Kingfisher

by Gerald Seymour

  No delays on the departure of Aeroflot flight 927 to Tashkent. On time, on schedule. The passengers walked the hundred yards to the plane, in untidy caterpillar file out across the tarmac, heat streaming back at them from the great, open surface, burning through the soles of their footwear, driving their eyes together with everything beyond the middle distance dissolving into a haze.

  'The seats run A-B-C down one side of the aisle, and D-E-F on the other,' David said to Isaac.

  They were near the plane now and walking to the rear exit where the steps had been wheeled up, and there was an angle of shade thrown by the single high-tail structure. 'Yevsei told Rebecca the package would be on the right-hand side, level with the nineteenth row, and would be under the blankets, the blankets that they store in the luggage shelf at the top. We must get on the plane quickly, before the herd, so that one of us can sit in that row and the rest close by. I Will try and see that it is me. When I take the package I will go to the toilet at the back to get the guns assembled. Give me two minutes, then come and knock at the door. Quite soon we will go, after ten minutes, when the seat belt sign is off.'

  David was the first of the three on to the steps, Isaac close behind, Rebecca separated by a dozen passengers. David climbed steadily, his speed dictated by the pace of those in front. To any passenger who glanced casually among his fellow travellers David would have aroused no particular interest, his inner tensions successfully masked. He seemed confident and relaxed as he ducked his head through the low doorway. He hesitated for a moment, sizing up the long cigarlike interior of the plane, with the duck-egg decor and green-backed seats stretching away from him to the distant cream-painted door that was half-open, so that he could see the silhouettes of the shoulders of pilot and co-pilot. Isaac nudged him, and he walked down the aisle, noting the row numbers. Row 19, aisle seat C. Isaac opposite him, Row 19, aisle seat D. The package would be above Isaac, and the boy hadn't look for it, was settling in his seat, fastening his safety belt.

  Rebecca stooped into her place, four rows in front, but not turning to see them, and then David lost sight of her as other passengers surged the length of the cabin in a steady clamour. It was what he had heard, that people always suffer stress before take-off and before landing; makes them raise their voices, and push aggressively in a way they would not contemplate if their feet were grounded. David fastened his seat belt and looked across at Isaac.

  'Courage, my friend,' he said.

  'Not courage. It is the time for luck now.' Isaac closed his eyes, waiting for the motion of the plane to tell him they were taxi-ing.

  Five minutes they'd been in the house, time enough for them to recognize the stark terror on the faces of the father and mother of Moses Albyov before the truncheon in her lower abdomen and the pistol whipping across his face had delivered up the names of David and Isaac and Rebecca.

  One policeman stayed in the living-room, covering with his drawn pistol the woman who cowered in the chair, clutching herself and moaning, and the man lying still on the floor with the blood running from the head wound on to the lino surface. Another had gone to his car to radio to headquarters the fruits of the visit Six more, packed close together, were speeding towards the home of the one called David, the one the woman had said she had gone to visit the morning before to ask the whereabouts of her son.

  Some hundreds of yards short of David's address the driver of the police car silenced the siren he had used to clear a path through the traffic, and when they staggered to a halt, his foot hard on the brake pedal, there was a swift and often rehearsed routine for them to follow. Two running for the back, jumping the wire fence, then crouching low, their guns aimed at the rear door. Two more at the front, and behind the car, to give themselves cover. The remaining two, an officer and one who was brave, chancing their luck at the door. 'Shoot him if he has a gun. Without hesitation. Remember what Albyov did, and remember this is one of them.'

  David's mother, alone in the house, answered the hammering at the door. Her younger children were still at school, her husband at work, so she was without protection as the officer forced her against the old wooden sideboard, his knee hard against her thigh so that the carved angle bit into her skin. There was no reason to hit: she talked without resort to violence. Too much for her, after a year in Treblinka and never called for the showers, no resistance left, not to a man in uniform who carried a gun, and who shouted and who wore boots that reached to his knee. She had submitted before and would do so again. She told them of her son's friends, pointed him out in the family photograph, said he hadn't been home the previous night.

