturer’s label still on them, two bottles of French perfume, and a Konica camera. ‘We are going home, Alexandra Zubko,’ he said, the relief coming upon him, ‘we are going home to Israel.’

When he returned to the foyer the American woman had gone.

It was almost eleven o’clock.

On the corner overlooking the street called Dmitrov the militiaman logged the first visitor to the house of Pasha Simenov. ‘We’ll pick up the next one,’ Iamskoy told him.

It was less than three hours till the end of their shift. ‘What happens if there isn’t one while we’re on?’ asked his subordinate.

For someone from the building on Petrovka, Iamskoy thought, the militiaman was remarkably naive at times. ‘There will be another one,’ he said simply.

Stick close to Iamskoy, the militiaman remembered they had told him at Petrovka, and you’ll learn a lot. ‘The next one,’ he agreed.

Yakov Zubko turned into Dmitrov, planning the conversation he would have with Pasha Simenov, working out how he would make sure that the man paid him enough. Be careful, Alexandra had told him as he left the flat that morning. In front of him he saw Pasha Simenov leave the house and begin walking up the road towards him. Suppose Simenov didn’t recognise him, he thought, suppose he had just done a deal, had no money left, suppose Simenov didn’t want to talk to him in the street.

At the top of the road Iamskoy cursed his luck and instructed the militia to log the fact that the suspect Simenov had left his house and turned east.

‘Good morning.’

Yakov Zubko knew Simenov was not going to speak to him, was going to walk straight past him. They still needed five hundred roubles, he thought; he saw the look in the other man’s eyes, saw Simenov was not looking at him, nor at the bag he was carrying.

Iamskoy saw the Beryozka bag, knew what was in it and reached for the ignition.

‘Across the road and left at the corner,’ Simenov ignored the greeting and pointed with his arm as if he was giving directions, as if that was what he had been asked. Yakov Zubko saw the car, realised why Simenov was afraid, turned to follow his instructions.

For one moment Iamskoy thought he was wrong, then knew he was not.

Yakov Zubko was reacting instinctively, following Simenov’s arm, as if he was in no hurry, as if he was clarifying the street directions he had been given. ‘Up the road fifty metres, through the block of flats.’ Simenov was talking quietly, quickly. ‘Car park on the other side, steps in the far corner to a tram stop. Good luck.’ It was almost, Yakov Zubko would think in the months and years he would have to remember the moment, as if Simenov knew what he was doing, as if he was sacrificing himself so that the Jew and his family could go home. ‘Thank you.’ He made himself pause, made himself move slowly, crossing the road in the direction Simenov had indicated. In the Zhiguli, Iamskoy hesitated for the second time. ‘Screw him anyway,’ he thought aloud, half to himself, half to the militiaman, ‘we can always plant something on him.’

Yakov Zubko was half way across the road when he saw the car begin to move. ‘No tricks,’ he remembered how he had lied to Alexandra the night before, ‘no way they can stop us now.’ Every trick, every way they could stop him. He turned the corner, out of sight of the car, and began to run. Up the road fifty metres, Simenov had told him, through the block of flats. Which block, he suddenly thought, panicking, there were two blocks of flats, one on either side of the road. He reached them and turned left into the alleyway beneath the building, side-stepping to avoid the children and crashing into the dustbins stacked against the wall. In the Zhiguli Iamskoy saw Simenov walking up the road, the man with the Beryozka bag turning almost casually round the corner. ‘We go for Simenov,’ he decided. They were almost at the junction; in the street in front of them Simenov disappeared down a side turning, in the passageway beneath the flats Yakov Zubko regained his balance, feared he had chosen the wrong block. ‘The other man and his suppliers.’ Iamskoy changed his mind.

Yakov Zubko broke into the sunlight and saw the car park; wondered for the first time if Simenov knew who he was, what he was, felt his legs seizing up, felt himself slowing down. ‘Run,’ he heard the voice, ‘run for Alexandra, run for the children.’ His lungs were hot, the bag was heavy, impeding him. ‘Run,’ he heard the voice again, shouting at him, screaming at him, ‘run so that you can all go home.’ In the far corner he saw the exit and the step to the tram stop.

Iamskoy turned the corner and accelerated up the road. Nobody with a Beryozka bag, nobody running as if his life depended on it. In the car park behind the flats Yakov Zubko was half way to the corner. ‘You take the right block,’ Iamskoy slammed on the hand-brake, ‘I’ll cover the left.’ He was out of the car, running, the door swinging open. He saw the dustbins rolling on the ground, the children staring. ‘This one,’ he shouted, ‘he’s gone through this one.’ He sprinted into the dark, seeing the car park ahead. ‘Run,’ the voice screamed at the Jew for the last time, ‘run as you’ve never run before.’ Yakov Zubko reached the corner, saw the tram in the street below, saw it beginning to move. ‘Wait for me,’ he prayed. He cleared the steps two at a time and hauled himself on as the rear doors clanged shut and the tram pulled away.

The kitchen was quiet, peaceful: Alexandra finished lunch, put the suitcase on the table and began to pack the children’s clothes; at her side her son and daughter watched her closely. ‘Tonight,’ she told them, ‘your father will be home early, tomorrow we will have a treat, tomorrow your father will take us all for a train ride. I will make sandwiches for us to eat.’

The passengers on the tram were looking at him, at the Beryozka bag he was carrying. Someone was bound to question why he had it, someone was bound to report him. He knew what he had always avoided in the past, what he had to do now, remembered what Alexandra had told him. One thing more important than Jerusalem, one thing more important than anything else. He left the tram and took the metro to the black market behind the station at Begovaya.

At the observation point overlooking Dmitrov Iamskoy watched as the militiaman checked the house of Pasha Simenov and confirmed the door was locked. ‘We say nothing,’ he ordered the man when he returned to the car, ‘we simply log the fact that Simenov left the house and turned east.’

‘What about the man with the Beryozka bag,’ asked the militiaman, ‘if he is selling is there any chance he’ll go to Begovaya?’

The possibility had already occurred to Iamskoy. ‘No chance. If he does have anything to sell he’ll lie low for a while.’ There was no way they could leave the observation point, he meant, no way they could concede that they had made a mistake. ‘Unless,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘he has a reason for off-loading the stuff today.’ No way that anyone would have that strong a reason, he was sure, no way anyone would risk the black market at Begovaya knowing the men from the building on Petrovka were waiting for him.

‘But if the others pick Simenov up this afternoon, they won’t know what to ask him.’

‘No,’ said Iamskoy, ‘but we will tomorrow.’

It was almost three, the sun already pale, when Yakov Zubko entered the maze of streets behind the metro station at Begovaya; he walked slowly and carefully, checking the buyers and sellers, eavesdropping on the conversations and negotiations, till he had worked out who was paying the best prices for what he had to sell. The man he approached was overweight, already wearing a winter coat, a cigarette in his mouth. Yakov Zubko struck up a conversation, after ten minutes he asked whether the man was interested in American denims.

‘Buying or selling?’

‘Selling,’ said Yakov Zubko.

‘What size?’

He realised he did not know. ‘New,’ he said, ‘the manufacturer’s labels still on them.’

‘How much?’

‘How much are you offering?’

The man gestured that he should follow him to a car parked on a side street. In the front passenger seat was a young woman, attractive, less than twenty years old. Money, thought Yakov Zubko, could buy anything, even in Russia. She saw them coming and moved to the back, allowing them to sit in the front.

‘How much did you say?’ the man asked again, fingering the flesh round his jaw.

‘Two hundred each,’ Yakov Zubko doubled the price he had calculated, ‘a hundred and eighty each if you take all three.’ He pulled them from the bag and showed them to the dealer.

The man snorted. ‘Eighty each.’

‘A hundred and sixty.’

‘Ninety, that’s as high as I can go.’

He knew he had made a mistake, that he should not have allowed the dealer to trick him into being the first to suggest a price, then began to see the way he could retrieve the advantage. ‘A hundred and fifty,’ he said, ‘that’s my lowest. After I’ve paid my man, that leaves me almost nothing.’

‘Your man?’

‘The man I get them from.’ He used the present tense, as if he had a regular supply.

‘You can get more?’ The dealer took the first bait. Yakov Zubko thought of Alexandra and the children standing behind the table when he had returned home the previous evening. ‘Not this week, probably next, definitely the week after.’

‘New like these?’

‘With the manufacturer’s labels. Any size you want.’

‘A hundred.’

‘A hundred and forty.’

‘A hundred and ten.’

We are going home, Yakov, Alexandra had said, giving him the papers from Kolpachny Lane, we are going home to Israel. ‘A hundred and thirty and they’re yours.’

‘How many others can you get?’ The dealer had always been greedy, now he showed it.

‘Three, four pairs a fortnight.’ He was watching the man’s eyes. ‘To start with,’ he added, ‘more if I can guarantee my man a good price.’ He could see the dealer trying to work out his source. An American, the man would be thinking, probably a businessman with regular trips to Moscow, the denims only the start of things. Yakov Zubko reinforced the image: ‘What about perfume?’

‘French?’ The tone in the man’s voice gave him away.

‘Of course.’

‘I’d like to meet your man.’

‘You must think I’m mad.’ Believe what you’re saying, Yakov Zubko, he told himself, make him believe what you’re saying.

‘A hundred and twenty-five each.’

‘A hundred and twenty-five each,’ he agreed. Enough for the visas and the renunciation, he thought, but not nearly enough for the tickets.

The man pulled a roll of notes from beneath his winter coat. It was more money than Yakov Zubko had seen in all the seven years since he and Alexandra had applied to leave Russia. ‘About the perfume,’ he said, taking the bottles from the bag, watching the way the dealer’s eyes flicked from the money to the contraband, seeing again the greed. The man reached forward to take them, Yakov Zubko moved them back.

‘Genuine?’ asked the dealer.

‘Seals and tops unbroken,’ confirmed Yakov Zubko.

‘Fifty each.’ It was the dealer who made the first offer.

‘A hundred.’

‘Seventy-five.’

‘Seventy-five.’ He had the tickets for the children, plus something towards the fare for Alexandra. ‘And a good price for this.’ He took the camera from the bag. ‘Only a sample,’ he lied, ‘one a fortnight, make and model specified three weeks in advance, for as long as you like. Guaranteed delivery.’

‘Anything else?’

‘You say, I’ll ask.’

‘A hundred.’

‘Plus films.’

‘A hundred and ten.’

‘A hundred and thirty.’

‘A hundred and twenty.’

He had their tickets to Vienna, plus something for his brother and his brother’s family when Stanislav and Mishka were allowed to leave. ‘A hundred and twenty,’ he agreed.

* * *

The flat was empty, the single suitcase in the middle of the kitchen floor where the table had stood. The children were frightened, he had not told them what was happening or where they were going in case they did not get there, in case the men from Petrovka came for him.

‘Mummy says that today you will take us all for a train ride,’ said his son. Yakov Zubko put his hand on the boy’s head. ‘Your mother is right,’ he smiled, ‘today I will take us all for a train ride.’

‘But why have they taken the chairs and tables?’ the boy asked. ‘Why have they taken my bed?’

‘Because today,’ his father told him, ‘we are going for a train ride.’

At three o’clock the friend from whom Stanislav sometimes borrowed the car for the family trips to the countryside came to take them to the station. Stanislav and Mishka, and their two children, would accompany them. They arrived at three forty-five, an hour and fifty minutes before the train was due to depart. In the square opposite was a Zhiguli similar to the one outside the house of Pasha Simenov. Yakov Zubko thought about the man and wondered where he was, if he had been caught, if he knew enough about him to betray him. He had not told Alexandra and did not tell her now; he had already decided not to tell her until they were in Israel, did not understand that she suspected.

The station was crowded. It took the officials twenty minutes to check the documents and tickets, twenty minutes for the people behind him to worry about their trains, and for Yakov Zubko to worry about Pasha Simenov. By the time he had been cleared, there was still an hour remaining. The two families sat together for the last time, not speaking. After thirty minutes they went to the square outside and asked the friend who had brought them to take a photograph of them together.

The photograph that was taken that day showed the men staring straight ahead, trying to hide their emotions, the women having the strength not to conceal theirs, the children holding hands, confused. Even in the noise of the square Yakov Zubko could hear the girl called Natasha fighting for her breath. At five minutes to five they said farewell: the words they would remember later, the only words they would remember when they had reason to remember, were the last words Yakov Zubko spoke to his brother.

‘B’shavia Haba a b’Yerushalaim.’

His brother could no longer hold back his tears. ‘B’shavia Haba a b’Yerushalaim,’ he said, ‘next year in Jerusalem.’

* * *

At seventeen minutes past twelve the following day, a mere seven minutes late, the Moscow-Vienna express carrying Yakov Zubko arid his family passed from the Eastern Bloc into Austria. The final check was remarkably brief, their papers were inspected, their single suitcase given the most perfunctory of inspections, and they were waved through. At three minutes to one that afternoon Yakov Zubko and his wife and children stepped into the West. Twenty metres away stood a woman from the Jewish Agency.

‘Shalom,’ she said, stepping forward to greet them. ‘Welcome.’

‘Shalom,’ he said, putting down the suitcase. ‘We are the family Zubko. We are coming home.’

Book Two

CHAPTER ONE

The MORI poll predicting a landslide victory for Ronald Reagan was on the second page of the International Herald Tribune. The man reading it sat in the chair in the corner of the room farthest from the window, between the sofa and the desk. The paper, one day old, had arrived that morning; he had not stopped reading the article, not stopped thinking about it, all day. The only person he had spoken to during that time, the only person he allowed to be in his presence, was the young man seated on the sofa.

The room, on the third floor of the complex, was neat and sparsely furnished, the walls a bare white. The only ornaments on the desk on the left side of the window were a chess set and a framed photograph of a young family, the children in the arms of their parents. Abu Nabil had aged almost thirty years since it was taken, though he could still be recognised in it; he kept and treasured it because it was the only photograph he had of his wife and sons; others kept and valued it because it was the only photograph of Abu Nabil known to exist.

At the side of the young man on the sofa lay a submachine gun.

It was two hours to midnight.

‘The car in ten minutes,’ Nabil told him. ‘Saad at eight, Sharaf at nine.’ The bodyguard went to the telephone and dialled two numbers, passing on his master’s instructions. The young men who took the calls, to be passed in turn to their masters, were surprised neither at the contents of the order not at the time it had been issued.

At fifteen minutes past ten Nabil left the safety of the complex in a black Mercedes, accompanied by three escorts, two to stay with him wherever he went and one to remain with the car. Even in Damascus, which he had made his home and base for the past six years, it was as unthinkable that his car should be left unattended as it was that he himself should not be protected. Not because of what might be missing from the car when he returned; rather for what might be added to it, as the Israelis had demonstrated during the maelstrom which had swept Europe after the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, as the IRA and, he suspected, the British army itself, had proved in Northern Ireland.

The café to which he led his shadows was in a maze of alleyways and passages in a quarter of the city they did not normally frequent, the entrance almost hidden behind a street hoarding. They left the car and completed the last fifteen minutes on foot, not knowing where he was going or why he was going there.

The room in which they finally settled seemed smaller than it was, the air filled with smoke, the floor packed with tables surrounded by men, mainly old, drinking arak and playing tawli. Nabil settled himself against a side wall, almost lost in the semi-gloom of the room, as if it was the place he always sat, while a waiter in a dirty white shirt and floppy grey trousers brought them their drinks. They took them, no one seeming to notice the newcomer or the two men who sat at either shoulder, no one seeming to notice the weapons which hung beneath their loose-fitting coats.

Nabil sat for half an hour before he chose his man, then he ordered more drinks, rose from his seat, leaving his escorts against the wall, and made his way to the table he had selected, ignoring both the game in the middle of the room, where the shouts seemed the loudest, and the one in the corner which attracted the most spectators, easing his way through to the inner circle of men so quietly and inconspicuously that they did not even register his presence.

The two men at the table had skin like parchment; they sat facing each other, rolling the dice from a worn leather cup, counting their moves, checking each other’s moves. The game lasted another fifteen minutes, then the players began stacking the pieces in the wooden boxes at the side of the board, one of them finishing his drink and the other looking up at Nabil.

‘You would like a game, I think.’

Nabil knew he had chosen wisely. ‘I would like a game,’ he confirmed.

It was the beginning of the new day.

They played for thirteen minutes under the hour; when they finished it was not clear whether the old man had won or been allowed to win. The crowd began melting away till they were alone at the table.

