Rabies

Novel published in Serbian as "Besnilo", Sveuilina Naklada Liber, 1983, Zagreb, Borislav Peki English translation by Bernard Johnson.

Peste si grande viendra a la grande gousse

Proche secours, est bien loinge les remedes,

Nostradamus

Mrs. Andrea Milliner of Stroud, Gloucestershire, died two months after being bitten by a dog while on holiday in

India Fifteen people have died from rabies in Britain since 1945. Mrs. Milliner's death was the firs for three years.

The Guardian, 9th October, 1981.

PROLOGUE RHABDOVIRUS

Penetrating into the live cell of a foreign body, the virus substitutes its own for the cell's

substance and transforms it into a factory for the production of new viruses. The changes which

it brings about in this way in the life medium of the cell are incomparably deeper and more

dramatic than man can ever hope to bring about in his own milieu.

The virus is the most perfect being in the cosmos. Its biological organization is nothing less than

a machine for producing life in its purest sense. The virus is the summit of natural creative

evolution.

The summit of artificial creative evolution is an intelligent virus. A creation with the form of a man and the nature of a virus, the vitality of a virus and the intelligence of a man.

A symbiosis of a virus, divested of its lack of purpose and of man, freed of his limitation would

rule over nature, which both otherwise serve only as refuse.

Professor Frederick Liebermann

When in the 8th Book of the Iliad, through the mouth of Aias Teucros Homer describes Trojan

Hector as 'Kion lisitir' mad dog, man did not yet know of It. Seen for the first time under the electron microscope in 1962, it was bullet-shaped, bulging outwards at the top on an elongated

base. It measured approximately 180 milicrons in length and 75 across. It was three hundred

times smaller than the animal in which it was born, and sixty million times smaller than the man

it would kill.

It lived in a cosmos called a Neuron which was five thousand times its size. It was smaller than

any other living thing, but this injustice was of no importance, for, paradoxically, it was more

powerful than anything else alive.

It was a wonder of nature, its origins shrouded in mystery, as are the origins of all mysteries. But

its purpose was beyond doubt, and beyond hope. It devastated all its native surroundings with the

same treacherous, diseased, savage heedlessness with which man abuses and ravages his own

environment. It was the murderous black sun of its cosmos, destined to become the sun of all

others.

In his persecution of Its ancestors, man had disguised It under the imprecise and innocent-

sounding designation of a helical ribonicleoprotein acid in a lipoprotein membrane with a

glikoprotein casing.

But in that ancient war there was nothing for It to fear, for it came into the world with yet a third

casing which so far had no name. When that name was given, it would mean that It was

impenetrable and indestructible. For It was a mutant, the first of its breed.

It was alone, but It had no sense of loneliness. It had an inborn affinity for large numbers. In

twenty-four hours there had been six thousand of its ancestors; in ninety-six human hours two hundred thousand; in two weeks twenty million. But in Its likeness in twenty-four human hours there would be forty million others. Its multiplication was ruled by a progression which lost itself

in incalculable infinity.

And by then no one could know where It would be.

It would journey through its microcosm as man journey through the macrocosm. Its wanderings

would take It through places with names which are mysterious for modern man as are the

Hindukush Mountains, the desert of Karakum, the primeval forests of Amazon; as mysterious for

mankind of the future, if there were a guarantee of his continuing existence, as the mists of

Andromeda, the constellation of Aldebaran, the star Proxima Centauri Its cosmic entry ports would be the Nervus Sciaticus, the Ammon's Horn, the Cerebellum, the Hyppocampus, the

Salivarna Glandula; its transgalactic route would be by way of the spinal cord, its final detination

the Brain.

Wherever It passed, worlds would be transformed by cataclysms more terrible than any

earthquake that had ever struck the Planet since its very beginnings.

Wherever It passed It would transmit fear, hatred and frenzy to those with the misfortune not to

go mad at once from its touch; to those lucky enough to go mad it would transmit some other

consciousness whose very nature no one would ever be able to penetrate.

It would once again become what It was created to be, what arrogant man had for some short

time disputed: the smallest, yet the most powerful, the most dangerous, the most pitiless living

creation in the Universe, incomprehensible to the unity of worlds to which its Neuron belonged.

Born to die only when It alone would be left, and when there would be no more death for It to

live on.

This time man would not be able to stand against It. Only Aristaeus, the son of Apollo, could

have done so, but there was no belief left in the old gods any more.

And so It set off calmly to fulfill its destiny; to annihilate and to die.

PHASE I INCUBATION

'The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and

they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were written in the book of life from the foundation of the

world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and has still to appear'.

Revelation of St. John the Divine, 17,8.

It was the first Sabbath of a hot, dry July in a certain year after the Creation of the World

according to the Hebrew Calendar; a different year by the Hedzhiri, or Mohammedan

calculation, and yet another year for the Christians. For those with no belief in God it was some

unknown year after Satan's Fall, and it was no year at all for those fortunate ones for whom time

no longer existed.

The place was the Plain of Ezdraelon in biblical Samaria and preset-day Izrael. It stood in the

shade of the Har-Carmel mountain and the river of Quishron wound past it. It was called Tell-el-

Mutesellim; but in the tongue of local people it was Harmagedon, though everyone knew it by its

ancient name of Maggido.

A full moon shone over the ruins of the once famous town; from it there no longer came the

hubbub of the market place, the lazy march of the warriors of Izrael, nor even the neighing of

Solomon's four hundred stallions. The only sound came from the clear night sky, from the jets of

the El-Al flight from Lod Airport, Tel-Aviv, to Rome, whose red navigation lights mingled with

the yellow spider's web of the Mediterranean stars.

Nothing moved; it was as if everything had been caught up in some magic spell.

Nothing except one shadowy form.

It was gray and amorphous. It had no likeness to any known thing. The diffused, pre-dawn light

could make no firm shape of it. It came up out of the ground and soundlessly, like some dark,

primitively colored picture of night floating above mater, merged into the ruins of the south-

western rampart of Solomon's fortress.

In the west, Lucifer, the morning star, glowed brightly, the falling star. It would disappear in the

west, above the place which had its shape, the radial shape of a star.

The shadow slipped easily over the rocky ground which fell in steep, rough, stony sweeps

towards the plain. Behind it the earth took on the virgin hue of hoar frost. The leaves on the olive

tree, sycamores and palms hung down stiffly in thin crystal membranes. The rock became

smooth and slippery as if raised up from the seabed. The landscape lost its brownish yellow

warmth and was turned into the frozen waste of some unreal north. In the height of summer

Maggido was gripped by an Artic blast.

At the feet of the mountain firm where once the marshes of Ezdraelon had given off their

poisonous vapors, but where now stood rows of ploughed furrows, as yet untouched by the cold,

the shadow stopped.

If it had a body, it must have raised its head, since with that sudden movement its indistinct,

phantom shape was turned into something which resembled a powerful animal.

It stayed for a moment on the spot from where, beneath the fading moon, could be made out the

high wall of the 'Rose of Sharon' kibbutz, built after the last war with Syria. From the kibbutz,

like some painful memory, reached out the sharp, aggressive smell of people.

And taking on the shape of a wolf, or of a dog with foam dripping from its jaws, the shadow set

off towards it.

PHASE II PRODROME

'Rabies is a killer!

One selfish act of animal smuggling could bring rabies permanently into this country.

There is no cure for rabies.

The symptoms are very painful and distressing.

The disease affects both animals and people.

Rabies is now widespread in Europe and is getting closer to our shores.

Please help to keep rabies out of Britain!'

(Poster, Central Office of Information, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food,

London, 1976)

1.

The six electronic clocks of Heathrow Central Underground Station, on the Piccadilly line at

London Airport, simultaneously indicated 07.15 hours as the train from Hatton Cross emerged

with a hollow rumble from the eastern tunnel and stopped opposite the entrance to the western

one where a dead-end section of the track, wrapped in darkness, led towards the end of the line.

The automatic doors of the neon-lit carriages opened with a hiss and from them, as out of the

glistening cocoon of some magical, mechanical birth-form, poured the passengers with the

exuberance of prisoners unexpectedly set free.

Random patterns of nomadic humanity of different sexes, races, shapes and sizes, but all united

by travel fever; bent beneath the weight of their luggage, they jostled each other frantically along

the platform, colliding with others whose less agitated behavior showed that the temptations of

summer or the excitement of departure had passed them by. Unhurriedly they stepped into the

empty train waiting to take them back to London, whilst the newcomers pushed forwards

impatiently towards the escalator and rapidly disappeared from the view of the angular

clergyman, the only person to have remained seated on the torn seat of one of the smokers'

compartments. The train opposite on the left hand platform closed its doors and disappeared into

the tunnel in the direction of Hatton Cross. A few tardy passengers began to get into the train on

the right. Only then did the clergyman stand up and step out onto the platform.

