Blood Rules (36 page)

“Very, we think. Of course it could be a con, but somebody went to a lot of trouble to persuade us that they could get Yemeni signatures on the line, and it’s coming out just like they said. They’ll allow a rescue force to assemble within their territory as long as no Israelis are involved and the Yanks stay out of it. And as long as the check clears, of course.”

“Of course,” Nunn said. “Will it?”

“Looking good. Hereford’s standing by; airlift on ninety minutes’ notice.”

“Excuse me,” Selman Shehabi said, “but they do not have recent desert experience.”

“Nobody has experience of South Yemen,” Trewin said huffily.

Israel does, Nunn thought to himself; bet you a pony any day, old boy. Yes, Israel—

“Germany’s GSG-Nine would be more acceptable,” Shehabi said. “To us.”

“With respect,” Trewin said, “your country has already caused more than enough—”

But Andrew Nunn interrupted them. ‘What exactly was the position with regard to Israeli passport holders on that plane?” he asked. “What did you establish, in the end? Don’t flannel me, give me the bottom line.”

“We turned up a couple of dual nationals,” said the M16 man. Then, after a pause, “And half a dozen shoes. Sorry—false passports.”

“False?” Andrew couldn’t conceal his trepidation, didn’t even try. “Anyone you know?”

“Apart from the terrorists, there were one or two familiar names. I’ve only just had the list in from London, I haven’t had a chance to analyze it yet, but…”

“Yes?” Andrew banged the table, his heart sinking. “Come on, don’t make us drag it out of you,
tell us the truth.”

“The Mossad had men on that flight.”

So now everyone knew. Andrew could hear his own pulse. The room was otherwise remarkably silent.

“Israeli intelligence had put men aboard that flight?” he said at last. Shehabi was preparing to explode. “No, Selman, wait… is that what you’re telling us?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh, for God’s—”

“Apparently Leila Hanif may not be the only—ah, loose cannon rolling around this particular deck.”

So Halib had been right about everything, Andrew

thought. In the circumstances, what was I supposed to

have done? Of course I had to call Tel Aviv, of course I

did.
Try and get her out of it, Dodo. The child too.
Annie,

I am so very sorry

“What will Jerusalem do about Sharett?” he asked, knowing already. “Assume they’ve discovered that one of their most senior people is aboard, what will they do?”

From the way M16 looked at him Andrew knew he was wondering about that word “senior.” No one in this room had said Sharett was senior. No one had mentioned his name, either.

M16 was about to speak when a knock on the door brought the exchange to an abrupt halt. A second lieutenant wearing the insignia of the Scots Guards brought in a sheet of paper and laid it before Trewin.

“Movement,” he said, after studying it. “High-level reconnaissance, last light today, indicates that the helicopter has crashed close to the plane. Indistinct markings on the ground
may
mean there were survivors.”

Ninety minutes’ standby at Hereford would not be enough; even as Nunn opened his mouth to speak he knew the futility of it, but now there was nothing more he could do to affect events so he did not hesitate.

“Get the SAS over,” he said to Trewin. “ETA sometime yesterday.”

S
HE
felt tired, so very tired. She sat in the cockpit, aimlessly looking out the window, and it was thus that Hisham found her.

He stood on the threshold awkwardly, shuffling his feet and wondering what he was supposed to do now that Fouad and Selim both were dead. Earlier he had gone with Leila to broadcast a message into the desert while she poked around in the still-hot wreckage of the helicopter, but since then the leader had remained sealed in the cockpit, alone with her thoughts.

“They will come tonight,” she said, not conscious of addressing him, not really aware of another presence at all. “The imperialist infidels.”

On her final word, as if at a prearranged signal, the cockpit lights flickered and died. A red lamp on the radio took some time to fade. The last residue of fuel had been used up. Now there was no power to work the air-conditioning, or the ovens, or the lights. NQ 033 had perished. She had perished.

Leila elbowed herself forward in the copilot’s seat, feeling the tension pressurize pain into her shoulders, and said, “We shall separate now.”