‘One question, old man,’ Nabil asked politely, respectfully.

The old man knew it was why the stranger had come, why he had played him. ‘One answer,’ he agreed.

From the wall at the back of the café, the shadows watched intently.

‘We have just played,’ said Nabil, ‘and you have just won.’ His voice was quiet, yet the old man did not have to lean forward to hear the words. ‘If someone told you that you have just won and I have just lost, what would you say?’

The old man’s eyes shone with a sudden pleasure. In the night outside, he knew, something was stirring, beginning, did not know what, had no way of knowing, knew that most people would say he would never know. Knew, in his wisdom and his years, that one day he would.

‘My father,’ he began, ‘was a good man, a wise man. He was also an Arab. If a man took him outside at night and showed him the moon, then took him outside the next morning and showed him the sun, he would wonder why the man was telling him that the moon rose at night and the sun shone during the day.’ He saw that the stranger was nodding his understanding and reached for his drink. The glass was empty; Nabil slid his own across the table. The old man took it and sipped from it, then placed it between them.

‘Compared with your question,’ he went on, his voice faint with age, ‘such matters are simple.’ He looked down at the tawli board. ‘If you ask me whether I have just beaten you. I would answer no. I would answer that you have just beaten me.’

‘Even though everyone would tell you that you have just won?’

The old man’s eyes shone again. ‘Especially if everyone tells me I have just won.’

‘Why?’ asked Nabil. He was so close to the truth that only he would understand, that only he could know.

The old man fingered the tawli pieces.

‘With you,’ he said, ‘nothing is as it seems. If the world tells a man he has won and you have lost, then he has lost and you have won.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you are more than an Arab,’ replied the old man, ‘you are a Palestinian.’

‘Thank you.’ Nabil rose to leave. At the wall at the back, the old man saw the two men with the loose-fitting coats rise to follow.

‘I only told you what you already knew,’ he said.

Nabil thought of the article in the newspaper, the plan that had been born of it, the single factor that would decide whether or not the plan would succeed. ‘That is why I thank you.’

* * *

Abu Nabil was fifty-three years old; his father had been a merchant, his two brothers were still prosperous businessmen on the West Bank, he himself had qualified as a doctor. For the past thirty years, however, his profession had been the exercise of whatever means he considered necessary to secure the return of his people to the land called Palestine. Others referred to the craft he practised as terrorism.

He had played a role, at first political, later military, both in the main body of the PLO and, increasingly, in the factions which splintered from it, till he himself headed one of the so-called extremist groups which opposed what it saw as Yasser Arafat’s increasing and self-imposed impotence. He had been involved in most of the acts of terrorism from the late sixties through to the mid eighties, from Dawsons Field and Black September, to the Vienna OPEC hijack, to Mogadishu. More recently he had been at the centre of the power struggle within the ranks of the Palestinian movement itself, his organisation being held responsible for at least some of the assassinations which had spread from the Middle East across Europe. He had operated his forces in the Lebanon during the various stages of that country’s civil war, and had played a key role in forcing the exodus of Yasser Arafat and his mainstream PLO grouping from their headquarters in the Northern Lebanese port of Tripoli in 1983.

The available information on him, however, was less than skeletal, the merest details of his birth and education, of his marriage and of the death of his family, though this was rarely mentioned, especially by his enemies, who feared how even the barest details of the massacre of such innocents would feed the legend which had grown around him.

His name, Abu Nabil, was itself a nom de guerre. There were even those who questioned whether he, in fact, existed, whether he was the person his enemies, and his friends, thought him to be, or whether he was a committee who used his name, his reputation, to further their various causes. Others accepted that he had existed, but maintained that he had died some years previously, probably in an Israeli rocket attack on a house in which he had reputedly been staying. In the past eight years there had been four reports, all reliable, that he had died of cancer, two of them stating that he had died despite treatment in Moscow, and three more reports, equally reliable, that he had died of a heart attack.

* * *

By eight that morning Nabil had slept for a little over three hours, showered and taken a light breakfast, then had gone again through the elements of the plan that was now taking firmer shape in his mind. Precisely on the hour, the first of his appointments arrived.

Malik Saad looked the accountant that he was, small, a sharp nose, heavy-rimmed spectacles. He had headed the organisation’s finances, welcoming its income and quarrelling over its expenditure, for the past five years; during that time he had also invested its money wisely, ensuring a fruitful return both in terms of finance and obligations, spreading its resources not only through the multitude of Palestinian companies which played a major role in the engineering and construction industries of the Middle East, but also into Europe and North America, both the United States and Canada. For the four years before that he had been imprisoned for his part in a bomb attack on an Israeli patrol on the West Bank.

Nabil watched him arrive, then welcomed him to the flat on the third floor, and offered him coffee. For ten minutes they discussed areas of future investments, Saad outlining what he saw as potential returns for the future; when what they both recognised as the formalities were completed, Abu Nabil turned the conversation to the reason for the summons.

‘I need to know how our finances stand at the moment. I am considering a medium-term strategy which will require, at certain points over the next few months, the transfer of substantial amounts of money to various organisations, probably within Europe. I will need you to ensure that the monies are available when needed, and that the transfers are completed with a minimum of complications.’

Saad had only one question. ‘You are anticipating a budget request. When will you approve it?’

‘I just have.’

Twenty minutes after the accountant had left, the soldier arrived. Issam Sharaf was thirty-nine years old and had been with Nabil since the bloody days of Black September fourteen years before; his body bore the scars of a lifetime of fighting, there were the traces of shrapnel near his spine and his left arm had been rebuilt round a metal rod.

The conversation was even shorter, even more to the point, than that with the accountant; it was how both men had grown together, how they preferred to operate. It was also, Sharaf thought, as if Nabil had already decided what was to be done, how it was to be done, as if he had also decided there was little time in which to do it.

‘I was wondering,’ Nabil began, ‘how Europe was.’

Sharaf knew the man well, knew how he approached a subject, even when time was short; he settled back onto the sofa and accepted the coffee.

‘Quiet,’ he said, the inflection in his voice suggesting that Europe had been too quiet for too long. ‘People have been re-grouping, we have been training them, giving them a little finance. As you know.’ He was already wondering where Nabil had decided the conversation would end.

For the next few minutes he listed the activities of the various European groups with which they had contact, giving updates on changes in personnel and philosophies, as well as a breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses of each. In West Germany the Red Army Faction, the descendants of the Baader-Meinhof group of the seventies, and the lesser-known Revolutionary Cells, the RZs; in Italy the Red Brigades and, again, the less known Prima Linea; in France, Action Directe; in Belgium the CCC, the Cellules Communistes Combattantes; in Portugal the Popular Forces of April 25th; in Spain the Basque separatist movement, ETA, plus the anarchist group GRAPO and the Catalan separatist movement, TL.

‘Four questions,’ said Abu Nabil when Sharaf had finished. The soldier waited, knowing that the first would be the easiest, as the first always was.

‘Firstly,’ asked Nabil, ‘how would we persuade the various groups with whom we have contact to launch a coordinated campaign throughout Europe?’

‘Easy. We agree to finance them.’ He knew the other questions would increase in complexity.

‘Secondly, how easy would it be to demonstrate that the campaign was, in fact, carefully coordinated rather than a series of isolated incidents?’

The soldier sensed again that Abu Nabil had already worked it out, ‘Equally easy.’ His mind was already anticipating the next question. ‘Exchange of weapons between groups to link assassinations, use of explosives from the same source for attacks in different countries, same targets or type of targets, joint communiqués between various groups, tied in with the exchange of weapons and sharing of explosives, claiming responsibility for actions. It would be simple to leave a trail all over Europe.’ He could see why Nabil would want it, could see the type of fear a coordinated campaign would create, wondered what Nabil had conceived for the next stage of the escalation of that fear.

‘Thirdly,’ said Nabil, ‘a hunger strike.’

It was, thought Sharaf, as if Nabil was establishing a background against which a specific event could take place, but it was also as if, when that event took place, it would appear to be merely a consequence of what had gone before rather than the reason for it.

With you, the old man had told Abu Nabil less than five hours before, nothing is as it seems.

Why? Nabil had asked him.

Because you are more than an Arab, the old man had told him, you are a Palestinian.

‘West Germany would be the obvious place,’ he suggested. ‘The groups there have the right history, the right commitment.’

‘In that case,’ said Nabil, ‘I will need a set of demands.’

Connected to the hunger strike, Sharaf knew. He thought for the last time that Nabil had already planned both where it would start and how it would end. It was not yet ten in the morning. ‘Why?’ he asked.

Nabil told him. When he had finished he had only one question. ‘When can you leave?’

‘This afternoon. I’ll need a budget.’

‘I have already approved it.’

Abu Nabil was planning something else, Sharaf thought, something connected with what he himself would set in motion, something, however, which did not concern him. Like the pieces on the chess board which Nabil kept on the desk, each piece playing its part, each piece allowed to know its part, but no more.

‘About the hunger strike,’ said Nabil. ‘There is one more thing.’

Six hours after the meeting, Issam Sharaf left Damascus to begin his arrangements, four hours after that Abu Nabil himself departed. He took with him only one bodyguard whom he would in turn leave during the most delicate moments of the weeks ahead, his driver and other shadows remaining behind so that they could be seen in the city during his absence, another figure behind the smoked windows of the Mercedes confirming that Nabil was still in Damascus.

As if this was not enough, he also left behind the one personal item he was known never to travel without, the photograph of the young family which he kept on the desk by the window.

* * *

The day after Nabil and Sharaf made their separate departures from Damascus, Yakov Zubko and his family left Vienna for Israel. Their stay in the city had been kept as short as possible, for reasons of finance: the Jewish Agency did not enjoy a limitless budget. And the address at which they stayed had been kept a secret, for reasons of security: Jews such as themselves were still considered targets for the Palestinian groups which lay waiting in Europe.

The El Al flight was crowded and they remembered little of it, each of them too excited to accept any of the food or drink they were offered. At fifteen minutes past seven in the evening the Boeing landed at Ben Gurion, at twenty-five minutes past seven they stood for the first time in the land for which they had sacrificed so much. The representative of the Jewish Agency in Tel Aviv was waiting for them; Yakov Zubko shook the woman’s hand then asked to be left alone. The representative understood, remembering the day she had arrived, knowing she would never forget it.

Quietly, ignoring the sound of the engines and the bustle of the airport, Yakov Zubko and his family looked across the concrete of the runway to the purple of the hills beyond, the smell of the orange blossom drifting to them, filling the night air. B’shavia Huzu a b’Yerushalaim, he thought, this year in Jerusalem. No more lying, he also thought, no more thieving, no more risks on the black market, no more people always waiting for him and the likes of him.

‘We are home, Alexandra Zubko,’ he said at last, the first tears filling his eyes.

‘We are home, Yakov Zubko,’ she said.

* * *

Three days later Abu Nabil began his entry into Europe, having spent the intervening time further concealing his departure from Syria. In his fifty-three years he had learned that it was as necessary to protect himself from those who called themselves his friends as from those he knew to be his enemies. He spent time in Amman, a seemingly unlikely choice given his role in Black September but one which could only be viewed accurately in the light of what was to come, as well as Cairo and Rome, crossing and re-crossing his tracks, making the telephone calls to arrange the appointments he was seeking in the capitals of the West, before his flight to Paris.

Five days after he had left the flat in Damascus, he flew into Charles de Gaulle using a false name and passport issued in Kuwait, both of which, had the authorities checked, would have been found to be correct. Nabil was a careful man.

His first appointment was the following morning. He took a cab to the Georges Cinq, which had been booked from Rome, and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening walking the streets. He knew the city well, though he had not visited it for many years, not since he had taken his lonely road after 1970. The places he visited in those hours, therefore, were places which he, though not necessarily others, considered shrines to the fallen, the streets and backstreets where the Israelis had executed their storm of revenge following the Munich massacre in 1972. By the time he returned to the Georges Cinq, he had made his penance; subconsciously, he was wondering how many more he was about to ask to take the same long road to martyrdom.

The meeting the next day was at St Germain-en-Laye. Nabil’s movements for the two hours prior to it were a microcosm of his movements the five days before: the false trails, the checks and cross-checks to make sure that he was not being followed.

He arrived at the quai half an hour early, spending the next twenty minutes examining the area in the quiet but efficient manner his shadows would have employed if the politics in which he was about to engage had not required him to travel alone. Ten minutes before the meeting was due he completed his inspection and returned to the side of the restaurant overlooking the river, from where he could observe both the jetty and the road leading to it.

The Citroën appeared at eleven thirty precisely. He watched as the car stopped in the parking area and the single occupant got out, locked the driver’s door, and made his way to the wooden gangplank overlooking the Seine. Only when he was as satisfied as he could be that the contact was not being followed did Nabil leave the security of his position and walk to the water’s edge. The other man heard him coming and turned to greet him.

‘Ahlan wa Sahlan.’ They embraced, kissing each other on the cheeks. It was ten years since they had last met and both showed the passing of time. ‘I have missed you.’ The greeting was traditional, between old and dear friends. ‘I have missed you more.’

They turned away from the path and walked along the wooden jetty to the line of boats moored at the end.

‘So, Khalidi, I see you are still making a reputation for yourself.’ The second man addressed Nabil by the name by which he had known him when they were children together forty years before. Nabil smiled. ‘I do my best,’ he said, ‘though sometimes it is not appreciated.’ He leaned against the wooden railings. ‘And you, Ahmad Hussein, you are also doing well. I read about your companies in the Wall Street Journal, I even have shares in you.’ Hussein laughed. ‘Insh’Allah,’ he said. ‘God willing.’

Abu Nabil looked across the water, turning, scanning the parking area, confirming Hussein had not been followed. ‘And your wife and little ones, they are still well?’

‘Rima is just as beautiful as when you suggested she should choose you not me.’ They both remembered, both laughed. They had been friends, close friends, since birth. ‘The children are also well,’ Hussein went on, knowing why Nabil was scouring the area behind them, knowing he had to. ‘Leila is playing the piano, Jamil prefers American football.’

He did not talk of the family of the man who had requested the meeting.

‘Life has been good to you,’ said Nabil. There was no malice in his voice.

‘Yes,’ said Hussein, ‘life has been good to me.’ He wondered where it was leading, why Abu Nabil had asked for the meeting.

‘And yet you have not forgotten.’ Abu Nabil drew the other man back to the single thread which linked them. ‘You still send money, still do what you can to help.’

‘No,’ said Hussein, ‘I have not forgotten.’

There was a sadness in his voice. They looked out over the river, watching the barge plough its way against the current. For the next ten minutes they stood almost motionless, talking of the old days, Nabil talking of the monies that Hussein had donated, the food and clothing he had sent unsolicited and unrecognised to the thousands who had poured into the refugee camps, the jobs he had created for the sons and daughters of the Diaspora, Hussein shrugging his shoulders, saying it was nothing, saying it was the least he could do. Meaning it.

After ten minutes they turned back, away from the river, and went to the restaurant overlooking the jetty, taking a table in the corner, away from the window.

To the waitress who served them they seemed like two businessmen discussing their affairs. In one way, at least, she was correct. Hussein was president of the company he had created twenty-five years before. Although its head office was in New York, where he had moved as the eldest son of a refugee family in the years after the United Nations had recommended the division of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel in 1947, its activities had spawned over Western Europe and the United States, as well as the Middle East, to the point where Hussein held as much power in his chosen domain as Nabil commanded in his.

Hussein poured them each a glass of wine, and broke the bread the waitress had given them. ‘There is something you want from me,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Nabil, ‘there is something I want from you.’

On the river outside it had begun to rain.

For the next fifteen minutes he went through the single, simple request, pausing only when the waitress served them or cleared the table between them. The two people, he said, the two people he wished Ahmad Hussein to find for him. Telling him why he wanted them, the objective he wished to achieve through them, not telling him the means he had already set in motion to achieve that objective.

Like the pieces in a chess game, the soldier Sharaf had thought in Damascus, each required to play his part, each allowed to know his part, and no more. Himself, the accountant Saad. Now, Nabil would have added, the man he was seeing in Paris, the two men Hussein would identify for him and the politician he would meet tomorrow in London. Plus the man he himself would send out, as well as the man the others would send to stop him. And the innocents, always the innocents, who would come between them. Like a chess game, each move, each piece, a part of the game, each move a game in itself.

On the river outside it had stopped raining.

