“How are the clients?” he asked the quartermaster sergeant.
“Sitting quietly, watching the scenery,” said the QMS over his shoulder.
“Keep ’em like that,” said the pilot. “The last time they took a plane trip, they ended up shooting the captain.”
The QMS laughed.
“I’ll watch ’em,” he promised.
The copilot tapped the flight plan on his knee.
“Three hours to touchdown,” he said.
The broadcasts from Gatow had also been heard elsewhere in the world. In Moscow the news was translated into Russian and brought to a table in a private apartment at the privileged end of Kutuzovsky Prospekt where two men sat at lunch shortly after two P.M. local time.
Marshal Nikolai Kerensky read the typed message and slammed a meaty fist onto the table.
“They’ve let them go!” he shouted. “They’ve given in. The Germans and the British have caved in. The two Jews are on their way to Tel Aviv.”
Silently, Yefrem Vishnayev took the message from his companion’s hand and read it. He permitted himself a wintry smile.
“Then tonight, when we produce Colonel Kukushkin and his evidence before the Politburo, Maxim Rudin will be finished,” he said. “The censure motion will pass; there is no doubt of it. By midnight, Nikolai, the Soviet Union will be ours. And in a year, all Europe.”
The marshal of the Red Army poured two generous slugs of Stolichnaya vodka. Pushing one toward the Party theoretician, he raised his own.
“To the triumph of the Red Army!”
Vishnayev raised his vodka, a spirit he seldom touched. But there were exceptions.
“To a truly Communist world!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
1600 to 2000
OFF THE COAST south of Haifa, the little Dominie turned its nose for the last time and began dropping on a straight-in course for the main runway at Ben-Gurion Airport, inland from Tel Aviv.
It touched down after exactly four hours and thirty minutes of flight, at four-fifteen European time. It was six-fifteen in Israel.
At Ben-Gurion the upper terrace of the passenger building was crowded with curious sightseers, surprised in a security-obsessed country to be allowed free access to such a spectacle.
Despite the earlier demands of the terrorists on the Freya that there be no police presence, officers of the Israeli Special Branch were there. Some were in the uniform of El Al staff, others selling soft drinks, or sweeping the forecourt, or at the wheels of taxis. Detective Inspector Avram Hirsch was in a newspaper delivery van, doing nothing in particular with bundles of evening papers that might or might not be destined for the kiosk in the main concourse.
After touchdown, the Royal Air Force plane was led by a ground-control jeep to the apron of tarmac in front of the passenger terminal. Here a small knot of officials waited to take charge of the two passengers from Berlin.
Not far away an El Al jet was also parked, and from its curtained portholes two men with binoculars peered through the cracks in the fabric at the row of faces atop the passenger building. Each had a walkie-talkie set to hand.
Somewhere in the crowd of several hundred on the observation terrace Miroslav Kaminsky stood, indistinguishable from the innocent sightseers.
One of the Israeli officials mounted the few steps to the Dominie and went inside. After two minutes he emerged, followed by David Lazareff and Lev Mishkin. Two young hotheads from the Jewish Defense League on the terrace unfurled a placard they had secreted in their coats and held it up. It read simply WELCOME and was written in Hebrew. They also began to clap, until several of their neighbors told them to shut up.
Mishkin and Lazareff looked up at the crowd on the terrace above them as they were led along the front of the terminal building, preceded by a knot of officials and with two uniformed policemen behind them. Several of the sightseers waved; most watched in silence.
From inside the parked airliner the Special Branch men peered out, straining to catch any sign of recognition from the refugees toward one of those at the railing.
Lev Mishkin saw Kaminsky first and muttered something quickly in Ukrainian out of the side of his mouth. It was picked up at once by a directional microphone aimed at the pair of them from a catering van a hundred yards away. The man squinting at the riflelike microphone did not hear the phrase; the man next to him in the cramped van, with the earphones over his head, did. He had been picked for his knowledge of Ukrainian. He muttered into a walkie-talkie, “Mishkin just made a remark to Lazareff. He said, quote, ‘There he is, near the end, wearing the blue tie,’ unquote.”
