ADAM HALL - The Kobra Manifesto

'Satynovich! I want to talk to you!

I used Polish and hoped none of the police understood.

Zade had turned his head and was looking straight at me.

He wouldn't expect anyone to speak to him in Belem in his own language: their contact would be Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking and Ramirez would be the go-between. Zade was turning to him and Ramirez now looked across at me.

In a moment he began calling to the police in Portuguese, ordering them to let me pass through the cordon.

They didn't want to. On principle they didn't want to do anything the terrorists told them, which was natural enough. A lot of shouting went on and I looked around for the nearest press group. A European was hanging from the side of a television van, trying to angle up a shot with the police captain in the foreground and the group on the flight steps beyond. I called out to him.

'Vous etes Francais ou quoi? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?'

He looked across at me.

'Bit of both, actually.'

'Listen, do you know who that girl is? The hostage?'

'American, isn't she?'

'She's the daughter of the US Secretary of Defence.'

'Jesus Christ! So that's — '

'Listen, get on a phone to Washington and tell him where she is and never mind about the bloody pictures.'

He was coming down from the side of the van.

'You're so right,' he said and got a quick shot of one in case he could use it later. 'Which side are you on?'

'Go and find a phone — you've got it exclusive.'

I wanted James Burdick to know the score because if that Boeing came down anywhere in the United States he'd want to be there. Forty-five minutes ago the Kobra operation had been running as a fully secret hostage-and-demand action and Pat Burdick had been insect-hunting along the Amazon with a group of friends but the situation had now changed radically: the girl's fever and Burdick's reaction to the news of it had either driven or panicked Kobra into the open and in seizing the Boeing they'd gone public and from this point onwards they'd be making their stand against the combined strength of the FBI, the CIA and whatever law-enforcement, counter-espionage and anti-terrorist organizations could be brought into the field.

That wouldn't make it more difficult for Kobra, as long as they held Pat Burdick. But it would infinitely increase her danger.

Ramirez was shouting again.

In thirty seconds, he announced in Portuguese, he and his companion would open fire on the crowd unless that man there were allowed through the cordon.

The police captain had been holding my arm. Now he released it.

He didn't believe I was a doctor.

' Urn dia ,' he said, ' voce pagavr, voce e seus amigos? '

Then he gave an order and the cordon let me through and I walked across the tarmac under the hot sun,

my right foot trying to buckle over because the heel of the shoe had been worn away by the tyre of the DC-6.

Satynovich Zade hadn't yet recognized me: he had known only that someone in the crowd not only spoke his tongue but knew his name and he wanted to find out who it was. He was still standing at the top of the flight steps as I climbed them, and when I was halfway up he stopped me with a jerk of the machine-gun. I took off the sunglasses and looked up at him.

His own eyes were still concealed by the smoked lenses, so that I couldn't see their expression; but I noticed his mouth give a slight jerk as he recognized me.

'She didn't succeed,' I told him carefully in Polish.

Then I caught movement and looked higher, beyond him, and saw Shadia staring down at me with her face dead white.

Zade had been keeping the sub-machine-gun aimed steadily at my heart, and now I saw his finger go to the trigger.

'Don't do that,' I said.

The sun was reflected on his smoked glasses as he stood above me with his head perfectly still. It looked as if his eyes were blazing, but of course it was just the reflection.

This was why Ferris had taken his time thinking about what I'd said, when I'd told him I was going aboard: it wasn't a terribly good move and I'd probably get killed; but something had to be done and if I could do it and get it right it'd mean a lot to that bastard Egerton. There was of course the ghost of a chance that I'd get away with it, and that's all we ask, when despite all we've done there's nothing more we can do to save the mission, when the only choice is to abandon it and try to live with our pride or make the final throw and hope for the only thing that can get us through:, the ghost of a chance.

I watched his finger.

'Don't do that,' I told him again. 'I'm working for Burdick, didn't you know? That gets you another hostage for nothing, and you can use me to negotiate the exchange. So don't throw away good material — you might be glad of it later,'

He didn't move.

Shadia had gone inside the aircraft.

Pat Burdick looked down at me but I don't think she was taking anything in: her skin was yellow and her eyes dull and I could see why they'd wanted a doctor on board.

Carlos Ramirez watched me with his gun steady, Zade watched me, his finger curled.

I heard the cry of sea birds in the distance.

Some kind of aircraft landed and reversed thrust, sending out a rush of sound that diminished slowly.

I watched his finger.

It'd be a quick pressure, then off again: with shells that size he only needed one shot to blow me right off the steps.

'Work it out for yourself,' I said. 'It makes sense.'

There wasn't anything else I could do now, because I didn't want to oversell the idea: it'd look as if I were worried. It was his decision to make, entirely his decision, with nothing on my side to help me. Except the ghost of a chance.

'I told you,' I said. 'It makes sense.'

He didn't answer.

I watched the reflections in his sunglasses.

He kept very still.

Sunglasses are effective in two ways: they disguise the face and they conceal the thoughts in the eyes of the wearer, and in a poker-type situation that can offer a critical advantage.

I couldn't see what he was thinking.

'Find out,' he said at last, 'where we are now.'

He was talking to Shadia, not to me.

She turned away and I watched her reflected back view in his sunglasses as she went forward to the flight deck.

We were still over the ocean: the glare still lit the mouldings above the windows. I hadn't been told anything but I assumed Zade would try for Washington: Flight 378 was originally scheduled for Miami so it would carry enough excess fuel.

Shadia came back.

'We're a few minutes north-east of Miami.'

'All right,' Zade said.

She looked into my face for a moment before she turned away and went aft to where Pat Burdick was lying on a tilted seat. Sometimes during the flight from Belem I'd found Shadia staring at me from a little distance, as if she still wasn't sure what had happened. I think if I'd suddenly sprung up with a fiendish cry she would have passed straight out. I don't use a gun so my experience with them is academic but I suppose when you pump six killing shots into someone's body it must do something to you as well: there must be a kind of rapport between you, in the giving and receiving of so much hate. For several hours Shadia had believed she'd lulled me and when she'd seen me standing there on the flight steps a: Belem it must have been psychically traumatizing.

'Do you think he would take your advice?' Zade asked me.

He meant Burdick.

'Yes, he would.'

We spoke in Polish most of the time, but he tried out some weird English phrases now and then to impress me, though I hadn't actually heard them used before. We sat facing each other: he was on the inside seat of the front row in the first-class section and I was on the steward's jump-seat I'd been searched and everything and they'd calmed down during the flight, though Zade and Sassine were still rather nervy and I had to watch what I said or they'd begin firing questions at me and I didn't want to tell them some of the answers.