Cannibals and Missionaries (28 page)

The other hostages, too, had been reanimated; interest had shifted to the dark farmhouse and what it might contain by way of amenities. “Will there be a toilet?” Simmons wondered. Beryl’s mother was hoping for a “bathe”—even a sponge bath. The men’s thoughts ran to food and heating: better not be counting on steaks, though, and Ramsbotham understood that Holland had an oil shortage. Henk, as the authority, was besieged with eager questions: would they heat with gas maybe, how many rooms in a farmer’s house, any hope of a frigidaire? For these poor souls, merely naming those “necessities of life”—warmth, food, running water—even with cautious pessimism, could not fail to bring on a mood of anticipation. “Will they let us get our things now?” said Harold’s wife.

Certainly by now they had earned a good night’s rest and something hot to eat. But the hijackers did not see it that way. From their point of view, there was still work to be done. Obviously the path that had just been widened would have to be restored to at least a semblance of its earlier state, so that from the air it would look as if nothing more than a builder’s truck had used it, to bring in materials. They could not just quit and go to bed. With reluctance, Sophie conceded that, and Jim Carey, beside her, was nodding his agreement as the leader, leaning against the barn wall, went down the list of tasks that remained. A squad of hostages was to collect sedge, lopped-off branches, and so on, to fill in the sides of the path. The uprooted tree was to be put back in place and all traces of disturbance cleared off the highway. To Sophie, it was as if a stage were about to be set, with the hostages as scene-shifters, and she asked herself whether so much verisimilitude was really necessary—could there be an element of sadistic enjoyment? “And our toilet cases?” prompted Harold’s wife, whose chief interest probably lay in her eight-Hour cream. Curious, though, that the hijackers had omitted to mention the detail of the hostages’ “things”; now that the helicopter was gone, the pile of cases on the highway was the most conspicuous item for miles around. The question annoyed Gretel. “We have not forgotten, Mrs. Moneybags. A squad will be assigned to place them in the ditch until we are ready.” That was a cruel blow; some of the women gasped and some emitted piteous bleats. Sophie caught Henk’s eye. He cleared his throat.
“Neen!”
he called out. Again he was going to come to the rescue. Over by the barn, he talked rapidly to the two in Dutch; Sophie watched his gestures—he seemed to be counting on his fingers, as a demonstration of something. And almost at once Jeroen was making an announcement: for “compassionate reasons,” a group of hostages would be permitted to collect their “hand baggages” and proceed to the house; the others would finish the work.

“How did you pull that off?” inquired Carey when Henk was back among them. “Yes, how?” said Sophie. “I said that here are too many persons. For them, it must be dangerous. And most are not needed.” Whenever he had been speaking Dutch, she noticed, his English got worse, as though he were trying to be his own interpreter at some summit meeting—he had pronounced “said” as “sayed.” Or was it a sign of strain? He was certainly a gifted negotiator.

It was the first-class passengers who reaped the immediate benefit. With the exception of Beryl and the curator, they were being sent off to bed, which was only fair, Sophie thought: most of them were well past fifty. It was a relief to see them set forth, guarded by two Arabs and clutching their cases. “But
I’m
fifty,” cried Simmons. “Why should they be privileged?” “You don’t look it, Aileen,” said Carey. “Let them have their shut-eye. Be good now and stay with us liberals.” “But they’ll eat up all the food, Jim.” Nevertheless, she complied. In a minute she was helping him pick up branches.

As it turned out, everyone’s baggage was promptly transported to the house. The steward and stewardess saw to it, and the pilots lent a hand. They did not forget the Bishop’s umbrella or his old carryall—his dead wife’s needlework. The squad working on the path smiled as they watched the young pilot go past with the treasured possession. “Gus’ll be happy as a clam to see it again,” the minister redundantly said. “Did he love her so much?” asked Simmons. “Or only after she was dead?” In the moonlight Sophie saw Carey wince. “Cult of relics,” he said, roughly pushing a heap of briars into position.

