The Glory Boys (15 page)

The Ambassador said, 'You say "further information".

To what end?'

Spell it out in words of one syllable, thought the Under Secretary. God protect us, they're a gauche crowd.

'With a view, Excellency, to deciding whether or not the visit should continue as planned, in the face of what your service and ours regard as a serious threat.'

'You are asking me to recommend to Jerusalem that the visit be cancelled?'

'I am asking you nothing. I am merely suggesting, on the direction of my Minister, that you might wish to reconsider the value of the visit.'

'There is only one set of circumstances which would lead me to tell my Government that in my personal opinion Professor Sokarev should cancel his lecture on Tuesday night and by-pass Britain.'

The Under Secretary inclined his head, and the Ambassador went on.

if I were to believe that the police forces and other agencies of Britain were incapable of providing the necessary protection for Professor Sokarev, then I would suggest to my Foreign Ministry that the visit should be cancelled.'

Cunning fox, the Under Secretary said to himself.

'There is no question of that. We will provide protection .. .'

'Then there is nothing further to discuss.' The Ambassador's voice was cold. 'When you report back to the Minister about our conversation I would be grateful if you could relay a sentiment of my Government. We are not prepared to be taken simply as a nuisance-child, a bother-some problem that will go away if the door is barred to it.

Professor Sokarev has been offered the hospitality of a learned and illustrious body in your capital. We intend to make sure that he honours the engagement. The rest, my dear fellow, is in your hands.'

The Under Secretary bridled. 'You must understand that I was passing on a request from my Minister.'

The Ambassador smiled, without friendship, puckered his eyes fractionally, and said, 'And I will pass on to my Minister that the British Government will be providing -

what was the word you used? - yes, "adequate protection". Perhaps you should know, since it seems you have not been informed, that while we have been discussing the suitability of the visit the security attache at my embassy has been talking with the relevant people on your side on the very question of Professor Sokarev's safety. At times like this, Under Secretary, it is liaison that is needed.'

He turned on his heel and made his own way out of the room.

In the early afternoon McCoy took Famy from the house and to the car parked fifty yards up the road on the far side.

'I didn't bring it down to the station last night,' he said, it's nicked - stolen - and that's too public a place to leave it lying around. It's all right in a street like this, half the bloody motors here have separated from their log books.'

It was a two-door Ford Escort, painted green and unscratched, 'M' registration. 'I got it over in Wembley, that's on the far side of London, out in the suburbs, night before last. Goes okay, though it's a bit small.'

Famy looked at the car, disinterested, and waited for the passenger door to be opened for him. Soon they were heading past Islington Green and stopping at the lights, indicator clicking, ready to turn right down the Pentonville Road and then into the main university complex. And as they drove McCoy realized the extent to which he was involved. It had begun simply, and without complications; providing back-up, assistance. The shooting in France had changed that, and ensured that if he carried on with the enterprise it would be as an equal partner.

There's no bloody help from this bastard, he thought to himself. Talks in spasms, then goes silent, just gazes into bloody eternity, like no one else exists. Doesn't give a damn whether we come out of it or not. A different war, the hedgerow actions that he had perfected among the fields of South Armagh. Political assassination . .. something that his Active Service Unit had never contemplated.

A soldier or a policeman, or a local Proddy councillor, that was different. That was attrition.

This was a totally new concept to him; a killing on such a grand scale that the shock waves would fill the world headlines for a week. It was one thing to drop a Para, to blow a Woolworths, to take out a policeman, but this . . .

And he was being drawn into it, he recognized that, and thought even now that the point of retreat was already lost. He was experienced, had known the tension of guerrilla combat in the hills round Crossmaglen, had fired the cumbersome RPG 7 rocket launcher at the tin-fenced, screened and barricaded police station on the edge of his town, had given orders, had had men follow him. And yet this other man who had known none of this was directing him, controlling him - and had outstretched him in commitment.

Perhaps it was the hate. He'd heard of it, read about it, the simple hatred the Palestinian hard-men felt for the Israelis, and he knew he couldn't match it. Even in the cage at Long Kesh when he had paced beside the interior perimeter wire and watched the camouflaged uniformed soldiers in their watch-towers, traversing their machine-guns, and jeering down at the men below, even then he could not hate to the exclusion of all else. When these people blasted their hostages, threw their grenades without hesitation, without remorse, into cinemas, they put themselves beyond the reach of McCoy's understanding. His men could never do that. There had to be a purpose to killing. Every victim ought to
know
why he would die at McCoy's hand. But just for the sake of it, just for the gesture . . . that was not enough.

At the bottom of the Euston Road, in the last lap to the university, he asked, 'Why this man? Why Sokarev?'

There was no urgency in the reply. Famy said, 'Three times the Arabs fought the Israelis and were shamed. At their Yom Kippur we fought them again and surprised them with our technique and with our bravery, but we did not win. The next time we fight we will do better, and the time after that we will have greater success. One time in the future we will have them close to defeat. Then they will have no option, then they will threaten their ultimate weapon. They will tell the world of their bomb, how they will use it to survive. Sokarev is an architect of that bomb.

To us he represents a symbol of what would be their last throw in desperation. We feel if we kill Sokarev we have demonstrated that we fear nothing from them. If we can eliminate a man so much at the centre of their whole basis of national survival then we have achieved a great victory.'

'There'll be others, others who know as much as this one man,' said McCoy.

'That is unimportant. It is not Sokarev's knowledge that we will deny them. It is the symbol that we attack. It meant nothing in manpower for Israel to lose her athletes at Munich, nothing to lose their attache in Washington, the man here in London we took with the letter-bomb. It is the symbol that matters. That we can prove to them that we are at war, that we can strike where and when we please.'