He stumbled and almost fell. His Pan-Am travel bag had got caught up round his legs. He swore

loudly before managing to straighten up, regain control of himself and glance around him. He'd

have to watch that damn tongue of his, he thought. Although for the rest the Church had kept in

close ecumenical step with time, as far as language was concerned, She was still hesitant about

accepting obscenities as the most efficacious medium of understanding between people.

He was a man of about forty with quick, mobile features whose sharpness was tempered by his

bronzed skin, light-brown hair and tall, thin body in the depths of his too-large suit. Over his

shoulder hung the blue Pan-Am travel bag and in his hand he held a black, leather breviary with

a gold cross engraved on the cover.

His train too closed its doors and disappeared towards Hatton Cross. He looked round about him.

The station was empty. He walked past the escalator in order to examine the platform from the

other side. There was no one standing along the left-hand track either. He wasn't surprised he had counted on this very kind of favorable circumstance. Unless, of course, there was some

hidden trap. An observation post which kept watch on the station unseen.

He didn't think they'd got round to that. One day televised surveillance would be installed here

too. Magic spying like in the big stores and banks. But only after something serious had

happened. Not before. Never in time. In Britain no one ever hurries. In Britain, in principle, as

Heinrich Heine said, everything happens a hundred years late. A German, of course, that

explained the impatience of the remark. This time the lethargy of the Authorities, in the majority

of cases intolerable, was working in his favor. He was satisfied. He was quite definitely alone.

He knew that he wouldn't be alone for long, but he wanted to check once again for exactly how

long that would be.

After 59 seconds the first group of passengers, Africans in tribal dress, came noisily down the

escalator. They were quickly followed by others. And immediately afterwards a train from

Hatton Cross drew in. The catacombs of the Underground were once more filled with the noises

of that jungle which optimists have called civilization.

The clergyman with the Pan-Am bag made a mental note, in such a public place he couldn't risk

writing it down in his breviary, right beneath the already recorded information that on weekdays

the first train for London left from Heathrow Central at 05.07, and the first arrival was at 05.45,

that the last departure was at 23.50 and the last arrival at 01.21, but that the frequency of trains

between those times varied with the time of day: during the morning and evening rush hours,

trains ran every four minutes, but during the day the interval could be between three and a half

and six and a half, and in the evening, after the rush hour, it was even seven and a half minutes.

Paying no attention to the bustle around him, he walked slowly round several concentric circles

along the platform stretching out between the two parallel tracks. He checked the position of the

escalator, built into their twin massive supporting pillars. Two more, cutting deep into east and

west walls of the station, hid, behind thickly iodized glass, stores and offices whose function, as

now, he had not been able to detect on earlier visits. On both sides of the oblong platform, the

four-pronged furrows of the rails disappeared in the impenetrable darkness of the tunnel. But the

station itself was uncomfortably well lit. Too well for what he had in mind. He wondered if it

was equally extravagantly illuminated between 01.21 and 05.07 when the Underground was not

working. And whether perhaps part of his task should not have been carried out the night before.

Once again the platform emptied. The clergyman with the Pan-Am bag verified once again that

in the morning Heathrow Central was empty for a variable number of seconds every four

minutes. This time it was no more than forty. After a fortieth second he saw the graceful calves

of an Air France hostess coming down the escalator.

The first time, Heathrow Central had been empty for fifty-nine seconds. Then for forty. The third

time most probably it would be still tighter. The time was shrinking like shagreen leather. And it

seemed not likely that for fourth time he checked, nothing at all would be left of it. More

particularly, that there would be no time at all when it was needed. Castor, of course, was

experienced; he'd get round it somehow. After everything that he, Pollux, had made of him,

resourcefulness in unexpected situation was something that could be logically taken for granted.

But in this business the skill lay not in being able to cope with unexpected eventualities, but to

eliminating them by logical forward planning.

He should never have made his tours of the Airport by daylight only. He ought to have come at

night as well. In any case, it was quieter here at night. Flights were cut to a minimum by the

Noise Abatement Act, the legal consequence of the ban on overlying the Royal Castle at

Windsor. There were very few passengers and security measures were lax. And for anyone with

that aim in mind it was easier to take note of things, one's thoughts were clearer, more logical. As

if on a dark, photographic plate, details lost in the daytime chaos became more visible. He would

have realized the unreliability of his calculations.

On the other hand, they had to make up the essential part of the conditions in which 'Operation

Dioscuri' was to be carried out. Otherwise they would be of no use at all. It had been an inspired

place of foresight to dress Castor and his companions in the everyday suit of a protestant

minister. Consisting officially of a dark suit with a white clerical collar, but in practice reduced

to the 'dog-collar' below which one could wear a sack if one felt like it, it threatened no

unpleasant surprises. He admitted, of course, that the whole masquerade somewhat resembled a

comic opera, but there was a certain consoling irony in disguising men of War and Chaos as men

of Peace and Order.

Along the wall above the empty track was a placard several meters high. On the black

background, like the universe strewn with gilt, wasp-like stars shimmered a haze, also golden,

filled with the elaborate coat of arms of Harrods. Beneath this commercial cosmic vista was

written in huge letters:

WHERE THE FUTURE BEGINS!

Quite an ambitious advertisement, he thought. As if its inventor had the magic power to blow

away the unknown, which, like a cloud of condensed possibilities kept hidden from people what

lay in store for them tomorrow. The imaginative artist had erred only with the last word. Had he

been truly clairvoyant the advertisement would have read:

WHERE THE FUTURE ENDS!

And there, on the other wall where it said:

WELCOME! YOU'RE IN LINE FOR YOUR HOTEL! should be:

WELCOME! YOU'RE IN LINE FOR YOUR GRAVE!

The escalator hummed dully beneath his in its monotonous movement, like the mechanism of a

time bomb. Constructive machinery still had a destructive sound to it. Castor would probably

have said - like everything else made by a human hand. He liked to gild his bombs with the

philosophy with which he formulated them. The circle was complete. In that Janus-like duality of

human products there was a certain perversely perceptive mockery. Beneath the metal staircase

which seemed unending, like evil, suffering, injustice, there was, of course, nothing. Not yet. But

there was would be. Beneath the whole Airport. A damning memorial to man's treachery. A

matricide which right from the Golden Age of the Greek gods had forgiven no one.

Mother nature, said Castor, created us for us to perfect her. Instead of that we are killing her. We

shall have to pay for it. All right, he thought, but 'abused and offended' nature would have to wait

a while. The Airport would suffer today, but only incidentally. They weren't challenging the

shortcomings of civilization, only the shortcomings of the politics which made that civilization

possible. There's no point in fighting a hole dug in the wrong place, you have to fight the idiots

who dug it. The hole gets filled in any case. He himself, in fact, was not so mad about nature.

Privately he considered that a little less nature, especially in the shape of the vulgar, aggressive

instincts of lower carnivores and higher bank employees, would in no way detract from

mankind's well being. But he needed Castor. Castor could perform tasks of which the castrated

brain of any ordinary citizen would not have been capable.

With a short, soft jolt the escalator deposited him on the station's upper level. He found himself

in a marble foyer from which pedestrian subways led to various Terminal Buildings. He had read

somewhere that the Central Terminal Area covered 158 acres, and the whole Heathrow Airport

with its auxiliary buildings, hangars, workshops, depots and runways, 2819 acres, ringed by a

perimeter road 9.3 miles long. The mammoth proportions of this aeronautical domain suited his

plans to the highest degree. At one time he had thought of choosing a transatlantic liner for his

operation. But however big, a ship would not have allowed the freedom of action which Castor

would have at the Airport complex. True, on some tourist cruise ships there were areas more

easily accessible than the Airport, which was certainly more strictly guarded but on the other

hand, the surveillance of a relatively small boat was comparatively easier.

The fact that at Heathrow Airport during the summer season and at the period of the densest air

traffic, there sometimes came together at one time more than 200 000 passengers and people

accompanying them daily, together with more than 60 000 airport staff, made any kind of

surveillance at best unsatisfactory.

Finally, an official state delegation was flying out today. Everywhere, everyone was in a hurry.

