Blood Rules (25 page)

Nunn found his mind diverting into unfamiliar byways. He’d fallen passionately in love with Anne-Marie and proposed to her shortly after they’d met while holidaying in Nice. Their son had been a love child. She would go all the way to hell, she said, but had there ever been a time when she would have resorted to violence for Michael’s sake? Would she have stolen a plane, just to be with him? No, it was absurd. And yet women stole to feed their starving children, killed in order to protect them….

Trewin was speaking.

“I’m not convinced. If she wanted the boy back, all she had to do was arrange a snatch in England any time over the past two years.”

“After the mess in New York the Raleighs were subject to surveillance,” MI6 said. “I checked. Halib would have guessed that.”

Trewin tossed his head. “Well, maybe…. Tell us, Andrew, have you had any luck this morning?”

Nunn forced his mind back onto the main highway. “Well, so far it seems as though things are much as they appear to be. The people I’ve spoken to are all agreed that it’s a commercial contract organized by the Hanifs. Probably a Hezbollah connection in there somewhere. I’m told, reliably I think, that since our meeting Halib’s gone aboard that Iranian frigate, the one backing up the chopper. Stalemate; unless our friend here"—he waved his hand at Shehabi—"can magic some Iranian prisoners out of the air.”

On the spur of the moment he decided not to tell Shehabi of Jerry Raban’s latest update: that Feisal Hanif was in Cairo, but booked on every flight into Bahrain for the next seventy-two hours.

Shehabi hitched himself onto the nearest desk and folded his arms. He stared at the floor. Nunn studied him with suddenly renewed interest. He’d been expecting the usual heated denial of the prisoners’ existence. This reticence was unexpected. Perhaps he’d been influenced by Nunn’s account of his meeting with Halib after all. But before Shehabi could either satisfy or confound expectations, the fax machine emitted a click and its
receive
indicator light began to blink.

Andrew digested the message line by line as it appeared through the slot, so that by the time the guillotine severed the sheet he already knew the worst.

“Oh, dear,” he said quietly. “Oh dear, oh dear.”

“I gather,” said Trewin, “that we’re none of us going to like this, but could we have it anyway?”

“Originating from Teheran … the latest videotape has just been delivered.” He kept up a smooth, unhurried delivery, not wanting to be quizzed on how he got his information before Trewin and MI6 received theirs. “I think I know what Halib was holding back, now. My contact says that on the most recent tape the hijackers have issued a demand, a deadline, and a threat. One of each. First, the demand. The six Iranian prisoners of war are to be flown from Baghdad to Cairo, where they’ll be handed over to representatives of the Red Crescent. This must be done before midnight Egyptian time tomorrow night, the twenty-third, which is the deadline.” He looked at his watch. “Egypt’s one hour behind us, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Trewin said. “Gives us, what? Thirty-six hours, more or less. What’s the threat?”

“The threat is that, unless their demands are met, sixty minutes after the deadline expires they will blow up the plane with everyone aboard.”

D
ANNIE
Neeman, the Mossad agent who occupied seat 24H, waited a long time before taking a look at the paper napkin Robbie had forced into his hand. It wasn’t simply a matter of waiting for the hijackers’ attention to be focused elsewhere. That, by itself, would have been simple. There were only five gunmen to cover nearly two hundred passengers. Five people couldn’t be looking everywhere at once; they didn’t have eyes in the back of their heads.

No, Dannie wasn’t afraid that the hijackers would detect him; he feared betrayal by his fellow prisoners.

He knew something about hijacks, how they turned. He’d watched the videos and studied the manuals. After a while, passengers came to assume that the outside world had forgotten them. Because they were constantly afraid, they constantly felt the need for reassurance. They began to identify with their captors. Gunmen were hardly sympathetic figures, but they represented the only other visible force in play. And they were better than those on the outside, the ones Leila mentally styled “the chess players,” because the gunmen sometimes smiled, or let you go to the toilet, or said you could have a glass of water.

