At Close Quarters

by Gerald Seymour

  The city, with a population of close to 300,000, is the hub of the Crimea and from this regional capital the roads snake out to Yevpatoriya and Sevastopol and Yalta and Feodosija and Dzhankov. It is an old city, dominated now by industrial estates, its university, several research institutes. At Simferopol is also a military academy.

  For the colonel commandant (foreign cadre training) that Saturday was a hell of a good day at the military academy. His best day in six months, in fact. The colonel commandant would this day wave goodbye, without a shade of regret, to the delegation of Palestinians. For the Ethiopians, the Cubans, the Angolans, even for the North Vietnamese, he could find some words of praise. Nothing good could be said for the animal Palestinians, not even as a courtesy at the farewell airport parade before the animals filed onto their aircraft. When the doors closed on the fuselage they would get the sharp index finger Nightly in the mess , to his brother officers, he catalogued their abuses.

  Three of the animals caught trying to climb over the walls after curfew hour to hitch into the city. One with the insolence to complain that a prostitute in Simferopol had stolen his wallet. One returned to the academy by the militia after being arrested when trying to sell counterfeit American dollars. One brought back to the academy by the militia dead drunk and violent. Four who would be in solitary confinement right up to the last minute for attacking a senior instructor. One accused by a fine Party man of getting pregnant his fine daughter.

  Not much sympathy from his colleagues in the mess, and rudeness to his face from the odious commander of the animals. One rifle lost, damage done all over the camp, and throughout the course an atmosphere of indiscipline that was insufferable to the colonel commandant. He would cheer their going, every last one of them from their ridiculously named groups. Popular Front, Sai'iqa, Democratic Front, Liberation Front, General Command, Struggle Command - idiot titles.

  He was a career soldier. He despised these animals.

  Through the colonel commandant's office window came the blast of Western music, loud and decadent, cassette players turned to full volume. The animals taunting their instructors, because the animals were going home.

  His telephone rang.

  The animals were in the gymnasium with their baggage waiting for transport to the airport. A fighter from Sai'iqa had argued with a fighter from the Struggle Command, and knifed him. The fighter from Sai'iqa was in the academy military police cells, the fighter from Struggle Command was in the academy sick bay.

  "Where is their commander?"

  Their commander was off base,

  Too much. He slammed his fist onto his desk in fury.

  This was too fucking much.

  The teleprinters linking Moscow and Yalta murmured through the afternoon, on into the early evening. Questions and demands for more information from Moscow.

  Scant detail relayed from Yalta.

  A crisis committee sat at Dzerzhinsky Square feeding from the teleprinter material, and going hungry. No workable description of a gunman, no getaway car identified. Cartridge cases that were from the Kalashnikov family, and there were more than two million weapons in the country that could fire such bullets. The files on dissident elements in the Crimea were being studied.

  In his office, the Foreign Ministry Embassy Liaison was left to clean his nails and watch his silent telephone.

  The commander drove his jeep through the main gates of the military academy at Simferopol.

  He waved cheerfully to the guard. He braked to allow a squad of Soviet conscripts to march across his path.

  All the conscripts were marched wherever they went in the camp, a difference in attitudes, he reflected, between the training demanded by the Red Army and the training required for the fighting in Lebanon. He checked his watch. He thought they had made good time, he thought the Antonov transporter would now be approaching Simferopol airport. He stopped by the gymnasium, punched the shoulder of Abu Hamid. He was too concerned with the tightness of his schedule to take note of the three military policemen standing outside the main doors of the building.

  The commander did not have to tell the young man to hold silence, to play a part of relaxed indifference when he was inside the gymnasium. His Abu Hamid would know. He drove away, drove to the office of the colonel commandant.

  He breezed into the inner office. On any other day he would have waited more respectfully at the door, but it was the last day, and it was the day that was the brilliant culmination of a difficult and dangerous mission.

