The atmosphere seemed a little torpid to Tricia, but it was a well-organized torpor. As in the address to his assistant, Franklin had emphasized in his opening lecture that the purpose of the next three weeks was pleasure and relaxation. He hinted tactfully that people had different levels of interest in classical antiquity, and that he for one wouldn’t be keeping an attendance book and marking down absentees with a black X. Franklin engagingly admitted that there were occasions when even he could tire of yet another row of Corinthian columns standing against a cloudless sky; though he did this in a way which allowed the passengers to disbelieve him.
The tail end of the Northern winter had been left behind; and at a stately pace the Santa Euphemia took its contented passengers into a calm Mediterranean spring. Tweed jackets gave way to linen ones, trouser-suits to slightly outdated sun-dresses. They passed through the Corinth Canal at night, with some of the passengers jammed against a porthole in their nightclothes, and the hardier ones on deck, occasionally letting off ineffectual bursts of flash from their cameras. From the Ionian to the Aegean: it was a little fresher and choppier in the Cyclades, but nobody minded. They went ashore at chichi Mykonos, where an elderly headmaster twisted his ankle while climbing among the ruins; at marbled Paros and volcanic Thira. The cruise was ten days old when they stopped at Rhodes. While the passengers were ashore the Santa Euphemia took on fuel, vegetables, meat and more wine. It also took on some visitors, although this did not become apparent until the following morning.
They were steaming towards Crete, and at eleven o’clock Franklin began his usual lecture on Knossos and Minoan Civilization. He had to be a little careful, because his audience tended to know about Knossos, and some of them would have their personal theories. Franklin liked people asking questions; he didn’t mind pieces of obscure and even correct information being added to what he had already imparted – he would offer thanks with a courtly bow and a murmur of ‘Herr Professor’, implying that as long as some of us have an overall grasp of things, it was fine for others to fill their heads with recondite detail; but what Franklin Hughes couldn’t stand were bores with pet ideas they couldn’t wait to try out on the guest lecturer. Excuse me, Mr Hughes, it looks very Egyptian to me – how do we know the Egyptians didn’t build it? Aren’t you assuming that Homer wrote when people think he (a little laugh) – or she – did? I don’t have any actual expert knowledge, yet surely it would make more sense if … There was always at least one of them, playing the puzzled yet reasonable amateur; unfooled by received opinion, he – or she – knew that historians were full of bluff, and that complicated matters were best understood using zestful intuition untainted by any actual knowledge or research. ‘I appreciate what you’re saying, Mr Hughes, but surely it would be more logical …’ What Franklin occasionally wanted to say, though never did, was that these brisk guesses about earlier civilizations seemed to him to have their foundation as often as not in Hollywood epics starring Kirk Douglas or Burt Lancaster. He imagined himself hearing out one of these jokers and replying, with a skirl of irony on the adverb, Of course, you realize that the film of Ben Hur isn’t entirely reliable?’ But not this trip. In fact, not until he knew it was going to be his last trip. Then he could let go a little. He could be franker with his audience, less careful with the booze, more receptive to the flirting glance.
The visitors were late for Franklin Hughes’s lecture on Knossos, and he had already done the bit in which he pretended to be Sir Arthur Evans when they opened the double doors and fired a single shot into the ceiling. Franklin, still headily involved in his own performance, murmured, ‘Can I have a translation of that?’ but it was an old joke, and not enough to recapture the passengers’ attention. They had already forgotten Knossos and were watching the tall man with a moustache and glasses who was coming to take Franklin’s place at the lectern. Under normal circumstances, Franklin might have yielded him the microphone after a courteous inquiry about his credentials. But given that the man was carrying a large machine-gun and wore one of those red check head-dresses which used to be shorthand for lovable desert warriors loyal to Lawrence of Arabia but in recent years had become shorthand for baying terrorists eager to massacre the innocent, Franklin simply made a vague ‘Over to you’ gesture with his hands and sat down on his chair.
