Cannibals and Missionaries (17 page)

The cabin was still, as if holding its breath. Then, without warning, with Mother Earth so near, pandemonium erupted. They heard a cat’s furious cries, a man’s angry yells, a metallic clatter as of something falling. From the rear, two shots rang out. The plane lurched, and the lights went dim. When they came back on, passengers were ducked down in their seats; the Reverend had assumed the fetal position. Carey looked back to where the shots had come from. By the serving-pantry, a tall fair-haired young man with big round spectacles stood holding a rifle; behind him was a fair-haired young woman, wearing glasses too. There was no sign of the grenadier. Up front, the machine-gunner was half-kneeling on the carpet, reaching toward his weapon somewhere ahead while clutching his leg and groaning. Further down the aisle lay a ball of bleeding blue fur. Beside it, Victor was weeping.

As Carey sought to understand this frozen scene, the young man raised his rifle and took aim. Sapphire’s back arched; she rose into the air and visibly died. Crouched next to Carey, Aileen was moaning hysterically. “Why did they have to kill Sapphire?
Why,
Senator Jim? Beautiful, beautiful Sapphire. Oh, how cruel, how terribly cruel.” “To put her out of her misery,” Carey said, putting an arm around her. “You could see she was horribly wounded. I don’t understand who did that.” “‘Who did that?’” cried Aileen. “Why
he
did!” Carey’s eyes turned to the machine-gunner, who was picking himself up and retrieving his gun; he was ashy and his plump figure seemed to droop. “No!” Aileen cried, sobbing. “Not him.
Him.
” Carey’s eyes went to the young fellow with the rifle. He could not sort this out. “The Dutch!” Aileen exclaimed impatiently. “Those two. Him and the girl. I thought I didn’t remember what they looked like. But of course I did. I recognized them right away, the minute I heard the shots and peeked over the seat.”

Carey supposed he was being exceptionally dense. “You mean, when he was shooting at
him,
he hit Sapphire too, by accident. She was in the way.” “He wasn’t shooting at
him.
Don’t you see, they’re all on the same side! The Dutch and the Arabs. They’re a gang.” He could not follow this reasoning. In his own mind, he had concluded that the tow-headed young man was a security guard or maybe an Interpol agent—there could have been a tip-off on this morning’s operation. On Aileen’s side, though, spoke the fact that the hijacker, strangely, had been allowed to repossess his gun; he held it with one hand while with the other he pulled up his trouser-leg to examine his calf, which was bleeding. “Yet
somebody
shot our friend there,” protested Carey. “Look. Surface wound, probably. I guess they aimed to disable him. Shoot at the legs—good police principle.” Aileen shook her head. “Nobody shot him. That was Sapphire. She clawed him. So they killed her.” She began to sob again. “Oh, poor darling Sapphire. She gave her life for us.”

This was an exaggeration—her Southern fancy tearily doing its embroidery. Yet in the main Aileen’s reconstruction of the event and cast of characters was exact, as was swiftly demonstrated when the plane touched down. “Schiphol,” declared Van Vliet de Jonge, with a doleful countenance, as the fair strapping fellow and the girl strode ahead to first class, leaving the scowling young Arab with the machine-gun in charge. Almost at once, over the loud-speaker, they heard a woman’s voice speaking excellent Nordic English: passengers were to remain in their seats with their seat belts fastened; in due time, a cold snack would be served; those needing to use the toilets were to raise their hands and permission would be given but no paper was to be put in the bowl. Soon a steward came by, distributing extra blankets; the lights dimmed. Outside, dusk was gathering. It was four in the afternoon; they had been in the plane five hours.

As though to help pass the time, the steward, finally, was willing to answer questions. He confirmed that Victor had released the cat from its container but he could not say for what reason. Possibly the animal had been crying. Then he did not know whether the hijacker had kicked the poor cat when it crossed his path, causing it to strike back with its claws, or whether the cat had struck out at him first, sensing an enemy. He favored the latter notion.
“Les chats, vous savez, c’est une race mystérieuse. Très sensibilisée. Surtout les chats pur-sang. On leur prête des pouvoirs occultes.
” Aileen wailed softly. The Bishop blew his nose. There was a silence. “But what happened then, steward?” Charles demanded. “One would like to hear.” Badly scratched and perhaps also bitten by the animal, the hijacker had dropped his weapon; that was the metallic clatter they had heard, as the gun struck the chromium of a seat frame. “And the Dutch?” prompted Aileen. “Dutch?” The steward had supposed they were Germans:
“anarchistes de la bande Baader-Meinhof.”
The deputy ruefully set him straight. “
Des hollandais pur-sang, je vous assure.”
At the moment of take-over, it appeared, they had moved in concert with the Arabs and seized the two cabins behind—the woman had a small pistol in her blouse. When the machine-gunner had let his weapon fall, the grenade-carrier must have summoned them. He had been holding two stewardesses in the strategic serving-pantry block at the center of the plane.
“C’est le chef de la bande, paraît-il.”

