The Glory Boys (20 page)

When the Director General had finished the Prime Minister turned away to the window, searching for the words he wanted, weighing them before speaking, face serious and intent, pencil twirling in his fingers.

'There is a chance, then, that a massive screen round the man will deter any attack. When I was in Germany for the football some years ago they adopted that policy. Total saturation. Nothing happened, and whether they were successful or not we have no way of knowing. But I think from what you say you don't believe that to be a likely eventuality, the deterrent. We will now move, Director General, into the realm of what is called "Late-at-night thought", not to be attributed to this building. I would like to think that should the Arab, if that is what he is, be taken prisoner, arrested, that he would violently resist such action, and that in his escape attempt he should be shot dead. We've had one package of hostages on a VC10

sitting it out in the Jordan Desert, we've had another VC10

wrecked at Schipol, we've had another held at gunpoint in Tunis. I don't want a fourth. I don't want to have to hand this man over at the point of a rifle with a plane-load of lives at stake, and that is what will happen if this man is taken and put through the courts. The Irishman in that context is unimportant.'

The Prime Minister wished the Director General luck, smiled bleakly at him as they shook hands, and showed him to the door.

In their small bedroom the Sokarevs were both involved in the packing of his suitcase for the visit to Europe and the United States. While his wife took the clothes, folded them and laid them on the bed, Sokarev placed them with care into his old suitcase. He chided her against giving him too many shirts, and spoke of the services of hotel laundries, but she said she was not concerned with that, and had her way. The shoes, the shirts, the underclothes and the socks, pyjamas and dressing gown, a thick jersey, all went into the case before his two suits. The suits were the only two he possessed, one for best, for making his speech, one for wearing during the day. And for travelling she selected his jacket and a pair of slacks and hung them out on the edge of the wardrobe. When they had finished the case was bulging and both of them had to press hard down on it for the locks to fasten. The case meant something special to him, and he had cared well for it since it had brought his many fewer belongings to Israel on the long journey from Frankfurt thirty-nine years ago. It was rarely used and treated with consideration, and had taken on special importance for David Sokarev, because his father had bought it for him, and carried it to the station, and handed it up into the train before waving goodbye. His father had disappeared from view as the train had pulled out from the platform, lost in the pall of engine smoke, and had then returned home to wind up the family affairs. He had been full of promises and assurances that he would follow his wife and son to Israel when that was completed. David Sokarev never saw him again.

The key that locked the case had long since been lost, and Sokarev used-a wide leather belt to hold down the top in case the clasps should fail during the journey.

She fussed around him that evening in the bedroom. It was a rare event for him to be away from home for anything more than a single night, but she could see that the anxieties and worries that had oppressed him two and three nights before were now something of the past. They laughed with each other, and smiled a lot and sometimes he put his arm round her shoulders, and he talked of the friends that he would be going to see in London, men that he had met on previous visits or who had come to Israel, and with whom he corresponded. When the packing was finished he went to his study to work on the draft of his speech while his wife moved to the kitchen to cook his dinner; it would be something light with cheese, as he liked it.

He wrote the speech in spidery long-hand, frequently crossing out what he had already set down and placing the corrections in smaller writing over the top. He would talk on the need of his country for atomic power to ensure self-sufficiency in the fields of agriculture and industry and reduce the necessity of oil. It would not be a fine speech, he knew that. He shared the problem of many brilliant men in that he found it arduous and awkward to cannibal-ize his detailed laboratory work into the language of a lecture theatre. He had sketched what he would say -

unsatisfactory, but the best he could manage. There would be no mention of the energy of the atom when directed for military purposes, and in the well-mannered and professional group to which he would be speaking there would be no questions on that count. It was understood.

Accepted.

He had worked for more than an hour, and was still regretting that Anna would not be accompanying him and that he would be dependent on a typist from the embassy in London, when the telephone rang.

'Mackowicz here,' said the distant voice, after Sokarev had given the number. Thoughts of neutrons and atomic piles and reactors fled from him, as his mind cleared. In their place was nothing. Clouded, vacant and hesitant.

'What do you want?' his voice showing the resentment he felt at the other man's intrusion into the private oasis of his study.

'I was just ringing to make sure that all would be well for you tomorrow.'

'There are no problems,' said Sokarev.

'You need have no fears of the visit to London. The British authorities are taking many steps to ensure that no incident will take place.'

'I have no fears.' Sokarev spoke sharply.

There was a pause at the other end of the line. What more do you want to say? thought Sokarev. Why burden me at my home? For the next ten days you will be there to hold my hand, dictate my movements, govern my actions.

'I will be picking you up myself tomorrow . . . '

'But I have a taxi ordered. It is all arranged. There is no need.' He was close to anger.

it has been decided that I shall take you to Ben Gurion.

Elkin will be with me. You can cancel the taxi.'

'Who has decided it?'

it has been decided in the Ministry, by the superiors in our department.'

Sokarev sank back in his chair, the telephone still to his ear. There was no fighting them; they had taken charge.

The depression surged again through him. He was weak, pliable again in the hands of the young men who would accompany him, a toy passed from hand to hand.

The younger of the two boys that had played in the clearing in the early morning saw and recognized the picture of McCoy when it was shown again at tea-time on television. His father telephoned the village policeman.

There were a series of calls that followed the sighting, and from County headquarters at Guildford some twelve miles away a tracker dog was sent. Special Branch officers drove down from London, and in the fading light the dog found the rabbit hole where McCoy had secreted the rifles and grenades. It had taken the labrador a long time to discover the hiding place, but eventually he stood by the entrance whining and impatient. The policemen had moved with caution lest they should disturb the footprints in the fresh soil. They would return again on Monday morning for a more detailed examination, but in the meantime the ten yards' square in front of the hole was covered with plastic sheeting, and a constable was left to spend a lonely night to prevent interference with the evidence.