Even trains, which in their day had replaced the earlier diplomatic mules, had become too slow

for the general rush towards a rapid lack of mutual understanding. So, that morning at Heathrow

Airport a top-level Soviet State Delegation would be accompanied on their departure from

London by important representatives of H. M. Government. There would have been no logical or

revolutionary purpose in laying in wait for the Russians with bombs beneath the deck of some

ocean liner bound for Murmansk.

He gave up his ticket at the ramp and with a light step set off to walk across the foyer. He was

humiliatingly aware that he was imitating Castor's professional calm, but he consoled himself

with the thought that he was only taking back what he himself had once given. Castor was his

product. He had both conceived and created him just as he was. But he sensed a certain creative

reciprocity linking them together, that of an author and his hero. Instead, Castor had now begun

to shape him, Pollux. Creator and the created had come together in an unusual mixture in which

it was barely clear which was which.

With a camera's precision his apparently uninterested eyes took in for the 9th time the

architectural details of the station hall, the features of its internal layout, communications and he

distances between them, each and every slightest, most insignificant detail of the confused life

going on around him. If he had been followed, he would have been seen to stop a little longer in

front of the escalator leading to the underground bus station, but it would have been impossible

to guess why. He would have been lost to view amongst the bustling crowd of passengers and

appeared again opposite the battery of wall telephones under their glass domes, for all the world

like oversized space helmets.

Waiting for the hands of his wrist watch to come together at Zero hour, the time fixed for the

beginning of 'Operation Dioscuri', he sat down in a low armchair and began to read extracts from

his diary in the notebook inside the cover of the breviary:

'Castor was against the code name 'Dioscuri' for the operation at Heathrow, just as he had been against his underground name of Castor. It reminded him of castor oil which he had been made to drink as a child. (It must

have been a bourgeois childhood since the poor were effectively protected against similar digestive problems by

hunger). Pollux, the name I took for myself, seemed to him like a firm producing light bulbs. A bit like Osram. He

gave in finally. They were just two dead names which we shall inspire with a new meaning. 'Dioscuri' was

something different: it joined Castor and Pollux in an event which already had a definite sense. It was as if he were

afraid lest by usurping the names we might not be heir to the fate of their original bearers in some mystical way,

even though he didn't know anything about them, (nor about a lot of other things, incidentally).

He wanted to know: 'who exactly were they, those two guys?' He had no comment to make when he heard that

Castor and Pollux were the sons of Zeus. I hadn't expected any. Revolutionaries are convinced that they have a

direct relationship with the highest necessities which govern history. That they themselves are, as a natural

incarnation of the cosmic laws of progress, in some way gods. Self-deification is a necessary pre-condition for the

secret functioning of any revolutionary machinery. Without it, it would be quite impossible to undertake those

exalted missions which in the language of ordinary mortals are called 'outrages'. I told him, too, that the Dioscuri

are considered as the protectors of travelers, which, bearing in mind what we are preparing for the Russians at

Heathrow, seemed to him to be 'a bloody good joke'. He was particularly happy to know that in reward for their

virtues the brothers were given immortality and the privilege of shining in the heavens as stars. I don't know if his

optimism would have survived the discovery that Castor, before his astronomical transfer, was obliged to die a

somewhat uncomfortable death. In the meantime, the other members of the group were also given names. I chose

them because of their mythological associations with the Dioscuri. The two men became Paris and Menelaus, and

the three girls Helen, Leda and Clytaemnestra, shortened to Mnestra'

' The Anglo-Russian talks have been going on for three weeks and if most of the London papers weren't in the middle of one of their endemic strikes, Fleet Street would have designated them quite unambiguously as

'exceptionally fruitful' 'certainly the most successful since Munich' would have added the few eccentrics, isolated in the swamp of trite pacifism into which British public opinion has sunk. For this special occasion, the BBC has

abandoned its natural diplomatic double-talk, and, gallantly espousing Soviet pancosmic rhetoric, has called the

talks 'historic'. For Castor they are 'the shameful coupling of exploitory capitalism and exploitory pseudo-socialism,

just one more imperialistic grand plot calculating on deceiving the broad masses of the people'. The imperialists,

however, are mistaken. It's they who will be deceived. An attack on the Soviet delegation will destroy the agreement

even before a single paragraph can be violated in some other, more elegant fashion. Icy blasts will once again blow

through international relations. Chaos will follow. And out of Chaos are born the stars'

Beneath the extract he could see the plans he had sketched out on an earlier visit to the Airport.

The first was a rough layout of the Central Terminal Area; the second represented the lower level

of the Underground at Heathrow Central. There was no need to sketch the upper level. At the

Information Desk he had picked up a brochure entitled 'Heathrow Airport Station and Pedestrian

Subways with a pull-out plan of the Underground', published by the BAA, with the black

silhouette of doves in flight across the yellow air of its paper cover. From this simple plan it was

clear that the Station was built beneath the aerodrome's approach road network between

Terminal 2, the Queen's Building and the Control Tower, and that mechanical walkways

connected the tree separate corridors to the tree Passenger Terminals.

He read:

' It is now 6.00 hours. In fifteen minutes I shall set off. I can feel nothing. Certainly none of the emotions usually attributed to terrorists. No excitement. No fear. But no joy either. Perhaps only relief. I feel like a writer on the last

chapter of a book where the subject has at last worked out. If I've made a mistake somewhere, I can no longer put it

right. Castor and the other Dioscuri are already on their way to Heathrow and there's no turning back. My

clergyman's dress, for example, that was a mistake. At first sight, only a technical one, but actually a careless slip of

imagination. I should have known that for somebody not used to it, it would make you incongruous in your own

eyes. And self-ridicule is destructive. It undermines your determination. That in turn leads to a falling off of

concentration and thence to failure. Since I am not taking part in the immediate action, the mistake is not fatal. I

take note of it only to avoid repetition in the future.

At 07.15 I shall be in the Entrance Hall of Heathrow Central Station, at 07.45 in Terminal 2 where Helen will be

waiting for me in the nun's habit with tickets for SAS Flight SK 514 to Oslo. The Russians are expected at about

09.00. The VIP Lounge is being redecorated so that the official leave-taking will take place in the Terminal Lounge

of Terminal 2. Castor and his companions will already be in position. The operation will begin at 09.50. It will last

10 minutes. At 10.00 it will all be over. At 10.00 also, Helen and I will be airborne en route for Scandinavia. This

phase of 'Dioscuri' has no code name. No one knows about it. Not even Helen. She thinks that it's our escape route

and that Castor and his followers have theirs. There is no way out for them, Helen. Surely the myth is clear enough?

In order to become immortal, Castor must die in battle. To become a star in heaven, one must first bite deeply into

the earth. Am I at all sorry about Castor? Subjectively a little. (But since for us 'subjectively' has no sort of meaning, only 'objectively' means anything at all, I have no pity for him, none).

There'll always be plenty of Castors to be found. Castors are expendable. It's Pollux's we're short of. Have you

noticed, I'm already speaking of him in the past tense? So we'll let that go, he'll put it right when he dies, it'll be his

epitaph. For he is going to die, Helen. He owes it to himself and to his code name. He won't risk losing his place in

the heavens through a cowardly betrayal. As for me, I shan't go to heaven. I'll stay here on earth as long as I can. In

a year or two I'll send some other Castor up the stairs. That one too will shine down on us with his eternal light. I

shan't be jealous. I shan't be jealous of anybody. Somebody has to stay down here and clear up the mess'

He closed his breviary. It might attract the attention of a member of the Airport Security, or of a

passenger with a hysterical imagination. But despite the danger, he had not given up his diary. It

helped him to understand his aims better. He looked at his watch it was 07.35 and lit a cigarette. At one time he had smoked expensive, aromatic St. Moritz. But since he had been with

this present Castor, for he wasn't the first, nor would he be the last, he had been smoking

'Caporal' out of solidarity. He hadn't gone as far as rolling his own. There were, after all, limits to

solidarity, However much a man loves his dog, he doesn't chew the same bone out of solidarity

with him.

His nicotine-stained fingers were trembling as if charged with miniature electric shocks. His

nerves had always played him up. They were evidently not strong enough for the imagination

they had to sustain. Fortunately, they only bothered him when he was collecting information,

putting together his plan. When he had defined the 'plot' and chosen the means of carrying it out,

his anxiety disappeared. The morbid hesitation gave way to cold, clean-headed determination.

Apparently it was like that with any talent, any skill.

In the initial phase of 'Operation Dioscuri', the interconnecting links between the Terminals

would be an undoubted help to Castor. Afterwards, all the passages would be blocked. For ease

of control the police would probably cordon off the Central Terminal Area into separate sections.