Inside the parked airliner the two watchers swung their binoculars toward the end of the terrace. Between them and the terminal building the knot of officials continued their solemn parade past the sightseers.
Mishkin, having spotted his fellow Ukrainian, looked away. Lazareff ran his eyes along the line of faces above him, spotted Miroslav Kaminsky, and winked. That was all Kaminsky needed; there had been no switch of prisoners.
One of the men behind the curtains in the airliner said, “Got him,” and began to speak into his walkie-talkie.
“Medium height, early thirties, brown hair, brown eyes, dressed in gray trousers, tweed sports jacket, and blue tie. Standing seven or eight feet from the far end of the observation terrace, toward the control tower.”
Mishkin and Lazareff disappeared into the building. The crowd on the roof, the spectacle over, began to disperse. They poured down the stairwell to the interior of the main concourse. At the bottom of the stairs a gray-haired man was sweeping cigarette butts into a trash can. As the column swept past him, he spotted a man in a tweed jacket and blue tie. He was still sweeping as the man strode across the concourse floor.
The sweeper reached into his trash cart, took out a small black box, and muttered, “Suspect moving on foot toward exit gate five.”
Outside the building Avram Hirsch hefted a bundle of evening newspapers from the back of the van and swung them onto a dolly held by one of his colleagues. The man in the blue tie walked within a few feet of him, looking neither to right nor left, made for a parked rented car, and climbed in.
Detective Inspector Hirsch slammed the rear doors of his van, walked to the passenger door, and swung himself into the seat.
“The Volkswagen Golf over there in the car park,” he said to the van driver, Detective Constable Moishe Bentsur. When the rented car left the parking area en route for the main exit from the airport complex, the newspaper van was two hundred yards behind it.
Ten minutes later Avram Hirsch alerted the other police cars coming up behind him. “Suspect entering Avia Hotel car park.”
Miroslav Kaminsky had his room key in his pocket. He passed quickly through the foyer and took the elevator to his sixth-floor room. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he lifted the telephone and asked for an outside line. When he got it, he began to dial.
“He’s just asked for an outside line,” the switchboard operator told Inspector Hirsch, who was by her side.
“Can you trace the number he’s dialing?”
“No, it’s automatic for local calls.”
“Blast!” said Hirsch. “Come on.” He and Bentsur ran for the elevator.
The telephone in the Jerusalem office of the BBC was answered at the third ring.
“Do you speak English?” asked Kaminsky.
“Yes, of course,” said the Israeli secretary at the other end.
“Then listen,” said Kaminsky, “I will say this only once. If the supertanker Freya is to be released unharmed, the first item in the six o’clock news on the BBC World Service, European time, must include the phrase ‘no alternative.’ If that phrase is not included in the first news item of the broadcast, the ship will be destroyed. Have you got that?”
There were several seconds of silence as the young secretary to the Jerusalem correspondent scribbled rapidly on a pad.
“Yes, I think so. Who is this?” she asked.
> Outside the bedroom door in the Avia, Avram Hirsch was joined by two other men. One had a short-barreled shotgun. Both were dressed in airport staff uniform. Hirsch was still in the uniform of the newspaper delivery company: green trousers, green blouse, and green peaked cap. He listened at the door until he heard the tinkle of the telephone being replaced. Then he stood back, drew his service revolver, and nodded to the man with the shotgun.
The gunner aimed once, carefully, at the door lock and blew the whole assembly out of the woodwork. Avram Hirsch went past him at a run, moved three paces into the room, dropped to a crouch, gun held forward in both hands, pointed straight at the target, and called on the room’s occupant to freeze.
Hirsch was a Sabra, born in Israel thirty-four years earlier, the son of two immigrants who had survived the death camps of the Third Reich. Around the house in his childhood the language spoken was always Yiddish or Russian, for both his parents were Russian Jews.