Cameron leaned forward. “How long would you say the gun was lying there before the other thugs intervened? One minute, two?” “Perhaps half a minute, sir.” “Umm. Pity Lenz didn’t seize the gun while he had the chance.” Aileen concurred. “Especially when you think that that was what Sapphire
intended
him to do. She gave him the opportunity, and he failed.” “You mustn’t attribute design to a cat,” put in Sophie sharply. “They have a brain the size of a minute.” “Pity the creature wasn’t rabid,” mused Charles with an elfin grin. “‘Rabid’?” said the steward.
“La rage,”
said Aileen. “Oh, sir, that has been taken care of. We have given the pirate an anti-tetanus injection.” Carey’s eyebrows went up.

They wanted to know what had been done with the body. If they stood up, they could see it, still lying in the far aisle, the steward said. The hostesses had wanted to clean the blood off its fur and put it in a box for its master. But the hijackers had refused; they intended the corpse to be left there, as an example. “What monsters,” said Aileen. “Don’t you think we might ask the Bishop to say a prayer for her?” “No,” said Carey.

He wrapped himself in his blanket, pulling it up over his eyes. When he opened them, it was night outside. In the shadowy dimness of the cabin, he perceived Victor, huddled in his long coat, kneeling in the far aisle by his cat’s side, keeping vigil. The deputy was awake too and watching. “Antigone,” he whispered. Carey nodded.

He had dropped off to sleep again when two figures, one holding a flashlight, appeared—the mustached grenade-carrier and a stewardess. They went along the aisles, stopping here and there to tap a half-awake passenger on the shoulder. It reminded Carey eerily of school dormitory inspection or of the awful night-time summonses that were wont to rouse the men in sick bay.
“Prenez vos affaires. Vous pouvez sortir,”
the stewardess was murmuring as she went. The exodus had begun. Up front, the Israeli couple with their wailing baby were being ordered to get a move on. “Out!
Raus! Weg
,” the grenadier barked. From the rear cabins, men, women, and children were filing past with their hand baggage, some still struggling into their coats. A woman had forgotten her umbrella. “Later,
madame. Maintenant vous sortez.”
Aileen started to rise.
“Pas vous, madame,”
the stewardess intervened. So they were separating the sheep from the goats. As the last camera-laden straggler passed through into first class, the lights went on full. Carey saw that he and his party were alone in the cabin. Victor had retreated to his place, up front. Nine little Indians, counting Charles.

In the serving-pantry there was a sudden bustle. The hostesses came forward with trays. The grenadier, yawning, undid his bristling belt and tossed it on a seat like a discarded stage prop. He settled himself and accepted a tray.

Five

A
VOICE WAS SPEAKING
to Van Vliet de Jonge in Dutch. They were still at Schiphol. Outside it was full day. He looked up into the pale green eyes, enlarged by thick lenses, of the young man who had shot the cat. “You sleep too soundly, Deputy. Come along now. We want a chat with your honor.” They knew him, of course. As he had been saying, Holland was a small country. For his part, he knew the accent of Groningen—not the once-moated city, but the dour, grudge-holding province. This was a lad from the grim Northeast, reared—one could be eighty per cent certain—in a “black stockings” sect of the deepest Protestant dye. The bad teeth, half-bared in a tight sarcastic smile, bore it out: the
gereformeerde kerk
looked on dentistry as devil’s work. Henk adjusted his scarf and reluctantly rose. These harsh signs of election did not bode well for a Brabanter from the sweet Catholic land “below the rivers”—current political preferences and class rancors aside.

Mounting the spiral staircase to the second story, in the cockpit he found the Air France captain, his co-pilots, and yesterday’s grenadier, now armed with a very realistic large pistol. The hulking northlander—Roodeschool? Stadskanaal?—dismissed the second co-pilot and took his place in the swiveling “navigator’s seat” with his back to the instrument panel and his rifle across his big knees. The gunwoman, wearing a woolen peasant blouse and a miniskirt, brought in a tray with five cups of coffee and retired, presumably to guard duty in the adjoining first-class cabin. The interview was brief. Six minutes later, he was back in his place beside Sophie, who was energetically combing her hair.

