“Shoot.”
The man at the other end of this very far-off connection dictated first a phone number, then a list of dates, times, and places. By the time he’d finished, Andrew Nunn knew the details of Halib Hanif’s movements over the previous seven days, culminating in a flight to Aden twelve hours before.
“You get all that, Andy?”
“Every precious word. Have you tested his Beirut phone number, the one you just gave me?”
“Yes, but nobody answers.”
“Ah. And the old woman, Feisal’s mother?”
“Celestine Hanif. We had a couple of numbers for her, but neither of them works. Tech. malfunc., according to records. Do you want me to follow it up?”
“No. She’s too old to be part of this; she can’t help. Feisal?”
“No information at this time. We’re still working on him.”
“Jerry, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.” A weary grunt echoed down the line. “Forget it. ‘Night.”
As Nunn put down the phone he felt elated. He’d called in a favor and been repaid a hundredfold. When you borrowed money, the longer the debt was left outstanding the greater the interest, but favors weren’t often like that; favors shrank with time.
Nunn had done something for Jerry Raban ten years ago, when the American was a lowly FBI narcotics agent. As a result of the information Nunn presented him with then, he became a not so lowly narcotics agent on his way to the top. Which he never reached, however, because the world’s foremost investigation agency poached him, and ever since then Andrew Nunn had been awaiting the right moment to dip into Kroll’s files for free.
He was plodding through his notes of Halib Hanif’s movements when that damn phone rang again. He picked it up and heard a voice say, “Andrew, how are you? Halib Hanif.”
Nunn was speechless for a moment. Only a moment; then he said, “My dear chap, what an incredibly nice surprise.”
Halib laughed. “We should meet, tonight, I’m afraid. A car’ll be at the back of the hotel, kitchen entrance, in five minutes.”
“Then I hope your driver doesn’t mind waiting, dear friend, because I shall take at least ten to dress.”
In fact he took fifteen, deliberately slowing down in order to think.
He was pleased that things were on the move; even more pleased to be in contact with Halib so quickly, because it seemed obvious to him that if Leila were running the hijack her brother was likely to be the one to oversee negotiations. And yet, and yet… Halib had not expressly forbidden him to confide in others, but Andrew knew that if he turned up with an entourage this rendezvous would dissolve into the desert air like the proverbial mirage. So he must go to the meeting alone. If things became unpleasant that would be strictly his funeral, in metaphor if not in truth.
The car was waiting, as Halib had said it would be. The streetlights thinned out, buildings became fewer, then they were driving through a broad gateway and he could see nothing in the darkness. At last the chauffeur pulled up and glanced over his shoulder with a mute indication that Nunn should get out.
On his right, a grove of palm trees; left of him, stone steps led down to a pool, its water glinting in the moonlight.
“The Virgin’s Pool,” said a voice from beneath the palms. Nunn slowly turned on his heel. “An appropriate name for such sweet water, don’t you think?”
Halib Hanif was approaching with both hands outstretched, teeth agleam in the unnatural, dreamy light of a crescent moon. The two men kissed on the cheek and stood back, holding each other by the elbows.
“So happy they chose you,” Halib murmured.
“Been a long time,
sayid;
thought you must have gone to grace paradise.”
“I had to drop out of circulation for a while, that’s all. As you see, I am well, by the grace of Allah!”
“The Compassionate, the Merciful, blessed be His name and the name of the Prophet.”
Halib laughed aloud. “I’d forgotten how good it was to be with you,” he said. “My father sends you his greetings.”
Andrew had met Halib before, Feisal never. Something to do with insuring a cargo of silver for air freighting to Manila, ages ago: satisfying deals, followed by a certain amount of cavorting aboard a yacht that rejoiced in the unlikely name of
Bordella,
as he recalled. Unimportant; what mattered was that they had a hook on which to hang their dealings.
“And I send mine to him. And to your worthy sister.”
“Ooh.” Halib dropped Andrew’s arms, affecting disappointment. “So swiftly to business?”
“For so the season bids us be.”
Halib shrugged. “Let’s walk awhile. It’s quiet, we can see the stars.”
They began to stroll around the curved perimeter of the pool.
“I must confess,” Andrew began, “I too am glad to find that it’s you. It could have been Ahmad Jabril, and I’m frightened to be in the same room as that man.”