  "Later than I thought, Colonel. Profuse apologies . . . "

  He laid the jeep's keys on the desk of the colonel commandant.

  " . . . One last expedition for shopping in the city, an opportunity to purchase merchandise that will remind me for the rest of my days in the service of the Palestinian Revolution of the warmth shown to us by the Soviet people..."

  He saw at once the barely controlled fury of the commandant.

  " . . . I trust my lateness has not inconvenienced you, Colonel. Shopping in the city is not always as fast as one would wish."

  "You have been gone seven hours."

  "Some shopping, a good lunch, time drifts..." He saw the clenched fist, the white knuckles. "There has been a problem?"

  "A problem!..." the colonel commandant snorted.

  "While you took lunch and wine and shopped, your hooligans have been brawling. I have one in the sick-bay, I have one locked in the guard house." The colonel commandant slapped a small double-bladed knife down onto his desk. "A knife fight while you were lunching and wining and shopping. I will tell you the military crime code for such an offence. Assault by one service person on another in the absence of any subordinate relations between them, that carries a minimum of two years confinement and a maximum of twelve years..."

  "My abject apologies, colonel. I will deal with the offender at once..."

  The colonel commandant stood. "You will do nothing of the sort. You will get it into your head that I have the authority to detain the entire cadre until a full investigation has been carried out."

  The commander thought of Abu Hamid coming panting to the Volga car. He thought of the Kalashnikov in the sacking, hidden in the large shopping bag of the Simferopol beryozka souvenir store, and, hanging from his hand, the rifle listed as "lost on manoeuvres".

  "But our aircraft..."

  "Fuck the aircraft. A serious breach of discipline has taken place amongst unsupervised personnel."

  "We have to take the aircraft." The bombast gone from the commander. Nervous and wheedling now. "It is of critical importance that we take the aircraft."

  "A fortnight's delay, a thorough investigation, will teach these hooligans the authority of discipline."

  "It cannot happen."

  "Don't tell me what can or cannot happen. It should happen and it will happen."

  Out of the confusion in Yalta would soon come order.

  The commander shivered. The trap would close.

  "I make a deal with you."

  "You are in no position to offer me a deal, military regulations are not subject to negotiation."

  "Give me a pistol..."

  "For what?"

  "And a mop and bucket..."

  "For what?"

  "And access to the guard room."

  "For what?"

  "So that I can shoot your hooligan and clear up the mess and remove your problem."

  The colonel commandant blanched, sat down. "You would do that?"

  "With my own hand. Give me the pistol."

  The knife was returned to the drawer. "Take him with you, then. Take both of them and punish them at home."

  "An admirable solution. The injured man is fit to travel?" He was told that the injured man could certainly fly.

  The commandant regarded the Palestinian with disgust - and with awe.

  He told his duty officer to send the bus to the gymnasium.

  Even in the crowded interior of the bus, 58 seats for 61

  personnel,
and the luggage filling the rear boot and the aisle between the seats, the commander thought that Abu Hamid was a man apart, dreaming his own dreams in his own privacy. The man from Struggle Command sat pale at the back of the bus with his left arm in a sling. The man from Sai'iqa stood in the aisle at the front, beside the commander, in handcuffs. They drove out of the gates. Only the commander and Abu Hamid and the man from the Struggle Command and the man from Sai'iqa refrained from cheering as the barrier was lowered behind them. Through the drab city where a greyness hung that even the sunlight could not lift, past the Ukraina Hotel, and over the wide bridge spanning the Salgir River, and past the museum and the terraced parkland and the railway station, through the industrial estates, out towards the airport.

  Around the perimeter of the airport fence. Waved through the gates into the military section. Past the buildings and the control tower, out along the edge of the tarmac.

  The sun was low in the west, and it hit the silver lower belly of the Antonov transporter. The Antonov was decorated with the green and white and black roun-dels of the Syrian Air Force. The commander's breath squeezed between his teeth. Military bandsmen were grouped around a rostrum. There were steps in position at the forward door. A fuelling tanker was driving away.

