Blood Rules (46 page)

O
NE
of the most important characters in this novel is not a person but a TriStar jet: the aircraft that services flight number NQ 033. Without her, no story; and without my friend, Flight Engineer Bob Osborne, no NQ 033 either. So it gives me great pleasure to take this opportunity of thanking him for his expert advice, and when Bob chuckles over such technical errors as remain, I hope he will be good enough to remember that they are mine, not his.

The same applies to Dr. Hamish Aitken, who enthusiastically applied himself to the problems facing my diabetic passenger and provided me with the necessary solutions—I’m most grateful.

“Memuneh” is what Israelis call the head of the Mossad, their external espionage organization roughly corresponding to Britain’s MI6 or the American CIA. By convention, the Memuneh is also head of the entire intelligence hierarchy. He is responsible to the Prime Minister and can be dismissed by the Knesset.

The two Yemens, North and South, have now joined to become a single country. In 1984, however, they were separate.

Finally, I want to pay tribute to three people, each a special individual “character” (nonfiction!) in his or her own right, each a major contributor to the novel: Ed Breslin, whose masterly touch guided this from the first; Charlie McDade, whose perceptive comments and illuminating editorial
aperçus
went hand in hand with charm, good humor, and friendship; and Jessica Kovar, who mediated, commented, harmonized, and helped until the job was done. When in doubt, say the editors, keep it short. So I will: Thank you all, very, very much.

I
N
the early morning of 23 July 1954, some ninety miles south of Hainan Island, Chinese fighters shot down a DC-4 passenger aircraft owned by Cathay Pacific Airways while on its way to Hong Kong.

The story of this tragic but true incident has been graphically told by Gavin Young in his history of Cathay Pacific,
Beyond Lion Rock
(London: Hutchinson, 1988), to which I pay grateful tribute. There, Mr. Young records how one of the passengers, Leonard Parrish, threw himself across his son in a vain attempt to save him from the fighters’ bullets. I mentioned to my editor at HarperCollins that I had read this account and been much moved by it. Since both of us are fathers, we spent some time musing whether we would have the guts, should the need arise, to try to save our children’s lives at the expense of our own.

I brooded over that question for a long time.

This novel is the result.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

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Copyright © 1992 by Dongfeng Enterprises Limited

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EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 978-0-062-03002-3

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1992 by HarperCollinsPublishers,

Cover illustration by Kirk Reinert

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