He supposed the man in front of him was Russian; he had no reason to think otherwise. So he called to him in Russian. “Stoi. ...” His voice echoed through the small bedroom.
Miroslav Kaminsky was standing by the bed, the telephone directory in his hand. When the door crashed open, he dropped the book, which closed, preventing any searcher from seeing which page it had been open at, or what number he might have called.
When the cry came, he did not see a hotel bedroom outside Tel Aviv; he saw a small farmhouse in the foothills of the Carpathians, heard again the shouts of the men with the green insignia closing in on the hideaway of his group. He looked at Avram Hirsch, took in the flash of green from his peaked cap and uniform, and began to move toward the open window.
He could hear them again, coming at him through the bushes shouting their endless cry: “Stoi. ... Stoi. ... Stoi. ...” There was nothing to do but run, run like a fox with the hounds behind him, out through the back door of the farmhouse and into the undergrowth.
He was running backward, through the open glass door to the tiny balcony, when the balcony rail caught him in the small of the back and flipped him over. When he hit the parking lot fifty feet below, his back, pelvis, and skull were shattered. From over the balcony rail, Avram Hirsch looked down at the broken body and muttered to Detective Constable Bentsur:
“What the hell did he do that for?”
The service aircraft that had brought the two specialists to Gatow from Britain the previous evening returned westward soon after the takeoff of the Dominie from Berlin for Tel Aviv. Adam Munro hitched a lift on it, but used his clearance from the Cabinet Office to require that it drop him off at Amsterdam before going on to England.
He had also ensured that the Wessex helicopter from the Argyll would be at Schiphol to meet him. It was half past four when the Wessex settled back onto the afterdeck of the missile cruiser. The officer who welcomed him aboard glanced with evident disapproval at his appearance, but took him to meet Captain Preston.
All the Navy officer knew was that his visitor was from the Foreign Office and had been in Berlin supervising the departure of the hijackers to Israel.
“Care for a wash and brush-up?” he asked.
“Love one,” said Munro. “Any news of the Dominie?”
“Landed fifteen minutes ago at Ben-Gurion,” said Captain Preston. “I could have my steward press your suit, and I’m sure we could find you a shirt that fits.”
“I’d prefer a nice thick sweater,” said Munro. “It’s turned damn cold out there.”
“Yes, that may prove a bit of a problem,” said Captain Preston. “There’s a belt of cold air moving down from Norway. We could get a spot of sea mist this evening.”
The sea mist, when it descended just after five o’clock, was a rolling bank of fog that drifted out of the north as the cold air followed the heat wave and came in contact with the warm land and sea.
When Adam Munro, washed, shaved, and dressed in borrowed thick white Navy sweater and black serge trousers, joined Captain Preston on the bridge just after five, the fog was thickening.
“Damn and blast!” said Preston. “These terrorists seem to be having everything their own way.”
By half past five the fog had blotted out the Freya from vision, and swirled around the stationary warships, none of which could see each other except on radar. The circling Nimrod above could see them all, and the Freya, on its radar, and was still flying in clear air at fifteen thousand feet. But the sea itself had vanished in a blanket of gray cotton. Just after five the tide turned again and began to move back to the northeast, bearing the drifting oil slick with it, somewhere between the Freya and the Dutch shore.
The BBC correspondent in Jerusalem was a staffer of long experience in the Israeli capital and had many and good contacts. As soon as he learned of the telephone call his secretary had taken, he called a friend in one of the security services.
“That’s the message,” he said, “and I’m going to send it to London right now. But I haven’t a clue who telephoned it.”
There was a grunt at the other end.
“Send the message,” said the security man. “As to the man on the telephone, we know. And thanks.”
It was just after four-thirty when the news flash was broadcast on the Freya that Mishkin and Lazareff had landed at Ben-Gurion.
Andrew Drake threw himself back in his chair with a shout.
“We’ve done it!” he yelled at Thor Larsen. “They’re in Israel!”
