Cannibals and Missionaries (41 page)

Frank had left the Book of Common Prayer, marked with a red place-ribbon, so that those who wanted could take part in the service. After “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord,” he was going to use Psalm XXVII, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?”—very appropriate—and lastly some verses from the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. John, “In my Father’s house are many mansions”—very appropriate too. He had timed the selections, pacing up and down: three minutes. That would leave room for the Lord’s Prayer—some wondered about the tact of that—and the responses. He was fussed by not having his round collar and dickey with him for the occasion; they were at Schiphol still, in his suitcase.

They watched as the procession came round the end of the house: Carey and Henk as pallbearers carrying the body on their shoulders, followed by Charles and his walking-stick, and with Frank in the lead. The three terrorists stood on the sidelines, their weapons lowered. Despite them or perhaps because of them, it was very moving. Cameron opened the window a crack, and the voices of Henk and Carey could be heard chanting in Latin as they marched along, keeping step:
“Requiem aeternam dona ei Domine….”
They had good strong voices, Henk’s a pure tenor and Carey’s a rich baritone. Then the voices faded. The body was set down on the open ground with not even a blanket to cover it; Frank made the sign of the cross and began to recite the Scriptures. He did not attempt to sing, and his voice was too broken to carry. But in the parlor they followed him, some looking on at the book and some reciting from memory. A few simply moved their lips or stood with bowed heads. They could tell when he came to the prayer because the group in the field knelt down by the body, but in the parlor, after a moment of indecision, everyone remained standing. In the doorway, Sophie—hesitant because of being Jewish, probably—finally joined in with the last “Amen.”

When Cameron closed the window, most were in tears. Outside, the mourners were turning back to the house, no longer keeping step. Without the body to support and accompany, like an offering, their number seemed to dwindle, and they looked pathetic in those flat fields under the sad gray sky. The illusion they had given while the Bishop was with them of a band of early Christians chanting and professing their faith in the wilderness had vanished; the composition, so like a frieze, broke up, and they could be four hoboes, almost, unshaven, in unpressed suits, heading for shelter in a barn. It illustrated the value of ritual and the need for forms. There were no clods of earth to throw into the grave by way of farewell, because of course there was no grave. Frank had performed the regular burial service, which was the best he could do under the circumstances no doubt, but without grave or coffin this was like a mere sketch, a cartoon, of Christian burial.

Those remaining at the window watched Jeroen stride back to the house and tried to make out what the Arabs left behind were doing. In fact, the pair of them were packing the Bishop for shipment; using what looked like two large potato sacks, they were stuffing the white head and the shoulders into one and the feet into the other. By shaking the Bishop down, they made the sacks meet in the middle, around his waist; then they used another sack to truss the package up and they finished with some rope. During the shaking down, the Bishop’s silver flask fell out and went into Yusuf’s pocket. Finally, they shouldered their weapons and waited, scanning the sky. The helicopter was strangely slow in coming. There was a general move out of the parlor. Few had the stomach to stay and press Frank’s hand, tell him “Very inspiring,” and so on, or to witness the Bishop’s ascent. Yet those who lingered at the window were rewarded in the end by a touching scene.

It was Sophie who first noticed the big dark bird hovering in the air, almost directly above the Bishop’s remains. She grasped Henk’s arm. “What is it?” “A gull?” suggested Lily. Henk shook his head. “A buzzard, I think.” Carey crossed himself. “Not a vulture?” wondered Lily. “Only in zoos,” said Henk. “But it’s too
soon
,” argued Frank. Henk shrugged. “Maybe. Look!” Another big dark bird, of the same family, had joined the first, hanging motionless with wings outspread. “Buzzards, all right,” declared Cameron. “Twa corbies, eh? But it
is
too soon, man, for the creatures to sniff carrion.” “They’re waiting,” said Henk. “He bled, Archie,” Carey added. Johnnie reached for the field glasses. “Don’t look!” cried Sophie, covering her eyes. “I can’t bear it. They’re going to strike!”

