Prologue

      The sun was orange and the sky was tinged with red. A shepherd’s sky, they had called it in Maglaj in the old days. Blood sky, they had called it after the shelling and sniping had started and the graveyard was full and you were afraid to cross the bridge from the old town to the new. But that was at dusk, when the light was fading and the night was gathering. And now it was only two in the afternoon.

      Amsterdam time; the same in Paris and Berlin. Four in the afternoon in Moscow, one in London, and eight in the morning in Washington. The shifts in time zone relevant because of what she had said four hours earlier and what would happen in eight hours’ time.

      The sky was deeper, redder. Perhaps those who clung to the old ways and the old traditions would have called it a sign, she thought; perhaps the women would have dipped their heads and hurried the children inside. Only now, because of the shelling and the sniping, they were inside anyway. Except when they went to the food kitchen, but that was a risk in itself.

      ‘Tell them we’re leaving,’ she told Maeschler.

      Somehow he had known, the captain thought. He pulled on the headset and pressed the transmit button on the left side of the control column.

      Lufthansa 3216 taking off, the Strike committee in the Cobra room below Downing Street was informed.

      Strike One, the political committee: the British Foreign Secretary and the ambassadors of the United States, France and the Federation of Russian States. Strike Two, the intelligence back-up: the Russian and American heads of station in London, the Frenchman from Paris, and Kilpatrick from Riverside. Knowledge of its existence and its machinations on a need-to-know basis, even within the governments represented.

      ‘So what now?’ Langdon asked. Langdon had been Foreign Secretary for three years.

      ‘We wait,’ Kilpatrick suggested. Because there’s nothing else we can do, because we don’t know what’s going to happen or where Lufthansa 3216 will go after Amsterdam. Even though the SAS have been at Heathrow since ninety minutes after the hijack.

      The images on the monitors at the end of the room changed: BBC first, ITV and CNN two seconds later, the picture on each the same. The Boeing 737 moving slowly, the words NEWS FLASH superimposed over the image, and the reporters describing the event and playing back the conversation which had preceded it.

      Lufthansa 3216 moving, the women heard on the transistor radios most of them carried. Lufthansa 3216 leaving Amsterdam …

      The demonstration outside the United Nations headquarters in New York had begun with one woman – seventy years old and a survivor of Auschwitz. In London it had been two women outside the St Stephen’s entrance to the House of Commons. Now the area outside the UN building and Parliament Square itself were filled, with similar demonstrations in most European cities.

      ‘Tower, this is Lufthansa 3216. Ready for takeoff.’

      ‘3216, cleared for takeoff. Surface wind two two five degrees, eight knots.’

      It was two days since Lufthansa 3216, with its hundred and thirty passengers and crew, had been seized. Twenty-eight hours since the leader of the hijack team had issued her demand, and four since she had announced her deadline. Eight hours to that deadline now and four to the emergency session of the United Nations Security Council which would vote on the demand.

      ‘Lufthansa 3216 …’

      ‘Go ahead, Tower.’ The words were picked up on VHF airband and transmitted live by the television and radio teams reporting from Schipol. ‘Good luck.’

      So what will the captain say, Kilpatrick wondered; how will the captain react? The captain was taking too