Peace on Earth - Gordon Stevens

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Dad?’ The woman closed the boot, cutting off the top of the tree. He called the waitress.

      ‘Two more cokes, please.’

      She saw what they were laughing at, saw that the tramp had also seen. ‘Why not?’ she began laughing with them. ‘After all, it’s Christmas.’

      Enderson thought of the newspaper article, the man who would begin to die in the New Year. ‘Why not,’ he smiled back, it’s Christmas.’

      John Kenshaw-Taylor sat back in his chair and sipped the malt whisky, he had been shooting since seven and polished off the despatch boxes after lunch. The house was quiet, the children would not be back from the party till six. In the kitchen, the nanny was preparing tea, at the table behind him his wife was wrapping presents. ‘These killings in Europe,’ she suddenly asked. ‘This man who said he will go on hunger strike. It won’t affect you, will it?’

      John Kenshaw-Taylor sat forward, threw a log on the fire, and poured himself another drink. ‘Shouldn’t think so, darling,’ he said confidently.

      *

      The night air was warm, much warmer than Yakov Zubko had ever expected in Moscow. He stood in the window and breathed it in. It was going well, he thought, better than they could ever have hoped; he had been found a job, not as good a job as others with his qualifications would have expected, but a job. They had even been promised a house.

      He walked through to the children’s room, opening the door quietly so that he did not wake them, and looked at them, hearing the sound of their breathing. In the kitchen Alexandra heard the singing from the street below. That afternoon they had been shopping; there had not been enough money and they had bought nothing for themselves, just a present each for the children to show to the friends they had made. It did not worry her.

      She left the kitchen and walked into the corridor, saw her husband looking into the children’s room, saw that he was oblivious of her. He was a good man, she thought, remembered, for the first time since they had arrived in Israel, how he had worked for them, stolen for them, how he had got the money for their tickets to Vienna. Remembered her reaction when he had told her about the unmarked car at the top of Dmitrov, about the quiet voice that had told him to run for them all.

      Slowly, quietly, she crept forward, slid her arm through his, and kissed him.

      At half past seven on the morning of Friday, January 4th, Klars Christian Mannheim began to die.

      He had woken at five, alert and fresh. The depth and soundness of his sleep that night had not surprised him. The sleepless nights had been before, when he was in doubt, when he was still turning the decision over and over in his mind. The night before, however, he had gone to bed knowing the only issue which remained was the execution of that decision.

      Execution had never disturbed Klars Christian Mannheim.

      From five until seven thirty he had sat on his bed, enjoying the silence. For three years now he had hated the silence, hated those who had imposed it upon him. Now it was a strength, now it was the authorities who waited. Ever since he had made his announcement on Christmas Eve. And each day he did not start, each day he took food, they relaxed a little, breathed a little more easily, convinced themselves a little more that he lacked the resolve to die for his cause.

      They were wrong.

      Mannheim was a man of precision. The date of the commencement of his hunger strike, therefore, was not a matter of chance but of calculation.

      He was twenty-eight years old and weighed sixty-eight kilos. On a diet of water he would lose approximately ten kilos in the first twenty days, most of which would consist of water contained naturally within the body. After that the rate of weight loss would slow as the body used up its supply of fat before the crucial phase when it was forced to draw on its own tissue, first the muscles of his arms and legs, then of his heart, and finally the muscles of his chest. At this stage his breathing would begin to be affected.

      Mannheim also believed in self-determination, man’s ability to control his own life and, in his case, his own death. Others, he knew, would calculate the number of days he would take to die, as he himself had calculated the figure, and would build into it a margin of error.

      He himself had rejected this. He had calculated the number of days it would take, and determined that he would sustain his hold on life for that period precisely, no more nor less.

      He would die exactly twenty-nine years after his mother had brought him into the world.

      The door opened and the warder brought in his breakfast. Mannheim did not bother to look up or to thank the man; the guards were, in any case, under strict instructions not to talk to their high-security wards, to avoid all form of communication, even eye contact. When the man collected the tray twenty minutes later only the water had been consumed.

      At nine thirty that morning the lawyer representing Mannheim issued a press statement on behalf of his client, spelling out a list of demands and stating that, unless they were met, his client had that morning begun a fast to death.

      One hour later, a bomb exploded beneath the perimeter fence of the NATO military school in Oberammergau. At precisely the same time a second bomb exploded outside the NATO headquarters in Brussels. Damage in both cases was minimal: what attracted the attention of the press, however, was that in both cases investigations showed that the bombs had been planted the night before. And in both cases the communiqués claiming responsibility were signed by a group bearing a name which was new to international terrorism: the Commando of the Martyr Klars Christian Mannheim.

      The first frosts of winter were settling in the courtyard below the window. In the training camps where he had spent the past days, in the mountains where the camps were hidden, the snow had been on the ground for two weeks. Now Damascus would feel its bite.

      It had started, Nabil thought, just like the snow, slowly and inevitably: the military campaign, the two men he hoped to ensnare in the tangle of Middle East politics, the first assassination in London, the sustained, deliberate build-up through Europe, the clues and connections for the authorities to spot, to feed to the press, for the press to tell the people, for the people to begin to worry, to put pressure on the authorities, for the authorities in turn to feel the tightening of the screw. Then the hunger strike. And now the beginning of the next stage, the last link in the chain.

      He wondered how he should tell Haddad, how he would explain the job, the possibility that Haddad would not necessarily return from it. He did not know it then, would not know it for days, even weeks, but he would remember the moment, remember it the next time he stood at the window and wondered how he should tell Haddad.

      He heard the knock on the door and turned back into the room as Issam Sharaf entered with the man he had sent to London, welcoming them both, offering them chairs and a coffee, both men sitting down, accepting.

      Haddad waited, feeling the liquid warm him, and wondered why he had been summoned.

      ‘A good job in London,’ said Nabil.

      They had already discussed it. Walid Haddad wondered again why he had been summoned, knew why he was always summoned. ‘It was as you said. Little security, he was wide open.’ He shook his head, remembering the final security lapses on the part of the driver, not mentioning the minutes on the motorway from the airport.

      ‘There’s another job.’

      There was always another job, Haddad thought.

      ‘It’s important,’ continued Nabil, ‘very important.’ He chose his words carefully, meaning what he was about to say. ‘In its way, it’s the most important job we have ever done.’ He looked at Walid Haddad. ‘I would like you to take charge of it.’

      Haddad knew they expected his first reaction would

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