  From his hip pocket the commander took a folded khaffiyeh scarf, shook it open and wound it round his head and his face, as if he were a revolutionary fighter for Palestine, not an embarking passenger at the military section of Simferopol airport in the Crimea. As he descended from the bus the commandant's transport drew up. The camp instructors, impeccably turned out, jumped down from their truck.

  The 61 men were lined up in two platoon-sized squads. The anthem of the Soviet Union was played by the Red Army band, interminable, and they were a single phonecall from disaster. A phone call from Yalta to Simferopol. The band struck havoc with a fighting march of the Palestine revolution. In his ears the bell of a telephone screamed.

  The colonel commandant, cold and contemptuous, scarcely pausing for the interpreter, addressed the men.

  If they had been seen transferring from the Volga to the jeep in the car park . . . In the mind of the commander the bell of a telephone clamoured.

  "Our Party supports and will continue to support peoples fighting for their freedom. We will never agree to the unacceptable American demands that the Soviet nation should cease to support its friends."

  The commander stood at attention in front of his men. Only the major who was his friend, only Major Said Hazan, would have dared to launch the plan. Such daring, such brilliance. He pleaded for the speech to end.

  "I wish you good fortune in your war for the regaining of your homeland. Long live Free Palestine. Long live the Soviet Union. Long live our friendship of i r o n . . . "

  The final words were drowned by the starting of the engines.

  A ripple of applause from the two ranks of instructors behind the colonel commandant was lost in the aircraft's engine roar. The colonel commandant and the commander exchanged salutes, shook hands without warmth. The Palestinians gathered their luggage, and then scrambled to get aboard.

  The commander came last, gesturing that Abu Hamid should be ahead of him. They threaded their way around the wooden crates that filled the centre of the hold and looked for the canvas seats, their backs to the fuselage. The light from the doorway was blotted out, a member of the aircrew turned the locking handle.

  A terrible tension in the commander as the Antonov inched forward and started to swivel. He seemed to hear in his mind the ring of a telephone in the colonel commandant's office, and the squawk of a radio in the control tower. His stomach was knotted - they could still be brought back. The member of aircrew was yelling at him above the drive of the engines for his belt to be fastened.

  Four hours and three minutes after an incident in Yalta, the Antonov transporter lifted off the long Simferopol runway. It took a course, as it climbed, to the south west and crossed the shore line of the Crimea close to the old battlefields of Sevastopol and Balaklava, then swung south over the darkening Black Sea. The aircraft had prior permission to overfly Turkish airspace, a standard arrangement. Ahead of it was a flight of two hours and 20 minutes, cruising speed 450

  miles an hour, altitude 25,000 feet. Within 18 minutes the four giant Kuznetsov NK-12MV turbo-prop engines had carried the Antonov beyond Soviet jurisdiction.

  The captain made the announcement. The excited yelling rang inside the aircraft. The commander sat slumped, drained of the energy to celebrate. Beside him he saw that Abu Hamid sat back in his seat, swaying with the motion of the aircraft. The commander thought the killer was at peace, and marvelled. Moving down the aisle towards them, steadying himself against the lashed-down crates, came Major Said Hazan.

  The question was in the smooth child's stomach skin around the major's eyes.

  "It was successful," the commander said. "The target was destroyed."

  Abu Hamid saw that the major wore smart Syrian Air Force uniform, but his face was hidden by a wrapped wool scarf and his head was hidden by his wide peaked cap. Only the eyes were for him to see. Abu Hamid leaned forward. There was pride in his voice.

  "There was a girl, with the ambassador, she too died."

  Major Said Hazan ducked his head in acknowledgement, clasped the shoulders of the two men each in turn, with a leather-gloved hand. He made his way back to the cockpit.

  The landfall would be high over the Turkish town of Samsun, the flight path would be above the central Anatolian mountains, the Syrian frontier would be over-flown east of Aleppo, and then the long descent to Damascus.