The two men left separately. By four that afternoon Nabil had checked out of the Georges Cinq and taken a cab to Charles de Gaulle; at five thirty he took British Airways flight number BA313 to London Heathrow.

The flight was comfortable, and the service friendly; he asked for a soft drink and spent the hour going through the English newspapers on board, checking both the political and financial sections. The pound had slipped another half-cent against the dollar, partly due to higher interest rates in the United States, partly due to industrial trouble at home, increasingly due to its position as a petro-currency. For several months the world’s oil surplus had led to a gradual reduction in the price of oil, for those months the world’s leading producers, both inside and outside OPEC, had been talking about a new price and quota structure. So far they had failed to agree.

He saw the lights of the city below and thought again of the man he would meet the following afternoon, and what he would ask him to do.

The Hotel Majestic overlooks the Paseo de Gracia, in the heart of Barcelona; one hour’s drive to the south, off the highway to Tarragona, is the village of Comarruga. On the outskirts of the village is a complex of holiday villas known as Las Piñas. At three in the afternoon on the fifth Sunday before Christmas, Issam Sharaf, military advisor to Abu Nabil, checked into the Hotel Majestic. The passport he was using, like that which Nabil was himself using, had been issued in Kuwait. He informed the receptionist that he would be staying three or four days, depending on business, and that he would probably wish to conduct a meeting in the hotel on the afternoon of the third day, confirming that the hotel would be able to provide a buffet lunch for his guests, with both wine and beer.

Sharaf appeared to spend the remainder of the day sightseeing, despite the edges of winter that were touching the city, beginning the second day in the same manner, walking to Gaudi’s Church of the Holy Family and taking coffee in a café off the Ramblas. At nine forty-five precisely he left the café, took a cab to el Corte Ingles, walking through the ground floor of the department store to the street on the other side, and taking a second cab to a restaurant near the Plaza de Cataluña which he had visited the previous afternoon. He walked through, left by the back door, and was driven away in the Seat that had been waiting in the narrow alley behind the building. At eleven fifteen he arrived at the villa in the centre of the holiday complex of Las Piñas near the village of Comarruga; he had stopped only once on the drive from Barcelona, to shake hands with the man and woman who had been waiting for him in the parking lot on the outskirts of the city.

The meeting, round the reproduction mahogany table in the lounge of the villa, began on schedule at eleven thirty. Those present represented the groups already discussed by Nabil and Sharaf in Damascus, the terrorist organisations whose actions would dominate Europe in the following months, plus, from Northern Ireland, the Provisional IRA and the INLA. Sharaf himself opened the meeting, thanking those present for attending and outlining the range of topics it had been agreed they would discuss. The first exchange was dominated by the representatives of the Red Army Faction and the Red Brigades; given their background, the move was both expected and accepted by the other delegates. In turn, however, both groups were influenced by the presence of the two people who accompanied Sharaf – the man and woman he had met in the parking lot outside Barcelona, both of whom had been involved in the campaigns of killings and kidnappings of the late seventies and early eighties, both of whom were still sought by the various security organisations of a number of countries.

The agenda was straightforward. Item One: the launching of a campaign of terror in Europe. Item Two: the coordination of targets during that campaign. Item Three: cooperation between groups, including the issuing of joint communiqués and the inter-exchange of weapons and materials.

With minor exceptions the discussion which followed was free of political rhetoric, the delegates welcoming the opening of a new front, and accepting Sharaf’s offer of a range of facilities, both logistical and financial. The only conditions, suggested by the West Germans and seconded by the Italians, were that such support would not impinge on the autonomy of each group in its own country, and that it should be the Palestinians themselves who would carry out the first action of the campaign. Both conditions had been anticipated and were agreed to immediately.

The meeting lasted six hours and ten minutes. It ended seventeen hours and ten minutes before it was due to begin, if the security forces had shadowed the Palestinian to Barcelona and taken his request for a room and refreshments at the Hotel Majestic to indicate the time and location of the meeting.

In fact, they had not.

Twelve hours later Sharaf left Spain for West Germany.

The meeting which Abu Nabil had arranged in London was at two forty-five.

Security in the West End that day was strict: the extra police vans on the street corners, the number of uniformed men in the area, the outlines of the marksmen on the roofs above them, the urgency with which the maroon patrol cars of the Diplomatic Protection Group and the white transits of the Special Patrol Group seemed to be moving.

Nabil did not allow it to concern him, knowing it was to do neither with himself nor any of his plans, assuming, correctly, that it was connected with the meeting of international oil ministers which was taking place in London that day.

At ten minutes past two he took a cab to the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane, allowing himself extra time for what he knew would be the inevitable traffic delays and the equally inevitable security blanket round the hotel, arriving at twenty-five minutes to three, ten minutes before his appointment.

There were three police cars outside, uniformed officers at the entrance to the foyer and, again he correctly assumed, armed plain-clothes men inside. The receptionist did not appear to be affected by the intrusion. He introduced himself by the name in the Kuwaiti passport which he carried and asked her to inform Mr Yussef of his arrival. The receptionist had been efficient and polite, now she was even more so. Adnan Yussef was a regular guest, known by the staff to treat them well when he left; he was also the head of the political staff of Sheikh Saeed Khaled and it was the presence of those among whom Sheikh Saeed Khaled held such influence, the oil ministers in London for the OPEC talks, that was the prime reason for the massive security screens both inside and outside the Hilton and other hotels where the delegates were secluded with their staffs.

Five minutes later the appointment had been checked and Nabil had been escorted to the eighth floor, past the discreet security line, to the suite occupied not by Yussef but by the sheikh himself. He was shown in, offered coffee, which he declined, and left alone. There was no way that he could check the room for the quantity of eavesdropping equipment which it could have concealed, he knew, and no point; such was his host’s position that no one but Khaled would have even considered installing such devices, partly because of the technical difficulties involved, mainly because of the political repercussions were such devices to be discovered in the regular electronic sweeps which the sheikh’s personal security advisors were known to conduct. And if the sheikh had introduced his own devices, which Nabil considered more probable, then he would also have arranged for them to be switched off during the meeting that was to follow.

Three minutes later, exactly on time, Sheikh Saeed Khaled entered the room.

He was older than the occasional photograph which appeared in the international press suggested, only the slight yellowing in the whites of his eyes betraying the toll of the lifestyle he had chosen to inflict upon himself.

Saeed Al-Haitham Bin Khaled had been born the fourth son of one of the extended families which comprised the oil cartel of the Middle East. Partly because of the changing nature of international politics following the Second World War, partly because of the interpretation of a dream which his father had had whilst he himself was still in his mother’s womb, he had been educated in France, Britain and the United States. He had also, because of both his father’s influence and his own inclinations, turned aside from the limitations of national politics and the opulence and privilege which his birthright afforded him, and begun to steer his path through the web of manipulation and intrigue which emanated from the Middle Eastern oil wealth, spreading his power base through the financial and political worlds which became increasingly linked to it, to the extent that his sway and influence, though little known to the general public, matched that of the Saudi oil minister Sheikh Yamani in the conference halls where the formal decisions were taken.

‘Khalidi,’ he said, using his visitor’s correct name and embracing him. ‘It is good to see you again.’ He ignored the coffee and opened the cocktail cabinet fitted along one wall of the lounge. ‘What would you like?’ Though their religion barred alcohol and Nabil drank little, he knew what his host expected. ‘Black Label,’ he said. Khaled poured two generous glasses, gave one to Nabil, then crossed the room and looked down from the window to the street below, shaking his head and smiling slightly. It amused him that the security net which surrounded the building, the visible elements of which he could observe from his suite, was designed to protect those he influenced from the likes of the very organisation whose founder he was now entertaining.

‘The talks are going well?’ enquired Nabil. The sheikh gestured with his hand, ‘Not well, not badly. OPEC has a problem which many do not wish to see solved.’ He settled into the chair by the window. ‘So, Abu Nabil,’ he changed the name by which he addressed his guest, ‘what brings you to London? Not the oil meeting, I hope, not another OPEC.’ In December 1975 the Venezuelan terrorist known internationally as ‘Carlos’ or ‘The Jackal’ had taken over a meeting of OPEC ministers in Vienna and held them hostage before flying them to North Africa. What was known publicly was that the drama had ended on the tarmac of the airport in Algiers when he had released the last of his hostages in front of the television cameras. What was not known was that Nabil had contributed in a major way to the planning which preceded the operation, and Sheikh Saeed Khaled to the negotiations which ended it. It had been during those negotiations, initially conducted through intermediaries, that the two men had come into contact with each other, though it was not until ten months later that they had first met.

‘No,’ Nabil shared the joke, ‘not another OPEC.’

The sheikh rose and poured them each another drink. Khaled was too politically experienced to ask why Nabil had requested a meeting with him, Nabil too well-practised to speak of the matter immediately: when it was time to raise the subject, they both knew, it would raise itself. For the next thirty minutes they discussed the situation in the Middle East, the power game in the Lebanon, the role of Jordan and the divisions within the ranks of the Palestinian movement itself, including Nabil’s own opposition to the PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

‘The trouble with Arafat,’ he suggested, ‘is not that he gave up the armed struggle, but that he gave it up for the wrong reason and in the wrong way.’

Khaled was aware the conversation was turning, as if of its own accord. ‘The trouble with you,’ he invited his guest to continue, ‘is that you cannot give it up.’

‘But by giving up violence, Arafat has nothing left with which to negotiate, nothing to offer in return for what he demands.’ Nabil knew the conversation was at the stage where there was no point in delaying.

‘And what can you offer in return for what your people want, when all you have to offer is your violence?’

Nabil looked at him, turning his words back on him. ‘Perhaps all I have to offer is my violence.’

‘But your violence is the only thing that gives your people hope, the only way they see of getting what they want.’

Nabil ignored the response, as Khaled knew he would. ‘But if they achieved what they wanted, then there would no longer be a need for that violence.’

One day, Khaled knew, one day, they both knew, they would remember the conversation, what was said, where it was said.

‘And how would you achieve that?’

With you, the old man had told Nabil, nothing is as it seems. ‘By violence.’

The telephone rang. Khaled picked it up and listened for fifteen seconds. ‘I am engaged,’ he said, ‘tell them tomorrow.’

‘The art of negotiation,’ Nabil began afresh, ‘is the ability to know in advance what the other person will accept. The greatest form of that art, as you yourself counselled me long ago, is agreeing with the other person what you will decide before you even begin.’

Khaled smiled.

‘In the past,’ continued Nabil, ‘there has never been success in discussions about the Palestinian issue because there has never been agreement beforehand.’

‘There has been suggestion of agreement,’ Khaled corrected him, ‘the problem was that those with the power to insist upon the agreement, the Americans, could never be certain that the Palestinians would stand by their word.’

‘But if they could be convinced?’

For the second time, Khaled was aware that he would remember the afternoon. ‘You could not approach them direct,’ he cautioned, ‘it would have to be through a friend.’ They both understood he was not talking about himself. ‘And even then, the friend would need proof that you could and would deliver.’

‘What if I had already delivered to that friend?’ asked Nabil.

‘It would have to be important,’ said Khaled.

It was the reason Nabil had sent the soldier Sharaf into Europe. ‘It will be,’ he confirmed.

Khaled noted the change in tense. ‘So what do you want of me?’ he asked.

Nabil had learned too much in his fifty-three years to give a direct answer to such a direct question. ‘I am thinking,’ he said, ‘about how I would find such a friend.’ It was the reason he had gone to Paris.

‘That,’ said Khaled, knowing it was not what his guest was asking of him, ‘is up to you.’

‘But if I found him, would you help me?’ It was the reason Nabil had come to London.

‘Yes,’ said one of the most powerful men behind the world’s oil discussions. ‘I would help you.’

CHAPTER TWO

The hole was wet and cold, the rain cutting in sheets across the corner of the field in front of them, and the water from the branches which concealed their hiding place dripping down on them. They had been there three days, at two the next morning it would be four, one of them sleeping, wrapped in the waterproof bag they had smuggled in, the other watching, waiting.

The path through the trees into the edge of the field was almost lost in the dusk. Somewhere he heard a car, knew it was too far away, knew how sound travelled at this time of day.

They had come in at night, skirting the village, knowing the dogs were there and taking care not to disturb them, taking care not to leave even the slightest indication that they had come; by the morning they had dug the hole, concealed it and begun their wait. Fifty yards behind them lay the back-up, their hole similarly covered, running wet and freezing cold.

Between two and six days and the men would come for the arms and explosives hidden in the cache in the corner of the field, Special Branch had told them the informant had said. Between two and six days and the centre of Belfast would be hit. He lay still, the Ml6 dry by his side, looking across the field to the single track where they had worked out the men would appear. Three men, Special Branch had said, all of them active Provos, one of them on the run since the break-out from the H-Blocks the year before. A small job, Special Branch had also said, an indication by their man of the amount and quality of information he possessed, an indication of his standing in the Provisional IRA, a promise by the informant of things to come.

In an hour, Graham Enderson thought, it would be dark, then it would be his turn to crawl into the sleeping bag and sleep; he had once spent fifteen days in such a hole, he reminded himself, fifteen days in a winter even colder than this one. He checked his watch again and wondered when the men would show.

Today was his son’s birthday, he had remembered that morning; he had intended to telephone, could not send a card, knew his wife would have taken care of it as she always did. The light was fading. He thought again of the three men who would come to the cache, how many people they intended to kill, whether they had ever thought about the moment they themselves would die. He would be careful, as he always was; he distrusted informants, wondered why they informed, wondered why the men he was about to kill were being set up, wondered who was being set up, them or him. So many tricks, he knew, so many times to be careful, never a time when he could not afford to be careful. It was almost dark.

He had been with the SAS nine years; most of that time on active service, except for the training months in Hereford, except for the language courses, except, he knew others would find it ironic, for the six months he had spent in the emergency ward of the hospital learning how to save life instead of taking it away. On his belt Enderson carried not only his spare ammunition, but also a sophisticated medical pack.

His son’s birthday, he thought again, and wished he was not missing it.

In the grey at the top of the path into the field he saw the three men, knew immediately they did not suspect, did not know they had been betrayed. He slid his hand across the hole, not taking his eyes from them, and shook the shoulder of the man in the sleeping bag. The man woke noiselessly and rolled over. There was a new silence in the air. As soon as they uncovered the cache and picked up the first gun. The men were careful, Enderson thought, had checked the area, for cars, for traces of people like himself. They were edging forward, out of the trees, three of them, as the informer had said. He recognised the second man, the one who had escaped from the H-Blocks, remembered his reputation, the charges on which the man had been convicted, the other things he had done. No challenge, he thought, no formal procedure. As soon as the first man picked up the first gun. He was looking down the sights, knowing the system, watching the three men skirting the barn, heading towards the corner of the field, closing on the cache.

He and his men could still be caught in a trap, Enderson was still thinking. He had always distrusted people like the informer, had never trusted anyone except his own. The men had come to the cache, were looking around for the last time, bending down. So many tricks, so many traps to walk into; he had not even inspected the cache in case it was boobytrapped, in case there was a sniper in the hills above waiting for him to show himself. The men in front were bending down, uncovering the cache.

The first man picked up the first gun.

The Special Branch briefing was brief, Special Branch briefings were always brief. Graham Enderson was not sure whether it was because the need to protect sources was as strict as the men concerned insisted, or because it was a game they played, not only with their contacts but also with him.

The informant who had passed them the details of the arms cache had approached them again, said the sergeant. He would not say who the man was or where the meeting had taken place, would not even confirm that such a meeting had taken place. There was to be a high-level conference in Belfast, the man had said, some of the big boys were coming for it, from Dublin, from Derry, he had given them the time and the location.

‘Who’s involved?’ asked Enderson. The meeting was taking place in the army centre in Lisburn.

The Special Branch sergeant gave him the names. Enderson knew all of them. ‘Where?’ he asked. He remembered the night at the arms cache, how he had managed to phone home that evening after all, managed to wish his son happy birthday.

The Special Branch man gave him the address.

‘The Sportsman’s,’ said Enderson, ‘just along from McDonald’s place.’ He knew the addresses, knew the IRA man who lived along the road.

‘That’s right,’ confirmed the sergeant, giving nothing away.

‘Will McDonald be going to the meeting?’ No problems, he was thinking; he already knew where they could keep watch on the house, where they had already kept watch on the house, the secret place from where they had logged McDonald’s movements, his wife’s movements, his son’s movements, till they knew them all as if they were family: McDonald himself, the hard man, the planner behind the deaths and mutilations, the wife Eileen, even the son Liam.