  At militia headquarters they believed in the power of routine. Three names, photographs that would illustrate them when the cars came in from the homes, and when Central Records turned up the files. All standard and routine. Just as it was routine to call the airport with the names, and the principal Aeroflot ticket offices, and to send descriptions to the railway station and the bus terminus by the square of the granite war memorial. All routes of exit from the city were notified with 'priority' messages. And because the computer of the central Aeroflot offices was repaired and functioning, that was the source of the first hard information. The message rattled back over the teleprinter - three names, three tickets, flight number, take-off time, destination. All this was controlled from the second floor operations centre of the militia headquarters - fast, quiet, efficient, a trained team that was good at its work, and which had discovered a scent, and believed that the kill was close.

  A call to the airport, routed through the offices of the Frontier Guard control point, to the commander of the unit who had responsibility for all matters affecting security. A second call to the Control Tower.

  'Aeroflot flight 927 to Tashkent has been airborne nine minutes, close to ten,' the Frontier Guard commander reported back to the Control Room. Verified by the tower.

  'Then tell the control tower to radio the pilot, order him to return. Tell him the passengers should be informed there is a technical fault. When the plane lands I want every man you have around it. Nobody gets off, not till we arrive.'

  'Do you want the pilot to be told that this is a security matter?'

  'Why not?'

  Down in the yard the black Moskva car had been alerted; it waited with its engine idling for the sprinting figure of the Colonel of Militia.

  They were climbing in light cloud when Yuri Zibov, 18 years an Aeroflot pilot and most of them on the lumbering Ilyushin 11-18V, and before that Yak bombers in the Air Force, received the recall order. He motioned to his co-pilot - young, feminine, petite, a hint of lipstick, and as many flying qualifications as her male equivalents. Had she understood the message? A nod.

  Zibov turned to the navigator sitting behind. He also had understood. Into the microphone that jutted out from his headset and that rested three-quarters of an inch from his mouth, he said, 'Bolt the cockpit door. Just a precaution, but fasten it, then we'll swing.'

  The navigator started to intone the statistics that would govern their change of course.

  David was groping with his arms into the recess of the shelf where he could not see. Even as he stretched upwards he was reliant on the touch of his fingers to tell him if the package were there.

  Fumbling among the softness of the blankets and the pillows, scratching with his fingers and seeking for the hard shape. Not there, not above Row 19, and in a driving and frantic motion his hands spilled out to right and left, and he was high on his toes, and the passenger who had the seat beside him was staring, and was interested. Almost at the moment of panic David's hands locked on to the ungiving shape of the parcel. Must have slipped backwards on take-off, he thought.

  Right over Row 20. He made a low- voiced apology to his neighbour, who was leaning back in his seat with his legs bent sideways to give David room. He lifted the package down, just as they had wrapped it, right down to the knots in the string: not tampered with. Tucking it under his arm he lurched his way through to the rear, to
the bolted security of the lavatories, and a half-turn to be certain that Isaac was watching him; the gleam of recognition that told him Isaac was ready, coiled, anticipating. Had to push past the two stewardesses, blue uniforms, crumpled shirts, hair wisping from buns, minimum of make-up, preparing the food trolley and drinks. No alcohol on board- mineral water and orange juice and coffee, reluctant to step aside and let him pass, an obstruction when they were trying to work, seeming to say why couldn't he have gone in the terminal lavatories.

  He slammed the door shut behind him and ran the catch across. Then he began to tear at the paper and the string binding, pulling at the cardboard that had given the parcel the rectangular shape, that had made Yevsei believe it was indeed a mass of books that he had handled. The parcel spilled open, pitching the hand-gun on to the floor beside the pan where he let it lie while he unravelled the further protection around the two submachine-guns. Lovely babies. Sweet, keen, pretty things, but already taking on the ugliness of their trade as the barrel symmetry was broken when he fastened the magazines at right angles to the bodies. One at a time and take it slowly, remember the drill with the old man, with Timofey. Never hurry in the preparation of weapons, he had said. The loud rasping of the cocking mechanism - devastating how the noise reverberated inside the confined space - then check the safety catch is on. Same for the pistol. No accidents, not in a capacity-filled airliner, not when the pressure of the cabin will soon be at risk.