To get through from one to another a special pass would be needed. But in the good old British

way, preventive measures would only be taken after it was all over. While it was all happening

panic would make any sensible organization impossible. Radio controlled explosives in the

Entrance Hall of Terminal 2 would drive passengers out onto the plateau above ground or down

into the Underground, where other bombs would await them. In the ensuing chaos in which no

one would be able to establish any order, Castor would get through to the Russians. The rest

would be part of a myth.

The yellow BAA brochure with its flight of doves on the cover had helpfully informed him that

the walking distances along the three corridors were all different. A passenger leaving from

Terminal 1 had to walk 205 yards along the subway from the upper level of the Underground; on

arrival, however, he had only 188 yards to cover. For Terminal 2 on arrival and departure there

were 167 yards; to the Departure Lounge of terminal 3 the passenger had to walk 252 yards, but

back from the Arrival Hall the route was 410 yards long. Fortunately the figures could not be

verified. If there was some room for criticism of the veracity of the Authorities in more serious

matters, their statistical accuracy concerning such trivialities was beyond reproach.

But he had been obliged to work out the time to walk the distances for himself. In any case, the

time in the brochure was the time of flights, of business trips, of tourist excursions and of

honeymoons, the time of life. His and Castor's time was the time of dying. So he had needed to

calculate how long it would take someone running. By then a frantic run would be the normal

pace of movement at Heathrow Airport. The quiet walk, at the worst, civilized, carefully

circumspect haste which had been normal up to just a little earlier, with the first second of

'Dioscuri' would become an unnatural risk which few would be prepared to have. Indeed, if

everything went off as he had planned, quite a lot of things would not be exactly as they were

shown in the picture which the Information Bulletin of the Public Relations Office of the BAA

painted of everyday life at the 'world's greatest aerial crossroads'.

It's good, he thought, that the redecoration of the VIP Lounge has made it necessary for the

Authorities to transfer the official leave-taking ceremony for the Russians to the Transit Lounge

of Terminal 2. The time needed to get from the Terminal 2 Lobby to the Underground or to the

plateau in front of the Terminal building was the shortest possible. There was the least likelihood

of the police realizing what was going on before Castor had finished with the Russians. Most of

all, Terminal 2 was international. A majority of foreigners always counted in learning English, if

they needed to at all, once in London. The language problems would make it still more difficult

to re-impose any kind of order, which would not have been the case if the Russians had been

leaving from the Terminal for domestic flights.

He walked across the marble entrance of the Station from where, like some aerodynamic

intestine, the passage to Terminal 2 led off. Before stepping onto the moving walkway, his eyes

fell on the milky white glass with the illuminated advertisement for BA:

WE'LL TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOU!

It's quite true, he thought. Only it would be he who would take that care, at least for today,

instead of BA. He stood on the walkway while the constantly changing silhouettes of a ceramic

dove in flight slid noiselessly past his face. When he had stepped onto the walkway the dove had

been 'taking off': it had 'flown' with wings spread wide while he moved along, to 'land' when he

got off at the other end. Whenever he came to Terminal 2 he always looked at the bird's flight

with indignation: whatever it meant in its free state, here, imprisoned in stone, it represented only

dead and vanquished nature. But this time it didn't happen. He saw the dove 'take off' but then

the bird suddenly disappeared in an evil phantasm which filled the tunnel with the images of a

ghostly cataclysm. First he heard a hollow echo of the Airport's welcome, re-arranged in the

ominous order of his own world game:

WELCOME! WELCOME WHERE THE FUTURE ENDS!

YOU'RE IN LINE FOR YOUE GRAVE!

I'LL TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOU!

Then the same echo was lost in an eruption of phantom silhouettes which in a massive rush

peopled the corridor with a mute stampede.

In the distance where the sharp line of the subway was broken by the bend leading to the

escalator, there was a dull rumbling and the flickering red glow of fire. Everything was wreathed

in a sulphorous mist, in same dreamlike water in which movements were slow and soundless. In

a sleep-walker's nightmare from which there was no escape, the shadows rushed towards him,

yet remained rooted to the spot, struggling against the moving pathway which carried them

implacably back towards the Terminal and death. He couldn't make out their faces; they still

looked human but with something animal in the immeasurable, primordial fear in their

expressions.

His vision had made him draw back, almost knocking over the passenger behind him. He swore

loudly, as he moved aside, dropping his breviary as he caught the handrail.

The moving band crawled monotonously on towards the exit.

"Um Gottes Willen, was tuhen Sie for God's sake, what are you doing?" The man with whom he had collided was in his early thirties. He had the smothered-down blond hair of a model, his

clean-shaven, rather horse-like face was lightly tanned and his eyes were a watery blue beneath

glasses in fine gilt frame. He had a square, black, overnight case in his hand. He was just about

to continue his outburst but a glance at the clerical collar stopped him short. In a heavy German

accent he asked:

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, of course" he mumbled impatiently, bending down to pick up the breviary which was lying

accusingly beside his feet. The fair-haired stranger was quicker. He picked up the breviary and

without closing it handed it to him. He had ugly finger nails bitten down.

"Thank you" said Pollux without further comment and stuffed the book into the outside pocket of

the Pan-Am bag. He wondered if the bastard had seen its contents, and if so, what he would

conclude from them. He looked like a commercial traveler whose livelihood depended upon his

appearance. He probably even cleaned the underside of his shoes, but he wouldn't get far unless

he stopped disfiguring his nails like that. He looked with revulsion towards the exit which was

slowly coming closer. Ordinary-looking passengers were gliding towards him now. Between the

moving bands several Indians in turbans were pushing trolleys loaded with luggage. Everything

was back in place routinely and recognizable.

It was 07.15 hours when the automatic double glass doors of Terminal 2 opened wide in front of

him. At exactly the same moment, Enrico Marcone, the captain of Alitalia Boeing 747 AZ 320

on the route Rome London New York requested permission to make a high-priority landing 15 minutes before his scheduled arrival time because one of his passengers had suddenly taken

ill. But of course Pollux had no inkling of this. The information belonged to the secret life of

large international airports of which only a little becomes known occasionally from the

newspapers while the dead are being counted and the cause of yet another airplane crash is being

sought from the black box with its preserved voices of the dead crew. And even if he had known

of it, it would not have concerned him. He, Pollux, alias Daniel Leverquin, alias Patrick Cornell,

had more important things on his mind today. He had to keep an appointment with a myth.

He stopped as if he had little faith in the automatic doors; then disappeared in the bustle and

throng before the BA's counter on the ground floor of Terminal 2.

Where, according to the Airport advertisements, for everyone the future was just beginning, but

where, according to his scenario, for many it would in fact end.

2.

He too knew nothing of the before-schedule arrival of the plane on the Rome London New York flight. The man disguised as a clergyman with the false breviary at least knew why he was

at the Airport, whatever judgments might be made about his reasons for being there. But the

down-at-heel figure of indeterminate years with thinning gray hair, an unshaven, grayish face

and a similarly gray, jumble-sale, tweed suit, who was leaning on the rail of the Roof Gardens

above the Queen's Building, from where, for the price of 35 p. the aircraft taking off and landing

could be observed, didn't even know that. Although he himself found it strange, he simply had no

idea why he was there or what it was he was looking for at Heathrow.

From a bird's eye view, the Central Terminal Area, bounded by its multiple bands of radial take-

off and landing runways, was both impressive and frightening. Its dirty gray surface, criss-

crossed by the arrow-like reinforced concrete tracks formed, at its outward perimeter where it

merged with the metal caterpillars of hangars, warehouses and workshops, a hexagonal crystal,

diamond-shaped, like a star of David with its sixth, northernmost point broken off. Along the

edges and axes of the aerodrome, as along the boulevards of some enchanted mega polis, there

were shining steel insects that stood or crawled forwards, groaning, and then either fell silent or

rose howling into the sky towards the sun and towards other hymenoptera which were buzzing

down towards the ground from all sides.

From on high it looked like a giant mechanical wasp's nest whose organization, like that of a

beehive, the uninitiated observer had no means of understanding, even though he knew it must

exist. In response to its unseen commands and in predetermined patterns there moved through

that noisy chaos the tiny ants of the service vehicles, and yet others, still smaller, inside the

armor of those working overalls it was possible to discern men only by using binoculars.

The man with gray hair didn't have them. But he had no need of them to make out the objects

which had attracted his attention. Of all the aircraft taking off and landing, he had eyes only for

the giant outline of the Concorde. Scheduled to take off for Washington at 08.15, it was in the

process of being loaded with luggage, brought along from Terminal 3 and lifted into the cargo

hold by a mobile crane.

