The Glory Boys

by Gerald Seymour

  When the Director General arrived in mid-morning he was shown into a room behind the stage of the hall, and he waited there among the piled chairs and old scenery props for the Minister to come in.

  'I'm sorry to trouble you,' he began.

  'I'm sure you wouldn't have done so if you hadn't thought it important.' The Minister was wary of the other man. Security was fraught with whirlpools in the political ocean; when everything was going well you never heard from them; they only surfaced when the gales were blowing.

  'I think we're running into some bother, something you ought to hear about.'

  The Minister acquiesced. The Director General could see he was nervous, uncertain of what was to follow and fearful of its implications, and his voice was subdued as he explained the situation.

  The Minister felt trapped. 'What do you want me to do?' he asked.

  it's not so much a case of doing anything, sir. It's a question of your knowing what's going on, what the situation is.'

  'How important is this Israeli?' The question was barked, staccato.

  'One of their backroom men, not a well known personality. Named David Sokarev. They regard him as critical to their nuclear programme. He doesn't work on the power station side, but on the civilian programmes. He's with the other crowd, the ones they don't talk about. Sensitive man, sensitive work.'

  is it an important meeting?'

  'Not that we know of. We haven't seen a guest list yet -

  this has only been developing since yesterday evening.

  We'll have that sort of thing by tonight. But there's nothing to suggest it's world-shattering . . .'

  'Which it would be if the bastards get to him.' He lingered, concentrating his mind on the problem. Always security providing the problems, never any good news, always anguish and heart-searching. And now, with not one of his Civil Servants within fifty miles, with the Prime Minister touring Lanarkshire, a snap decision to be made.

  I know what this blighter wants, he thought, can read him a mile off. Wants me to tell him he's doing a grand job, let him run off and take charge on his own, and when the fiasco comes, when the scandal breaks, then he can tell the committee sitting under the learned judge 'in camera' that the Minister was aware of the situation right from the start. No way you get me that easily.

  'The Prime Minister should be told of this. He takes a great interest in Israeli affairs. He'd want to know. I'll do that. My first reaction is that the Israelis should call off the visit. If it's not an important meeting, not an important personality, then what's the point in risking him?'

  'You won't find that so easy, sir,' said the DG. 'Foreign Office have tried that one, down the more tortuous channels rather than the ambassadorial ones. Got a straight shut-out on the suggestion. But I agree it would be the easiest solution to our problem. I'd be grateful if someone could let me know how the suggestion is taken.'

  The Minister shook the other man's hand, and walked back into the hall. The plates were empty by this stage, and the tea was getting cold. His words were awaited. He prided himself on talking off the cuff, without a note, but by now his mind was clouded by the conversation that had just terminated. It would be a bad speech.

  As the sun rose that Saturday morning so it moved beyond the compass of the attic-floor window to the room that housed Famy and McCoy. While its brightness and warmth streamed through the glass the Arab had dressed, pulling on his clothes secretively and with a shyness that came from never having been separated from his people before. As he dragged his trousers on he had turned his back on the Irishman, who still lay in his sleeping bag picking at the dirt that had accumulated beneath his fingernails. McCoy called across to him not to worry about shaving. 'Don't want to look pretty in here. Doesn't fit with the rest of the surroundings.' And then a quiet laugh. After he had dressed Famy paced about the room, taking in its length in a few strides, going continuously to the window to peer down on to the street below, then walking again. He waited for some movement from the other man, and was loath to go beyond the door on his own. The street fascinated him, indistinct voices reached up the height of the brickwork as he strained to hear what was being said. The dogs that ran free cocking their legs at the lamp-posts, the black men and women and children, the house along to the right where the old facade had been painted a bright scarlet, the wooden window fittings and the door in vivid yellow - all were strange and beyond his experience.

  Beneath him there were more sounds — the music had started up again. It was not so vibrant as when they had arrived, he told himself. That was reserved for the night-time.