  Abruptly he lunged to the side, cannoning into the wall- fitted basin, knee ramming against the rim of the pan seat, thrown off balance by the sudden shift in direction of the plane as the pilot banked to begin the long turn that would bring the aircraft back to Kiev. David's mind was razor-sharp, honed by suspicion ... He was still regaining his balance when there was Isaac's voice muffled by the closed door, dispute with the stewardesses, and them retorting angrily that the seat belt signs were illuminated again, that he should return to his place. Over the loudspeaker which had its own amplifier in the lavatory . . . 'This is Captain Zibov, your pilot. Sorry, but we seem to have some minor technical problem, but it means we must return to Kiev. It is nothing that should concern you, but we have to land again and get the fault repaired. Please fasten your belts again, and no more smoking. I hope the delay will be short. Thank you.' Warning bells, cymbal loud.

  Not good enough, you pigs. Has to be wrong; too controlled, too much of a coincidence. Must not land, not at any cost.

  David pulled the door open. Submachine-gun in each hand, pistol in the belt of his trousers, he careered straight into the grey-metalled drinks trolley, heaved with desperation to rid himself of the impediment, saw the faces turning, the necks twisting. Then he was clear and sprinting. Isaac in front of him, standing waiting, sharing his anxiety, had read the same message from the pilot's announcement and the tilting of the plane, ready to receive with outstretched arm the weapon that would be his. Unaware of everything now, of the passengers, of cabin crew, everything except the door of the cockpit. David's right shoulder cannoned into it, expecting it to give, face wreathed in amazement as it flung him back. The old David, the man of decision and fight, who had brought them together, armed and aimed them. The old David, who should have told Rebecca to go and scratch herself with her bloody twigs, who should have vetoed the use of Moses in the attack. The old David, that Isaac would follow as far as he was led. Submachine-gun held low and away from his body and the flash and explosion that drove at their ear drums as he fired into the centre of the door.

  'Open or it's machine-gun fire. Open, or I kill the whole fucking lot of you.' Voice at screaming pitch. 'Open the fucking thing.' There was a hesitation, seeming endless, but in fact little more than three seconds, then the bolt was

  withdrawn, the door opened.

  So small in the cockpit, a tiny space, like the lavatory, a box room, and three persons already strapped and harnessed in their seats. Saw the pilot, saw the co-pilot. A woman: David noticed that because she was the one who had turned her head towards them, then his eyes were riveted to the maze of dials and buttons, the instrument boards. Find the altimeter, that was the first thing, had to be certain they weren't losing height, had to climb, had to get up . . . after that the time to set a course.

  'Take the bloody thing up,' he yelled, and pushed sideways with the gun barrel at the pilot's shoulder, aware there had been no response, still staring at the labyrinth of controls, searching for the magic of the altimeter.

  Isaac said, his voice very quiet, 'You're wasting your time, David. No point shouting at him.

  You've killed him.'

  David stepped back, peering at the pilot held upright in his cockpit straps, then took in the neat expertise of the drilled hole at the back of the skull where the circumference showed clear against the short-cropped greying hair, and the path of blood that ran down to the uniformed collar and the white shirt. David arched his body round towards the hole in the door where the woodwork had been forced out by his bullet. Then his eyes rolled back again, via the instrument panels to the co-pilot. The noise and the venom gone, replaced by a vague aloofness, like a schoolmaster in a laboratory talking to students.

  'What's your name?' he asked, almost conversationally.

  'Anna Tashova, pilot officer.'

  'You will ignore all instructions. Get the plane up now, get it high, and set a course to the West.

  We want a course to the nearest frontier of the West. And know this. I am ignorant about flying.