Franklin’s audience – as he still thought of them in a brief proprietorial flurry – fell silent. Everyone was avoiding an incautious movement; each breath was discreetly taken. There were three visitors, and the other two were guarding the double doors into the lecture room. The tall one with the glasses had an almost scholarly air as he tapped the microphone in the manner of lecturers everywhere: partly to see if it was working, partly to attract attention. The second half of this gesture was not strictly necessary.
‘I apologize for the inconvenience,’ he began, setting off a nervous laugh or two. ‘But I am afraid it is necessary to interrupt your holiday for a while. I hope it will not be a long interruption. You will all stay here, sitting exactly where you are, until we tell you what to do.’
A voice, male, angry and American, asked from the middle of the auditorium, ‘Who are you and what the hell do you want?’ The Arab swayed back to the microphone he had just left, and with the contemptuous suavity of a diplomat, replied, ‘I am sorry, I am not taking questions at this juncture.’ Then, just to make sure he was not mistaken for a diplomat, he went on. ‘We are not people who believe in unnecessary violence. However, when I fired the shot into the ceiling to attract your attention, I had set this little catch here so that the gun only fires one shot at a time. If I change the catch’ – he did so while holding the weapon half-aloft like an arms instructor with an exceptionally ignorant class – ‘the gun will continue to fire until the magazine is empty. I hope that is clear.’
The Arab left the hall. People held hands; there were occasional sniffs and sobs, but mostly silence. Franklin glanced across to the far left of the auditorium at Tricia. His assistants were allowed to come to his lectures, though not to sit in direct line of sight – ‘Mustn’t start me thinking about the wrong thing.’ She didn’t appear frightened, more apprehensive about what the form was. Franklin wanted to say, ‘Look, this hasn’t happened to me before, it isn’t normal, I don’t know what to do,’ but settled instead for an indeterminate nod. After ten minutes of stiff-necked silence, an American woman in her mid-fifties stood up. Immediately one of the two visitors guarding the door shouted at her. She took no notice, just as she ignored the whispers and grabbing hand of her husband. She walked down the central aisle to the gunmen, stopped a couple of yards short and said in a clear, slow voice suppurating with panic, ‘I have to go to the goddam bathroom.’
The Arabs neither replied nor looked her in the eye. Instead, with a small gesture of their guns, they indicated as surely as such things can be that she was currently a large target and that any further advance would confirm the fact in an obvious and final way. She turned, walked back to her seat and began to cry. Another woman on the right of the hall immediately started sobbing. Franklin looked across at Tricia again, nodded, got to his feet, deliberately didn’t look at the two guards, and went across to the lectern. ‘As I was saying …’ He gave an authoritative cough and all eyes reverted to him. ‘I was saying that the Palace of Knossos was not by any means the first human settlement on the site. What we think of as the Minoan strata reach down to about seventeen feet, but below this there are signs of human habitation down to twenty-six feet or so. There was life where the palace was built for at least ten thousand years before the first stone was laid …’
It seemed normal to be lecturing again. It also felt as if some feathered cloak of leadership had been thrown over him. He decided to acknowledge this, glancingly at first. Did the guards understand English? Perhaps. Had they ever been to Knossos? Unlikely. So Franklin, while describing the council chamber at the palace, invented a large clay tablet which, he claimed, had probably hung over the gypsum throne. It read – he lo
oked towards the Arabs at this point – ‘We are living in difficult times’. As he continued describing the site, he unearthed more tablets, many of which, as he now fearlessly began to point out, had a universal message. ‘We must above all not do anything rash’, one said. Another: ‘Empty threats are as useless as empty scabbards’. Another: ‘The tiger always waits before it springs’ (Hughes wondered briefly if Minoan Civilization knew about tigers). He was not sure how many of his audience had latched on to what he was doing, but there came an occasional assenting growl. In a curious way, he was also enjoying himself. He ended his tour of the palace with one of the least typically Minoan of his many inscriptions: ‘There is a great power where the sun sets which will not permit certain things’. Then he shuffled his notes together and sat down to warmer applause than usual. He looked across at Tricia and winked. She had tears in her eyes. He glanced towards the two Arabs and thought, that’s shown you, now you can see what we’re made of, there’s some stiff upper lip for you. He rather wished he’d made up some Minoan aphorism about people who wore red tea-towels on their heads, but recognized he wouldn’t have had the nerve. He’d keep that one for later, after they were all safe.