‘Yes, McDonald will be going to the meeting.’

Typical Special Branch briefing, Enderson thought again, the sergeant had omitted McDonald from the original list; he knew, nevertheless, that McDonald was not the informant, knew that McDonald would never be an informant.

One problem, he was already thinking. He did not know the interior of the bar in which the meeting would take place, which rooms were above it, which doors led to it, away from it.

‘When?’ he asked.

The Special Branch man told him.

Not much time, he thought, only a matter of days, almost the end of term for the kids, he thought, knew he would not be home for Christmas, almost the beginning of their Christmas holidays.

‘OK,’ he said.

The Special Branch briefing lasted a mere fifteen minutes, the briefing which Enderson gave to his teams lasted almost three hours; at the end of it they had worked out the covers as well as the approach routes, plus what they would do inside. The only things they did not know, the only things they still needed to know, were the movements of McDonald and the interior lay-out of the bar where the meeting would take place.

By five thirty the IRA planner called McDonald had been given the code-name Michael, by five forty-five Enderson had solved the problem of the lay-out of the bar. At seven thirty that evening a house in the Falls Road opposite the home of the IRA planner called McDonald was broken into whilst the family who lived there were out. Nothing was stolen and the entry was not even noticed. When they returned at nine that evening there was no way the family could have known that concealed in the roofspace of their house was a man, lying in a hammock strung between the beams of the roof, looking through a hole where he had removed a tile, his radio on whisper.

* * *

By twelve fifteen the next day Enderson confirmed the arrangements he had set in motion to examine the internal lay-out of the Sportsman’s. Eighty-five minutes later Jimmy Roberts flew into Aldergrove Airport.

If he had asked them, he knew, they would have said no; instead he left the flat he shared in Earls Court, took the tube to Heathrow and caught the twelve thirty shuttle to Belfast. There was no trouble with security or Special Branch at either airport. Jimmy Roberts was, after all, an American citizen.

It was almost six weeks since the first message from California that his grandmother was ill, three days since she had died, two days since he had known of it.

He arrived at Milltown Cemetery fifteen minutes before they arrived to lay her to rest, the rain sheeting across the headstones and the mud churned round the hole they had dug for her. He had met her only twice in his life, on the two occasions she had visited the branch of her family on the West Coast of America, yet even there, he remembered, she had been fêted, even there they had known of her republicanism.

Roberts stayed at the gate till he saw the procession wind its way up from the city, the outline of Belfast almost lost in the clouds, and turn into the cemetery. Not many for such a fine woman, he thought, knowing again he should not have come, was glad he had. They passed by him, staring ahead; he watched the faces through the car windows, white, colourless, the men and women not looking at him, seeing him nevertheless, wondering who he was, what he was doing. Only when they had slid the wooden coffin from the hearse and the Holy Father was praying over his grandmother for the last time, did Roberts leave the gate and join the handful of mourners. They nodded at him and looked back at the priest.

He looked on as the box was lowered into the ground, remembering how he had listened to her, remembering the stories she had told him, the heady days of the Easter Rising, the mystery of the death of Michael Collins, the dread of the despised Black and Tans. Only when the coffin was still, and the earth had been sprinkled on it, did they turn to him.

‘I’m Sean.’ He had already worked out what he would say, knew there was no way they could check, no way any of them would know. They recognised his accent, knew he was who he said he was.

‘You’re Sean,’ one of them was saying, ‘all the way from America, you’re her Seamus’s boy.’

It was amazing, he thought, how the family ties still spread across the world, how they were still remembered. ‘Yes,’ he thought of his cousin, ‘I’m Seamus’s boy.’

The rain was harder: not a fitting day, they all agreed, asked him how he was getting back to the city, offering him a lift, someone suggesting he might like a drink. He thanked them, meaning it, was only sorry that he could not tell them the truth, that he never had the chance to tell his grandmother the truth.

Jimmy Roberts was twenty-six years old, his father had emigrated to America with his wife three years before Jimmy had been born. His uncle, the father of the man called Sean, had joined them two years later. They had settled on the West Coast, in the Bay area of San Francisco, where the old lady had visited them, once when Jimmy was four, the last time when he was eighteen. Roberts was both intelligent and industrious, he also shared his grandmother’s zeal for a united Ireland. In late 1982, after four years in the United States army, he had volunteered, through a complicated series of checks and cut-off points, for active service in the cause of the land he considered his own. His last meeting, in a bar in New York, was with a man introduced to him as the head of the movement in North America, whom he knew only by the nick-name or code-name, he was not sure which, of Chopper. The following summer he had been sent to the republic, where he met the men with whom he would live and fight until the movement tired of him, or he of it. Or, he always knew, until the day they buried him with the black beret and the tricolour on his coffin. Three months later Roberts and three others had been posted to London as a sleeper unit of the Provisional IRA. The job of the unit was simple, to lie low, build up a supply of arms and explosives and to wait for the moment the men who gave the orders decided it was time to bomb both the body and the soul out of the mainland. It was for this reason, he knew, that they would have said no if he had asked them permission to attend the funeral of his grandmother, for this reason he had not asked them.

The Falls Road was already dark when the car stopped outside the Sportsman’s. He followed the men inside, the car continuing, taking the women home. The room was small and warm, the condensation running from the windows. He reminded himself who he had said he was and knew that he should not have come. One drink with the family and then he would leave, he told himself; before anyone saw him, before anyone who might recognise him from the training in the Republic entered the bar. The family would not let him get away with just one drink, he knew. He knew again why he had not asked permission, knew he should not have come.

The door flew open and the troops came in. The Green Jackets, he knew, smashing through the tables, forcing the drinkers to get up, pushing them against the wall. He felt the panic rising in him and forced himself to stay calm, to act like the others, tried to persuade himself it was routine, looking at them hurrying through the bar, through the door at the end, up the stairs to the flat above.

The bastard on the end, he suddenly thought, same uniform as the others, same badges, same weapons hanging from his arm, same beret. He wondered why he had noticed the man, why he had singled him out, told himself to remember the face.

They were gone as quickly as they had come, crashing out through the door, the last man covering the others. He heard them moving along the street, the engines starting, pulling away, then he finished his drink and left.

By ten thirty that evening Jimmy was back in the flat in Earls Court which the active service unit used as a base and a bomb factory. He did not tell anyone where he had been or what had happened. It was almost Christmas; he remembered feeling the sadness that his grandmother would not see it, was glad, at least, that he had said goodbye.

By eleven Enderson had drawn out the plans of the bar from the details he had memorised on the raid that afternoon and briefed his teams. It was almost Christmas, he remembered; perhaps, he thought, he could phone his wife on Christmas Day, perhaps he could speak to the children.

* * *

Twelve days after the meeting in the villa outside Comarruga, Issam Sharaf reported back to Abu Nabil. Except for the tight circle of advisors who had need to know, there was no indication to anyone that either he or Nabil had been away; even within that circle no one knew where they had been or why they had gone.

It was almost lunchtime. Only after the bodyguard who sat behind Nabil had left the room did the soldier begin his briefing on the Barcelona conference and his meetings in West Germany; at no stage did Nabil inform Sharaf of his own discussions in Paris and London and at no stage did Sharaf ask.

The sky outside had the thinness of winter, cold and watery.

Sharaf listed those present in the villa at Las Piñas, describing the general atmosphere and detailing the consensus on the three-point agenda, his summary brief and businesslike.

‘Under the general policy that all actions must be seen as part of a coordinated campaign, it has been accepted that assassinations and kidnappings, if any, will be directed against figures connected to the military-industrial complex, and that bombings, which are more likely, will be restricted to companies and institutions linked directly to NATO.’ His voice was level, matter-of-fact.

Nabil nodded his agreement. ‘Weapons and explosives?’ he asked.

‘Arrangements have already been made for the groups involved to share weapons and explosives. There were some objections: some groups feared that it would suggest they were short of such items. It took time to persuade them that the effect would be the opposite.’

Nabil nodded again. ‘And communiqués?’

‘Also agreed. Communiqués will carry joint responsibility. There will also be a link-up between joint communiqués and the exchange of weapons.’ Nabil waited for an illustration. ‘If Action Directe, for example, carries out an assassination in France using a weapon previously used by the Red Brigades in Italy, then the communiqué claiming responsibility will be signed by those two groups. If the Belgians use explosives of a type already used in Germany, then the communiqué will carry the names of the CCC and the RAF.’

Nabil looked up from his drink. ‘It should set them thinking,’ he mused. ‘I wonder how long it will be before anyone picks it up?’

‘Not long at all.’

Nabil tapped the rim of his cup. ‘Anything specific?’

‘Yes. Action Directe are already planning the execution of the man in charge of French arms sales, General René Audran. They’ll postpone that action until ordered to carry it out. The weapon they’ll use will be a machine pistol already used by the Red Brigades in Italy.’

‘What was it used for in Italy?’

‘The killing of a magistrate in Turin in August.’ Sharaf’s voice was still matter-of-fact.

‘Any other specifics?’

‘The Germans and Belgians have agreed on a list of firms they’ll both attack, using explosives from the same source. They have also said that they are prepared to hold off.’

Nabil interpreted the nuance of his words. ‘They will hold off until what?’ he asked.

‘Until one condition has been met, the same with the French.’

‘The condition we assumed they would impose?’

‘Yes,’

They stopped for lunch: Nabil did not consider they should eat while discussing the next subject. The meal, in any case, was light and they completed it in fifteen minutes. When the plates had been cleared and they were again alone in the room, Sharaf raised the subject of the second stage of his European itinerary.

‘The hunger strike,’ he began. It was the part of the plans Nabil had requested him to set in motion which he had anticipated would be the most difficult, but the part which, to the contrary, had proved the easiest.

‘The West Germans have agreed. Contact has been made with those in prison for what the state calls acts of terrorism or who have connections, at whatever levels, with the Red Army Faction; all these are prepared to join a hunger strike.’ One other requirement, Nabil thought, one other prerequisite he had emphasised to Sharaf. ‘Contact has also been made with those in prison in West Germany for political offences not connected with acts of violence,’ continued the soldier. ‘Of these, a number are also prepared to join a hunger strike.’

‘How far are they all prepared to go?’

Sharaf looked at him. ‘As far as necessary,’ he replied simply.

‘What about the authorities? Will they try to stop the hunger strike in any way?’ He did not ask how the man had communicated with those in prison.

‘No,’ said Sharaf.

‘What about force feeding?’

‘The authorities will view the hunger strike as an extension of the campaign against them. Any attempt at force feeding would be considered a victory for the hunger-strikers.’

‘And how will the German public react?’

Sharaf was realistic. ‘At first they won’t care a damn, they won’t even notice. As the first death draws near, however, they’ll begin to think about it, about what it means.’

They would begin to sense the fear, Nabil knew. ‘How long will it take?’ he asked, partly out of consideration of those he was about to sacrifice, partly out of necessity for his timetable.

‘The key,’ Sharaf began to explain, ‘is water. On average, the human body can only survive ten to fifteen days without water, so a hunger strike with no food or water would be over very quickly.’ Too quickly for them, he was thinking, though he did not say so.

‘And if the person took water but no food?’

‘A lower limit of thirty to forty days, an upper limit of approximately seventy to seventy-five.’

‘Is there any way of calculating the probable length of a hunger strike given the individual’s personal characteristics, his weight and body type for example?’

Sharaf guessed the reason for the question. ‘Only within broad outlines. It depends on more factors than just body size and shape. The amount of fat on the body is important. Women therefore tend to survive longer than men, but it also depends on how much exercise the person takes, even the temperature of the room. In the IRA hunger strike of 1981, Bobby Sands was expected to die after about fifty days but survived sixty-five. Joe McDonnell lasted sixty-one, but Kieran Doherty took seventy-three days to die.’

Nabil was staring across the room. ‘So what do you suggest?’

Sharaf’s recommendation was brutal and straightforward. ‘We start one a week, as the IRA did in Belfast. That way the public are made aware of the campaign as each person joins it, that way they are more exposed to the pressure as the deaths become imminent or the people start dying.’ He realised Nabil was looking at the photograph on the desk at the side of the window. ‘In a way,’ he said, ‘the pressure only comes after the first death.’

Nabil took a long time to reply. ‘So the really important person is the second one to die?’ he said at last.

‘Yes. The first death is a necessary sacrifice; it is the second death which is important.’

Nabil was nodding slowly, thinking of it, thinking of the fear it would bring, of the full awesomeness of the pressure he had asked Sharaf to set in motion. ‘You have arranged the second group as I requested?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And they have all agreed?’

‘They have all agreed.’

Nabil knew how important they would be, how important they would all be. ‘Who goes first?’ he asked.

‘Klars Christian Mannheim.’

Abu Nabil knew it would be Klars Christian Mannheim. ‘He knows he will die?’

‘Yes, he knows he will die.’

For the second time, Nabil did not ask how Sharaf had communicated with those in prison. ‘How long will it take?’

The soldier had already made the calculation. ‘He weighs sixty-eight kilos. Within the limits we discussed, about seventy days.’

‘When will he start?’

‘He will announce his intention to go on hunger strike on Christmas Eve. He will start in the New Year.’

Nabil knew that Klars Christian Mannheim had worked it out, that he had set himself a timetable, that there was a reason for it.

‘How will it be for him, for all of them?’ he asked quietly.

‘Hell,’ said Sharaf simply.

Neither of them spoke for thirty seconds.

‘You said the campaign in Europe was dependent upon one condition?’ It was Nabil who broke the silence.

Sharaf nodded. ‘They ask that we start the campaign.’

‘As we expected.’

‘Yes.’ He knew Nabil had already selected both the target and the place.

‘Hassan Nabulsi,’ Nabil’s voice was without emotion. ‘The PLO man in London.’

The choice neither surprised nor displeased Sharaf: the target would satisfy those who had made the request at the Spanish conference, and assassinations within the various factions of the Palestinian movement were not uncommon.

‘Nabulsi is in Tunisia with Arafat at the moment,’ he said.

‘He returns next week.’

Sharaf did not need to know how the other man knew. ‘When?’

‘Before Christmas. Before Klars Christian Mannheim announces his hunger strike. That way he’ll know we’re serious.’

‘Who will do it?’ Sharaf asked at last.

If Walid Haddad was going to end it all, Nabil had already thought, then it was only fitting that Walid Haddad should begin it.

‘Walid Haddad,’ he said.

* * *

The mood in the centre of the city, even a city continuously under siege like Belfast, was festive; the mood in the operations room was tense. Today, Special Branch had confirmed.

At two in the afternoon Enderson left Lisburn and drove into the city; although he was wearing civilian clothes, he carried his personal Browning inside his coat and was accompanied by two members of his team. In Belfast, they had long learned, in the civil war in Ireland, they never went anywhere unaccompanied.

The streets were busy, the shop fronts lit and decorated; he realised how close it was to Christmas, how he had forgotten it was almost Christmas. The driver stopped the car outside a hamburger bar and they went in, not because they were hungry, simply to while away the waiting. It was crowded. Even at the table they did not relax, one always looking at the car, another at the door, looking at who might be looking at them, leaving, setting them up as they left. Outside the afternoon was already getting dark. He looked across the road at the shoppers, hearing the music in the background, the words of the carol.

‘They said there’d be snow at Christmas,

They said there’d be peace on earth.’

Today, the Special Branch had said. This evening. Definitely, they said their informant had told them, without fail. They rose and left the café.

The man whom Abu Nabil had personally chosen to both begin and end his campaign of terror arrived at Heathrow fifteen minutes late at ten forty-five in the morning on Scandinavian Airlines SK501 from Copenhagen. Neither the timing nor the flight was a coincidence. SK501 was one of seven flights to arrive from Europe in a half-hour period; the immigration halls would therefore be crowded and congested. And passengers from Copenhagen attracted less attention from immigration and Special Branch than those from other European cities, such as Rome and Athens, with reputations for terrorist connections.

Walid Haddad was twenty-eight years old, neatly though not expensively dressed in a dark blue business suit. The briefcase he carried contained, among a number of other items all related to his supposed profession of petroleum analyst, a diary with a list of business appointments in London over the next two days which had been easy to arrange but which, if they had been checked, would have provided him with justification for visiting Britain.