“Separate?” he said uneasily.

“I must follow my son.”

Hisham looked dubious: how could anyone have survived such a terrible crash? Yet they had found nothing that might once have been a teenage boy among the twisted struts and embers.

“What do you want us to do?” he asked. “Blow up the aircraft?”

Leila shook her head. “Killing the passengers cannot help you, and it’s time to protect yourselves. You’ve been magnificent. In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful, go in peace and soon, before the soldiers come. Leave me water. Only that.”

Hisham quit the cockpit. He went the rounds of his people, giving them quiet instructions, before lifting the intercom handset. He told the passengers that he and his men were moving to the desert floor and warned them to stay seated, because gunmen would still be covering the doorways throughout the night and the booby-trapped explosives would remain in place. Ten minutes later the plane was bereft of terrorists.

At the foot of the escape slide, Leila exchanged an embrace and a blessing with her men. Then she headed toward the place where the helicopter had crashed. She carried an M3A1 with a full clip plus one spare, and a flask containing three liters of water. When she reached the wreckage she settled down to await first light.

She had no sense of time passing. She may even have slept a little: here, in the desert, there was no light to ease the eyes from their constant battle with blackness. Her mind turned this way and that, but mostly it concentrated on the coming day.

She was used to this terrain, and she knew how to track a man. She had water. She would travel fast. But the pace of those she hunted would be dictated by the group’s weakest members, Robbie and Colin. One or more of them might have been injured in the crash. Her chest tightened at the notion. She would find them quickly. Then she would take Robbie back and settle accounts.

Time drifted slowly, so slowly. Like that last day in New York; it had seemed interminable, from the moment she woke up until …

She could have stopped all this then. A word to Halib, another to Colin. No separation, no loss, no more death. Did her family ever think of that? she wondered; did they blame her for keeping silent when a word from her would have changed the world?

Sharett led them only a little farther into the wadi before calling a halt for the night. In total darkness there was no way they could continue. The silence was total too.

Despite the pain he was suffering, Colin managed to get his priorities in order. First, reestablish contact with Robbie. And second. And third.

Easy to say. Two years of silence and concealment didn’t evaporate overnight. Robbie knew his father had lied to him. How long had he known?

Colin squatted beside his son, trying to ignore the pains in his back. His arm was feeling better, but the burns were going to trouble him for a long time. He had nothing to cover his skin with. When they left the plane he’d abandoned his jacket, and his shirt was scorched, useless. He’d have to take off his trousers and use them to cover the wounded area. He’d look ridiculous. So what.

“Robbie,” he whispered, “son … I’ve been talking to Sharett. He—”

“Your friend Sharett.” Robbie kept his chin cupped in his hands, distorting the words. “Old mates, yes?”

“We’ve met.”

“So I gather. In New York. Interesting talker, isn’t he?”

Robbie’s churlish tone coming on top of the burns made Colin want to lash out as he had done years ago, when his son was just a kid. But old solutions didn’t function here. Not that they ever had.

“Yes, New York. When I was teaching there. And he was tracking Halib.”

“And Mum. Don’t forget Mum.
He
never did.”

“Your mother got into trouble, but it was all Halib’s fault. Sharett’s from the Israeli secret service; of course he was after them both. That’s his job.”

“And you helped him.”

Colin was silent.

“Didn’t you?”

“I had to give certain information to stop a murder.” “Oh,
God!”

Robbie slipped off his rock and took a few steps toward the wadi wall, keeping his back to Colin. After a moment of hesitation, Colin followed. It wasn’t easy, feeling a way through the blackness.

“Tell me about it,” Robbie said softly. “Tell me all the things you’ve never said before. Not just the bits you fancy serving up in a sauce. The truth. Everything!”

“Tall order,” Sharett said laconically from somewhere close, making the Raleighs jump.

R
OBBIE
couldn’t understand why his mother had tears in her eyes. “What’s the matter?” he asked dolefully at the school gate.