To some people it looked like a great bird with a predatory beak. To some it looked like a silver

shark. Its silhouette didn't remind him particularly of a fish, or a bird, but it did leave him with

the unpleasant sensation of having seen it somewhere, or in some way, before, where or how he

didn't know. Something in those nightmares of his, a dream image without a definite shape,

whose amorphous and changing shadow gave promise of a future body only in a few vague

features it was that mysterious, menacing, dangerous something which reminded him of the Concorde.

But what could it be, what for Christ's sake was it?

Last night as usual, he had gone to bed without the slightest idea of how he was going to spend

the day. His life had no need for any plans. The everyday, routine things were waiting for him in

the morning. He simply had to observe them. For most of the time he didn't find it difficult, even

though he could frequently see no sense in them, as in much of the behavior of the people around

him. But whenever he had his own ideas about how to spend time, they conflicted with the fixed

order by which one lived in the Home. When he carried them out it got him into difficulties. And

that brought him back to the agonizing question of whether there was really something wrong

with him, as they told him from time to time.

Fortunately, he couldn't remember the last time that had happen, or even whether it had really

happened at all. There was something not right with his memory. He could remember things,

which people said he couldn't possibly have experienced, and he completely forgot others which

again they told him had really happened to him. His memory was really lousy. He had to admit

that much. All the rest was hidden in darkness about which, evidently others knew more than he

did.

Lying in bed the night before while all around him the light bulbs were going out like distant

stars growing cold, he didn't know what he was going to do today. Least of all that he would be

watching the Concorde take off at the Airport. The disturbing need to go somewhere, to do

something, it wasn't clear where or what, had come to him months ago, but in the last few days

he had suffered from severe headaches and the need had become an unconquerable longing

which drove him to satisfy this wandering instinct as soon as possible. From that first very vague

vision, when one stormy April night he had woken covered in cold sweat with a hesitant memory

of his dream, he had had the knowledge that he was summoned on a journey whose meaning he

would find out only later.

Last night had been just like that night in April. The south-westerly gale had lifted off roofs

along the Thames valley, overturned cars on the motorway to Cornwall and uprooted trees in

London parks. He had been wakened by the thunder. The extinguished sky in the frames of

Victorian windows, like repeated copies of the Ascension, was flooded with a bright, purple

glow. The reflections of the ghostly lightning flashes crushed against the empty walls of his

room. The air was full of electricity, the skin prickled, the hair crackled. He sat up in bed with

his knees beneath his chin and his palms on his cheeks which were dripping with clammy

moisture. Suddenly he knew where he had to go. Not yet why, but he was certain he would find

out as soon as he got to the right place. Otherwise, the knowledge of where he had to go would

make no sense.

Single details scattered through all his earlier dreams came back to him.

Once again he was passing through a dark tunnel whose walls, rising in an arch, had the

sharpness and cold of artic crystals. He was wading through a swamp, shallow at first, but later

deeper, of a yellowish, oily color in which floated human faeces covered with a film of white

hoar frost. It was getting colder. The source of the cold seemed to be at the bottom of the

labyrinth, where a dark mass had formed, like a shadow which had lost all shape, but which was

recovering it again with every step he took. The shadow was waiting in an icy whirlwind to be

given back its body. In every one of his dreams he was standing in the same spot, at the bottom

of a mysterious lagoon, but never managing to guess at the shape or the name.

Even in the dream which had been shattered by last night's storm, it had been waiting for him.

But now he knew where he could find it. The crossed outline of illuminated pathways in the form

of a six-sided, pointed precious stone with the sixth point broken the X-ray photograph of his nighttime wanderings which in the daytime gave him no peace did not represent, as he had thought, some seascape or a picture of the star of David, but the ground plan of Heathrow,

which, like a heraldic coat of arms, was to be found on the cover of the book 'Air Traffic

Control, a man-machine system'.

It was a text book which was used in the technological studies of the Open University's Second

Level course, and it had attracted his attention quite by chance. It had been lying open in front of

young Charlie Rees, who was mad about aero planes. There was no possibility, of course, that

Charlie would ever be a pilot, or even travel in one, not to mention to rule over the network of

flights above some aerodrome from the Control Tower, but that fact, clear to everyone except

him, in no way weakened his desire to find out everything he could about aeronautics from

books. Nor did it stop him, quite impervious to his surroundings where everyone else was

equally passionately absorbed with his own world, from imagining himself seated at the controls

of a Jumbo-Jet on a fatal collision-course, or before a crowded Air Traffic Control radar screen,

setting in order, in the impersonal voice of an experienced controller, the aerial chaos above the

Airport.

Charlie's preoccupation with some such aeronautical crisis had given him the chance to look at

the book rather more closely. While the conscientious Charlie, sweating profusely, had been

peering into his invisible screen, filled with the bright dots of aircraft positions, and sending out

laconic instructions on their behalf, he had examined the picture on the cover of the book.

There was no doubt about it. In the ground plan of Heathrow, a hexagonal diamond, pointed, in a

shape of a broken Star of David, was the mysterious route he had taken so many times in his

dreams, to end up in each one in a windswept tunnel where, frozen in ice, a shapeless, faceless,

nameless shadow awaited him.

He lived in South Ealing. Heathrow belonged to the Borough of Hillingdon. He knew more or

less where it must be from the aero planes which flew over his head during the day. And so, a

little before the mist-soaked dawn, with the storm rolling away towards the north-east, he found

himself, wet and cold, at the entrance to the brightly-lit approach tunnel above which in clumsy

neon letters was written:

WELCOME TO HEATHROW AIRPORT!

Immediately, he heard the sound of the first aircraft gathering speed on the unseen runway.

He had reached his target, the enigmatic territory of his dream. Somewhere in the Terminals,

only just rousing from the lethargy of the night, or in the open space between them, was the

answer for which he had come. Before climbing up to the Roof Garden, he wandered between

the Airport buildings which were like beehives whose gleaming, glazed honeycombs were

darkened by the swift shadows of the passengers.

Found no answer. He still didn't know why he had been brought there.

He felt hungry. He hadn't eaten much the night before. His nerves had sensed the arrival of the

storm. He had some small change in his pocket and could buy something to eat. Perhaps he had

even a few pounds. He didn't usually worry about money. He never knew how much he had. Or

even if he had any at all. Many of the cares which were important for the majority hardly

bothered him. There were many things he simply didn't understand. You couldn't, for example,

do the most natural thing in the world, to say you were hungry. Actually, you could say it, but no

one would feed you. No one considered themselves responsible for you being hungry. You had

to buy your food or go hungry. Of course, he didn't pay for his food. He was given it. But always

at a certain time. He wasn't allowed to be hungry at any other time. Or rather, he could be, but he

wasn't given any food.

On the reinforced concrete runway the Concorde was still insatiably swallowing its load. There

was hardly anyone on the Roof Garden. People were only just arriving. Most of them had

probably come to see the Concorde take off. He would watch it too. He had nothing else to do,

apart from waiting for something to show him why he had come to the Airport, why he had

obeyed a dream with no apparent meaning. For what meaning would there be to an icy tunnel

with frozen human excrement and a shadow in its depth, a shadow which, like primeval cosmic

chaos, searched in torment for its true form?

Something in all that didn't fit somehow. Something was wrong. Either it was wrong or he was in

no condition to discover the link between the shadow and the Airport, if it really existed, if the

broken Star of David, along the axis along which he moved in his dreams was really a bird's eye

view of Heathrow and not something quite different.

The gray-haired man in the grey suit looked so exhausted that it seemed that he might collapse at

any moment. Sue Jenkins looked at him out of the cornet of her eye, her hands clenched tight on

the railing and her heels pushing against the concrete as if she were exercising on the bars in her

school gym. He looked like one of those lonely people in the park. They were never taking

children or dogs for a walk. They never talked. Not even to each other or to others walking there.

They behaved as if they had all the time in the world but didn't know what to do with it. They sat

without moving on distant benches, quite alone, without company, without newspapers, without

any sense of the time of day. The park-keepers had to shepherd them out before they closed the

park gates. And when they went, meekly and quietly, each one wrapped up in himself, like a

procession of ghosts, it didn't look as if they had any idea of where they were going. Her mother

had told her not to go near them. But her mother wasn't here now. She'd gone off to find out how

much longer they had to wait for their delayed flight for Nice. Sue Jenkins was left on the Roof

Gardens of the Queen's Building, to observe the Concord's take off and 'all the rest which was

happening on an international airport.'