From Scotland Yard the report of the identification and subsequent discovery were passed on to Jones, along with the conclusions that had been drawn from the find in the woods. So Fairclough had been right, and Duggan wrong in his assessment. The bastards weren't running, they were on course still, and visiting a cache. Collecting something.

And only one thing they'd need such a hiding place for.

They'd have their guns now, thought Jones. He looked at the picture of McCoy on his desk, face puffed out where he'd tried to distort his face as the shutter had gone on the army camera - old trick, to try to make the official record useless. Hard, mean face, thought Jones. The Photofit picture of the Arab was with him now, fresh from the printing press, and alongside it an artist's impression in semi-profile.

Jimmy came into the office, following his knock by a couple of seconds. Jones could see the well-scrubbed chin and cheeks, bright and shining, knew it was the sign of too many at lunch-time and a head under the tap. Cold water, to regain control. Jones pushed the pictures across his desk towards Jimmy and said, 'Those are our little boys. Get those bloody faces stuck in your mind.'

ELEVEN

From behind the driving wheel Elkin watched Mackowicz emerge from the doorway of the flats carrying the professor's case, and a few steps behind him came Sokarev and his wife. He saw the scientist kiss his wife hard on both cheeks and cling to her for several seconds before breaking away and almost run to the car door Mackowicz had opened for him. She stood and waved long after the car had gone away up the road, but through his mirror Elkin could see that the passenger in the back never turned his head. The face behind was taut, stretched with emotion, that much Elkin could see before he settled into the long, winding road to Ben Gurion Airport.

There was little talk during the journey: Mackowicz tried several times to get conversation going, but was rebuffed by Sokarev. By the time they were through Kiryat Gat, nearly half-way there, he had given up and sat quietly beside Elkin, leaving the passenger to whatever thoughts with which he cared to occupy himself.

The two security men were not unused to this. It was frequent that men who required bodyguard protection should resent the presence of those sent to ensure their safety. If the man didn't want to talk then that was his concern, thought Mackowicz; he and Elkin had enough to concern themselves with.

They had been out of Israel on this duty before, but always in a bigger team, once with the then Prime Minister Golda Meir, when the detail had been nine men, once with Abba Eban in his days as Foreign Minister, when there had been four others. This was a different situation - just the two of them, which made their success or failure more dependent on the effectiveness of forces completely outside their control. In particular, when they had travelled with the Prime Minister they had been in sufficient numbers to organize a complete security screen around their charge.

They had not been obliged to rely on the departments of the countries they visited. But when they were simply a pair they would be forced to accept the guidance and knowledge of the British police. It was not the way they liked to operate.

Their selection for the task of watching over the small, stout man who slumped across the back seat of the car was no accident. Both were expert shots with hand guns, and both were thorough and painstaking. When the threat had become known they had been the two obvious choices.

The Head of the Protection Division of the Foreign Ministry had had no doubts that among the men under his control Mackowicz and Elkin were the most efficient and professional. They travelled light, just two canvas bags in the boot alongside the professor's larger bag. They contained a few changes of clothes, while the suits they wore in the car would see them through the public functions. In one bag were the files, marked 'secret', that contained all the available Israeli intelligence information on the threat, and a complete dossier on Sokarev from his blood group to details of his family and his financial arrangements. In the other bag, wrapped in shirts, were the personal two-way radios that would be modified to the wavelengths of the Israeli embassy by the resident communications and wireless expert, and the issued firearms.

They had left at seven and turned into the driveway of the airport seventy-five minutes later, which left them a little over an hour before take-off. Sokarev could sense that the two men in the front of the car understood his hostility to them. He was dominated by feelings of isolation and loneliness, and an inability to communicate with the two men with him. They were so much younger, so assured. There was nothing to talk to them about, no mutual point of sympathy. Killers, he decided: so how different were they to the men who awaited him - if the fears were true? Cloaked in legality, given the seal of approval, how much were they separated from the terrorists? Both groups killed from a sense of duty, both acted without hesitation, ferret-fast. He recognized that he was afraid of the men he had been given as travel companions.

Only the gun could give him confidence, his own gun, the unused Mauser, and that was a step into their world, one with which he could never sympathize, barely understand.

It rested in his coat pocket, beside his spectacle case, awkward, forcing out the material of the jacket, the single magazine in his inside breast pocket placed within the fold of his wallet.

The baggage check took half an hour. Thirty minutes of shuffling the cases forward inch by inch as he stood behind a crocodile of blue-rinsed lady tourists who even at that early stage of the morning were strident in their retelling of alimony suits, lost husbands and necessary hysterecto-mies. He was surprised he was not taken through a side door and spared the routine, but neither Mackowicz nor Elkin made any move to suggest that that were possible.

When they came to the young man in the orange jerkin who was searching the cases it was only Sokarev's that was opened. When it had been checked, closed again, and scribbled on with chalk his bodyguards produced their identity cards, exchanged a quiet word with the airport security man, and were allowed on their way to the ticket desk. Sokarev felt the indignity, near-humiliation of it.

Elkin saw the chin jutting out and the thin-lipped anger of his mouth, and said — not with pomposity but a degree of kindness - it's routine, Professor Sokarev. It's nothing personal about you. All passengers are searched. All, that is, except us. We carry papers and equipment. Perhaps it would not be suitable for those to be seen by others standing in a line. So we go through. If it is of comfort to you we are all searched when we leave Heathrow.'

Sokarev fumbled for a reply, unnerved by the accuracy with which the other had interpreted his thoughts.