“Nothing, darling. I’m just a bit overcome, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“Oh …”

How she wanted to disobey Halib, then! It would have been so easy to say, I’ve got a surprise for you: you haven’t seen Uncle Halib for so long and this afternoon he’ll be coming to collect you from school; won’t that be nice?

But Halib had warned her that if she so much as hinted at what was about to happen, his guarantee of safety for Leila and Robbie would be worthless. So instead of speaking the words she longed to say she merely shrugged. “No reason.”

Robbie’s face had whitened. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” he muttered, turning away.

“Robbie!”

He looked over his shoulder. She could see that he, too, was close to tears. “What?” he cried.

“I …” Surely it could do no harm? Surely? “I was wondering. …”

He came back to her, obviously upset. “Tell me,” he said in a small voice.

“I was thinking Robbie, do you believe in miracles?”

“Miracles?” He seemed to think the notion very daring, not quite nice.

Seeing the look on his face she faltered, not knowing how to retrieve her mistake. “Forget it,” she said lamely. “Mummy’s only teasing, that’s all. I’m not quite myself.”

He stared at her as if she’d gone mad, and for an instant she felt mad.

“Come give Mummy a kiss.” She crouched down, spreading her arms.

After a second of hesitation he ran into them and she embraced him with her eyes closed, trying to keep the image of his dear face imprinted behind her eyelids, until at last he pushed her away, but gently, and ran in to join his friends.

“I love you, darling,” she said to empty space as, swallowing back salt tears, she walked off.

There came a blank in her mind, then; a blank that only dissolved when she found herself sitting on a bench overlooking the river without any sense of how she’d got there. Such a lovely day. … The roar of the traffic behind her mingled with the chaos inside her head, making it ache.

How had she come to this pass?

When Halib told her bluntly that the Mossad intended to wipe her out, her and her beloved son and her husband, the options had instantly narrowed down to one: she had to do whatever Halib told her, because then, only then, would he be able to protect them. But as time went by, and Halib told her to do more and more strange, terrible things, the rationale for her decision weakened, until now she could only sit on a bench, helpless, and cry for the chance to divert this tidal wave about to overwhelm her.

She had made a mistake, many mistakes. She ought to have told Colin the same night Halib had delivered his cruel message. He was her husband, the man she loved,
had
loved, still loved; oh,
God!
“Oh, God,” she murmured, “how can I have been such a fool?”

No answer. Leila made an effort to dry her eyes. She had things to do, vital things, and was in no fit state to do them. But one notion refused to leave her head: she would summon Colin to be with her and Robbie the minute they arrived in Beirut. She would call from the airport, after immigration but before they collected their bags. She knew the phone, had used it before; it was just by the baggage claim area. She would call New York and she would say, “Come, darling! Come
now!”
That’s what she would do.

She felt so confused. She’d been in such a mess these past few days and never dared show it, God knew how she’d gotten this far. Of the mental checklist that had been guiding her there was now no sign at all. Halib, a voice wailed inside her brain, Halib, help me. God refused to come to her aid, but Halib worked better than God: as she spoke her brother’s name, she remembered the first item on today’s list: Robbie delivered to school,
check, damn you, check.
And the second. And the third. …

Robbie’s school, overlooking Riverside Drive, was just five blocks away from the Columbia Law campus. As soon as Colin received the call from Tom Wainwright, the school’s principal, he hurried down, arriving well before classes finished for the afternoon.

“Robbie complained of stomach pains around lunchtime and he didn’t eat,” Tom told him. “Then he was found vomiting and one of the teachers took him under his care, and next thing the boy was having some kind of hysterical fit. He’s better now, though. I’ll call him in … but before I do, may I ask you something? Has there been any problem with his mother lately?”

“No. Why?”

“His trauma seems centered around her.” Colin stared at the wall. “I … I just don’t know what to say.”

“Well. I’ll call him, then.”

One look at Robbie’s face told Colin the worst. The boy was ill.

“What is it, son?” While Tom Wainwright looked on concernedly, Colin knelt down and hugged Robbie to him. “What’s up, now?”