He followed the line of passengers off the plane, through the walkways and connecting doors, and into the large impersonal hall lined, at the far end, by the immigration desks. Four queues, he saw immediately, knowing he would have no problem, looking anyway for his insurance. The queues were longer than he had anticipated, with three officials on duty at each desk. Normally two, he thought, wondering why the security was tighter than he had expected, and glanced again at the desks. One official checking passports, a second looking over his shoulder at the person at the desk, looking for the tell-tale signs, the third concentrating on the queue itself. He moved forward, wondering again about the increase in security and looking again for the insurance he needed.

A flood of passengers from another flight began spilling into the hall. There was a moment of confusion as the new group mingled with those already in the hall, deciding which queue to join. He looked round, ignoring the mêlée, and saw the woman. She was young, in her mid-twenties, of Arab appearance, with olive skin and dark piercing eyes, taller than average with long black hair. She also had the one quality above all, the single characteristic he was looking for: that of arrogance. In the way her eyes flashed, the way she held herself. He knew the men at the desks were already looking at her.

The woman was moving towards the third queue from the far side of the hall. He hurried after her, waited till she had almost joined the queue, then stepped in front of her, almost bumping into her. He turned and apologised, politely, not friendly. The queue moved forward. He knew again they had already seen her, already singled her out. The queue to his right was moving faster, already growing shorter. Stay behind me, he spoke silently to the woman, stay where you are, give me cover. The queue shuffled forward, he reached the desk, gave the official his passport, entry visa on page five.

‘Name?’ The voice was harsh. He knew the other two men at the desk were looking at the woman and gave the name in his false passport.

‘What are you doing in London?’

‘Business. I’m a petroleum analyst.’ He thought about the appointments he had arranged in case they questioned him, knew it was a formality, felt himself relax, did not let it show, controlling the degree of eye contact that would give the woman away even though she was entirely innocent. Abruptly the official stamped his passport, snapped it shut and handed it back to him. Forty-five minutes later he had retrieved his one suitcase, cleared customs, collected his hire car, and was driving down the M4 motorway into London. Behind him, he knew, the first tentacles of the security net were beginning to tighten round the woman, the first arrangements for a Special Branch surveillance, the first requests, formal or informal, for a telephone intercept wherever she was staying.

By two thirty he had checked in at the Holiday Inn in Swiss Cottage, unpacked his suitcase and showered. The telephone in the room was direct dial. He checked the number he had been given in Damascus, and phoned the London office of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in Green Street.

‘Good afternoon,’ he spoke politely. ‘This is Mohsen Masri from An-Nahar.’ He named a prominent Middle Eastern publication. ‘Is it possible to speak with Mr Nabulsi?’

The receptionist was equally polite. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Nabulsi is away at the moment, can anyone else help?’

He thanked her, but said he needed to speak to the PLO representative personally and asked when she suggested he should phone again.

‘He flies in tomorrow and will be back in the office on Friday. Can I get him to contact you then?’

‘Don’t worry.’ Haddad kept his voice friendly and informal. ‘I’ll try him then.’

‘Make it early,’ she answered. ‘He’s busy after eleven.’

He thanked her and put the phone down. Abu Nabil was right, he thought, Abu Nabil was always right.

The traffic in London’s West End, where the offices of the PLO were situated, was congested, made worse by Christmas. It took Haddad twenty minutes to drive from the hotel to the office and another ten to find a parking space, even though it was on a yellow line. If a traffic warden came, he knew he would only have to move.

The black Ford Granada was parked outside the building which housed, amongst other offices, that of the London office of Yasser Arafat’s faction of the Palestinian movement. It was interesting, he thought, that the chauffeur came to work even when the representative himself was away, even more interesting that he came in the Granada. On a car radio he heard the sound of a Christmas carol. He waited, lost in the crowd of shoppers, the afternoon losing its light and the Christmas lights already on, shining in the dusk.

At five o’clock a man he supposed was the chauffeur left the building and unlocked the car. The man, he noted, checked neither around nor underneath the vehicle. Either, he imagined, because the car was visible from the front windows of the PLO office, or because the man assumed that because the representative was away, there was no security risk.

It was interesting, thought Haddad, how often people made the wrong assumption.

The traffic was heavy. He followed the car across Oxford Street, skirting behind Marylebone station and through the side streets to the west of Regent’s Park. At the intersection on the corner dominated by the cricket ground at Lord’s, he had checked on the street map, the chauffeur should drive straight on, towards the representative’s house in St John’s Wood and the security of the garage, electronically protected, at the side of the house. He knew what the man would do, that when the end came it would be so sudden and unexpected that the chauffeur would have no time to question when he had made his mistake. In front of him, the man turned right, away from St John’s Wood, towards Camden Town.

Ten minutes later Haddad watched the chauffeur reverse the Granada into the garage below the mews flat where the man lived with his wife. In front of the entrance to the flat was a Ford Escort which he assumed was their own vehicle. He parked the hire car and walked down the mews, the air cold, his hands pushed into his pockets, taking his time, as if he had every right to be there. The chauffeur was concentrating on his driving, taking care not to scratch the Granada as he backed it into the narrow space, giving Haddad plenty of time to see what he needed to know. No security, no tell-tale wires, not even a burglar alarm, or the pretence of one. Just the wooden door with the Yale lock.

He returned to the hotel, had another coffee, and waited till it was time to make the telephone call. The same number, Nabil had instructed him, the same time each evening.

At seven o’clock exactly he dialled the number. To his surprise, the voice which answered was American. West Coast, he thought. ‘Hello, John,’ he began, using the names of the code. ‘Is that you?’

‘Yes,’ replied the American in the public telephone kiosk. ‘Is that you, Peter?’ The same public telephone kiosk, his masters in Belfast had told Jimmy Roberts, the same time each evening.

‘Yes, it’s Peter.’ Haddad wondered why it surprised him that the IRA contact was an American. Definitely West Coast, he was thinking, the accent too soft to be anywhere else.

Roberts waited for the next part of the code, and wondered why the IRA should give a bomb to the Arabs, why the Arabs needed it, had asked for it specifically, even the type, when he knew they had plenty of their own.

The same thought had occurred to Haddad when he had been briefed by Nabil in Damascus. He had not queried it, assuming there was a reason; with Abu Nabil there was always a reason. ‘Look, John,’ he continued the coded conversation, ‘I’ve got a couple of girls and I need someone to help me out with them.’

‘When?’

‘Tonight.’

The Arab was in a hurry, Roberts thought. ‘Do I get the blonde or brunette?’ Blonde for a straightforward meeting, brunette if he needed to bring the explosive device and detonator.

‘They’re both brunettes.’

Christ, Roberts thought, the Arab really was in a hurry. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you in the saloon bar at eight thirty.’

The first report came in at four. The car carrying the men from Dublin had crossed the border and was heading north. Three hours to go, thought Enderson. The second report came in half an hour later. The car carrying the men from Londonderry had left the city and was heading south. Two and a half hours, thought Enderson. He went through the plan again, how the man in the roofspace would tell them what was happening, who was arriving, how they were protected, the signal for the moment the unmarked cars would close in, which of his team would cover the back, the ways out, who would go in the front, what they would do when they were inside.

‘Michael leaving his house with his wife and son, getting in cars.’ Enderson heard the voice of the man in the roofspace overlooking the street. McDonald the IRA planner, he thought, the man whose house was less than thirty yards from the drinking club where the informant had said the meeting was to take place. He wondered why he was leaving and what he was doing, why he was taking his wife and son, thought for a moment that the informant was wrong then knew that he was not, realised what McDonald was doing. Putting on a front, acting normally, covering himself for what lay ahead. Two hours to go, he thought. Stand-by, the voice in his head told him, stand-by, stand-by.

The second report from the south came in at five, the men from Dublin closing on the city; he checked with the tail on the car from the north and heard the confirmation. An hour, less than an hour, then he and his men would move into position, any later and they would be too late, any earlier and they would be noticed.

The car from the south entered the city, the car from the north closing fast. They seemed to have been waiting for ever, Enderson thought. It had been dark two hours. Time to move in. Except where the hell was McDonald?

‘Vehicle check, urgent.’ It was the voice of the man in the roofspace. Enderson took the make and registration number of the car and passed it to Lisburn; knew they would only take seconds to run the computer check. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘Probably nothing, but the car’s been up and down the road twice now, first day I’ve seen it.’

The computer check came through.

‘Stolen three hours ago from the city centre,’ Enderson told the man in the roofspace. Not kids, he thought, not the sort of car the teenagers stole for their joy-rides.

‘Passing by again.’ He heard the voice. ‘Slowing in front of Michael’s house.’

The other reports were coming in, the men from Dublin driving through the city, the men from Derry just entering Belfast. He wondered what the car was doing, who it was. Not the Provos, definitely not the Provos.

‘Three men,’ said the man in the roofspace. ‘Windows wound down.’

He knew what it was, began to radio the information back to Lisburn.

‘Michael’s car in street, slowing down. Stopping outside house. Michael and wife getting out.’

He saw what was going to happen.

‘Car coming again. Opening fire, front and rear seats.’ The voice of the man in the roofspace was cold, clinical, factual.

He knew the operation was off, that the men from Dublin and Derry would already have been warned.

‘Michael and wife OK, sheltering behind car. Other car still firing.’

He knew they could not move, could not betray their positions, could not disclose the fact that they had been waiting for the men from the north and south. ‘Alert RUC and army,’ he was informing Lisburn. ‘Probably ambulance as well.’

‘Bomb going in,’ said the man in the roofspace. ‘Car catching fire.’

The kid, Enderson was suddenly thinking, the IRA man’s bloody kid: he wasn’t there, the man in the roofspace hadn’t seen him. He knew that McDonald had expected trouble, had left the boy somewhere.

‘Boy in car,’ he heard the voice, still dispassionate. ‘Mother trying to get door open, door seems stuck. Car on fire. Attackers’ car moving off.’

‘Move it,’ Enderson was saying, the driver already accelerating, tyres screeching as they turned off the street. The women were already on the street, the crowd already gathering. ‘Fire spreading in car,’ the man in the roofspace was saying. ‘Can see boy inside.’

He knew what they would say when he returned to base, how they would tell him he shouldn’t have blown the operation, knew the Special Branch people would accuse him of endangering their informant. They were in the Falls, the driver cutting between the crowd, he could see the car, the flames beneath it. ‘Cover me,’ he was saying, the driver braking hard and the men moving fast.

Eileen McDonald heard the sound and knew it was the car again, knew they had come back for her and her husband, ignored it, pulled at the door, tried to get her Liam out. On the other side she could see her husband, picking himself off the ground, coming round, trying to help her. The car behind her was stopping, she half turned, waiting for the bullets, the next bomb, saw the men, faces blackened, British army uniforms. No insignia, she saw, no markings, knew who they were, did not have to think what they were doing there. The flames were spreading, the door handle jammed. The man was coming forward, the others protecting him, not looking at the car, looking out, guarding him. She saw the weapons on his body, the sawn-off shot gun in his hand. He was pushing her out of the way, pushing her husband out of the way, blasting the door open, pulling her Liam out, the fire licking at the petrol tank.

The door was only half open; Enderson reached in, trying to open it, felt the tearing and burning in his arm as he pulled at the door, the flames on his jacket.

She saw the man pulling the boy out, saw he had been injured, one of the other men coming forward, putting out the fire. She saw the injury to his arm, tried to move to help him, watched as he pulled her son away from the car, the men round him moving with him, everyone moving back, away from the car, away from the explosion. She was looking at her son, at the way the man was laying him on the ground, seeing the red, so much red she was suddenly thinking, the blood pouring from her son’s body, knew he was not breathing, knew he was dying, his insides pouring out, his tiny lungs giving up the fight for breath. Somewhere, she did not know where, she heard the ambulance, knew they would not know what to do, would not know how to save her son, knew they would be too late.

The man with the blacked-out face was reaching to his gun belt, pulling out a pack, inserting the tube into her son’s mouth, clearing the airway, enabling him to breathe, pulling his body together, ramming the padding and bandages on his wounds, stopping the red pouring from him. Just like the accident unit at Birmingham Hospital, Enderson was thinking, just like when he had done his six months on the emergency unit, just like the night they had brought in the first victims of the motorway pile-up.

The photographer was parking his car by the drinking club on the corner, his camera on the seat beside him. He had been on the nightly tour, hoping for a picture, knowing there would be nothing so close to Christmas, when he had heard the shooting, known where it had come from. He heard the sound as the car blew up, knew he had missed it and ran anyway. The crowd was parting, he saw the woman kneeling over the boy, knew who the man treating the boy was, not who he was, not his name, what he was. The ambulance was pulling up, the ambulancemen pushing through the crowd. One chance, he thought, was reacting automatically. Seven thirty, he checked the time, worrying about the deadlines, if he would make them, if the photograph was as good as he thought.

Within twenty-five minutes he had developed the film and alerted the picture desks in London.

The image began to appear, he tilted the tray, letting the liquid run evenly over the print, and watched the details emerging, growing stronger, saw that the photograph was even better than he had remembered, knew without thinking what he would call it, what they would all call it. It was so close to Christmas, he thought. Knew the impact the photograph would have, the impact the three words of the title would have.

The saloon bar of the public house in Charlotte Street was busy, it would get even busier later. The walls were draped with decorations and a sprig of mistletoe had been pinned on the ceiling by the fireplace. Walid Haddad arrived five minutes early, bought himself an orange juice and stood against the bar, sipping it. Behind him a group of men he could not help overhearing were talking to two attractive young women he assumed were their secretaries. At eight thirty he made his way across the room, through the door at the side of the bar, and followed the signs to the gents’ toilet. A man in a business suit was leaning against the urinal singing to himself; he looked up, his eyes red and blurred, then turned back to the wall. The cubicle was empty, Haddad closed and locked the door and felt behind the cistern. The envelope was taped in place, he pulled it off, flushed the toilet and left.

Fifteen minutes later he collected the briefcase from the left luggage locker at Euston station and returned to the Holiday Inn, stopping at a chemist shop in Camden Town to purchase a pair of surgical gloves and a torch. Only when he was in his hotel room did he open the case, pull on the gloves, and examine the contents. The four ounces of plastic explosive were in a soap container, the transmitter, receiver unit, detonator and battery wrapped separately. He connected the receiver unit and battery to the bulb from the torch, and activated the transmitter, seeing the bulb light up and confirming the system was working, then he disconnected the bulb, replaced it with the detonator and began to assemble the bomb. At twenty minutes to ten he locked his bedroom door and left the hotel.

The mews in Camden Town was quiet and dark, the only light was through the curtains of the windows of the flats on the first floors and the street lamp thirty yards away at one end. It took Haddad less than a minute to open the garage door and another eight to attach the bomb to the petrol tank of the Granada. By eleven thirty he was back in his room. He helped himself to a drink and turned on the television, searching the channels for the in-house feature film. As he passed BBC 2, a late-night news flash caught his attention; he flicked past, then back again.

‘We are receiving more details of the terrorist incident in Belfast earlier this evening,’ the announcer was saying.

He turned up the sound.

The rain outside was heavy, the windows were running with condensation. In the corridor outside she could hear the clamour of the children as they began their morning break. In the corner someone was smoking, they had tried to ban smoking in the staff-room, but some people had objected. She joined the queue for tea, enjoying the atmosphere, and sat down. The morning newspapers were on the table in the centre of the room, the men amongst the staff were talking about them. ‘Amazing,’ she heard one of them saying, ‘absolutely amazing.’ She hadn’t seen the papers, been too busy to look at them. End of term, carol service that evening, the reports for her English class to finish. And the Christmas shopping, all of it, for her and the kids. One day, she sometimes thought, she ought to sit down and work out how she managed it all by herself, except there wasn’t any time. In the far corner the men were still talking about the newspapers. ‘Incredible,’ one of them was still saying, ‘absolutely bloody incredible.’ She took a cup of tea and sat down.

‘What are they on about?’ she asked.

‘Haven’t you seen the photo in the papers today?’

She said she hadn’t had the time; a colleague reached across, pulled one from the pile and gave it to her.

The picture filled the entire front page; it had been taken at night, she knew, the image grainy, almost unreal.