Of course Mrs. Jenkins wouldn't know for certain that her daughter would be asked to write

about aerial transport in Britain at school, but she did know for certain that in this sordid world

one had to be prepared for all kinds of stupidities. Even for her husband to have abandoned her

after ten years of model, if not exciting marriage, leaving nothing behind save his Asiatic

features on their wedding photograph, a few pairs of dirty underpants, two or three 'not very nice'

intimate souvenirs, and not a penny to their joint account. And that after everything she had done

for that yellow swine from Singapoor to be given British citizenship and a chance to become a

real man. She didn't want something like that to happen to her daughter. Sue would have her

own, separate bank account, which would be guaranteed by a good education and by the capacity

to know all important things about the Concorde at any time. In her quest for a husband, Sue

wouldn't have to change some ape's passport for him.

Unfortunately, at ten years old, Sue already had that independence of spirit which is supposed to

lie at the roots of any successful civilization before it ceases to be successful and disappears. If

she had been told to watch people, she would probably have watched aero planes. But since it

was aero planes, she naturally turned her attention to the people around her. And of those,

particularly to the elderly man with gray hair and eyes filled with emptiness.

He felt that he has being watched. At first he thought that his untidy appearance had attracted

some policeman's suspicious gaze. He didn't think he was known here. Back in Ealing, in the

House, they'd probably only just noticed his absence. He glanced round. No one was taking any

special notice of him. Everyone's eyes were fixed on the Concorde which was now moving

slowly towards take off. Then his eyes looked down and he saw the little girl's smiling face. She

was standing beside him and watching him with curious blue eyes. She had high, oriental

cheekbones and her skirt was the color of light amber. He felt an urge to stroke her black hair,

caught up behind in a poly tale. But he stopped himself in time. Perhaps that would frighten her.

He certainly didn't want to scare her away. He felt quite alone at the Airport, where apart from

him, everyone was with someone, or knew someone. He almost regretted having given way to

his instinct. He ought to have been more patient. He should have waited for his dream to have

become clearer. Then he wouldn't have been so helpless. He would have known exactly why he

was here, if he would be here at all. If in its clearer form his dream hadn't led him off somewhere

else.

'Hallo!' said the little girl. 'I'm Sue.'

'Good morrow, Sue!' he answered with the old-fashioned greeting, smiling.

He liked children and knew how to get on with them. Only he rarely had the opportunity. People

were funny. It was as if they didn't want anyone but themselves to like their children. It was

something he couldn't understand. Like a great many other things besides.

'Sue, that's from Susan, isn't it?'

'Yes.'

'Susan's a holy name, from the Bible.'

'I hate it,' said the little girl, and frowned.

'Really, why is that?'

'There's at last four Susan in my class.'

'But thou'rt the only they call Sue?' he said, using the old-fashioned biblical 'thou'.

'That'd be all right. But there are two more. We never know which is which.'

'Yes, that's very awkward.' He admitted.

'It's beastly horrible.'

He smiled. On her lips the words didn't sound ugly. Just a precise description of a fact for which

there was no remedy.

'I'm Susan Lee really. But so is Susan Lee Alvin. Her name comes before mine in the register, so

I had to be Sue, and she's Sue Lee.

'Well, dost know Sue' he said reflectively, 'that's not so hard to put right.'

She looked at him doubtingly.

'How can you put something like that right?'

'Simply change the name.'

'Names can't be changed,' she answered crossly. After all the grey-haired man wasn't any

different from all the others. He just looked different. And it was funny, he talked so strangely.

'And why not?'

'What do you mean, why not?'

'Why shouldn't they be changed?'

'I don't know why,' she said. 'I only know they can't.'

'But if they could'st, what would'st thou be called?' Once again the biblical thou. 'Ariadne, I think.'

'Ariadne? Why Ariadne?'

'It's from a story. It's about a man who had to go into a labyrinth and kill a bull which ate people.

But the labyrinth was so long and mixed up that no one had ever found their way out of it before.

So Ariadne gave him a ball of thread and he unwound it while he went to look for the bull. When

he had found it and killed it and saved the town, he found his way back to the entrance by

winding up the thread and following it.'

'All right then,' he said, seriously. 'I'll call thee Ariadne.'

'But I'm Susan, Susan Lee!' laughed the little girl.

He leaned over, took her hand and said confidently: 'For those who don't know thy real name.

But I know it and for me thou shall be Ariadne. If thou would'st like, of course.'

'Yes, I do' she answered. She was beginning to like the game, it was like a fairy-tale. The man

with the grey hair really was different from the others. 'But what shall I call you?'

'Wait now, let's see,' he said perplexedly. 'What name dost thou like?'

'Theseus. He was the one who killed the bull and found his way out of the labyrinth with

Ariadne' thread.'

'That's' he hesitated an instant, 'that's really very strange.' 'What's strange?'

'That's my real name.'

'But Theseus is a Greek name. You don't look like a Greek.'

'What do Greeks look like?'

'I don't know.' She was puzzled. 'But different.'

'That's right,' said the man with the gray hair almost apologetically, 'it happened. But it's a long

story.'

'Tell it to me!'

He looked at her doubtfully.

'Please. I could be called to board the plane at any minute.'

The man with the gray hair seemed worried: "I thought thou wast here to watch the flying

machines?'

'What made you think that? I'm not mad about planes. I'm going on one, that's all.' She was

jumping up and down on one leg, looking at him seriously. The wind lifted her kilt round her

smooth, thin thighs. She thought it was funny the careful way he watched her every movement.

'Where art thou journeying?' He almost had to shout. From the runway came an ever deepening

roar.

'To the seaside.' She shouted. 'But the flight to Nice has been delayed.'

'Thou art not going on thine own?'

She shook her head: 'With Mummy.'

'Where is she?'

'She went to find out how much longer we've got to wait.'

The roaring turned into a howl. A Swissair Boeing 707 taking off, shattered the air through

which the sun was just beginning to break.

'It looks like a great white whale, like Moby Dick,' said Sue.

From the opposite side, the Concorde was dignifiedly taxing along the perimeter track towards

the runway.

'And that one looks like an arctic wolf.'

The thundering roar gradually decreased. The Swissair Boeing became rapidly smaller and

smaller in the shining air which blurred its outline. Peace returned to the Roof Garden, disturbed

only by the rumble of the Concorde as it moved towards take off.

The man with the gray hair looked towards the entrance to the Roof Garden from where Sue's

mother would come. It was always like that. Whenever he got close to a child, someone always

turned up to separate them. They would take Sue away from him too. He would be left with his

worries and his headache, which was becoming unbearable. He would never see Sue again. And

soon he wouldn't even remember her. Sue-Ariadne would be lost in the forest of memories like

so many other details of his life and who knows when she would emerge again as a person he

was sure he had seen somewhere before, although he could never quite place where.

'Listen,' he said quickly, 'I am hungry, and thou?

'Not particularly!' said the little girl, and then: 'But I can always eat some chocolate.' She didn't

know why she said that. Probably because she had been told it was something one never said.

Especially to someone you didn't know.

'Shall we buy some?'

She hesitated. 'But what if Mammy comes back?'

He stretched out his hand. 'We'll be back by then.'

He led the child onto the flat surface from where a stairway went down to the road in front of

Terminal 2. He supposed her mother would go up to the roof by the internal staircase and that in

this way they would miss each other. Meetings always led to misunderstandings. People were

morbidly distrustful. It was as if they were continuously at a state of war with each other, as if no

one expected any good from anyone else. People were really very strange. As if they were from

different worlds.

Even those who showed kindness to him, even they didn't approve of his way of thinking. It's

just not done, they said. But when he asked why, why it wasn't done, they were quite unable to

give him an answer. Why were they like that? The headache which had tormented him ever since

his dreams had begun, was once again clouding his eyes and driving thin, sharp wedges into the

back of his head.

'You're squeezing my hand,' said Sue.

He released the pressure on his clenched fingers, although he had not been aware of squeezing

tightly. Nor was he aware that someone was running after him. Not that the women in the wide-

brimmed summer hat was shrieking hysterically. The howl of the Concorde deafened all the

other sounds of the Airport. The aircraft was sucking all that was left of the world into its

engines and suffocating it there. It was even suffocating the crunching of the wedges in his brain.

Something tugged at his shoulder. He only caught sight of the woman when he turned round. Her

mouth was opening and closing but only the howl of the engines was coming out. Suddenly she

raised her handbag. The silver chain flashed in the sunlight. He felt a piercing pain at his

forehead, stumbled and let go of the girl's hand.