They waited for half an hour in a silence that smelt of urine before the leader of the visitors returned. He had a brief word with the guards and walked up the aisle to the lectern. ‘I understand that you have been lectured on the palace of Knossos,’ he began, and Franklin felt sweat burst into the palms of his hands. ‘That is good. It is important for you to understand other civilizations. How they are great, and how’ – he paused meaningfully – ‘they fall. I hope very much that you will enjoy your trip to Knossos.’
He was leaving the microphone when the same American voice, this time more conciliatory in tone, as if heedful of the Minoan tablets, said, ‘Excuse me, would you be able to tell us roughly who you are and roughly what you want?’
The Arab smiled. ‘I am not sure that would be a good idea at this stage.’ He gave a nod to indicate he had finished, then paused, as if a civil question at least deserved a civil answer. ‘Let me put it this way. If things go according to plan, you will soon be able to continue your explorations of the Minoan Civilization. We shall disappear just as we came, and we shall seem to you simply to have been a dream. Then you can forget us. You will remember only that we were a small delay. So there is no need for you to know who we are or where we come from or what we want.’
He was about to leave the low podium when Franklin, rather to his own surprise, said, ‘Excuse me.’ The Arab turned. ‘No more questions.’ Hughes went on, ‘This is not a question. I just think … I’m sure you’ve got other things on your mind … if we’re going to have to stay here you ought to let us go to the lavatory.’ The leader of the visitors frowned. ‘The bathroom,’ Franklin explained; then again, ‘the toilet.’
‘Of course. You will be able to go to the toilet when we move you.’
‘When will that be?’ Franklin felt himself a little carried away by his self-appointed role. For his part the Arab noted some unacceptable lack of compliance. He replied brusquely, ‘When we decide.’
He left. Ten minutes later an Arab they had not seen before came in and whispered to Hughes. He stood up. ‘They are going to move us from here to the dining-room. We are to be moved in twos. Occupants of the same cabin are to identify themselves as such. We will be taken to our cabins, where we will be allowed to go to the lavatory. We are also to collect our passports, but nothing else.’ The Arab whispered again. ‘And we are not allowed to lock the lavatory door.’ Without being asked, Franklin went on, ‘I think these visitors to the ship are quite serious. I don’t think we should do anything which might upset them.’
Only one guard was available to move the passengers, and the process took several hours. As Franklin and Tricia were being taken to C deck, he remarked to her, in the casual tone of one commenting on the weather, ‘Take the ring off your right hand and put it on your wedding finger. Turn the stone round so that you can’t see it. Don’t do it now, do it when you’re having a pee.’
When they reached the dining-room their passports were examined by a fifth Arab. Tricia was sent to the far end, where the British had been put in one corner and the Americans in another. In the middle of the room were the French, the Italians, two Spaniards and the Canadians. Nearest the door were the Japanese, the Swedes and Franklin, the solitary Irishman. One of the last couples to be brought in were the Zimmermanns, a pair of stout, well-dressed Americans. Hughes had at first placed the husband in the garment business, some master cutter who had set up on his own; but a conversation on Paros had revealed him to be a recently retired professor of philosophy from the Midwest. As the couple passed Franklin’s table on their way to the American quarter, Zimmermann muttered lightly, ‘Separating the clean from the unclean.’
When they were all present, Franklin was taken off to the purser’s office, where the leader was installed. He found himself wondering if the slightly bulbous nose and the moustache were by any chance attached to the glasses; perhaps they all came off together.
‘Ah, Mr Hughes. You seem to be their spokesman. At any event, now your position is official. You will explain to them the following. We are doing our best to make them comfortable, but they must realize that there are certain difficulties. They will be allowed to talk to one another for five minutes at each hour. At the same time those who wish to go to the toilet will be allowed to do so. One person at a time. I can see that they are all sensible people and would not like them to decide not to be sensible. There is one man who says he cannot find his passport. He says he is called Talbot.’