They might shoot you, too. So passengers on a hijacked plane tended to be wary of anything that could upset the men responsible for their plight. Oddballs who resisted were, after a while, viewed with suspicion by their fellow victims. And from suspicion it was but a short step to hostility.

By the grace of God, no one had seen Robbie deliver the message. If another passenger had noticed the Israeli reading it, he might have told the hijackers. That was the way to win the strong men’s favor—you might secure an extra meal for yourself or a seat nearer the open door and fresh air.

That way they might not choose you when next they needed a corpse to be videoed.

Dannie Neeman waited until his nearest neighbors had fallen asleep before unfolding the paper napkin Robbie had brought. There was no signature, but he recognized Raful’s writing. His orders were to wait until one of their team was chosen to die, then act “as arranged.” He understood. It was a worst-case scenario, but he knew what he had to do when the time came.

Something was going to break. It wouldn’t be much longer now.

He swallowed, trying to pump a little saliva up from empty glands; it was a long time since the last water ration. He found it hard to hold his head level, and his feet were full of sluggish blood. Aboard the plane, things had deteriorated to the verge of critical. The hijackers kept small amounts of food and water coming, but things like diapers and medicines and tampons had run out. Babies’ little bodies couldn’t cope with the sweltering atmosphere. Women were bleeding into their seats, and it sapped them mentally more than physically. Soon the souls aboard NQ 033 would no longer be able to cope with kids wallowing in their own shit, perpetual thirst, cloth rubbing against raw skin, pools of vomit, ulcers, mouth sores … the devil would have loved the interior of this plane, and perhaps only Hieronymus Bosch could have done it justice.

Another scruple in the scale, only one, and the balance would tip. One more death, that was the thing, Dannie decided; and across the other side of the plane someone was dying. A few hours ago, the hijackers had asked anyone aboard who was a doctor to identify himself. A man had come forward and diagnosed diabetes; now he was kneeling beside his patient, a youth slumped in row 20 on the port side. Yes. When the diabetic boy snuffed it, that would be the flashpoint. The cue.

At first Celestine and Azizza could not decide where would be the safest place for them to lie low. In the end they took a circuitous route back to the house at Yarze, reasoning that Feisal wouldn’t waste manpower keeping a permanent watch on Kharif. Even when he discovered her escape from Damour, why mount guard over a dilapidated house? Once he’d satisfied himself that his mother wasn’t there—and before returning home they gave him plenty of time to do that—he would leave it alone. At least, that’s what they hoped.

By the grace of Allah they reached Kharif safely. There, a crisis conference speedily resulted in a decision that Azizza must go back to Chafiq Hakkim’s. Earlier in the day she had begged time off, but someone had to find out what was going on and Hakkim was likely to know. Besides, they needed food.

Celestine, alone again, collapsed into a chair, finally able to admit how ill she felt. Previously she’d put it down to a poisonous combination of anxiety over Robbie, old age, and physical exertion that would have taxed a teenager, let alone a woman in her seventies. Now, however, as she sat in the gloom counting her irregular heartbeats, she knew that the only thing to keep her from crumbling was willpower, and it couldn’t last forever.

She took a photo of Robbie from her bag. It had been taken in the restaurant at the top of New York’s World Trade Center. Twelve-year-old Robbie was staring solemnly into the lens, his shirt turned stark white by the flash. The last time she’d seen him; dear God, she prayed, let it not be the last time she ever would see him.

“Robbie,” she whispered. “Hold on, darling. Celestine loves you, Robbie. She’s coming to help you. She is. She is.”

Tears crept up on her by stealth. She fought them, for a while. But the more she resisted the more her distress deepened, until at last she blurted out everything in a convoluted expression of terror and pain.