In the centre, lying, screaming, on the ground, was a small boy. He was burned, she could see, horribly burned and shot, the insides of his body seemed to be pouring from him, the remnants of his clothes hanging from his limbs. He was looking up, white-eyed with fear, at the two people bending over him, at the woman – she knew instinctively it was his mother – kneeling beside him, holding his hand, looking at the other figure, the man in the camouflaged clothing of the British army. She looked at the man, not aware she was sipping her tea; not aware of the noise in the staff-room. His hair was long and his face was streaked with black. He was bending over the child, his hands pulling the remnants of the shattered body together, stemming the blood that was flowing from the boy’s arteries, soothing the terrible burns. Even in the photograph she could see he was treating the child as if he was a doctor, as if he himself was a father. From his left shoulder hung a short squat weapon, she did not know what it was, a belt of cartridges across his chest, the pistol and grenades hanging from his belt. His left arm appeared to be injured, she could see by the way he was holding himself, see the way his own clothing had been burned away. The woman beside him was looking at him, appealing to him. She stared at the picture then read the handful of words below.

Late the previous evening, the single paragraph stated, a British army unit had gone to the help of a Catholic family who had been bombed and shot in their car. Both the father, a leading member of the Republican movement who was high on the Protestants’ wanted list, and the mother had escaped unharmed.

She read the words a second time, still not hearing the conversations around her, then looked at the three words of the headline across the top of the page, ‘Peace On Earth’.

It was almost Christmas, she remembered.

‘Anyone noticed this chap here?’ The deputy head was looking out the window. ‘He’s been standing there since half past nine.’ She put down the newspaper and went to the window, wiping away the condensation. On the pavement opposite the school entrance was a man, his hair was long and he was wearing a mackintosh, the collar turned up against the weather. The rain had flattened his hair and soaked through the shoulders of the coat.

The left sleeve of the mackintosh seemed empty.

The school bell went, she finished the tea and returned to the classroom, not concentrating, thinking of the photograph in the newspaper and of the man on the pavement. When the bell went for lunch she hurried back to the staff-room, left her books on the table, and pulled on her coat. At the last moment she remembered that those staff not on duty were going for a Christmas drink and that she had said she would go with them. They were waiting for her. She apologised to them, waited till they had gone, then went to the car park and started the car. It was still raining. She drove out the gate. The man was still there. She pulled across the road, stopped and opened the door for him.

‘Hello, Grah,’ she said.

‘Hello, love,’ said Enderson.

* * *

Haddad knew every inch of the route from Heathrow. He had driven it that morning, again and again, till he was sure.

He looked at his watch and decided to check it again, make sure there were no last-minute obstructions, no hold-ups.

He started the car, left the short-stay car park, and followed the road through the tunnel from the airport towards the M4. At the precise moment he pulled onto the motorway he pushed the indicator to record the mileage, remembering that he was accustomed to thinking in kilometres and forcing himself to think in miles. The traffic was light and moving quickly, he slid into the centre lane and headed towards London, noting again the marks he had identified earlier. One mile, first bridge over motorway; two miles, A312 exit and second bridge; three miles, service station. He ignored the time it took and concentrated on the distances. Four miles, fourth bridge; five miles, fifth bridge. Not much time anyway, even at the speed limit of seventy miles an hour, and the PLO driver wouldn’t stick to the limit. Six miles, three-lane carriageway into two lanes. And the cameras, the bloody cameras. Two of them, two hundred yards apart, the first facing west, the second east, towards London. He assumed they were for traffic control, that at the time of day he would follow the PLO car along the motorway the police would be paying little attention to them, knew nevertheless that they might be recording the pictures on tape, that it was a risk he could not afford to take. Seven miles, onto the flyover. Plenty of distance, he thought, as long as nothing went wrong; not much time though, he also thought, wondered what would go wrong. Eight miles, off flyover, almost into the suburbs. Nine miles, traffic lights at Hogarth roundabout. If it wasn’t over by then there would be problems. He circled the roundabout and turned back for Heathrow.

The black Granada arrived thirty minutes before Tunis Air flight TU790 was due. Haddad followed it into the airport complex, overtaking it as it slowed outside the terminal, then drove back to the short-term car park. The driver of the Granada parked outside the main entrance of the building, in front of a policeman, got out of the car, showed the man his credentials and disappeared inside. Haddad confirmed it was the man he had followed to the mews in Kentish Town the evening before and watched as the uniformed policeman spoke into the radio he carried on his left shoulder. Two minutes later an unmarked white transit van pulled up thirty yards behind the Granada. Ten minutes later the chauffeur came out, spoke to the policeman, and pulled away, the unmarked transit remaining in position.

The chauffeur had stepped up the security level, thought Haddad, was acting as he should do. Except that it was already too late. He sank back into his seat and looked again at the newspaper he had bought in the hotel foyer that morning, the picture covering the entire front page, the image of the man stemming the boy’s life as it flowed away from him. After fifteen minutes the black Granada returned and parked in front of the unmarked transit. The chauffeur got out and went again into the terminal building. Haddad laid the newspaper on the front passenger’s seat of the hire car, pulled the transmitter from beneath the seat, placed it on the newspaper, and folded the paper over it. The picture of the man in Belfast, he could not help notice, was staring at him.

He had waited another ten minutes when the chauffeur reappeared, carrying a suitcase; with him was a middle-aged man, slightly balding, whom Walid Haddad recognised from photographs as the PLO representative in London. The driver put the case in the boot and opened the door for the delegate, thanked the policeman, put up his hand to the unmarked transit then pulled away.

No second man, thought Haddad, no bodyguard. Only the driver. Not that it would have done any of them any good.

He moved after the Granada, not wanting to be either too close or too far back, remembering the points before the motorway at which he could become separated from his target. The traffic lights at the roundabout before the tunnel were green, the driver of the car in front of him was lost, the man’s wife telling him what to do. The Granada was almost at the lights. Still green. He was getting too far back, tried to pull round the car in front, was cut off by an airport coach crowded with schoolchildren. The lights turned to red. He looked for the Granada, saw that it had also stopped, and breathed a sigh of relief.

The lights changed, he followed the cars down the slope and into the tunnel. The Granada was in the left-hand lane, not travelling as quickly as he had imagined it would; the airport coach was in the right-hand lane, pulling away. He drove out of the tunnel, turned right at the roundabout, and headed towards the M4. Nine miles, he began to think, nine miles in which he had to kill the PLO man and his chauffeur. It did not occur to him that they were Palestinians like himself. He passed the Trust House Forte Hotel on the left, drove round the roundabout beneath the motorway and turned back onto the M4 towards London. At the precise moment he did so he leaned forward and pressed the mileage counter. One mile, first bridge. The Granada picking up speed, the driver talking to his passenger. Not much traffic, even less traffic than before. The Granada pulled into the central lane and began accelerating. Two miles, A312 exit and second bridge. Never much time, almost a quarter the distance already gone.

In front he could see the airport bus, the one filled with children. Three miles, service station. The PLO driver was sticking to the speed limit, he suddenly thought, knowing he could not do it from behind, could not be caught in the traffic jam that would pile up behind the blast, knowing also that if he was too far in front he would not be able to check that the road round the Granada was clear. The airport bus moved into the inside lane, the Granada overtaking it. ‘Yallah,’ he urged the driver. ‘For the love of Allah, move it.’ Four miles, fourth bridge, the Granada pulling away from the coach. Ideally he would need half a mile between the coach and the car. Could do it with less, of course, could overtake and do it now. Run the risk of killing the kids. Kids had died before, would die again. Except his orders were specific – only the PLO man and his driver should die, no one else. Especially not a busload of kids, Nabil would have said.

Four miles gone, another five to do it.

Plenty of time, he told himself, not believing it, beginning to accelerate, preparing to overtake the Granada. The coach six hundred yards behind.

The sirens blasted in his ear. Instinctively he slowed down, saw the white police BMW level with him, lights flashing. He had been set up, he thought. The device was only six inches from his left hand. Do it anyway, he thought, get the PLO man. The Granada driver had heard, was slowing down. Fool, Haddad thought, he should be reacting, pulling his man out of trouble. Do it anyway, he thought again. Saw the coach. Alongside him. The children looking at him, waving at him. The Granada only twenty yards in front.

Five miles, fifth bridge, only four miles to go. He told himself to calm down, looked across at the police car, ignoring him, ignoring the Granada, already pulling away. Six miles, three-lane motorway into two lanes. Almost too bloody late. The Granada beginning to accelerate again. Not quickly enough, the coach still too close. The cameras, one facing west, the other east. Never much time, he thought, almost no time at all.

The blind spot, the two hundred yards between the cameras. He pulled the wheel violently to the left, and jerked the hire car across the inside lane, braking hard. Behind him the coach driver slammed on his brakes, the children tumbling forward. In his rear view mirror Haddad saw the coach suddenly fill the entire frame. The Granada was pulling away, three hundred yards, almost four hundred. Bloody drivers, the coach driver was shouting at him, waving his fist. The Granada five hundred yards away, nearly six hundred. The children picking themselves up from the floor. Madman, the driver was gesticulating at him, bloody loony. He changed into third, accelerating away from the coach. Seven miles, onto the flyover, the office blocks on either side. The Granada was three hundred yards ahead, two hundred. The road in front and behind clear. Almost out of distance, he thought, almost out of everything. Eight miles, off the flyover and past the Granada. A hundred yards, two hundred yards clear, closing on another group of cars. In his rear view mirror he could see the Granada clearly.

He reached across to the passenger’s seat and unfolded the newspaper.

* * *

Pan Am flight number PA1 arrived at John F. Kennedy Airport on time, taxied across the runway, and began disgorging its three hundred and fifty-two passengers into the terminal building. Three hundred and fifty-one of them were innocent citizens, the three hundred and fifty-second was Abu Nabil. By six thirty he had cleared immigration and customs, using the passport he had used in Paris and London, and taken a cab to the Plaza Hotel. He checked into his room, switched on the early evening news programme and made a single telephone call confirming his meeting for the following morning.

The third item oh the news bulletin was the assassination in London of the PLO spokesman Hassan Nabulsi. The report showed video pictures of the remains of the man’s Ford Granada motor car, on the M4 motorway near Heathrow Airport. He had just returned from a meeting with Yasser Arafat, the report continued, adding that unofficial sources had confirmed that the type of bomb used was believed to be identical to that used by the IRA in Northern Ireland. The reporter, standing at the side of the motorway, the wreckage of the car behind him, speculated that the assassination was the latest episode in the struggle for supremacy within the various factions of the Palestinian movement. More sinister, he suggested, his collar turned up against the biting wind and the first cutting flakes of sleet, was the possibility of a link-up between the IRA and one of the extremist Palestinian groups.

If Haddad was to end it, Nabil had thought to himself in Damascus, then Haddad may as well start it. He flicked between the channels, catching the same report on CBS and NBC. Haddad had now started it.

He showered, took a light supper of cold meats and salad, and went to bed.

He woke at four, a combination of the time difference between Damascus, London and New York, and the air conditioning, which he found oppressive, slept fitfully for another two hours and rose at six. He left the hotel and spent the next ninety minutes walking the streets. The weather was brisk and cold. On the corner of Times Square he bought copies of the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal.

He was getting hungry. In a delicatessen six blocks from the hotel he took lox and bagels, sitting in the seat farthest from the window. The service was friendly, he wondered for the briefest of moments what the shabab, the boys, would have thought, how the owners would have reacted, if they had known that he, Abu Nabil, planner of death, executioner of violence, survivor of at least three Israeli attempts on his life, was breakfasting in a Jewish deli in New York, served by a smiling Jewish waiter whom he called David and whom, as he left, he would tip and who would tell him to have a good day. His battle, however, had never been personal. Besides, the lox was good and the second cup of coffee was free. And the place was warm and crowded. He thought, not for the first time that day, of the photograph he had again left in the emptiness of his flat in Damascus and turned to the newspapers.

The assassination in London featured on the front pages of both the Times and Tribune and the international page of the Journal. On the front page of the Herald Tribune there was also a photograph, taken two nights before, of the moment in Northern Ireland when a British soldier had saved the life of the son of a leading member of the IRA. The British government, the article said, had declined to comment on press speculation that the soldier concerned had been a member of the Special Air Service, the SAS.

The waiter refilled his cup. He drank it slowly then rose to leave, paying the bill and leaving a good tip. As he left, the man he had called David told him to have a good day.

At eight thirty that morning, Paris time, the head of arms sales for the French government, General René Audran, was shot dead at his home outside Paris. An hour later, in a communiqué to the Paris and Rome offices of Agence France Presse, responsibility was claimed jointly by Action Directe and the Red Brigades. Forensic tests conducted within twenty four hours established that the weapon used appeared to match that used in the murder of a magistrate in Turin the preceding August.

Two hours later a West German industrialist, Hans Martin Schneider, was murdered when he answered the door to an attractive young woman claiming to be a friend of his daughter.

In the next forty-eight hours there were bombings in West Germany and Belgium; in West Germany the targets were the American companies of Litton, MAN and Honeywell in that order; in Belgium the targets were the American companies of Litton, MAN and Honeywell, also in that order. In all the attacks, it was suggested, the explosives came from the same source: 816 kilos of plastic explosives stolen at Ecoussines, in Belgium, six months before.

The meeting with the industrialist Ahmad Hussein was at ten; it was almost seven weeks since they had met on the quai at St Germain-en-Laye, on the outskirts of Paris. Nabil walked to Macy’s, enjoying the Christmas decorations, and bought two gifts, one of them a chess set, asking for both to be wrapped, then took a cab to the block which housed the offices of the businessman. His host was waiting. He poured them coffee from a percolator in the corner and asked whether Nabil had breakfasted. Nabil confirmed that he had without saying where.

The room was comfortable, well furnished, a Persian rug on the floor and three paintings of Jerusalem by Suleiman Mansour on the walls.

‘A sad affair in London,’ Hussein suggested, handing Nabil a coffee.

‘A sad affair indeed.’

For the next ten minutes they discussed the implications of the London assassination; when they had finished Hussein unlocked the top right drawer of his desk and took a file from it.

‘In January,’ the industrialist began, establishing the background, ‘Ronald Reagan will officially begin his second term as president of the United States. He will be seventy-four years old when he starts, seventy-eight at the end. For reasons of his age, and because he cannot, under the Constitution, hold office for a third term, many people believe the next four years will be what Americans like to call a lame-duck presidency.’ He paused. ‘In Paris, we agreed this would not be the case. In Paris, we agreed that, partly because of his own background, partly because it is what every president wants, Reagan will seek to do something that will allow him to go down in history. In Paris,’ he concluded, ‘we also agreed that the obvious area is foreign policy. Within this, we agreed, Central America was too controversial, too many comparisons with Vietnam. The obvious area, therefore, other than any agreement with the new Russian leadership, was the Middle East.’

He moved the file to the centre of the desk.

‘You wanted two names. Firstly, the name of the man who will be the president’s foreign policy advisor in the foreseeable future, the man who would run his Middle East policy for him, who would do the negotiations. Secondly, you wanted the name of the person most likely to have influence with that man.’

He opened the file. ‘As regards the first,’ he said, ‘there are three possibilities. The first, and luckily for us not the favourite, is pro-Israeli, strong connections with the Jewish Lobby here.’ Nabil listened intently. ‘The second,’ continued Hussein, ‘would be a strong candidate, except that his wife is seriously ill. It may be that she recovers by the dates we are discussing, it may also be that she is no longer with us.’ His voice had dropped slightly. ‘In which case,’ he said, ‘the man in question might have both the time and motivation to do something.’

‘But?’

‘But he would be preoccupied with his wife’s illness during the lead-up to that period, during the time he would have to be convinced that he wanted the job and others persuaded that he was the man for it.’

‘And the third candidate?’

Hussein pulled a photograph from the file and handed it to Nabil. ‘Henry Armstrong is fifty-six years old. He was associated with Reagan, albeit at a distance, when the president was governor of California, he is also reported to have had links with George Bush when the vice president was head of the CIA.’

‘Does that go against us?’

Hussein shook his head. ‘Henry Armstrong is a wealthy man, a prominent businessman, a success in his own right. Fortunately for us, he is also a very practical man. His companies have close connections with companies in the Middle East, Arab companies.’

‘How will you manage it?’ asked Nabil.

Hussein looked up from his coffee. ‘I have already started,’ he smiled, knowing Nabil wanted to know more. ‘A little financial backing where necessary,’ he began to explain, ‘sometimes a long way from the target itself, even from the people who will have influence when it matters, but to the people who will influence those people.’ He laughed. ‘Sometimes you don’t even say he’s a good man to have around, sometimes it’s better to say he’s a real bastard and the last man they should let anywhere near the Oval office.’ His eyes gleamed at the thought.

‘So Henry Armstrong will be the next major foreign affairs negotiator for the United States of America?’