The noise was too loud to permit any explanation. He backed away awkwardly and then a

column of schoolgirls carrying a placard with 'EF LANGUAGE SCHOOL HASTINGS' came between him and the woman. He ran down the stairway whose massive pillars linked the roof of

the Queen's Building with the Airport's roadways by an aerial bridge, then stopped in the shadow

of a pier. He must go, he thought. They would soon be coming down to look for him. Obviously

he was being blamed for something. He didn't know what but he was sure both that it would only

bring him harm if they found him, and that it had all happened to him before, only he didn't

know where or when.

He stopped indecisively in front of the doors of the Medical Centre on the ground floor of the

Queen's Building. He could make out neither the roof area from which he had escaped, not the

policeman talking to Sue and her mother and the witnesses of what had happened. Evidently they

couldn't agree about the direction that the man with the gray hair had taken. They were pointing

in conflicting ways. The policeman, notebook in hand, bewilderedly tried to follow the

argument.

The sky shook. He lifted his hand. The Concorde was rising skywards above Heathrow. Sue had

been right.

The aircraft was an artic wolf with a stream of foam trailing from its pointed snout.

3.

For people who value Order, even if they are not policemen, the world is a logical creation,

according to some plan, as a result of which the same causes always give rise to the same effects.

Crime leads to Investigation, which in turn leads to Punishment. That this happens most often,

but by no means always, in certain well-defined patterns, and only sometimes, but not often, in

others, in no way destroys the logical beauty of the plan. The plan is O. K. It's just that certain

events don't keep to it. Most of what happens, in fact, does not at all resemble something well

thought out, or simply doesn't follow the accepted rules of logic. Many things could quite easily

be considered to be the results of some magic lottery, governed by some Mad Hatter-like

Chance.

The passengers and crew of Alitalia's Boeing 747 Flight AZ320 Rome London New York had no need at all of any 'high priority' landing. It was quite enough for them to be flying in their

hermetically sealed, coffin-like box at 30,000 feet above mother earth, which God had created to

be crawled upon rather than flown over. It certainly wasn't needed either by the Heathrow's

personnel, right after the gale-force winds which had turned the Airport into air traffic chaos.

And least of all was it needed by P. R. Larcombe, the diplomatic correspondent of the

Washington Post who had come to Heathrow officially to cover the Russians' departure, but also

for an article on Pan Am, which was to show that air travel was less dangerous than walking

along the street.

But they all heard about the flight from Rome's difficulties and some of them were soon going to

experience them. The only one whose future depended upon his knowledge of the facts

concerning this particular flight for the others it boded only stomach ulcers - was the fair-haired passenger in the white raincoat, and just he knew nothing at all of them; so much for that

logic which guides events.

The aircraft was scheduled to land at 08.45 hours. But the man in the white raincoat, Hans

Magnus Landau, Chief Accountant of the Deutsche Bank of Cologne, had no intention, for once,

of relying on his instinct to obey orders and trust in the announcements of those whose job it was

to give those orders or to make information available to the public. Because of the previous

night's bad weather, the flight timetable was completely disorganized. He wanted to be one

hundred-per-cent certain.

For the third time he walked to the left of the Arrivals' Gate, watching the laconic details

flickering on the TV screen's glass face and the flights due to arrive at Terminal 2. In between

the information about the flights from Madrid and Moscow shone the phosphorescent band

which stated that Alitalia Flight AZ320 from Rome was still expected at the scheduled time. He

waited a few minutes longer during which time the details of the flight from Rome disappeared,

and again appeared on the screen unchanged.

On the supposition that there was little probability that any delay would arise during the flight's

final stages, and calculating that, with the overloading of the peak flight season, passport control

would take longer than usual, thirty minutes at least, the passenger he had come to meet, the

Director of the Cologne Branch of the Deutsche Bank, could not be expected to arrive in the

Main Concourse Area before 09.15 at the earliest, even though he would have no luggage to hold

him up. He looked at his watch it was 08.15. So he had a good hour at his disposal to prepare for

the meeting with Dr. Julius Upenkamph on which his self-respect depended, and to make the

telephone call as a matter of conscience.

Hans Magnus Landau could not know, of course, that at the moment when the Information

Services' TV screen showed the flight from Rome still thirty minutes out from London, it was in

fact already making its first circuit over Heathrow while waiting for the Control Tower to free a

landing lane reserved for other aircrafts. No great fuss is ever made over exceptional

circumstances. For their own peace of mind and the Air Lines' profit, it would not be desirable

for passengers, enquiring about their flights, to find them in the following predicaments:

OSLO/PARIS - diverted to Island due to bad weather; PARIS/LONDON delayed due to engine trouble; BELGRADE/LONDON lost in fog; ATHENS/LONDON burned down in mid-air collision with the aircraft SOPHIA/PARIS; CARACHI/LONDON crashed near Dover; MOSCOW/LONDON highjacked; ISTANBUL/LONDON blown up by a time bomb.

The telephone number he dialed belonged to the Airport Office of the Metropolitan Police. As

soon as it rang, the receiver was lifted and a throaty voice with a strong Caribbean accent

answered:

'Metropolitan Police Office, Sergeant Elmer.'

Hans Magnus was silent. He still wasn't certain he was acting wisely.

'Metropolitan Police Office, Sergeant Elmer. Can I help you?'

His civic reflexes came into play. Hans Magnus answered quietly, slowly, searching for the

English words from his international banker's vocabulary.

'You can be of help to yourself if you don't interrupt me. Keep quiet and listen. Otherwise I'll put

down the receiver.'

'Speak slowly, Sir' The heavy voice had a matter-of-fact, reassuring tone. 'A priest has just entered Terminal 2. He's tall, thin, with a dark complexion. He is carrying a

blue Pan-Am shoulder bag ' Perhaps he should put down the receiver. Why should all this be his concern? It was true that he

always tried to be a good citizen in every way. German, that is, not English.

'What's this all about, Sir?' The voice was making an effort not to seem too interested.

Matter-of-fact again, thought Hans Magnus. But wasn't what he was doing just as common-

place? - The ordinary reaction of a good citizen who knew his place and his duties. A good

citizen of one country is a good citizen of every country.

'That man is certainly no priest.'

'May I ask what makes you think that?'

Hans Magnus was in every respect an average example of his kind, a passenger who it would

have been hard to distinguish at Heathrow from the majority of the rest. Like everyone else, he

thought more of himself than reality allowed, and less of all the rest of the world than they really

deserved. But that morning there was a special reason which made him different from the rest of

traveling humanity. Passengers usually go into the Airport Toilets to wash, shave, freshen-up,

and more often than not, to comply with their most urgent needs. He was going into the toilets to

completely change his appearance.

He would go into one of the men's toilet cubicles on the first floor gallery of Terminal 2 a man in

his early thirties, blond, smooth-skinned, with a light Aryan complexion, blue eyes and

meticulously clean-shaven face; he would come out ten years older with black, unruly hair, a

swarthy complexion, almond-colored eyes and a short, graying beard. He would go in, in a white

gabardine and come out in a black one. He would go in with the step of a man who never missed

his morning exercises, and would come out with one leg slightly dragged. But not for a single

moment during this process of transformation would he be bothered by the fact that in all

probability he was doing exactly the same as the man he had denounced to the police ten minutes

earlier.

For Hans Magnus was a prime example of the kind of person who in that respect differed little

from the majority of other passengers at London's Heathrow Airport on that July morning.

Sergeant Elias Elmer of the Metropolitan Police Office, Heathrow Airport, was still holding the

telephone receiver from which, like jumbled Morse code, came the crackling of a broken line. He

put it down gingerly, as if it were made of glass. The Morse code stopped. From outside came

the muffled noise of aircrafts. His eyes rested on the last lines of an official report which the

hefty Ludwell had made out for the Superintendent, an account of the abortive attempt by some

unidentified person to kidnap the ten-years-old daughter of a certain Mrs. Jenkins:

' Witness Mr. Lennox, of 20 St. Andrew's Avenue, Wembley, described the man as particularly dark-haired, thick-set, middle-aged and with a limp. Mr. Rowlandson of 7, Cranley

Gardens, Muswell Hill, N. 10 asserted that he was short, of slight build with fair hair and

wearing a dark-brown suit. Mrs. Jenkins of 12, Palmerston Road, East Sheen, agreed with this

description, except that she thinks the suit was black. When asked what she could remember, her

daughter, Susan Lee Jenkins said she was unable to remember anything'

Sergeant Elmer wondered if he would have had any better luck if he had been on the roof Garden

instead of Ludwell. But he hadn't been. It was always like that when something important

happened at the Airport, he always had to be somewhere else. It didn't matter where; it was never

where anything was going on.