  Never far from his mind was the image of the darkened, cloaked figure he had seen in the room. He felt a sense of frustration that the Irishman had not taken what he had said more seriously, and felt affronted by the casualness with which his revelations had been greeted. And when the sun was gone, and McCoy still showed no sign of moving, Famy had just squatted down on the sleeping bag and waited for him to get up.

  'You can go downstairs if you want to,' McCoy said.

  Famy shook his head, irritable at his own reluctance.

  'They won't eat you, you know. They're just ordinary kids.'

  'I'll wait.'

  'Please yourself,' McCoy said. He lit a cigarette, smoked it with consideration while Famy silently watched, flicked the ash successively on to the floor, and then when it was spent ground the tip out on the boards. Then he climbed out of the bag.

  Standing in his underpants and vest, he stared directly at Famy.

  'Have you done this sort of thing before?' he said, not much more than a whisper, but demanding an answer.

  Famy wavered, avoiding the other man with his eyes, reluctant, hurt.

  'No. No, I have not before. It was planned that I should have moved into Israel, that I should fight there, a mission over the fence into the North. Then they had the information on Sokarev, and his visit, and all was changed for me. I was taken from the original plan.'

  'Have you been in action before? I mean, have you fired a gun - in anger?'

  'Only in training. I have never fought.'

  Famy struggled to control what he thought were the inadequacies of his answers.

  it'll be difficult to get near the bastard, you know that?'

  'With preparation, there is always a way.'

  'You don't mount a thing like this on wishful fucking thinking.' McCoy showed his impatience. 'You have to know what you're about. You can't just breeze in . . . '

  it is unnecessary to talk to me as a child.' Famy cut McCoy in mid-sentence. His speech was clear, soft, almost sing-song. The Irishman retreated.

  'Don't get me wrong. I wasn't suggesting . . . '

  'Well, don't speak to me as if I were a fool. If you want no part in the rest, say so now. We can separate - your role forgotten.'

  'There is no question of that.' McCoy stopped. The voices and music carried up to them. Neither spoke for four, five, six seconds. Then McCoy said, 'I say there's no question of that, I'm under orders. From the Army Council. They've made a decision, and they'll stick to it. They won't go back on it. Our Chief of Staff has given his word.' He smiled, weak at the side of his mouth, feeling the cold on his skin.

  The relief flooded through Famy. He reached out and patted McCoy's shoulder, girl-like, but a gesture meant as affection and gratitude.

  'What do we do today?' There was excitement in his voice.

  'I thought this afternoon we'd take a look at the university. Can't do that on a Sunday, all the students are back in their digs, in their lodging houses. There won't be many of them about, but a few. Would have been better yesterday if you'd showed up on time. Don't worry, I'm not blaming you. You were a bloody genius to make it here at all. I've got a car, and tomorrow we go down into the country. Where the guns are. I've got some grenades.

  We don't use those much, but I was told to bring them.'

  'We know about them,' said Famy.

  'We'll try and hit at the meeting. It's a publi
c place.

  Should offer the best hope.'

  'In Lebanon they thought there might be two opportunities. The meeting and at the airport - not as he is coming in, but when he leaves.'

  McCoy said, 'The airport will be sealed, it's difficult there. The best chance has to be at the meeting. How close do you need to get to him?'

  'As near as is necessary.'

  'There has to be a way out.'

  'We have not come here to escape. We have come to kill Sokarev.'

  McCoy fumbled with his socks, turning them inside out, trying to decide which one belonged to which foot. He felt the chill of the moment. Could see again the pictures.

  Those arching bodies spilling from the windows of the flats at Beit Shean, crumbling on the paving below and welcomed there with knives and axes and tins of petrol, and then the smoke and the flames; the sack-like shape pulled from the wreckage of Tel Aviv's Savoy Hotel.

  Palestinians who had gone 'as near as was necessary'.