Their labors were almost over. The final chore was to remove all the skid traces from the highway. In Sophie’s opinion, this was overdoing it. The
kapers
were succumbing to a perfectionist temptation, unless they were plain brutes. And in their place she would have advised water, carried from their hideaway if necessary, rather than a broom. She and Beryl were alone on the empty road. They had relieved the young museum man and the silent Scottish don. The tree had been replanted, the path had been “landscaped” to the limit of possibility, and most of the weary workers had been allowed to go to the house. Only Henk and Jim remained, waiting loyally by the road’s edge and strictly forbidden to help. Somewhere nearby, the leaders were keeping watch. Eventually they would come with their flashlights to assure themselves that Beryl and Sophie had not shirked. To shirk was certainly tempting, with one broom between them and the skid tracks half frozen in places. They could have used a shovel as a scraper; instead they had only the feet God had given them. Kicking at a lump of ice, Beryl hurt her big toe. Sophie commiserated, grateful, now, for her boots. Both would greatly like to know how it was that the two of them had been specially elected to perform this senseless last task by themselves. “Why us?” wondered Beryl. Sophie suspected that it was because the gang was punishing her for being Jewish but she decided not to say that; anyway, it did not explain Beryl. On that point, however, Beryl had her own theory. “Ahmed likes me,” she said. “That’s why.”

Suddenly Sophie was bone-tired, too tired, she feared, to be able to eat. And tomorrow, she expected, would be worse, even if they were fed, because tomorrow there would be nothing to do but wait. She took the muddy broom from Beryl and gave a ferocious swipe. As she did so, Beryl’s head turned. They heard the sound of a plane’s motor. It was flying low. A searchlight was playing over the highway perhaps half a mile off and coming nearer. They saw a flare drop. “Cripes,” said Beryl and ducked. Automatically Sophie let go of her broom; she crouched. A strange thought crossed her mind. “If it sees us,” the thought said, “we are lost.” She scrambled toward the road’s edge, looking crazily for shelter.

“Down!” the man’s voice commanded from somewhere in the underbrush. Clearly he could not see that the order was superfluous. “Down, both of you,” said the woman’s voice. “Into the ditch.” “She loves that ditch,” muttered Beryl. The icy, muddy trough was the last hiding-place either of them would have chosen; nevertheless they obeyed. Sophie hoped at least that Henk and Jim would be there, too, but they must have been told to hide in the bushes. She was by herself with her one-time classmate, the two of them crouching down, with their feet in the gelid mud. “Does she remind you of Mrs. H.?” Beryl said, under her breath. “Ssh!” said Sophie. She had remembered something. The broom. She had left it lying on the road. She asked herself whether Gretel realized that. Maybe she could not see it from where she had taken cover. Sophie straightened up and peered out. The searchlight was still some distance off, making broad sweeping arcs; she had time. Her heart raced; her knees shook, as if the plane was “enemy” with a load of bombs to release on her. She crept out. “Get back!” called the man’s voice. Sophie did not answer. She inched along the highway on her hands and knees—dirt on her suede coat no longer mattered—till she could touch the tip of the broom-handle; then she pulled the broom toward her and fell back with it into the ditch. “The broom,” she explained, idiotically. Beryl gripped her filthy hand. “Shake, sister.” All at once, Sophie remembered a funny thing about her at Putney: the time she had told the whole form that she was changing her name to “Aventurine” and expected them all to call her that.

Now the plane was directly overhead. Another flare was dropped. Next to her, Sophie could feel Beryl holding her breath. Impossible that the plane would not see them as a motionless pair of shadows in this blinding light. The pilot was making sweeps, yet what interested him seemed to be farther up the road. Did the replanted tree look peculiar? She remembered reading a background story—was it about the Moors murders?—which said that aerial photographs could show where a grave had been dug from the way the soil looked even when the turf had been carefully replaced. Now even Beryl’s breathing seemed to her too loud; she could not rid herself of the queer feeling that they could be overheard by the plane. Yet the pilot could not have noticed anything suspicious, for he had turned away from the road, in the direction of the dark house and the barn. It was safe now to peek out. He dipped, and the searchlight prowled. The peaked roofline of the house showed clearly, a quarter of a mile away. Sophie wondered what the hostages inside were feeling. She pictured Harold trying to signal from the roof. But apparently the pilot was satisfied that there was nothing there but “a typical Dutch farmhouse.” In a minute the plane veered back to the highway. It went on, still flying low, toward what must be the mainland. The sound of the motor gradually died away.

The scare was over; bodies popped up, as if resurrecting, and stretched their limbs. Nothing could be heard but the distant pumping-station, the sudden rustle of bird wings, and low human voices, still pitched to an undertone. The flare petered out; everything returned to normal. Or so to speak. “‘Beddy-bye,’ eh?” said Carey, and no one contradicted. As he took her arm to steady her on the homeward path, Sophie could not help feeling that she had proved quite a heroine in the broom episode—courage and initiative under fire. Yet she fought back the urge to mention it, since on the one hand objectively there had been no “fire,” as a sane part of her giddy mind must always have known, and on the other the whole adventure, insofar as it was one, was best kept between herself and “Aventurine.” What would the Bishop think if he heard that single-handed and without prompting or duress Sophie Weil had foiled a powerful search plane intent on learning their whereabouts? And that she was unrepentant and unregretful, though she could not say why. He would pray for her maybe.