“I’m just a poor widow woman … no good to anyone … not wanted, not needed, oh,
God,
not needed. And I can’t do anything. I can’t save him. Oh, God, Allah, help him, help my poor lovely Robbie…. ”

At sunset Azizza came back to find Celestine rocking to and fro in a chair.

“Izza,” she cried, “what am I going to do, what am I going to
do?”

The old servant ran to the table and grabbed both of Celestine’s hands between her own. “Keep calm,” she said, her voice more of a snap than a consolation. “Stop your weeping and listen. I need your help. Celestine!”

Celestine dried her tears and took a deep breath.

“It’s Hakkim,” Azizza said. She busied herself lighting candles. “He’s funny.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s changed. The minute I was in the door he came at me and I thought, Oh, he’s going to torture me until I cough
you
up. But it wasn’t that. He was frightened.”

“Hakkim, frightened?” This was something, this was news; come on, old girl, sit up, take notice.

Azizza blew out the match with which she’d been lighting the candles. “He said he’d been cheated and there was something you had to know.”

“And you believed him?” Celestine found it hard to keep an edge of scorn from her voice.

“Of course not, stupid, not until he mentioned the money.”

“What money?”

“He’d been hauled in to back this hijack thing. A business, like any other; those were his exact words, imagine! He put up the cash for training, weapons, tickets, hotels, everything! But he stands to lose the lot.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he’d only tell you. But I wasn’t having any of that, I pretended I hadn’t seen you since you came to his house yesterday. He didn’t believe me, of course, but he told me to pass on a message to you, and when I heard what it was I actually started to believe him.”

“What message?”

A man’s voice from the passage. “The Israelis were in it from the beginning.”

Both women shrieked. Celestine jumped up, one hand held to her throat, the other clutching Azizza for support. It took her all of ten seconds to realize that she knew this voice; it was Hakkim’s.

So he’d followed his housekeeper back to Kharif. “Oh, Izza,” she murmured, but there was no harshness in the reproach. Being duped on occasion was the price you paid for God’s gift of an upright nature.

“Don’t worry,” Hakkim said agitatedly, pulling a chair up to the table. “Ai, what a day!”

“Chafiq,” Celestine said, forcing all the urgency she could muster into the one word. “Do something useful for once in your life, and help me save Robbie.”

“Yes, yes. Let me get my breath. I’ve brought coffee, some wine—”

“Does Feisal know you’re here?” Celestine barked. “Did he send you?”

“No, to both questions.” Hakkim used his teeth to extract the half-drawn cork from a wine bottle.

“Is he tailing you, then? You follow Izza, he follows you…. ”

From the look on his face she deduced he hadn’t thought of that. More interestingly, the notion frightened him. There was silence for a while. Celestine found herself in no hurry to break it. Let him stew!

“Feisal’s hit a rock,” he said at last, before taking a swig of wine.

“The hijack’s gone wrong?”

“Badly. You want some coffee?”

He unstoppered the flask, allowing the aroma of fresh coffee to permeate the room. Celestine had to force herself to say, “Later.”

“Someone tried to stop Leila,” Chafiq said, “just before she took the plane. Someone who knew she’d be there. When Halib heard about it he ran a check. The man who attacked Leila is called Rafael Sharett. He’s a Mossad man. Very high: a director.”

Celestine frowned. “So what?”

“So one day soon this mess is going to end, right? And the papers are going to get the story, and if Sharett’s still alive he’s going to talk to his people.”

“I imagine so.”

“Celestine.” Chafiq leaned forward across the table, hands folded across his chest. She noticed that his forehead was running with sweat. “I can’t afford to upset them in Jerusalem. When I went into this I spelled it out to Feisal: ‘Look,’ I said, ‘no Zionist dimension, okay?’ And he said okay, so I went in with my share. But if they ever once so much as suspect…”

So Banker Hakkim had done business with Tel Aviv, had he? Celestine thought that must be a dangerous game. If he was telling the truth, she could understand his fear.
If.