‘Yes.’

Nabil leaned forward and turned the photograph of Henry Armstrong face down on the desk. Not from disdain or disrespect, but from habit. ‘And who will be the catalyst?’ he asked. ‘Who will be the man who will have his ear?’

Hussein took a second sheet of paper from the file. Attached to it was another photograph and a cutting from a newspaper.

‘The Jacksonian Institute is a political think tank in Washington. It is highly respected, both nationally and internationally, with considerable justification. Henry Armstrong is a regular contributor to its foreign affairs seminars, he is also a major benefactor of the institute.’ He smiled again. ‘Most things in America are, of course, tax deductible.’

‘That aside the institute plays an important role in Armstrong’s life. It is one of the reasons he must be considered in line for a top post in government.’ Nabil heard the words and knew that Armstrong was the man he wanted, wondering whether Hussein’s second choice would be as good as his first. ‘Each year,’ continued the industrialist, ‘the institute hosts a number of international forums to which guest speakers from various parts of the world are invited. Several years ago Armstrong himself chaired a seminar on strategic politics at which one of the guest speakers was this man.’ He unclipped the photograph from the sheet of paper in front of him and passed it to Nabil. The man in it was in his late thirties, good-looking, immaculately groomed. ‘The speaker was a British Member of Parliament, one of the up and coming breed who seem set to control things in the future. Armstrong was so impressed that he invited him back. They are now close friends.’

‘How important was he?’

‘He wasn’t important then, he is important now, he will be extremely important in the future.’ He passed Nabil the sheet of paper with the newspaper cutting fastened to it.

Nabil took it. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

Hussein looked at him. ‘John Kenshaw-Taylor entered the British Parliament in a bye-election in 1978 after a successful career in the City. Like others of his kind, it was important to him that he was seen to make his first million by the time he was thirty. Politics, in any case, was always a strong possibility for him; his family has had its hands on British foreign affairs for most of the past half-century, probably well before that. Since 1978 his rise has been spectacular. Two years ago he was made Minister of Energy.’

Nabil knew there was more.

‘Eight weeks ago he was promoted to Number Two at the British Foreign Office. The day he moved, the London Times said it was merely one more step to his becoming Prime Minister.’

Nabil looked at the dates on the newspaper cutting Ahmad Hussein had given him. The day, he thought, that he had seen the article which had planted the first seed of the plan in his mind, the day he had played tawli with the old man in the café. The day, he did not know, that Yakov Zubko and his family had left Moscow and begun their journey to the West.

‘How can we get at him?’ he asked.

‘He’s ambitious,’ Hussein replied, equally succinctly.

The meeting finished at twelve. At twelve thirty Hussein drove them to a Lebanese restaurant where they ate a quiet and discreet lunch. When they parted, Nabil gave him the gifts he had bought for his children; that night Hussein gave them to his son and daughter; when they asked who they were from, he told them they were from an uncle who loved them very much but whom they had never met. His wife knew not to ask.

At four thirty that afternoon Nabil made a single international telephone call, checked out of the Plaza Hotel, took a cab to John F. Kennedy, and caught the six forty-five TWA flight to Rome.

CHAPTER THREE

The sherry was manzanilla. He had a standing order for it from Green’s in the City and kept it chilled in a walnut cabinet in the corner of the office.

‘If this is how a bad day ends, Minister, how do we end a good one?’ The civil servant’s question was only half a joke. For the first time since he had taken office the Foreign Minister had sent back a briefing with a request that it should contain more information.

John Kenshaw-Taylor sat down on the edge of his desk. ‘Edward,’ the Under-Secretary was his senior by at least fifteen years, ‘you know I will always take your advice, as long as you make me think it was my idea in the first place.’

The man called Edward smiled. ‘Precisely, Minister.’

The exchange had cleared the air, they settled back into the chesterfields and relaxed.

It was the way Kenshaw-Taylor had always anticipated ending each day at the Foreign Office, a quality he considered the other newer members of the government lacked, a style, in addition to his ability to digest a brief and reproduce it with maximum impact in the House or in cabinet committee, that had already marked him out in the minds of the Whitehall mandarins as the man to watch, the one who would get to the top.

The lighting in the room on the third floor overlooking Horse Guards Parade was subdued, in the semi-gloom he could see the outlines of the mementoes he had brought with him from the sanitised corridors of the Department of Energy. None of them referred to himself, at least not directly. On the left of the antique clock on the wall facing his desk was a portrait of his grandfather, below it a letter signed personally by George V. On the wall to the left of the desk, an original newspaper report of the Balfour Declaration, to which the same grandfather had been an advisor, in the gloom to the right a black and white photograph of his father standing behind the seated figures of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta in 1945.

John Kenshaw-Taylor had dreamt of the Foreign Office, had savoured its charisma and its power, ever since his father had brought him there when he was eight years old. He had taken it with him when he returned to his prep school that evening, held on to it through Eton and Oxford, even during his days in the City, when his natural instincts, as well as his undoubted connections, had amassed him a considerable personal wealth. He remembered the decision to enter politics, the bye-election, his first ministerial post, remembered above all the evening a few short weeks ago, the telephone call inviting him to see the Prime Minister at Number Ten, the suggestion that he should leave Energy and take over as Number Two at the Foreign Office. He sipped the manzanilla and looked at the winter sky gathering outside the window. What a way to start Christmas, he thought, recalling his first day in the building itself, the portraits, their oils glinting in the strange light which seemed to stalk the corridors, the images of the men who had directed the nation’s course and its relationship with the rest of the world, the men who had led the nation itself.

‘Thank you, Minister.’ The Under-Secretary rose to leave, placing his glass on the silver tray on the side. ‘Perhaps it has been a good day after all.’ He meant it. For forty years, the British Foreign Office had presided over the dissolution of an empire; after the Falklands campaign, it had been said by some, even the Prime Minister had seen fit to question what remained of its role on the world stage. The new minister, the civil servant felt, was not long for the Number Two job, and when he was at the top, things would change. An old wind blowing through the corridors, someone had remarked. ‘Thank you, Minister,’ he said again.

Kenshaw-Taylor watched the man leave, staring for a few moments out of the window, looking through the darkness towards Buckingham Palace, then turned back to his desk. Kenshaw-Taylor’s mind was the epitome of clarity and logic. He took pride not only in organising to the last degree whatever he was doing, but in sticking to it, whether in the day-to-day management of his personal affairs, or the advancement of his political career.

It was seven fifteen. He picked up the telephone and dialled his home in the country; the phone rang for thirty seconds before his wife answered. ‘Samantha, darling, it’s me.’ They talked for ten minutes about what she had done that day, what he had done. That evening, because of his commitments in London, she was due to open the Christmas fayre at the village hall in his stead; tomorrow, she reminded him, the children would be home from school. He assured her he would be back by the following afternoon, and that he was looking forward to Christmas. She said she was already late and would have to go. ‘OK, darling. Love you. Bye.’

He put the phone down and turned his attention to the despatch boxes. Three to get through. He already knew what they contained and worked out his timetable for the evening. One hour on the first box, the reception he had to attend for fifty minutes, a couple of hours in the flat to finish off the other two. Thank God he wasn’t still at Energy, the midnight meetings about the miners’ strike, the problems about the instability of North Sea oil prices. The move had come just at the right time, and to the right department, kept him away from the law and order problems at the Home Office and the financial worries at the Exchequer.

He was in an enviable position, he knew, not just because he was in the Foreign Office, but because of his position within it, aware that he would look back on these days with just a tinge of nostalgia. His hands were on the first trappings of power, real power, but he was still far enough from that power not to be encumbered with its disadvantages. He could still take his wife to dinner, could still go Christmas shopping with the children without the armed bodyguards who were always just a pace away from his senior colleagues. He could ask his driver to wait for him, or he could tell the man to drop the despatch boxes at his flat and make his own way home.

He shut his mind off and opened the first box.

At eight thirty, precisely according to the schedule he had mapped out earlier, he finished the box. At eight forty-five his driver dropped him at the reception and continued to Pimlico where he left the two remaining boxes at the minister’s London flat.

Kenshaw-Taylor stayed at the reception until twenty minutes to ten. Pimlico is five minutes from Westminster by car, fifteen by foot. When the Foreign Minister arrived at the flat it was eleven thirty.

The temperature in Rome was minus three and falling; it was also wet, the blanket of rain sweeping across the runway, sounding like the roll of kettle drums as it cascaded off the metal roof of the terminal building.

The TWA jumbo was thirty minutes late, delayed by an air traffic control dispute. Abu Nabil hurried through immigration and customs, showered, shaved and changed his clothes in the gents’ toilet, made a telephone call to the hotel in the city centre explaining that he had been delayed, and was asked to attend as quickly as he could. On the cab rank outside he picked up a taxi, told the driver there was an extra tip for him if he could get to the city centre in record time, and settled back into his seat. The traffic was heavy, he did not feel it was the best preparation for the meeting ahead.

He arrived at the hotel thirty-five minutes later, tipped the driver well, and was shown immediately to the suite on the fifth floor. Sheikh Saeed Khaled was waiting. Nabil apologised for being late, Khaled in turn apologised that he had little time to spare that day and had to leave the hotel for an appointment in thirty minutes. Breakfast arrived two minutes later.

Whilst Khaled poured them both coffee they discussed the outline of their London meeting, concentrating on the sheikh’s suggestion that Nabil needed what they had called a friend, as well as the friend who would influence that friend.

‘That is why I have come to see you again,’ Nabil brought the conversation into focus.

‘You mean you have found the friend you were looking for?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Who?’ asked Khaled.

‘I am told that Henry Armstrong will be the next major United States Foreign Affairs negotiator and that he has a special interest in the Middle East.’

Khaled smiled, nodding his head. ‘I wonder who told you that.’ He drew his hands together and rested his chin on them. ‘You’re probably right. Henry Armstrong has the right connections, the right ambitions. Who will influence him on your behalf?’

‘The British Foreign Minister, John Kenshaw-Taylor.’

The choice did not appear to surprise Khaled. Nabil began listing the details contained in the brief Ahmad Hussein had given him in New York, but Khaled interrupted. ‘I know him. We met during the oil discussions before he was moved to the Foreign Office. How are they connected?’

Nabil explained the Jacksonian Institute link.

There is one thing about Kenshaw-Taylor that you should know,’ Khaled said slowly and carefully. Nabil noted that the sheikh still had not passed comment on his choice and feared he was preparing the ground for a rejection. ‘One thing,’ continued the sheikh, ‘that might make him an ideal target, but which might also prejudice you against him.’

‘What is it?’

‘Think of the betrayal of your country. Think when the betrayal started.’

It was ironic, Nabil had already thought, and probably inevitable, that the man he had chosen to help his people return to their homeland should be the Foreign Minister of the imperial power which had played such a role in their original exodus from it.

‘Most people would say the United Nations decision of 1947,’ he began. ‘They would be wrong. It actually began in 1917. The Balfour Declaration. The first open support by the British for the idea of a separate Jewish state.’

Khaled looked at him again. ‘Kenshaw-Taylor has a very long political pedigree. His father was in politics, his father before him.’

‘I knew he came from a political family.’

‘Did you know his grandfather was a senior advisor to Balfour?’

‘No,’ said Nabil. ‘I did not.’

He sat silently, remembering the terms of the support, remembering the way his father had taught him to despise what the Declaration had done to his country and people.

‘Why did you choose him?’ asked Khaled.

‘Because he is ambitious.’

‘Some who know him would say he is too ambitious for his own good,’ said the power broker. ‘He is a good choice.’

Nabil sensed his relief. ‘What else is there to know of him?’ He did not know what answer he expected, only knew later that he had not expected the answer he received.

Khaled sat back, remembering the first time he had met Kenshaw-Taylor, the many times they had observed each other prior to negotiations, the informal conversations in the receptions after. Something about the man, he thought, something they might be able to use. ‘I don’t know, but I will find out.’

The coloured lights were shining brightly, even though it was only four in the afternoon, the pavements were crowded. Enderson could smell the roast chestnuts on the corner of the street. It was as Christmas Eve used to be, as it should be, he could not help thinking.

The children were tugging at his sleeve, forgetting that his left arm was in a sling. It still hurt, where it had been burned and torn, where the surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital in Woolwich had pulled it together and informed him that it was to be checked every month until it was healed. Jane was in front of him, struggling under the weight of the turkey. In his one good hand he carried a bag of food and wine.

‘Dad,’ said his children, ‘come on, Dad, you know what, Dad.’ His wife pretended not to hear. ‘Look, love,’ he suggested, ‘you’ll want to get the turkey started. Why don’t you go home and the kids and I will finish here.’ His wife smiled. ‘OK, but don’t be late.’ She watched as Enderson and the children turned back down the pavement and headed for Chadds. ‘Great, Dad, great,’ she heard the boy say. ‘About time,’ said the girl.

The ground floor of the department store was crowded: he followed the children, protecting his arm. Two weeks in a sling, he had been told, then a plaster. It would not affect his work as long as he took it carefully, the surgeon had said, as long as he came back for the monthly checks. They reached the perfume counter, he watched as the children worked out the prices, how much they could afford, then bought their mother her Christmas presents. ‘You want them wrapped here or shall we do it when we get home?’ He already knew the answer. ‘When we get home, Dad.’ It was his first Christmas with them for three years.

By the time they left the store it was four thirty. ‘Can we have a Wimpy, Dad?’ He knew it was a conspiracy against which he could not win. ‘OK,’ he conceded, ‘you can have a Wimpy.’ On the way they passed a news-stand, he bought a copy of the Evening News, tucked it under his arm, and followed the children.

The Wimpy bar was quieter than he would have thought; they sat at a table near the window: the children ordered burgers and coke, he asked for a tea and began to browse through the paper. At the third table to their left, his back against the wall, was a tramp, he had just finished a plate of chips and was eking out his cup of tea. The music in the bar was seasonal. Enderson remembered when he had last sat in a Wimpy bar, what the music had been then, and was glad that the food arrived. The tune changed and he recognised the words. On the table to his left the tramp had finished his tea; in the corner of his eye Enderson saw the waitress approach the man, assuming, he did not know why, that she was going to ask him to leave. She reached across the table and gave him another cup of tea. In the loudspeaker in the ceiling he heard the words of the tune.

‘They said there’d be snow at Christmas,

They said there’d be peace on earth.’

He looked out the window at the sky. No snow, he thought, remembering the boy in Belfast, the bombings and killings in Europe, the assassination on the motorway near Heathrow, not much peace on earth either.

He turned to the foreign page of the newspaper. In the right-hand column was an item from the Reuters office in Bonn which a desperate sub-editor had used to fill up space. The piece was headed ‘Christmas terror alert in Germany’. The West German terrorist leader Klars Christian Mannheim, convicted on three bombing charges, had announced that from the New Year he would go on hunger strike in support of demands for greater civil liberties in the country’s prisons.

On the table to his left the tramp was warming his fingers round the cup of tea. ‘Look, Dad, look.’ His son was pulling at his coat, drawing his attention to a woman in the street outside, trying to push a Christmas tree into the boot of her car. He began to laugh. ‘Can we have another drink, Dad?’ The woman closed the boot, cutting off the top of the tree. He called the waitress.

‘Two more cokes, please.’

She saw what they were laughing at, saw that the tramp had also seen. ‘Why not?’ she began laughing with them. ‘After all, it’s Christmas.’

Enderson thought of the newspaper article, the man who would begin to die in the New Year. ‘Why not,’ he smiled back, it’s Christmas.’

John Kenshaw-Taylor sat back in his chair and sipped the malt whisky, he had been shooting since seven and polished off the despatch boxes after lunch. The house was quiet, the children would not be back from the party till six. In the kitchen, the nanny was preparing tea, at the table behind him his wife was wrapping presents. ‘These killings in Europe,’ she suddenly asked. ‘This man who said he will go on hunger strike. It won’t affect you, will it?’

John Kenshaw-Taylor sat forward, threw a log on the fire, and poured himself another drink. ‘Shouldn’t think so, darling,’ he said confidently.

*

The night air was warm, much warmer than Yakov Zubko had ever expected in Moscow. He stood in the window and breathed it in. It was going well, he thought, better than they could ever have hoped; he had been found a job, not as good a job as others with his qualifications would have expected, but a job. They had even been promised a house.