“As I am of Hawari. I know, it’s terrible. Every little hoodlum’s in this business now.”
It was true, thought Nunn; only the Syrians preserved a fragile link with the ancient Assassin ideology; all the rest were paid hit men.
“There’s too much spare capacity,” Halib was explaining, “too many passionate young souls wanting to fight for something. The poor F’listins …”
“Such a catastrophe,” Nunn murmured dutifully.
“But look here, Andrew, do you know what it is we want?”
“Half a dozen prisoners for Iran, I was told.”
“Ah, thank goodness.” Halib sounded genuinely relieved. “I was afraid that some of your colleagues might have picked up the wrong nuances.”
“About …?”
“About Leila. You know, of course you do, that her son is on the plane?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s not what you think.”
“And what do I think, dear
sayid?”
“That this is pleasure, not business; whereas in fact it’s business pure and simple. Father and I have done a deal with Teheran. Leila, she—well, yes, she has a sideline going. She wants her child back and we have said, ‘Okay. Take him. But'"—Here he stopped, turned to Nunn, and laid both hands on his lapels—'"Let us do the business
first.’
That’s why I wanted us to meet here, face-to-face, to make the position clear.”
Nunn stood in silence for a moment, thinking over what he’d just been told, delving beneath Halib’s words for their true meaning.
“Did she agree?” he said at last.
“Of course.”
“Did she agree?” Nunn repeated.
“Ah! My friend.” Halib heaved a great sigh, releasing his hold on the Englishman’s lapels. “I told my father, I said, ‘Now that Mr. Nunn is on the case we shall have no problems.’ How wrong I was! Andrew sees everything right down to its heart.”
Nunn waited silently for this effusive storm to blow itself out.
“The fact is,” Halib said, once more resuming his walk along the margin of the pool, “Leila has become some-what—mm, what’s the word?—-temperamental. Yes. After New York. You knew about New York?”
“I remember hearing something about her trying to … there was an ambassador of a certain place, some people wished there to be a vacancy in that office.”
“But did not see their wish granted. Yes. Since then she has been less stable than before.”
“Stable…. You are afraid that this hijack may disintegrate?”
“Unless things move rapidly.”
A loose cannon, Andrew was thinking; God help those poor passengers….
“She will be looking for a rapid conclusion to the hijack. And I was afraid that you, Shehabi, the others—that you might not appreciate her position. Hence this meeting.”
He’s scared, Nunn thought. He’s not in control and it frightens him. She could blow the lot up tomorrow, that’s the message. Or maybe just bugger off with her son, leaving Halib to head up the complaints department when Teheran comes calling to find out what went wrong. Great God, what a mess!
Not only is Halib scared, he is holding something back.
“Thank you,” Nunn said at last. “Is there anything else we need to discuss at the present time?”
“I think not. But impress upon them, Andrew, impress upon them fully, that this matter is
urgent.”
It must be, Nunn thought, for Halib to come here in mid-crisis. What is he holding back, what does he want to conceal,
why
does he want to conceal it? “I will do that, yes,” he said. “You will understand, however, that I myself have no authority to commit the principals.”
“What nonsense! No, excuse me, that was rude, but really! Of course you have authority.”
“I can assure you—”
“And
I
can assure
you,
my dear Andrew, that I did not drag you here for the fun of hearing your voice.” Hanif’s voice was harsh. “It is a negotiating tactic I know all too well, this ‘lack of authority’ crap!
Get
authority.
Get it!”
Andrew counted up to ten. He did it slowly. Then he said, in the same mild tone he’d adopted until now, “How can I contact you?”
“It won’t be necessary.” Halib Hanif was making an attempt to recover some of his usual smoothness. “My father will handle the final stages of the negotiations; he will communicate with you. Listen, forgive me, I really have to go.”
Indeed, by now there could be no disguising his anxiety to leave. Nunn was prepared to bet the Bahrainis didn’t even know he’d entered their country; anyone with a fast boat could do that from Saudi, Qatar, even Iran. He decided not to waste time pressing Halib for his father’s contact number, knowing that Jerry Raban would get it eventually.
“Of course,” he said. “I’m grateful to you for giving me so much time.”