  'There has to be a way that leaves us a chance of escape,'

  said McCoy.

  'Perhaps,' said Famy, and the Irishman left it there. He was a madman, this Arab, a suicide merchant. Well, good bloody luck to him. But what to do about it? Couldn't back out, couldn't fade away from it. Orders too implicit.

  Just at the time, he'd hold him back. Make his presence felt then, and when the shooting came do it with a bit of skill, with an aimed shot, not close in and blasting over open sights.

  But they were not a team, and both men longed for the companionship of their own.

  When he had dressed McCoy led the way downstairs.

  They saw no one till they came to the front hallway, when McCoy opened the door into the main room that faced out on the street. The conversation in the room, carried on in a series of separate huddles, went on uninterrupted, but eyes and heads and bodies turned to look at them. Like the bloody zoo, thought McCoy. He stood in front of the open door, staring back, waiting for someone to speak.

  They had little resolution against his gaze, and one by one the sitting, standing, crouching youths returned to their own groups. All except one girl. Famy noticed her before McCoy, then the Irishman saw her. Not pretty, rather plain, McCoy thought. A long, loose black dress, and a heavy woollen jersey pulled over her shoulders, shapeless, protection against the cold but nothing else. Ugly witch clothes, accentuating the dullness of her skin - devoid of make-up, empty of anything feminine.

  Doris Lang had noticed that the two new arrivals were out of place from the moment they had come through the door of the house the previous night. She was trained to observe and make deductions from what she saw. These two did not fit the pattern that governed the other young people in the commune. She had seen the Irishman's complexion —too bright, too countrified, too healthy for life amongst the drop-outs - had noticed that his stature and bearing were divorced from those of the hand-to-mouth hippies.

  There was too much command in his face for him to belong to those who could not cope with the pressure of the life outside. This one, she had decided, was strictly a transit traveller, on his way through, and using the commune for a particular purpose.

  She could also sense the nervousness and unease in the movements of the willowy, dark-skinned man who stood a pace behind. He too did not belong there. His hands must have been sweating, because twice he rubbed them against his trouser-legs. He had cold, purposeful eyes, that roamed without settling across the room, always coming back to her. It surprised her that she had found nothing in their possessions last night to give her any indication of their business in the house.

  She felt the two men's eyes boring into her, and turned away, unwilling to appear too curious. There was marijuana smoke drifting, cool and gentle, from the far side of the room. Smoking today had started early.

  EIGHT

  The car of the Israeli Ambassador came to the back door of the Foreign Office.

  It was a Mercedes, low on its wheels because of the armour plating that was standard for senior members of the country's diplomatic corps. Unlike the principal transport of other embassies it carried no suggestion in the number plate as to the identity of the passenger. There was a large radio aerial attached to the rear of the bodywork at the side of the boot, and this maintained communications with the embassy building set back from the private Kensington Palace Road. Most ambassadors accredited to the Court of St James travelled with just a chauffeur for company, but in this car there were two other young men, both of whom had been issued with licences from the Home Office to carry Uzi sub-machine-guns. These lay on the floor, one in the front beside the driver, one in the back beside the Ambassador and covered from careless gaze by coats. As it had made its way through the traffic the Mercedes was shadowed by a powerful three-and-a-half-litre Rover, unmarked, and in which sat two men from the Protection Division of Special Branch.

  When the car pulled up the bodyguard in the front of the car stayed in his seat, his hand a few inches from the hidden Uzi. The man who had ridden in the back with the Ambassador unlocked the door, climbed out, scanned the pavement where it ran down from Birdcage Walk towards the Horseguards Parade, and nodded. The Ambassador got out quickly, and had been shepherded through the narrow door in a matter of seconds. Both he and his bodyguard ignored the Special Branch man who had also stepped on to the pavement. The London detective assigned to the Israeli embassy was used to that, familiar with being treated as an unnecessary bystander, there to make up the numbers, but not to be consulted.