McCoy was still silently repeating to himself, 'Bloody maniacs' when he drove past the Students' Union building, and pulled up outside the massive mausoleum structure that marked the administrative and academic centre of London University.

'Just relax. Take it easy. If anyone asks, you've left some notes behind, coming back to get them. But don't look furtive, look as though you belong,' McCoy said as they walked up the great cement steps and into the building.

Famy said quietly, 'Do you know which entrance he will use?'

'No, there are a stack of them. This is the main one, the natural one, but there are alternatives.'

There was almost a tranquillity about the Arab's voice, as if it belonged to someone who has had a great rest, and woken refreshed. His breathing was relaxed, unhurried, as he peered round him in the echoing, high-roofed hallway.

'But the room, we know which room he will use?'

it's marked on the invitation.' McCoy pulled his wallet from an inner pocket. From it he took an embossed square of card, and smiled as he showed it to Famy. it's the real thing,' he said. The Arab recognized the name of David Sokarev in ornate, copperplate writing in the centre of the card, followed by a string of initials. He saw also the words 'Lecture Room D, ground floor, Fourth entrance to the Right after entering the Main Hallway.'

'Where did you get it?' Famy asked.

'Acquired it. Long story. I'll tell you some time.'

'What time does he arrive? And when does he speak?'

'He'll come about fifteen minutes before the speech.

There's a reception, sherry and sandwiches - he'll probably arrive at the end of that. He's due to talk at eight.'

But Famy was not listening, just scanning the corridor, taking in the pillars, and the various shadowy entrances that led off the hallway to offices and other lecture rooms.

He was assessing cover, the room he would need, the speed at which a man could travel across the floor space, the angle required to see him if he were to be surrounded by guards and the welcoming committee. Without seeing the room, he had already decided there would be no possibility of gaining direct admission to the lecture, particularly with the bulky firearms that would be needed for the killing.

it has to be from outside,' he said, vaguely and to himself.

Famy turned and walked back down the hallway and out into the light. He went left across the car park to the edge of the building, then moved down its side, his attention locked on the windows that were fitted just above the level of his head. Massive, functional and intimidating in its grey strength, the building towered above him in a narrowing column to the topmost point from where half London could be viewed. The fortress to which Sokarev would be brought. But there had been a way, hadn't there, into every citadel? Brick and stone and cement in themselves do not provide protection, Famy thought. There will be a gap, if only one caused by the error of man.

The construction of the lower floors was in the form of a giant and flattened cross, the main doors at the north end, the lecture room off to the west extremity of a protruding arm. Famy hurried across from the front toward the wall where the lecture room would have its windows set, and in his step there was a lightness and excitement. They had taught him the art of what they called 'using dead ground', moving in terrain which was denied to the vision of the enemy. Those who stood at the main door would have no sight of the windows he wanted; the butting corner would deny them. And where would they accumulate the security men that would come with Sokarev? They would be with him inside, and they would be at the doors . . . He came round the corner, McCoy following blindly but uncomprehending, and again there were windows and beneath them cars, all closely parked and near to the wall. He noted that and was satisfied.

He glanced around him, for the first time a trace of anxiety showing, then scrambled on to the bonnet of a dark saloon. It gave him the elevation to see inside the lecture room, across the rows of pew-like benches, and to the lectern which on Tuesday night would hold the typed notes of David Sokarev. He jumped down from the car.

'Would you go inside,' he said to McCoy, 'and if there are curtains draw them across this window, the middle one of the three?' McCoy stood his ground, confused. 'Just do it,' the Arab said, his voice rising. 'Just this window and draw them tightly. So I can see where they meet.'

He waited a full two minutes after McCoy had gone, then the curtains swished their way across the broad window. He noted that when they closed they were completely together, letting no light escape from the room.

He bent hurriedly down, picked up a small stone from the gravel, scratched the wall at the place where the curtains had met. Almost immediately the drapes opened again.

While he waited for McCoy he repeated the scratch in the wall over his original mark. This time he drew a six-pointed star a little more than four inches across from tip to tip. He was still smiling about it when McCoy joined them.

'We must get some gloves,' Famy said. 'Thick ones that will withstand broken glass, cover the hand and the wrist.'

In the mind of Abdel-El-Famy the assassination plan was complete. Beautiful and totally simple.

The drugs scene in London as in any major capital is a brutal and violent one. A below-surface cancer invisible till the skin of society is scraped. Young detectives like Doris Lang, who attempted to infiltrate the market and supply the evidence required by the courts to convict the

'pushers', went through extensive and thorough training before they abandoned their conventional trim clothes for those of the teenagers and drop-outs among whom they would now move.

She had been on a three-week course to learn the medical side of the menace, to be taught the arts of survival in an alien society, and had spent two concentrated days in a gymnasium with an instructor who taught self-defence.

She was a capable young woman, used to looking after herself, and the Detective Inspector to whom she reported had few fears about her personal safety. What he was looking for from her was, first of all, patience, and, when that was rewarded, detail.

She had seen McCoy and Famy leave the house, and then spent twenty-five minutes reading and gossiping casually and inconsequentially with her new friends before she excused herself and left. On the stair landing on the floor immediately below the room occupied by the two newcomers she had stood stock-still for a full minute, listened to the sounds of the building, convincing herself that in the upper reaches of the house she would be alone.

She had been disappointed with her earlier search in the small hours. She had used the time on the clock that her training suggested, just after 4 a.m., when the psychiatrists say the human physique is at its most vulnerable and yearning for deep sleep. But she had recognized that this search could only be a cursory one, though she had weighed the chances of her discovery as being slight. In daylight she could be slower, more observant.

None of the locks to the rooms was fitted with a key, and she was able to turn the handle and walk in. In her left hand was a small memory-pad and a pencil stub. She worked through the men's possessions for twelve minutes.