Leila Hanif, New York … the details were starting to come back. As he watched Halib all but run to his own car, he remembered how the Israeli ambassador had gone to a party where Leila also was a guest….
“Goodbye,” he cried, raising a hand.
Halib reached his car and jumped in. The headlights flashed once; then he was off.
After the New York debacle Halib Hanif was known, by insiders, to have reentered society, but his sister, Leila, had disappeared, gone to ground. Occasionally her name would surface: seen at a training camp for terrorists in the Beqaa Valley, assaulting an Israeli ship, divorced in her absence … what kind of life had this woman been leading for the past two years?
The sound of Halib Hanif’s car died away to silence. Nunn rubbed a hand across his forehead to find it clammy.
“What would you do for Michael?” he’d asked his wife an hour before. “How far would you go?”
All the way to hell to refuel and then on.
He knew then that he had to put a stop to this hijack, had to do it
now.
F
R
O
M
his seat in the middle section, Raful was unable to see the helicopter, although he could hear it come and go, not obeying any pattern. On the last trip, the crew had brought food and water. Perhaps that would happen again now; the chopper was just coming in to land.
What was preventing Leila Hanif from leaving on that helicopter with Robbie; why was she waiting? All Raful’s instincts told him that the solution was simple. She’d cut a deal with the people who’d commissioned this hijack. It was a term of this deal that she stay the course until all demands had been met and only then take her child away with her. It didn’t require genius to imagine what her Iranian employers would do to her—
and
the boy—if she broke her word and they subsequently caught her.
This would also explain why she hadn’t even revealed her presence to the boy yet—she knew that once he saw his mother again the truth might come out and then she’d have to take him away as fast as she could.
Whatever her reasons, Raful told himself, he still had time on his side … unless she recognized him from New York. She hadn’t yet, or he wouldn’t be alive now, but something might jog her memory. The Raleigh boy had mentioned them taking a photograph of him. Once it had been processed and Halib had seen it …
aach,
no point in thinking about that; concentrate on Robbie. If the boy was taken back to the economy cabin to rejoin his father, and he could somehow manage to pass over the message Raful had written on the napkin …
Where were they?
Yemen, Robbie had told him, when asked, but Raful fervently wished he knew more about their precise location. Because he had been semiconscious when they landed, he did not know what lay behind the plane. More hills, like the ones visible through the distorting Perspex window? Flat desert? The sea?
A seaborne rescue attempt: Israel might try that, though the odds against any kind of rescue were astronomical. No cover for half a mile, no buildings, no power supplies, and, most important of all, no way of putting out a major on-board fire. A rescue would be the worst thing in the world, if only because Leila Hanif might survive it.
His eyes strayed to the seat in front. Nothing gave away the deadly cigarette lighter’s presence, but Raful felt certain that anyone looking at the outside of the back flap must see a telltale bulge. Should he try to retrieve it now or later? Would the hijackers search the plane? Why should they?
So hard to think. He was exhausted. The passengers, the hijackers, they were exhausted too. The plane was a stinking snake pit, a sewer ready to crack and contaminate. How much longer before the violence exploded?
He was so busy with his calculations that at first he failed to understand the significance of the voices behind him, of the sounds that accompanied the voices. Only when one of the hijackers led Robbie out of the business section into first class did Raful come to a state of red alert.
Mashriq:
sunrise. But she waited until the helicopter had been unloaded and had flown away before she prayed, not wanting to conduct her devotions in public. She descended by rope ladder to the desert floor and took a few moments to reorient herself, blinking against the fierce sunlight. She had shed the long skirt she’d worn at Bahrain and now was wearing jeans. A bad choice: South Yemen’s oppressive humidity caused them to chafe. The incense coast, that’s what they used to call it, she reminded herself, because all the incense there was in the world once traveled along this heartless hinterland of shale and stone.
She kept beneath the aircraft’s hull, where no one could see her, and inspected its underside. She stared up at the huge rents along the side of the port engine, at the buckling, at the places where whole panels had been stripped away. The undercarriage hadn’t collapsed completely; perhaps it could even be made usable again, one day. Morgan was a pilot in name and in truth.
Looking up at the hull, she was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of alarmed possessiveness, such as might rush through a mother watching her child in the playground while she talked with a friend, her mind only half on the conversation. This was her plane now, and she was its captain. Everything that happened to or inside it was the responsibility of Leila Hanif. She should ask God’s guidance, then.