  I have never piloted an aircraft, but I think I would know if you deceive me. If you seek to trick us, Miss Tashova, then I will kill you, and if you die so does everyone on board the aircraft. We are Jews, Miss Tashova, and the days when we could be told that we were going for a warm shower to shed ourselves of lice are long gone. Do not test us, Miss Tashova; today we are a harder people.'

  She did not fight him, recognizing her responsibilities. 'The tower is talking to us. They direct us to return to Kiev. What do you want me to tell them?' Calm, with a brusqueness in her voice, as in a committee meeting.

  'You say nothing, ignore them. Let them shout. They can do nothing."

  He watched her hands, moving deftly over the scores of buttons and switches in front and beside her, never allowing herself a glance towards the dead captain. Saw the preparations until she was ready to move her hands, both together, on to the control lever that bisected her knees, heard the navigator beside him calling his lists of numbers and figures that represented a path through the airways. And there the sensation at his feet - the sensation that they were climbing.

  It was possible for him to look now. Possible for him to gape at the occasionally lolling, drifting head of the first man he had killed. He had bickered with Isaac that first evening, snapped at him because he had used the word 'easy'. What was easier than this? Not a moment's thought demanded, no intention, no programme, no plot, just the pulling in of a finger knuckle.

  A man dead that David might go free. The pilot officer involved in the work he had set her, the navigator concerned by his task. Only David and the captain who had no immediate function.

  But it had not been intended, not to kill him. Yet he is removed from your apology, David. Now you must live with it.

  Meanwhile, soaring upwards, the Kingfisher bird was escaping from her enemies. Full power given to the four Ivchenko A1-20 engines, reaching for her operational altitude of twenty-seven thousand feet, full tanks loaded to a capacity of five thousand two hundred Imperial gallons, offering a range of minimally less than two thousand miles with the cover of one hour's clear reserve.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In the control tower that dwarfs the whitened form of the airport terminal buildings the traffic controllers were quick to observe the change of course. For a full minute the Frontier Guard commander demanded of the man who wore the headphones and who had been talking to the crew of Aeroflot 927 that he should continue repeating the instruction that the aircraft respond to its order and return to Kiev.
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br />   The controller did not turn to his superior, hovering at his shoulder, but just repeated, There is nothing, sir. No response. They ignore us. Nothing since the second pilot reported the shooting, that the captain had been hit and incapacitated.'

  'But the plane is still operational, it is not flying on automatic controls?'

  To a man of lesser importance than the Frontier Guard commander the controller would have been scornful of such lack of knowledge, but he answered with politeness, 'There can be no question of that, sir. The manoeuvres it has made are not those of a plane flying remote. It must be the copilot who is handling the aircraft, and she is working now to orders - that must be' the assumption. The planes are dual; she would have no difficulty in piloting on her own . . . only if she has to land by herself, and if she were tired and under stress.'

  'What is the course?' The Frontier Guard commander could feel the initiative slipping from him, losing whatever tenuous control he had once had on the aircraft.

  'Towards southern Poland, and climbing. Ultimately such a line as they now hold will bring them into the airspace of the BDR. Perhaps two hours' flying time.' He was the un- involved one, cocooned from responsibility, and in the grandstand seat to watch what his betters would make of it.

  'And again, what was the last message?'

  'As I told you, sir. They reported the bolting of the door. They reported they were responding to instructions to return. They reported a shot being fired at the door, that the bullet penetrated the door and struck the captain - that is, Captain Zibov. They reported the impression that he was killed instantly. They reported that they were being threatened with machine-gun fire unless they opened the door, and they reacted to that threat. There is no option, you must understand that, sir.'

  As if fearful that the military would have no knowledge of the reality of an aircraft cockpit, and the weight of the burden of the lives of a cabin full of passengers, he went on: 'Not when you have such a confined space as the flight deck; the damage could have been very great. Since the opening of the door we have had vague shouts, which I could not distinguish. That will be on the tapes, but to us they were not clear - perhaps you will be able to decipher them. Pilot Officer Tashova has identified herself to the hijackers, if that is what they are, and has told them that we are talking to her and requesting her to return. There has been nothing since that.'