  Through the working part of the week a liveried official would have been there to escort the Ambassador to the second-floor office where the Under Secretary who specialized in Middle East Affairs now waited. But at the weekend there was simply a man in a dark suit. The wide passages were darkened, electricity switched off to save money, leaving the portraits of the great British Foreign Secretaries that lined the walls mysterious and shadowy.

  'Thank you for coming, your Excellency,' said the Under Secretary, as the door closed behind the Ambassador. The Israeli said nothing.

  'The Minister would like to have been able to see you personally. It is regrettable, but he is out in the country, and cannot return to London in the time we felt was available.' Liar, thought the Ambassador. More likely up to his thighs in a trout stream somewhere in his beloved Yorkshire.

  'On the basis of the information with which your own Security Service was able to provide us, and because of additional information that our own departments have obtained, the Minister has asked me to request of your Excellency that further consideration should be given to the visit to Britain of Professor Sokarev.'

  The Ambassador said, 'You say "further information".

  To what end?'

  Spell it out in words of one syllable, thought the Under Secretary. God protect us, they're a gauche crowd.

  'With a view, Excellency, to deciding whether or not the visit should continue as planned, in the face of what your service and ours regard as a serious threat.'

  'You are asking me to recommend to Jerusalem that the visit be cancelled?'

  'I am asking you nothing. I am merely suggesting, on the direction of my Minister, that you might wish to reconsider the value of the visit.'

  'There is only one set of circumstances which would lead me to tell my Government that in my personal opinion Professor Sokarev should cancel his lecture on Tuesday night and by-pass Britain.'

  The Under Secretary inclined his head, and the Ambassador went on.

  if I were to believe that the police forces and other agencies of Britain were incapable of providing the necessary protection for Professor Sokarev, then I would suggest to my Foreign Ministry that the visit should be cancelled.'

  Cunning fox, the Under Secretary said to himself.

  'There is no question of that. We will provide protection .. .'

  'Then there is nothing further to discuss.' The Ambassador's voice was cold. 'When you report back to the Minister about our conversation I
would be grateful if you could relay a sentiment of my Government. We are not prepared to be taken simply as a nuisance-child, a bother-some problem that will go away if the door is barred to it.

  Professor Sokarev has been offered the hospitality of a learned and illustrious body in your capital. We intend to make sure that he honours the engagement. The rest, my dear fellow, is in your hands.'

  The Under Secretary bridled. 'You must understand that I was passing on a request from my Minister.'

  The Ambassador smiled, without friendship, puckered his eyes fractionally, and said, 'And I will pass on to my Minister that the British Government will be providing -

  what was the word you used? - yes, "adequate protection". Perhaps you should know, since it seems you have not been informed, that while we have been discussing the suitability of the visit the security attache at my embassy has been talking with the relevant people on your side on the very question of Professor Sokarev's safety. At times like this, Under Secretary, it is liaison that is needed.'

  He turned on his heel and made his own way out of the room.

  In the early afternoon McCoy took Famy from the house and to the car parked fifty yards up the road on the far side.

  'I didn't bring it down to the station last night,' he said, it's nicked - stolen - and that's too public a place to leave it lying around. It's all right in a street like this, half the bloody motors here have separated from their log books.'

  It was a two-door Ford Escort, painted green and unscratched, 'M' registration. 'I got it over in Wembley, that's on the far side of London, out in the suburbs, night before last. Goes okay, though it's a bit small.'

  Famy looked at the car, disinterested, and waited for the passenger door to be opened for him. Soon they were heading past Islington Green and stopping at the lights, indicator clicking, ready to turn right down the Pentonville Road and then into the main university complex. And as they drove McCoy realized the extent to which he was involved. It had begun simply, and without complications; providing back-up, assistance. The shooting in France had changed that, and ensured that if he carried on with the enterprise it would be as an equal partner.