It must have appeared so to Ahmed, too, for, as they watched, he began to wave his short arms and thrash his body around to frighten the buzzards off. He was acting as a scarecrow to protect the Bishop. Except for the two motionless birds, the sky was empty. Below, far away, was the cordon of guardsmen. The only movement on the ground, as far as the eye could see, came from Ahmed, whirling and waving his arms. Yusuf stood by, doing nothing. Now the birds were turning in a circle above the body. Ahmed picked up a rock and threw it at them, then another. “Why in God’s name doesn’t he shoot them?” cried Frank. “Saving his ammo,” said Carey. Ahmed was aiming another rock upward, with a motion like a baseball pitcher’s, when the birds, as if coming to a decision, wheeled about and flew heavily away. The helicopter appeared. Perhaps it was the noise of its rotors and not the angelic Ahmed that had scared the buzzards off. Sophie burst into tears as though from relief and flung herself on Henk, fervently kissing him. Then, still crying, she kissed Jim and Lily. But it was sallow little Ahmed that they would have all liked to hug for showing simple respect for the dead. In their emotion, of course, they forgot the obvious fact that the Bishop would not
be
dead, bundled up in potato sacks and a prey to hideous scavengers, were it not for Ahmed and his ilk.

Eleven

H
E WAS JUST AS
glad, on the whole, not to figure in the batch of hostages scheduled for release today or tomorrow, depending. The Congress was still in recess; he had no wife waiting for him; the company here was congenial, and he was curious as to what would happen next. The release of the first lot hung on the delivery of the first consignment of paintings, which were presumably in transit, having left Dulles yesterday in the Dutch diplomatic pouch. Washington must have finally caved in, under the combined pressures of the Vatican, the World Council of Churches, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Quakers, sundry ambassadors, and the hostages’ well-heeled relatives. But nothing in this shifting world was certain; the “qualifying” hostages already eyeing their watches might be counting their chickens too soon. An amusing wrinkle would be if the carrier winging toward them with their El Grecos
et alii
were hijacked by professional mobsters.

Barring the unforeseen, however, a helicopter should arrive within the next twenty-four hours and unload the canvases. The hostages had already been warned that a careful inspection would follow, to determine that the paintings were genuine, corresponding anyway to attested photographs the relatives had been ordered to provide. If the inspection found nothing suspicious, the hostages would be permitted to embark. In short, an on-the-spot horse trade, transacted while the helicopter waited and the national guard looked on.

To give himself credit, Jim had surmised, fairly early, that this was the plan. It made sense. The exchange of flesh-and-blood hostages for painted images, eidola, had a number of advantages that the strategic genius of Jeroen would perceive. In the first place, eidola did not have to be fed. They would take up less space than their owners were doing, and they did not ask questions or require watching. With reasonable care, they would not fall sick. More important, upon their arrival the polder farmhouse would become impregnable. Any thought of taking it by storm in a pre-dawn raid would become unthinkable to the Dutch authorities, who otherwise might accept the risk to innocent lives entailed. After all, in investing a target, civilian casualties were largely unavoidable, viz., “We had to destroy the hamlet in order to save it.” If a hostage or two got killed, it had to be seen in the perspective of the greater good of the greater number. But works of art were a different type of non-combatant, not to be touched with a ten-foot pole by any government respectful of “values.” It was in the nature of civilians to die sooner or later, by preference in bed, but also in car crashes, earthquakes, air raids, and so on, while works of art by their nature and in principle were imperishable. In addition, they were irreplaceable, which could not be said of their owners. Once the paintings were here, Jim reckoned, the farmhouse would be safe as a church. Guards could almost be dispensed with; all the authorities needed to know was that within the walls a man was standing ready to activate a fuse.

Finally, the masterpieces would not only guarantee the security of the command post; they would be replacing their owners as hostages. Threats to execute one or all of them would have more powerful leverage than threats to execute one or all of the present company; the very notion of such an infamy would cause a thrill of horror to run round the civilized world. And Henk’s unlucky prime minister would find himself in a worse fix than before. Inhibited from resorting to force to dislodge the barbarians, he would be reduced to begging, since what, realistically, did he have left to offer in a peaceful trade-off? Bombarded with ultimata by the enemy, he would be under crossfire from his own troops. On the one hand, he would be told to stand firm against “blackmail.” On the other, if he showed undue Dutch stubbornness in the face of a menace to art, he would bear the brand of “philistine” writ in large letters across his socialist forehead; the entire circuit of Philistia would rise to apply the hot iron. The lesson to be derived—well understood by Jeroen—was that paintings were more sacrosanct than persons.