She had to make a guess at Mecca. She prayed as a man did: standing, kneeling, prostrating herself for the first of the five daily prayers, or
salah. “La Illaha il-la Allah wa Muhammad Rasool Allah!”
There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God!
The words came easily to her now, but it had not always been so. For most of her life she had lived in a realm of misty agnosticism. Only when Colin stole her son from her did she find God, over the horizon of a desolation greater than this by far.
As she stood up she felt the warm wet wind on her cheeks and turned on her heel, slowly, surveying the sky-line in every direction. There was nothing here. No animal life, no plants, no softness. A masculine territory.
She still hadn’t received any message from Halib, still lacked his permission to proceed to the next phase. Perhaps he was having trouble checking out the man who’d attacked her. Perhaps that man’s links to the second, unauthorized helicopter with Palestinian markings on its side were proving hard to establish. Yes. The man who’d tried to foil the hijack was an Israeli agent, she felt sure; he smelled of the Mossad as a trawler stinks of fish. The memory of that surprise attack still troubled her. Something about it served to underline an uneasy conviction that Colin and Robbie had walked into this hijack far too easily. She should get her son out
now.
She had not kissed the boy for over two years, not since that last day in New York. So never mind Halib. He must understand that she was a mother, and it was time to meet her son again.
As she hauled herself up the ladder next to the inflatable safety ramp she felt an uneasiness of the lower stomach, part pleasure and part pain. It expanded to fill her chest, leaving her gasping to a degree not justified by the climb alone, or even by her decision to deviate from Halib’s plan.
How much had Colin told Robbie since 1982?
Because she knew her ex-husband well, she would have staked everything she possessed on his deciding to keep quiet and shield the boy from knowledge of his mother’s “crimes.” When she disappeared there was no publicity; everyone concerned had a vested interest in ensuring that there shouldn’t be. But if she was wrong about that, if he had talked …?
If she took further time to think, doubts might overwhelm her. So she lifted the intercom and, in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible to Selim, she requested that Robbie be brought forward into first class.
She sat in row 2, seat A, next to the window, leaving the aisle seat for her son. When she heard the rend of a Velcro fastener she knew that Selim had drawn back the curtain, but she did not turn her head; did not turn it even when soft footsteps approached down the aisle; did nothing, in fact, until Selim had retreated and only two people were left in the forward cabin.
Then she looked at him.
How beautiful he had become! Of the many complex impressions fighting for supremacy inside her, that was the first to articulate itself as a thought: Robbie was beautiful and manly, yet not quite a man. His complexion, lightly tanned and somehow pure, shone as if inlaid beneath glass. He stood up straight, his figure had filled out, he was strong and fit. He was beautiful. Just that. Beautiful.
His eyes narrowed, then widened. His mouth drooped open into a watery “0” of wonder. She waited to hear him speak the first word, knowing what it would be, even if Colin had told him the worst.
“Mum?”
His voice was hoarse and timid, not at all manly; she did not care. She heard nothing she did not want to hear. He’d spoken the one word she had been aching for these past seven hundred and eighty-one days, and it was not like she imagined it would be. She’d imagined it would be inconceivably wonderful, but never had she bargained for an experience
sans pareil.
For an instant she felt herself rise off the seat and hover on the threshold of martyrdom. It faded quickly, but she would remember that feeling forever. This was her son, her only child, and she loved him.
“Robbie,” she whispered. He swayed a little. Leila, blinded, made a futile effort to wipe away the tears but effortlessly, silently, they reproduced themselves. She raised her hands. She spread them wide. He fell into them with a cry, and she felt his own tears mingle with hers while she rocked him to and fro as if he were still a baby. For a moment, an untold handful of seconds, she holidayed in the country called
then,
oblivious of Robbie’s determination to stay rooted in that other place called
now.
She had no idea how long they lay in each other’s arms, stretched awkwardly along the seats. Robbie was first to move. He pushed himself away from her a fraction, but only so that he could look at her face, and said, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t.” He patted her chest, ever so gently, before once again throwing himself into her embrace. “Oh, Mummy!” she heard him cry, his voice no longer timid but deep with the huskiness of adolescence. “Don’t go away again, don’t go, don’t!”