Between the 'somewhere else' where in his absence something was happening, and 'here' where

in his presence nothing ever happened, ran the monotonous story of his police life. It reminded

him of the doubtful authenticity of the anonymous telephone message. It simply couldn't be

serious. It would have been if someone else had taken it. He would have been, of course, hanging

on somewhere where the telephone wouldn't have rung, except if it had been a wrong number.

He was alone in the Office, apart from the duty man in the radio-control room. It was situated on

the ground floor of the Queen's Building, a few yards from the place where the kidnapper had

tried to make off with Sue Lee Jenkins, and because he had been in the right place at the right

time it was Ludwell who was now searching for the man. The greater part of the police available

was committed to the security of the Russian delegation. That was where the Superintendent

was. He must locate him and pass on the information received, which he himself didn't believe. It

was only sure it had come from a German. That much he had learned from his contacts with the

passengers: to distinguish their impossible accents and to calm down their impossible agitations.

The story could be, but wasn't necessarily accurate, particularly since it had been told to him. (If

it had been told to someone else, it would probably have been true.) It could be just a stupid

hoax. It wouldn't be the first time. Two months after he'd been posted to Heathrow, just such a

voice had informed him that there was a dead body in the toilets of Terminal 3. He had wanted to

be the first on the scene of the crime. And he had been. Only the corpse had been that of a dead

bird. Since then he'd been known as 'Canary' Elmer. He'd suspected it had been someone from

the Unit.

He wasn't bitter about it any more, but he was still wary of spectacular pieces of information

given over the telephone by people who refused to identify themselves. But Regulations were

explicit. Any information which was not entirely beyond the bounds of reason (doesn't concern,

for example, stealing the moon) had to be treated seriously and the corresponding measures had

to be taken; these too were carefully set out in Regulations. Regulations had a section for

everything, they catered for all eventualities. Everything, that is, except how to go on working

with pride, dignity and enthusiasm when a man trained to protect people finds himself

confronted with the corps of a dead canary.

He had to admit that the presence of the Russians ensured a certain measure of probability. It was

true that no one had gone in for killing Russians in the same way as they has Americans and

Europeans, but why shouldn't they start somewhere? There were people who could find good

reasons for it. If the information was genuine, perhaps this could be that really big thing he'd

been longing for all the time he'd been guarding passengers from having their pockets picket and

directing them to the nearest buffet. That is, of course, unless someone else took over.

There had always been a 'lack of understanding between colleagues', a merging of areas of

competence, a criss-crossing of professional paths and trespassing on each others' provinces

between the Metropolitan Police and the Airport Security Services, the two pillars of order at

Heathrow, even big ones. Only not for him, Elias Elmer. Always for someone else. Someone

who was in the right place at the right time.

In 1974, the Irish Guards had taken over Heathrow in anticipation of an IRA terrorist attack with

SAM missiles. Then, four years later, the army had once again occupied the aerodrome during

the negotiations between Egypt and Israel. Today the security has been strengthened by Special

Branch, but mainly in a routine way. Elmer wondered whether that made the telephone message

any more probable. There had been some robberies too. In 1977 two men had broken into the

strong-room at the BA depot and got away with 2,000,000 worth of diamonds.

On another occasion, it had been a member of Airport Security who had committed the robbery.

Raymond, or some such name. He'd taken 2,000,000 in banknotes. They'd given him ten years for it. But he, Elmer, hadn't been involved. Nor had he been in any way responsible for the first

pair not being caught. While they had been despoiling the coffers at the BA depot, he had been

taking passengers round the Airport. When Raymond had made off with his 2,000,000, he had been returning lost children to their mothers.

Once upon a time, Hounslow Heath, a wilderness between the Bath and Staines Road, had been a

hunting ground with no closed season. The hunters had been highwaymen, and the excellent

game rich merchants whose business, or misfortune, whichever way you looked at it, called to the City by way of the stagecoaches which were obliged too pass over the Heath. Sometimes the

roles were reversed. The incompetent hunters hung on trees alongside the road which barely hold

its own against inroads of the thick forest.

Two centuries later, this same road, together with the village of Heathrow, was buried beneath

the reinforced concrete runways of London Airport. It seemed that the tradition of old, marry

England was still alive when in 1977 they found the body of a man with a Canadian passport and

three bullets in his chest at the foot of an air-duct. But the investigation had been entrusted to the

Middlesex Police. It would have made no difference if it had been the men in blue at the Airport.

He wouldn't have been allowed to conduct it. He might just have been allowed to keep guard

beside the air-duct to stop curious onlookers from hindering his colleagues during the

investigation.

Sergeant Elias Elmer got up ponderously from his chair. His arthritis had troubled him ever since

he had emigrated from his native Jamaica to Britain. Apart from the constant scorn reserved for

the London Caribbean Unit, chronic arthritis and cronic bronchitis were about all his new

homeland had given him up to now. But he was a resilient, stubborn man. He put his black,

conical helmet on his head, slackened off the strap beneath his bottom lip, grimaced at the

shooting pain in his bones and went out to look for the Superintendent.

The toilet cubicles on the first floor gallery of Terminal 2 were painted light blue and a modest

furnished cube. A porcelain toilet bowl, a white brass toilet paper holder, a knob for flushing

water and a narrow neon strip-light, fixed to the wooden partition above the door, which was

eight inches above the ground. There was nothing else in the cubicle.

Hans Magnus Landau placed his square executive briefcase on the lid of the toilet and opened it

with the easy movement of long practice. He took from it a vanity mirror and a length of

sellotape with which he fixed the mirror to the wall at eye level. He took out a black wig and

shook it slightly to make it look more natural; then he placed it over his own hair. The unkempt

wig irritated him, but he knew from past experience that the modern fashion of sculptured wigs

was much better for covering up the tell-tale joins with the skin.

He took off his glasses and put them in the case; beneath his eyelids he placed thin, brown

contact lenses, adjusting them expertly with his thumb and forefinger they lent a pleasantly warm glow to his watery, expressionless gaze. From a make-up box he took out a tube of

Egyptian brown henna paste, spread several blobs of it with a cotton pad on his face as a base,

carefully tapping and spreading it out over his skin so that his pale northern color became dark,

sun-burnt and southern looking. When he had practiced this make-up beforehand, it had usually

taken him 10 to 15minutes. By the end of his practice sessions the time had regularly been less

than 12 minutes. He wondered if he could do it in that time now.

Time played an important role in his plan. Time was the key factor which guaranteed its success

in every phase, or if he didn't keep to it, its failure. He was certain it would succeed. Time was

going to work for him since he had always worked for time and on time. He was a man of

accuracy and precision. He functioned like a machine which had been so well wound by nature

that apart from occasional cleaning and inspection, no further attention was necessary.

This time he had made up his face in eleven and a half minutes. It made no difference at all to his

plan but it was pleasing to his vanity. He could still work better and faster. It had always been

like that with his accounts, and now it was so with his disguise. Capability lies in Willpower, his

father used to say when Willpower, together with Steel and Blood, was still in fashion, and until,

in front of the allied investigating judges, it had been replaced by Force, or at worst, by Need.

The black, graying beard too he stuck on quicker than in practice. He turned the white raincoat

he had been wearing inside-out round. Now he was in a black raincoat. He took a folding

walking-stick from his case and pushed the top into the hole in the bottom of a board with the

name in large letters:

MR. DR. JULIUS UPENKAMPF

He put back the make-up box in its place. Then he examined himself carefully for several

minutes in the mirror before putting that away in the case too. He said, in English from which by

dint of stubborn practice he had managed to banish at least for that sentence all trace of the harsh

German accent:

'The Deutsche Bank of Cologne has reserved a suite for you at the King George Hotel, Sir.

Where is your luggage?'

He knew, of course, that the Managing Director would have no luggage, but someone sent to

meet him from the King George Hotel couldn't know that. Perhaps the refinement wasn't really

necessary, but he kept it nevertheless. It was such attention to detail which made his plan perfect.

Perfect, like the complicated calculations in which all mathematical processes, just because of

their infallibility, down to the smallest operation, merge into the uniquely possible result.

He returned the mirror to the briefcase and shut the lid. He ran some water to lend authenticity to

his lengthy stay in the cubicle. He went out with his left leg limping. He rinsed the traces of the

henna from his fingers at one of the wash basins. He was surrounded by the hallowed silence in

which humans carry out their dirtiest necessities, a silence only disturbed by the gurgling of

water and the distant noise of the Airport.

To the southeast the Boeing 747 from Rome was circling above Epsom,