It had been short-sighted of the Dutch not to see that. The use of art as a weapon had been conceded by them to the
kapers
with no perception, seemingly, of the consequences. And yet there were recent precedents, just across the Channel, that should have been instructive—put a terrorist next to a work of art and you got an infernal new chemistry, as scarifying to “civilization” as the nuclear arm. But it had not occurred to The Hague, evidently, that the hijackers would insist that the paintings be flown to the polder. So far as could be judged from television, the reaction of official circles had been one of the purest surprise. But what had The Hague been expecting? To transfer them by armored truck to a New York bank vault in care of the Weatherman account?

The collectors, too, had been unprepared for the news that the paintings were coming here. For days they had been voicing puzzlement as to what the hijackers were going to “do” with their lovely things, as though the only function of a world-renowned painting was to enhance the furnishings of a drawing-room or proceed finally, through a tax write-off, to the wall of a museum, duly labeled “Potter bequest.” That, Jim supposed, was immortality to them: a vision of future museum visitors bending to read a label. It had failed to penetrate, apparently, that art was negotiable tender; they were privileged indeed not to have seen their holdings in that cruel commercial light when every secretary knew that pictures were the soundest investment, a hedge against inflation, and so on. Even now, they had not quite grasped that the substitution of their “things” for themselves represented an immense improvement in the
kapers’
position. Instead, they were already worrying about where and how the paintings were going to be kept and pronouncing it “quite insane” of Jeroen to have dreamed of bringing them here, with no humidifiers, no curtains to be drawn against the sun, no proper thermostat to maintain an even temperature. And the poor little Potter woman was still busy wondering why she had not been allowed to die for her Vermeer, unable to accept the idea that any sane hijacker, given the slightest hope of ultimately laying hands on her canvas, would be satisfied to leave her her unrewarding life. Her case, in fact, suggested that it had probably not been necessary for all of them to make the tapes—at any rate not so precipitately.

Now most of the Croesuses would soon be going home, the Potter woman included. The withdrawal of the toilet privilege had done it; following on Gus’s funeral, they had revoked Henry’s too. When his wife learned that the stately old duffer had been forbidden to go outside with the other males, she had capitulated. Both were on today’s list for release, which meant that the bruited Vermeer would be aboard the helicopter when it turned up. The Chadwicks, unfortunately, were remaining; dear Lily and Beryl, too, by way of compensation. The rumor was that these four would be in the second batch; there had been some question or mix-up about the delivery of their holdings.

Like him, Henk and Sophie were content to stay; they were looking forward to seeing the Vermeer unpacked. Jim was curious to see it himself, but he was looking forward more to simple peace and quiet and room to stretch his legs. There was also the fact that supplies were running low; Aileen had told Greet that they should ask for a food delivery as well, and Greet as always had been unreceptive to advice. Aileen said the prisoners should have a Suggestion Box, so that their ideas could get a fair hearing—hard to know whether she meant that seriously. In any case, with eight fewer mouths to feed, the strain on the larder would be somewhat relieved.

Rumor—in other words, their friendly Tupamaro—also had it that tomorrow or the next day the Dutch airmen would be allowed to fly the German helicopter to freedom. If so, that would liberate the barn and reduce the total of hostages to thirteen—a manageable number, though Lily was superstitious about it. It looked as though the ransom money had been paid or promised. There had been no word of it on television; instead, the box had spoken of the expected release of some
“kabouters”
in accordance with Demand Three. It seemed clear that out in the busy world things were moving along nicely, so far, although Greet had voiced displeasure at the
kabouter
announcement. Those were middle-class elements, she said, calling themselves “goblins” and living in a childish fairy-tale of non-violent pranks; to release them was to violate both the spirit and the letter of the important third demand.