I won’t. Her lips framed the words but they came out silently, as certain prayers are spoken. He did not know the truth; for a moment she actually blessed her former husband.
“Why are you here? I mean, my God, what a coincidence!”
It was odd, she couldn’t understand the reaction at all, but she wanted to say to him, Don’t blaspheme; God will not be mocked by us. She couldn’t. He was a man. He was her son. She had no right to rebuke him.
“I happened to be on the flight.” She could not challenge Robbie’s disrespect, yet she could lie to him. “Because I speak Arabic and I am a Muslim, they were gentle with me. They took all the passports—”
“I remember! So they saw our names and knew we were related.”
“Yes.” Would he not think it odd, she wondered, that after the divorce she was no longer entitled to hold a passport in the name Raleigh? Was it in fact odd? Leila didn’t know. Robbie, however, like his mother, heard nothing that he did not want to hear. “They thought we might be related,” she went on, “and so they asked me, and they showed me your passport, and then of course I knew.”
He was examining her with the same adoring eyes she remembered so well: eyes full of trust and love and longing. His father’s eyes….
“I asked if I could see you,” she said hurriedly. “They said, ‘Maybe.’ Suddenly, here you are. Oh, Robbie … but you have such a
tan!”
“I like the sun. You always used to say how bad it was for me.”
“Your skin was pale; I was afraid you’d burn.”
“Is that why you never let me go back to Beirut?” There was a hint of accusation in his tone. “Because I used to love the beach so much?”
She couldn’t tell him the truth: if they had returned to the Middle East after 1974 they would all have been murdered. When she said nothing he snuggled down into her arms again and he too was quiet. Leila stroked his hair. She had not done this simple thing for over two years. The movement of her hand became hypnotic after a while. She began to drift away. She had missed him so much, so very much. Why had she chosen to cut herself off from him?
Her hand froze. Surely
she
had not chosen to do anything of the kind; it was the design of Allah. And yet … was she not responsible, in a way?
It came to her, then, under the stimulus of her son’s presence—a fearful perception of the evil she represented to others. In the eyes of the world, she had stolen and tortured and killed, from choice; she was wicked beyond understanding; and her son must know none of this, because once he did he would cast her aside with abhorrence.
“Mummy, what’s wrong?”
He had raised his head and was staring at her; she could feel how the muscles around her mouth had tensed into a hard look. Slowly she relaxed them until she could once again force a smile.
“Nothing. I’m … oh, it’s so unfair! Why did you have to be on this plane; why did your father have to choose
that
day to fly?”
“Don’t be frightened. You mustn’t. They’ll come to rescue us. They will.” He lowered his voice. “And we’ve got to be ready. These hijackers can’t stay awake forever. Something’s got to break. Trust me!”
She smiled at him through her tears, glad he had no conception of the man-hours they’d devoted to planning this hijack, of the care, the attention to detail, the dummy runs, the fall-back plans one, two, and three; let him keep his hopes.
“Dad’s back there, you know?”
“Yes, they … they told me.” She hesitated. “How is he?”
“Great. But they won’t let me see him, and I’m worried. They … they killed a man. You knew that?”
“I knew.”
“And I … I so want to be with Dad, to know he’s all right.” “I’m sure.”
“Oh,
Mum!
Don’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
“All … all cold. Just because I mention Dad.”
“I’m not cold. I don’t wish your father any harm.”
“Then why did you run away from us?”
She stared at him as if he’d suddenly dematerialized before her eyes and then reassembled as a total stranger. “What?” she asked stupidly.
“You ran away and left us.” His voice alternated between masculine authority and childish reliance, and sometimes its tones mingled, but now it was high-pitched, accusing. “You did, Mum, you left us, and I want to know why.” He dashed a tear from his cheek and assumed a scowl, defying her to notice his weakness. “Have you any idea how I felt? And Dad? I wanted you, I needed you. Dad’s fine, I love Dad, but … but …”
Suddenly he collapsed into the seat next to hers and howled. For a moment, all she could do was gaze at him in astonishment. He sat there shaking like a leaf, with fists pressed into his eyes and this unearthly wail coming out of his mouth. She tried to embrace him but he pushed her away, and when she tried force he flailed his arms, punching her, scratching her, until she desisted.