“But they
have
found out, haven’t they?” she remarked gently. “They put an anti-hijack team aboard that plane, so by now they know all they’ll ever need to. I don’t follow your logic, Chafiq. If you’re dead, you’re dead already.” She paused, keen for the timing to be perfect. “Already.”

Hakkim breathed heavily. Suddenly he smashed a fist down on the table, making bottle and flask jump.

“Maybe the Mossad don’t know Sharett’s aboard,” he said.

“They put a man on the plane, to stop the hijack … and they don’t know he …? You’ll have to help me, I don’t understand.”

Celestine became aware of a shadow at Hakkim’s elbow. She heard a noise and, although the banker appeared not to have noticed, Celestine knew that Azizza had picked up the flask. Good. She really could do with some of that coffee.

“Follow it through with me,” he said. “One. There’s been nothing in the papers, the TV or radio, to suggest that anyone knows there’s a top-ranking Mossad man aboard that plane.”

“But they’d deliberately keep it a secret, wouldn’t they? To preserve the element of surprise.”

“The Mossad would. But others would be only too keen to broadcast it. The Syrians, the Iraqis: their press would be crowing it from the hilltops.”

“Maybe the Mossad just managed to keep this secret well.”

“You don’t understand. If Tel Aviv knew Sharett was aboard, they’d storm the plane and get their man out. And they’d have done it before this.”

“But what does it mean?” she said slowly. “Sharett was on that flight for the purpose of foiling the hijack. Why wouldn’t this man tell his own people what he was up to?”

“Perhaps he knew they’d forbid it.”

“You mean, he’s on his own … it’s a private party?”

“Yes.”

“Even though he works for an organization whose job it is to stop people like my grandchildren? Oh, come on, Chafiq!”

“Look. We know this man is on that plane, we know that his own side isn’t interested—”

“Prove
to me that this man is on the plane, that he’s who you say he is.”

When his hand shot to an inner pocket her first thought was, Allah! He’s got a gun!, until she saw him hold out a square of cardboard. She took it warily: a photograph of a man sitting slumped in what looked like a plane seat, his face streaked with blood.

“That’s Sharett,” Hakkim said. “It was taken immediately after the plane landed in Yemen and flown out to Teheran next day. It came to Feisal along with a request that he try to identify this man, because he attacked Leila when she made her move on the cockpit. They sent him photocopies of his passport, too: false, of course. Here.”

He gave her some folded pages. She looked at them. “These could all be faked,” she muttered.

“It’s not a fake.”

“This snap could have been taken before the hijack.” She peered closely at it. “How did you get hold of these? Did Feisal give them to you?”

“Are you mad? He’d slit my throat if he knew I’d gotten them.”

“You stole them?” Celestine asked sharply.

“I have a good friend on Feisal’s staff.” Hakkim’s eyes were bulging now; he was thinking of what would happen if Feisal caught up with him. “He borrowed them.”

“You’ll have to show these to the Mossad if you’re to have any chance of making them believe you.”

“Forget it!” He snatched the photo back from her.

Celestine became aware of the shadow again standing at Hakkim’s shoulder. She hadn’t seen Izza for a while. Had she gone somewhere? Or had she been there all the time, listening?

“Why are you telling me this?” she demanded.

“The whole thing’s going to come out; the Zionists will know I’m involved; they’ll finish me.” He was almost in tears.

“So how can I save you?”

“Make the Israelis believe Sharett’s on the plane. I can help you get to Tel Aviv, I have … ways.”

She stared at him, too astonished to speak.

“They’ll send a team to rescue everyone, Robbie, everyone.” Hakkim’s voice, so enthusiastic until now, suddenly faltered. “But unless they think there’s one of their high-ups aboard, they won’t do a thing.”

Azizza slowly lifted the coffee flask and waved her forefinger above its stopper, shaking her head. Then she floated backward into the shadows that were starting to fill the room with the onset of dusk.