‘Mr Talbot, yes.’ A vague, elderly Englishman who tended to ask questions about religion in the Ancient World. A mild fellow with no theories of his own, thank God.
‘He is to sit with the Americans.’
‘But he’s British. He comes from Kidderminster.’
‘If he remembers where his passport is and he is British he can sit with the British.’
‘You can tell he’s British. I can vouch for him being British.’ The Arab looked unimpressed. ‘He doesn’t talk like an American, does he?’
‘I have not talked to him. Still, talking is not proof, is it? You, I think, talk like a British but your passport says you are not a British.’ Franklin nodded slowly. ‘So we will wait for the passport.’
‘Why are you separating us like this?’
‘We think you will like to sit with one another.’ The Arab made a sign for him to go.
‘There’s one other thing. My wife. Can she sit with me?’
‘Your wife?’ The man looked at a list of passengers in front of him. ‘You have no wife.’
‘Yes I do. She’s travelling as Tricia Maitland. It’s her maiden name. We were married three weeks ago.’ Franklin paused, then added in a confessional tone, ‘My third wife, actually.’
But the Arab seemed unimpressed by Franklin’s harem. ‘You were married three weeks ago? And yet it seems you do not share the same cabin. Are things going so badly?’
‘No, I have a separate cabin for my work, you see. The lecturing. It’s a luxury, having another cabin, a privilege.’
‘She is your wife?’ The tone gave nothing away.
‘Yes she is,’ he replied, mildly indignant.
‘But she has a British passport.’
‘She’s Irish. You become Irish if you marry an Irishman. It’s Irish law.’
‘Mr Hughes, she has a British passport.’ He shrugged as if the dilemma were insoluble, then found a solution. ‘But if you wish to sit with your wife, then you may go and sit with her at the British table.’
Franklin smiled awkwardly. ‘If I’m the passengers’ spokesman, how do I get to see you to pass on the passengers’ demands?’
‘The passengers’ demands? No, you have not understood. The passengers do not have demands. You do not see me unless I want to see you.’
After Franklin had relayed the new orders,
he sat at his table by himself and thought about the position. The good part was that so far they had been treated with reasonable civility; no-one had yet been beaten up or shot, and their captors didn’t seem to be the hysterical butchers they might have expected. On the other hand, the bad part lay quite close to the good part: being unhysterical, the visitors might also prove reliable, efficient, hard to divert from their purpose. And what was their purpose? Why had they hijacked the Santa Euphemia? Who were they negotiating with? And who was steering the sodding ship, which as far as Franklin could tell was going round in large, slow circles?
From time to time, he would nod encouragingly to the Japanese at the next table. Passengers at the far end of the dining-room, he couldn’t help noting, would occasionally look up in his direction, as if checking that he was still there. He’d become the liaison man, perhaps even the leader. That Knossos lecture, in the circumstances, had been little short of brilliant; a lot more ballsy than he’d imagined possible. It was the sitting alone like this that got him down; it made him brood. His initial burst of emotion – something close to exhilaration – was seeping away; in its place came lethargy and apprehension. Perhaps he should go and sit with Tricia and the Brits. But then they might take his citizenship away from him. This dividing-up of the passengers: did it mean what he feared it might mean?
Late that afternoon they heard a plane fly over, quite low. There was a muted cheer from the American section of the dining-room; then the plane went away. At six o’clock one of the Greek stewards appeared with a large tray of sandwiches; Franklin noted the effect of fear on hunger. At seven, as he went for a pee, an American voice whispered, ‘Keep up the good work.’ Back at his table, he tried to look soberly confident. The trouble was, the more he reflected, the less cheerful he felt. In recent years Western governments had been noisy about terrorism, about standing tall and facing down the threat; but the threat never seemed to understand that it was being faced down, and continued much as before. Those in the middle got killed; governments and terrorists survived.