  The words as taught him in the camps of Damascus before the journey to Simferopol were soundness in the throat of Abu Hamid.

  The thoughts echoed in his mind. The thoughts were of the Old Man of the Mountains who had built his fortress a thousand years ago in the valley of Alamut and gathered his followers, who were the Assassins.

  Enclosed in the valley that was paradise were palaces and pavilions, channels flowing with wine and honey, and young girls who danced and sang. Every pleasure was found here for the Assassins until the Old Man of the Mountains called one forward.

  "Go from here and kill the man whose name I give you . . . When you return you will enter again into paradise . . . should you not return then my angels will seek you out and carry you back to our paradise."

  A thousand years ago word of the skill and dedication of the Assassins of Syria, travelling from the valley of Alamut, had spread across the known world. Brilliant in disguise, unrivalled in their dedication and fanaticism, ruthless in murder, the Assassins were feared by kings and princes and military commanders and civil gover-nors and the priests of Sunni Islam. Abu Hamid saw himself as the descendant of the old Assassins of ten centuries before.

  The words, soundless in the throat of Abu Hamid, were those of the Old Man of the Mountains, handed down over a millennium.

  "To kill these people is more lawful than rainwater."

  There was no advance warning. The car drove unannounced into the forecourt of the embassy. Three men in the car, all pressed into service and summoned from their weekend break. A First Deputy Foreign Minister, a protocol official, a full colonel of the Second Directorate. They were shown into an ante room on the ground floor where they were watched by a security man.

  The duty officer for that weekend was a Second Secretary, Trade. He was still buttoning his collar when he came into the room. Grim faces staring back at him, all three men standing. They introduced themselves, even the one from State Security. Not the moment to offer them tea, nor the moment to ask them to sit. Their seniority meant urgent business to be conducted without delay.

  "I am the duty officer," he said. He produced a pencil and notepad and waited on them.

  The First Deputy Foreign Minister seemed for a moment to examine the close patternwork of the carpet, from Bokhara, then he straightened.

  "It is with the utmost regret that as the representative of my gov
ernment I have the sad duty to inform you that His Excellency, Sir Sylvester Armitage, and Miss Jane Canning were today the victims of a cruel and cowardly attack in the city of Yalta. As a result of this attack His Excellency and Miss Canning have died. The third member of the delegation, Mr Holt, is unhurt. I am instructed to inform you that the Soviet government has made available a military aircraft to take to Yalta any members of your staff who would wish to go. The aircraft is ready to leave at your convenience. I am able to tell you that a comprehensive criminal investigation has been launched in Yalta, and it is our earnest hope that the investigation will bear fruit soon."

  The duty officer was scribbling his note, in longhand.

  Incredulity on his face. Lips moving, but they could not formulate the barrage of questions.

  "The deaths were caused by shooting. His Excellency and Miss Canning were hit many times as they were leaving the hotel for lunch with the city authorities; they were dead on arrival at hospital. The initial indication is that the culprit was involved in an attempt to enter the hotel for the purpose of robbing the cash desk, but panicked as he was confronted by the British delegation leaving."

  "Where's Holt?" The first stuttered question.

  "He is in the hotel. He is quite safe."

  "But this happened, you say, before lunch. Why hasn't he telephoned?"

  "Mr Holt is in shock."

  The mind of the duty officer was racing, incoherent.

  "Didn't they have any protection?"

  "Later there will be an opportunity for such detail."

  The KGB colonel added, "There was a representative of state security at the hotel. He performed his duties with great bravery, but sadly was not able to prevent the attack."

  "God Almighty..."

  The First Deputy Foreign Minister said, "We shall be at the Foreign Ministry. We are at the disposal of the British people in this moment of anguish."

  "It wasn't terrorism?"

  "It was the act of a common criminal in pursuance of theft," the KGB colonel said decisively.