Larsen nodded slowly. He was trying to close his mind to the steady agony from his wounded hand.
“Congratulations,” he said sardonically. “Now perhaps you can leave my ship and go to hell.”
The telephone from the bridge rang. There was a rapid exchange in Ukrainian, and Larsen heard a whoop of joy from the other end.
“Sooner than you think,” said Drake. “The lookout on the funnel reports a thick bank of fog moving toward the whole area from the north. With luck we won’t even have to wait until dark. The fog will be even better for our purpose. But when we do leave, I’m afraid I’ll have to handcuff you to the table leg. The Navy will rescue you in a couple of hours.”
At five o’clock the main newscast brought a dispatch from Tel Aviv to the effect that the demands of the hijackers of the Freya in the matter of the reception at Ben-Gurion Airport of Mishkin and Lazareff had been abided by. Meanwhile, the Israeli government would keep the two from Berlin in custody until the Freya was released, safe and unharmed. In the event that she was not, the Israeli government would regard its pledges to the terrorists as null and void, and return Mishkin and Lazareff to jail.
In the day cabin on the Freya, Drake laughed.
“They won’t need to,” he told Larsen. “I don’t care what happens to me now. In twenty-four hours those two men are going to hold an international press conference. And when they do, Captain Larsen, when they do, they are going to blow the biggest hole ever made in the walls of the Kremlin.”
Larsen looked out of the windows at the thickening mist.
“The commandos might use this fog to storm the Freya,” he said. “Your lights would be of no use. In a few minutes you won’t be able to see any bubbles from frogmen underwater.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” said Drake. “Nothing matters anymore. Only that Mishkin and Lazareff get their chance to speak. That was what it was all about. That is what makes it all worthwhile.”
The two Jewish-Ukrainians had been taken from Ben-Gurion Airport in a police van to the central police station in Tel Aviv and locked in separate cells. Prime Minister Golen was prepared to abide by his part of the bargain—the exchange of the two men for the safety of the Freya, her crew, and her cargo. But he was not prepared to have Svoboda trick him.
For Mishkin and Lazareff it was the third cell in a day, but both knew it would be the last. As they parted in the corridor, Mishkin winked at his friend and called in Ukrainian, “Not next year in Jerusalem—but tomorrow.”
From an office upstairs, t
he chief superintendent in charge of the station made a routine call to the police doctor to give the pair a medical examination, and the doctor promised to come at once. It was half past seven Tel Aviv time.
The last thirty minutes before six o’clock dragged by like years on the Freya. In the day cabin, Drake had tuned his radio to the BBC World Service and listened impatiently for the six o’clock newscast.
Azamat Krim, assisted by three of his colleagues, shinnied down a rope from the taffrail of the tanker to the sturdy fishing launch that had bobbed beside the hull for the past two and half days. When the four of them were standing in the launch’s open waist, they began preparations for the departure of the group from the Freya.
At six o’clock the chimes of Big Ben rang out from London, and the evening news broadcast began.
“This is the BBC World Service. The time is six o’clock in London, and here is the news, read to you by Peter Chalmers.”
A new voice came on. It was heard in the wardroom of the Argyll, where Captain Preston and most of his officers were grouped around the set. Captain Mike Manning tuned in on the Moran; the same newscast was heard at 10 Downing Street, in The Hague, Washington, Paris, Brussels, Bonn, and Jerusalem. On the Freya. Andrew Drake sat motionless, watching the radio unblinkingly.
“In Jerusalem today. Prime Minister Benyamin Golen said that following the arrival earlier from West Berlin of the two prisoners David Lazareff and Lev Mishkin, he would have no alternative but to abide by his pledge to free the two men, provided the supertanker Freya was freed with her crew unharmed. ...”
“No alternative!” shouted Drake. “That’s the phrase! Miroslav has done it!”
“Done what?” asked Larsen.
“Recognized them. It’s them, all right. No switching has taken place.”
He slumped back in his chair and exhaled a deep sigh.