He walked through to the children’s room, opening the door quietly so that he did not wake them, and looked at them, hearing the sound of their breathing. In the kitchen Alexandra heard the singing from the street below. That afternoon they had been shopping; there had not been enough money and they had bought nothing for themselves, just a present each for the children to show to the friends they had made. It did not worry her.

She left the kitchen and walked into the corridor, saw her husband looking into the children’s room, saw that he was oblivious of her. He was a good man, she thought, remembered, for the first time since they had arrived in Israel, how he had worked for them, stolen for them, how he had got the money for their tickets to Vienna. Remembered her reaction when he had told her about the unmarked car at the top of Dmitrov, about the quiet voice that had told him to run for them all.

Slowly, quietly, she crept forward, slid her arm through his, and kissed him.

Book Three

CHAPTER ONE

At half past seven on the morning of Friday, January 4th, Klars Christian Mannheim began to die.

He had woken at five, alert and fresh. The depth and soundness of his sleep that night had not surprised him. The sleepless nights had been before, when he was in doubt, when he was still turning the decision over and over in his mind. The night before, however, he had gone to bed knowing the only issue which remained was the execution of that decision.

Execution had never disturbed Klars Christian Mannheim.

From five until seven thirty he had sat on his bed, enjoying the silence. For three years now he had hated the silence, hated those who had imposed it upon him. Now it was a strength, now it was the authorities who waited. Ever since he had made his announcement on Christmas Eve. And each day he did not start, each day he took food, they relaxed a little, breathed a little more easily, convinced themselves a little more that he lacked the resolve to die for his cause.

They were wrong.

Mannheim was a man of precision. The date of the commencement of his hunger strike, therefore, was not a matter of chance but of calculation.

He was twenty-eight years old and weighed sixty-eight kilos. On a diet of water he would lose approximately ten kilos in the first twenty days, most of which would consist of water contained naturally within the body. After that the rate of weight loss would slow as the body used up its supply of fat before the crucial phase when it was forced to draw on its own tissue, first the muscles of his arms and legs, then of his heart, and finally the muscles of his chest. At this stage his breathing would begin to be affected.

Mannheim also believed in self-determination, man’s ability to control his own life and, in his case, his own death. Others, he knew, would calculate the number of days he would take to die, as he himself had calculated the figure, and would build into it a margin of error.

He himself had rejected this. He had calculated the number of days it would take, and determined that he would sustain his hold on life for that period precisely, no more nor less.

He would die exactly twenty-nine years after his mother had brought him into the world.

The door opened and the warder brought in his breakfast. Mannheim did not bother to look up or to thank the man; the guards were, in any case, under strict instructions not to talk to their high-security wards, to avoid all form of communication, even eye contact. When the man collected the tray twenty minutes later only the water had been consumed.

At nine thirty that morning the lawyer representing Mannheim issued a press statement on behalf of his client, spelling out a list of demands and stating that, unless they were met, his client had that morning begun a fast to death.

One hour later, a bomb exploded beneath the perimeter fence of the NATO military school in Oberammergau. At precisely the same time a second bomb exploded outside the NATO headquarters in Brussels. Damage in both cases was minimal: what attracted the attention of the press, however, was that in both cases investigations showed that the bombs had been planted the night before. And in both cases the communiqués claiming responsibility were signed by a group bearing a name which was new to international terrorism: the Commando of the Martyr Klars Christian Mannheim.

The first frosts of winter were settling in the courtyard below the window. In the training camps where he had spent the past days, in the mountains where the camps were hidden, the snow had been on the ground for two weeks. Now Damascus would feel its bite.

It had started, Nabil thought, just like the snow, slowly and inevitably: the military campaign, the two men he hoped to ensnare in the tangle of Middle East politics, the first assassination in London, the sustained, deliberate build-up through Europe, the clues and connections for the authorities to spot, to feed to the press, for the press to tell the people, for the people to begin to worry, to put pressure on the authorities, for the authorities in turn to feel the tightening of the screw. Then the hunger strike. And now the beginning of the next stage, the last link in the chain.

He wondered how he should tell Haddad, how he would explain the job, the possibility that Haddad would not necessarily return from it. He did not know it then, would not know it for days, even weeks, but he would remember the moment, remember it the next time he stood at the window and wondered how he should tell Haddad.

He heard the knock on the door and turned back into the room as Issam Sharaf entered with the man he had sent to London, welcoming them both, offering them chairs and a coffee, both men sitting down, accepting.

Haddad waited, feeling the liquid warm him, and wondered why he had been summoned.

‘A good job in London,’ said Nabil.

They had already discussed it. Walid Haddad wondered again why he had been summoned, knew why he was always summoned. ‘It was as you said. Little security, he was wide open.’ He shook his head, remembering the final security lapses on the part of the driver, not mentioning the minutes on the motorway from the airport.

‘There’s another job.’

There was always another job, Haddad thought.

‘It’s important,’ continued Nabil, ‘very important.’ He chose his words carefully, meaning what he was about to say. ‘In its way, it’s the most important job we have ever done.’ He looked at Walid Haddad. ‘I would like you to take charge of it.’

Haddad knew they expected his first reaction would be to ask what the job was. ‘Where is it?’ he asked.

‘It depends. Partly your choice. Probably, almost certainly, Europe.’

‘How dangerous?’

‘Very.’

The first suspicion of what it was crossed his mind. ‘Who else will be involved?’

Nabil gave him the part of the answer that concerned him. ‘Your decision. A team job. I imagine you will decide yourself plus three or four others.’

The suspicion was growing. ‘What conditions?’

‘On the team you choose? Only one condition, one of the team must be a West German.’

‘Why a West German?’

‘Because we will be making demands of the West German government.’

He knew what it was. ‘When?’ he asked.

‘Ten weeks, possibly eleven.’

The hunger strike that had started that morning, Haddad thought, knew for certain what the job was.

‘What is it?’ he asked at last.

‘A hijack,’ said Nabil.

The first snows of the year had settled on the sides of the hills surrounding the city, laying its blanket over the valleys and moorlands where they had their secret places. The ground was already hard with frost, and the cold in the air took his breath away. He wondered what it would be like in the Brecons, in the disused quarries and the forgotten valleys where he and his men would practise their craft.

He left home at seven thirty and began the ten minute drive to the barracks on the southern side of the city. It was his first day on duty since he had returned from Northern Ireland, it was also the first day for as long as he could remember that he would return home when he came off duty that night. He turned out of the road and began the drop into the city. Jane and the children were still on Christmas holidays, they had booked seats for the pantomime that evening. The traffic was light, he crossed the bridge over the river, turned right at the post office and began the drive along the edge of the barracks, the wire of the outer fence glistening in the cold of the sun. The man at the main gate looked into the car as he stopped. He knew what was going to happen.

‘It’s the bloody pin-up boy,’ the man joked. ‘Can I have your autograph?’

‘Sod off,’ Enderson told him.

The barrier lifted and he drove through.

The key number in the organisation of the Special Air Service, ever since its inception by David Stirling in the deserts of North Africa in 1941, is the number four. The regiment is divided into four active service squadrons, named Sabre squadrons. Each squadron is, in turn, divided into four troops; each troop in its turn, is divided into four patrols; each patrol is made up of four men. Each Sabre squadron is an entity in itself; there are, therefore, in principle at least, a minimum of four tours of duty in which the SAS may be engaged at any one time. Three of those are normally overseas, and in recent years the fourth has been British-based. It is the anti-terrorist duty. Other circumstances permitting, each squadron takes that duty in turn, with the in-built precaution of an over-lap period during which the outgoing squadron remains in place while the incoming squadron begins its training and familiarises itself with the places and locations in which it might be called upon to operate.

That morning Graham Enderson’s squadron went on anti-terrorist duty.

The briefing began at eleven, and the equipment was issued at twelve. While on the anti-terrorist duty, as well as the two-week period when the squadron which would take over from his were being trained up, Enderson would be on twenty-four-hour call. His equipment, the assault suit, the gas-mask with the built-in radio, the Heckler and Koch MP5K sub-machine gun, his small arms, the streamlights and stun grenades, as well as his body armour, would be kept in place in the special rooms in the centre of the barracks at Hereford. When the units were on red alert, he and his men would sit in the rooms fully geared; when he went home each evening, and when he came to work each day, he would carry with him a small hold-all with his personal items in it, as well as a Browning hand gun. He would also take a bleeper with him wherever he went, starting with the pantomime that night.

By five o’clock it was dark, Enderson left the barracks and drove home. The house was warm and bright, the Christmas decorations still in place, the tea on the kitchen table.

‘What’s that?’ his wife asked, looking at the hold-all.

‘Something from work,’ he replied vaguely. ‘Where are the kids?’

‘Getting ready.’

He went upstairs, locked the hold-all in the wardrobe at the foot of the bed, and changed.

The pantomime that evening was ‘The Gingerbread Man’, the theatre was crowded; Jane did not query why he took the bleeper with him, nor did she ask again about the hold-all, assuming she would become accustomed to it. She did, however, object when the bleeper was checked at six o’clock the next morning, waking her up, groaning as Enderson told her it was routine.

‘Every morning at six?’ she asked incredulously.

‘Every morning at six,’ he confirmed.

Walid Haddad sat in the darkness, the windows and doors closed, his shoulders hunched and his hands clasped tight in front of him.

Leish ya’Allah a hijack? Why in the name of Allah a hijack?

The thought crossed and re-crossed his mind. He moved his legs slightly, easing the pressure on them, and pushed himself even deeper into the chair. He had been like this, locked into himself, for the past four hours, ever since he had returned from the briefing with Abu Nabil.

The concentration was consuming him. He eased himself forward, searched for the small lamp on the floor at the side of the chair, switched it on, and made himself coffee.

There were hijacks, of course, often bloody, always spectacular, and there were groups who would carry them out. But they were the small groups, the fringe groups, who believed in violence for its own sake, not as a means to an end. He sat down again, leaving the light on, and placing the cup on the arm of the chair. Hijacks were no good if they made you enemies, if they lost you friends. Nabil had long seen that, used it as a criterion against which to judge every action on which he sent his men, quoted it when he had vetoed the many ideas that were placed in front of him.

So why a hijack? he thought again.

It was getting cold. He stood up, pulled on a sweater, and slumped back into the chair, pushing the reasons for the hijack to the back of his mind, turning his attention to the logistics and concentrating on the two basic requirements that were within his responsibility: how the hijack would take place, and where.

The two could not be separated, he was aware, separated them anyway, studying each in turn, beginning with the second.

Almost certainly Europe, Nabil had said. Definitely Europe, if a West German was to be in his team, Haddad thought, if the West German government was to be the target of their demands. All the big hijacks of the past had started in Europe. It was good for the publicity, the ease with which the television people could get their pictures out, the images without which the hijack would have no impact. Bad for everything else, especially the security. With the exception of Athens, most airports in Europe were tight, not water-tight, but tight. He wondered if he could turn the fact to his advantage, and began to reflect on what, in his mind, he already thought of as the Dubai factor, knowing that he would return to it, then switched his attention to the other requirement.

Getting his team on the plane would be simple, they would have no difficulty posing as ordinary passengers, using false identities and passports. The problem was how to get their weapons and explosives on with them. Not just pistols, not just inflight perfumes and spirits splashed round the cabin in the hope they would ignite. The weapons and explosives had to be good, the best. Not only that, they would have to be seen to be the best.

There was no sense in hoping he could pick up additional materials half way through, stop for refuelling in, say, Libya, and trust that Gadafy would supply him with what he needed. Gadafy aside, it was too obvious, with too many political as well as military complications. It had also been done before, it was one of the things they would expect, and the only way the hijack would succeed, the only way he would get through it, was if he always did what they did not expect.

Not always, the thought came into his mind, it was not correct that he should always do what they did not expect. Sometimes he would do what they expected. Or would appear to do what they expected. He thought again about what in his mind he referred to as the Dubai factor and began to analyse why he had always thought it was important, how he had always known that one day he would use it.

In December 1984 a group of Shi’ite Moslems had hijacked an airbus of Kuwaiti Airlines en route from Dubai to Karachi and diverted it to Teheran. The hijack had ended six days later when they were over-powered by the Ayatollahs security police dressed as doctors and mechanics. What had attracted his attention, however, was not the way it had ended, despite the fact that it had previously been assumed that Khomeini supported both the hijackers and their cause, nor even the period of waiting in the middle, but the day on which and the circumstances under which the hijackers had boarded the aircraft. It was this which had established itself in his mind as the Dubai factor.

He rose from the chair and made himself a fresh coffee, wondering if they had also seen it, wondering if they would see how he was using it. It was interesting, he was thinking, that he was not just considering those against whom he was being sent, but also those who would be sent against him. He knew they would see it, that it was their job to see it, and began to calculate how he could use that fact against them.

John Kenshaw-Taylor selected a log from the wrought-iron basket inside the inglenook and placed it on the fire. The lounge was warm; he loved the smell and sound of wood burning, the sparkle of lights from the chandelier in the centre of the ceiling. On the oak beam which spanned the massive fireplace stood a glass of his favourite malt. Christmas, he thought, had been good, very good, made even better, he could not help admitting to himself, by the rumours of despondency which had filtered through from the other ministries, worries at Central Office about the decline in popularity ratings, and concern at the Exchequer about the gradual but persistent fall in the value of sterling, the acrimonious sessions in his own previous department about his successor’s failure to find the means to a settlement of the oil dispute which was increasingly being seen as the major underlying cause of the weakness of the pound. In two days’ time the new Energy Minister would fly to Zurich for the latest round of oil negotiations. It would not, Kenshaw-Taylor felt, be a successful trip. As a member of Her Majesty’s government, he reflected, reaching for the malt, he could take no pleasure in such a failure by a fellow member of government, especially one who, like him, had been short-listed as a potential leader of the party within the next decade.

The door opened and his wife came into the room. He stood up, told her how lovely she looked, and poured her a sherry. ‘Thanks for a really lovely Christmas, darling,’ he said. ‘I’ve really enjoyed it.’ They stood looking at the fire. ‘Pity it has to end. Pity I have to be away for a few nights.’

The first guests arrived five minutes early, the last a mere ten minutes late. The people he and Samantha had invited were those whose company he enjoyed, a merchant banker, a barrister, a shooting partner, rather than those, like the chairman of the local Conservative Association, whom he felt compelled to entertain regularly in order to protect his constituency base. They were, however, not without influence, both inside and outside the party.

The dinner, he insisted, was simple and straightforward, though he did concede that it had been tastefully prepared and presented, joining his guests’ demands that cook should leave the kitchen to receive the accolades personally. Thinly-sliced raw salmon, marinated briefly in a mix of fresh lime juice, crushed coriander seed and olive oil from a recipe he had picked up in a little auberge he knew in the South of France, with a Riesling Clos Ste Hune 1976 vintage. Pheasant Souvaroff, the game shot by himself and hung for two days and no more (Kenshaw-Taylor did not stand on the custom of hanging a bird till the flesh was falling from its bones), with a purée of celeriac, a mélange of carrots and leeks, and almond potatoes, plus a 1978 vintage Château Rayas. And tartlet with kiwi fruit and raspberry sauce, accompanied by a Schloss Vollrads Trockenbeerenauslese by Graf Matushka-Greiffenclau, whom, he happened to mention, he had met at Claridge’s in the autumn. When they had finished he suggested they tried a Stilton he had bought for Christmas but which he judged had not come right in time, ignoring their protests when he fetched a 1960 Quinta do Noval from the cellar.

The party finished at one. They told cook she could do the washing up in the morning and went to bed.

‘You know, darling,’ his wife said as they went to sleep, ‘I have a feeling this is going to be your year.’

Two months after they arrived in Israel, Yakov Zubko and his family were given their new home. It wasn’t big, the social worker from the Jewish Agency told them when she called them to her office, and it wasn’t in the city, yet she believed them when they told her it didn’t matter, that at least it was home.

The following weekend Yakov Zubko took his family to see it. They rose at five, Yakov making breakfast and tidying the flat while Alexandra packed them sandwiches as she had done the day they began their journey out of Russia. The social worker had suggested she come with them but had not been surprised when they declined her offer. We, the family Zubko, managed to leave Russia, they told her and we, the family Zubko, can find our own way to our home.

They caught the bus before the sun was up, leaving the city and travelling east, the morning still cool, passing through Ramla and Jerusalem before turning south towards Hebron. They had been out of Tel Aviv before, had knelt at the Wailing Wall and stood in silence at Yad Vashem; but today was different. When she did not have to hold her daughter, Alexandra squeezed Yakov’s hand.

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