Eight

D
URING THE NIGHT, A
thin snow had fallen. The temperature stood at -1° Celsius. The sky was empty; no plane had yet come snooping. From the air, in any case, nothing unusual would be noticed: a typical new farmhouse painted dark green in the Frisian way, its eastern window panes glittering in the rising sun, the sloping roof tiles a shiny fresh orange. Outside the main door swung a clothes-yard on which laundry hung, the only sign of habitation. Fifty meters off, there would appear to be a barn twice the size of the house in construction, loosely roofed over with tar paper or plastic sheeting and lightly blanketed with snow. Beyond, stretching to the horizon and broken only by the gleam of a canal, lay ploughed fields marked by frozen furrows like the deep wrinkles of a weathered
boer
face—on the ridges the earth color showed through where the wind had swept them bare. Around the house were dainty bird tracks but as yet no human footprints. Later the men would be led out in pairs to pee and move their bowels, if able, close to the back shed; the women would use the downstairs toilet for the time being—the toilet permission would be revoked were a breach of discipline to occur. From the air, the house should appear to be occupied but not unduly, not beyond the norm of four to six persons warranted for a settler’s family.

On this day in reality it held thirty-two. Eight guards, twenty-four prisoners, which made an acceptable ratio: for every three imperialists, one people’s army soldier. In the kitchen the Air France personnel was preparing a morning meal of bread, cheese, cold ham, butter, and coffee. The same meal had been distributed the night before, with the addition of pea soup and herring. If the hostages were to become constipated on this diet, it made no matter: fewer trips under guard to the outdoors and fewer stinking turds deposited. For this reason, prunes had been struck off the list of military supplies required. The logistics of this phase of the operation had been reviewed in depth; no detail of housekeeping was too small to be passed over. These people, it must be remembered, were prisoners of war. In engaging an enemy the less left to chance, the greater your flexibility in meeting the challenge of the unexpected under whatever form it might arise—“For want of a nail,” as the proverb said.

Now, thanks to good planning, on this Tuesday morning, precisely forty-four hours after the launching of the assault, the innocent-looking farmhouse was an arsenal, stocked to the rafters with arms and ammunition, sandbags, explosives, canned and dried foods, smoked meat and fish, legumes and cereals, dairy products, blood plasma—all the matériel needful for a sustained auto-defense. The dwelling stood isolated, in open ground, without neighbors. As yet, no tree or shrub, which might afford cover, screened it from the wind. Any force seeking to approach would be seen immediately, at any rate by daylight. On the side away from the barn ran an entry road visible along its whole length from the big kitchen window, no doubt for the housewife’s convenience; the underbrush that might have obstructed a sweeping view had been cleared and stacked in piles. The thicket near the highway on the barn side extended only a few hundred meters of protection. As noted in the initial study, the position had one small drawback, unavoidable in this terrain: the dwelling lacked a cellar, which might have been used for storage and for punishing disciplinary offenders. On the other hand, in the utility room, which occupied the shed, there was a big deep-freeze chest, and the kitchen had a frigidaire, ample shelves and cupboards and old-style bins. Outside the rear door were a chicken coop and a rabbit run. The welfare state was kind to its kulaks.

This rich farmer’s house boasted eight rooms: on the ground floor, utility room, kitchen, family living-room, and
beste kamer
, plus a lavatory off the entry hall, containing shower and toilet; upstairs, the parents’ room, two rooms for the children, playroom, and bathroom with tub and toilet. Above, reached by a ladder, was an attic. These
boers
had a washing-machine, a color television, a floor-waxer, a dish-washer, and central heating, fueled by oil—earth gas, the Netherlands’ bragging retort to the Arab oil “boycott,” had not arrived at the polder. The cookstove ran on propane. In addition, these folk had a tractor, fueled by petrol, and a new family automobile—a Ford Fiesta—as well as bicycles. On Sunday morning, bright and early, the Fiesta had carried the farmer and his butterball wife and four children to Schiphol, with six round-trip tickets (four half-fare) to the Balearics for a two weeks’ winter vacation in the sun. Besides the
dreck
of capitalist technology, the family had a real eiderdown on the matrimonial bed, a child’s crib painted with traditional Hindeloopen designs, and, in the
beste kamer,
genuine old-time oak-framed samplers embroidered with Old Testament mottoes, an
erfstuk
Reformed Bible bound in leather, with silver locks, a vase of peacock feathers, and three oriental carpets, one of which Yusuf declared to be genuine and at least fifty years old.