The talk had gone rapidly, in English—the common language, it transpired, as at any international meeting. He and his friends were hostages. He would be treated as group leader and held responsible for its full cooperation. During the night, negotiations had begun with the criminal government in The Hague. “Why not with the French criminals at the Quai d’Orsay?” Van Vliet had inquired, in Dutch. The question had been ignored. Nor had he been able to discover what demands the hijackers were making. For the moment, they merely wanted a plane, to be supplied by the Dutch, to fly to their next destination with the hostages. “Your government, Deputy, has refused.” It was not his government, he objected, with a measure of truth. “Your fraction is the accomplice of the ruling social democrats,” retorted the gunwoman, reappearing in the doorway with her coffee-pot. “If Van Vliet de Jonge’s fraction voted against the American stooges, they would fall.” As this was a fact known to everyone in Holland, he had not denied it. Nor did he feel moved to point out—what would surely be of no interest to these people—that the consequence of such an action would be a government of the Right.

Still, if the Prime Minister—or, more likely, the Minister of Defense—was refusing to give them a plane they craved, it was hardly his fault. In any case, they were knocking at the wrong door. It was the French they ought to have been dealing with. That the 747 was now on Dutch soil was immaterial. Permission to land must have been granted at the request of the French ambassador; that was probably why the pilot had circled so long yesterday, while the request was being considered. Yet between the hijackers and France’s representative no dialogue had been opened, though messages had come last night from the control tower that he was at the airport and ready to talk. At least so the co-pilot intervened to say, wearily, out of the corner of his mouth, glancing backward at Van Vliet, as if for help with these intractable people. Van Vliet turned to the rifleman:
“Is dat waar?” “A
ruse,” replied that one, with contempt.

Van Vliet shook his head. He was mystified. Why pick on the Dutch? The French, he remarked, were in a position to send them any aircraft they wanted, in exchange for the one they were holding. Even the latest model of bomber, if that were their heart’s desire.
“Bien sûr,”
the pilot concurred.
“Mais soyons sèrieux. Plutôt un DC-8.”
In any event, as he had been telling the air pirates, they were exhausting themselves here to no purpose; he had only to return them in the Boeing to De Gaulle, where their demand would be studied. “This option does not interest us,” the Arab air pirate had answered.

More than once during this puzzling conversation, Van Vliet had tried to steer it into Dutch. Each time this had brought a scowl from the Arab, which yielded, at any rate, one piece of information: perfect trust did not reign among the confederates. It was the young woman who chiefly roused his curiosity. Was she the northlander’s sweetheart or did she “belong” to the Arab? Or was she—despite the coffee service—their boss? If he could have got her to speak Dutch, he might have the first elements of an Identikit portrait. But not only would she not speak it, when she heard
him
speak it to her comrade-at-arms, she put on a blank face, as though waiting to be supplied with a translation. If he had not overheard the pair of them yesterday talking Dutch behind him (unfortunate that he had heard but not listened!), her show of ignorance might have convinced. She was fiercely determined, evidently, not to admit by a word or sign that she shared a mother-tongue with the enemy.

Yet for what reason, unless because he was Dutch, had he been selected as go-between or interlocutor? Were they unaware that Senator Carey was aboard? It now indeed looked as if yesterday’s exploit had been based on a tip-off that a catch of notorious liberals—“your group”—would be on the Teheran flight. Mindful of SAVAK, Van Vliet de Jonge had told no one of the trip except his family and one trusted associate and he assumed that the others too had been reasonably discreet. Yet obviously there had been a leak. The young Iranians in Paris may have innocently boasted of what was afoot to their fellow-students, who would include the usual anarchists and PFLP zealots. Even more probably, the tip had come from SAVAK. Had he not cheerily estimated, in what now seemed another incarnation, that SAVAK’s spies would have seen to it that this committee did not arrive unannounced in Teheran? But prevention was the better cure. What could be more fitting than that a “black” secret police should transmit a full Interpol description, down to the flight number, of an incoming party of pinks to a squad of red terrorists? Two birds with one stone, if all went well, that is to say badly. In an hour or so, the Shah and his murderous vizier would be rubbing their hands as they followed the current episode on Iranian television. Still, even SAVAK’s information system, being in some degree human, was necessarily imperfect. Since the committee itself had not known, till it met itself yesterday at breakfast, who would be in the party, it was possible that Carey’s identity was not yet known to the hijackers.