Hostage

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I have never been so moved by the beauty of our earth. Excitement of course sharpens the senses. Man is still enough of an animal to be far more keenly observant when he is in danger or engaged in illegalities; but I know that at any time I should have responded to the stillness and colours of the inlet and the strangely decisive shape of the cliff which faced me across the water.

I lay among the terraces of olive on the steep northern slope of the cove with nothing to do till after sundown and probably nothing then. In an emergency I could reach the edge of the water by following a precipitous goat track which cut down through the crumbling stone walls. My orders were to delay or distract any interference on this, the only accessible side. It was unlikely that there would be any, for the water was out of sight from the scattered village behind and above me, and two cottages at the head of the inlet were safely tucked away up a winding valley. It may be that some money had passed to ensure that the fishermen and their families stayed indoors or visited the cinema. At any rate I was told that I need not worry about them.

The sheer face of yellowish rock opposite to me started at a height of perhaps two hundred feet and slanted downwards across the south side of the cove until it turned the corner and plunged into the open sea. The crest was a straight diagonal line separated from the sky by a narrow band of olive; at its foot was the brilliance of blue water sparkling in the evening sun. It may have been the diagonal which created the multiformity of beauty as if one were to paint a three-sided landscape, the bottom horizontal, the frame then running up from the lower right hand corner at an angle of thirty degrees. It was an uncompromising frame and its regularity, enhancing the richness and detail of living earth by a sort of cosmic horizon, was at a guess what moved me to rejoice in the unknowable purpose it served. I haven’t anything which could fairly be called religion beyond a vague reluctance to ascribe too much to accident.

In the short dusk I moved lower down the slope so that I would be within reach of the boat when it arrived. There I commanded the path to the water and an even rougher one which followed the lowest tiers of olive to the head of the cove. The only sounds were from the distant village: a final cock-crow and the bleating of goats. There was no wind. Even if a norther had suddenly sprung up, the cove was sheltered. That small indentation in the savage north-west coast of Paxos had been well chosen. I was told that shipping rarely came close in apart from tourist caiques doing the round of the island in fine weather and the occasional boat of a lobster fisherman.

An hour before the moon rose the motor cruiser was lying under the cliff. She had cut her engines and put out lights, and I would not have known she was there if not for muffled sounds of wood on wood and wood on metal as her cargo was manhandled for easier transhipment. The coaster was bang on time quarter of an hour later. The black bulk of her, darker than the night, could be distinguished and the throb of the diesels heard, but there was no risk that she would be identified since the operation was carried out too swiftly for anyone to stumble down through the olive groves and interrupt it. In any case I doubt if police or coastguards kept an eye on the north-western cliffs where approachable beaches were few and small, and only two could be reached from inland.

I heard the coaster’s derrick swing out and lift a load from the cruiser. In five minutes more both craft had left the cove. When the coaster was a few miles out with no other shipping in sight she put on her lights and would have seemed to any observer to be on course from Preveza to Brindisi. I saw no more of the cruiser.

For a while I stayed on in the silver peace and silence after the moon had risen – partly because I felt I ought to make certain that no one else showed any interest in the cove and partly that I was reluctant to leave that little, secluded meadow of the sea, the memory of which will haunt me for ever. A mixture of motives so curious that one must probably be untrue. I cannot say which.

Following my orders I returned to my sleeping bag on the other side of the island without meeting a soul. Early in the morning I took the daily packet to Corfu with my bedroll on my back, inconspicuous among other holiday makers. It was a rough passage against a norther and I wondered whether the cruiser had put in for shelter and where. In the evening I was back in London, apparently after a weekend in the sun.

My knowledge of the reasons for it is very limited. I know the motor cruiser came from Libya, taking some thirty-six hours. I can guess that the cargo transhipped was a crate of arms or explosives, but whether for us or for Ulster or Italy is not my business as a cell leader. I am trained to obey, to ask no questions and to care for the safety of my partisans.

That last entry was originally just a casual, personal note: an undated aid to recollection. Now that I have decided to keep a record of events I have put a date on it. The night of June 2nd is where this diary should start.

Why a diary? Because I am uneasy; because I cannot make sense of the operation, and weekly or daily details of which I do not yet see the importance may take on a definite meaning when I refer to them later. Such a diary is, I admit, a menace to the security of Magma, but I am confident it will never be read. I have treated every tenth page and inserted into the padded cover of a luxurious yearbook – designed with conspicuous vulgarity for the desk of some producer of superfluous rubbish – a small incendiary device which will infallibly destroy it if opened by anyone but myself.

Four days after my return to London the press carried a story of the hijacking of a consignment of arms from a beach in Libya on the night of May 31st. Surprisingly, responsible papers, as well as the more sensational rags, made it front page news, giving a small theft as much publicity as if we had robbed the Bank of France. France I mention because the security conferences which so excite the media seem to be taking place in Paris. Interpol has been called in. The papers always report this to impress us with the enormity of the crime, though Interpol is hardly more than a centre of hot lines connecting one set of peaked caps with another.

After allowing for speculative additions and the usual omission of solid facts, here is the approximate picture:

A motor cruiser, the
Chaharazad
, was discreetly taking delivery of the arms on a deserted beach not far from Benghazi – as likely as not, all that remained of a long vanished port. When she arrived a truck was already waiting. The Lebanese owner and his deck hand went ashore, approaching the truck without any special caution, and were quickly nobbled by three masked men. The hijackers then went aboard the cruiser, held up the master and engineer and locked all four in the small forward cabin.

The prisoners heard the crate being loaded and the engines starting up just before dawn. For a day, a night and most of the next day the
Chaharazad
proceeded at her cruising speed of about fourteen knots – so far as they could tell – and in the evening began to idle along. They were then blindfolded and tied up. The master, apparently a temperamental and indignant Greek, dared to resist, was immediately shot dead and thrown overboard. After that the remaining three gave no trouble at all.

Soon after dark they heard the cargo transhipped to some other vessel. A few hours later, still tied up and blindfolded, they were set ashore in the cruiser’s dinghy, and it was not until late next day that they were spotted by fishermen on a remote and inaccessible pebble bank below the western cliffs of the tiny island of Antipaxos.

At first these three surviving Lebanese stated merely that the
Chaharazad
had been hijacked and that at least one of the hijackers was British. They didn’t say a word about arms until that side of the story was publicised by the Libyan Government. Now, since the Libyans are known to be supplying arms to the Palestinians, to Ulster and to any revolutionary organisation which has the money, why on earth set the cat among the pigeons by admitting what the cruiser was up to and inviting investigation? They could have allowed the Lebanese story to stand.

I have no doubt that this was the transhipment I witnessed and that Magma is responsible. We can be proud of an operation brilliantly plotted and carried out on the strength of first-class inside information. The death of the master is regrettable but could not be helped. Yet I would dearly like to know what sense there can be in so much planning and expense to acquire a crate of arms. As yet we do not need more than the small quantity available for emergencies, and there is no shortage of explosives.

So my curiosity is natural, but again I ask myself: why a diary? Even assuming that the story carried by all the media is true – and it tallies closely with the little I know of the truth – I am in no danger. I obeyed orders and have no reason to question them.

Do I then have reason to question myself? That may be the answer. Accident has thrown me between two mysteries. If I had supervised this transhipment in, say, London docks, I should have downed a few triumphant drinks with my partisans and thought no more of it. If I had been a casual traveller in Paxos, I should never have forgotten sea and cliff and the silent passing of colour into night, but disassociated it completely from my life of revolutionary violence. It could be the combination of the two which provokes a need for confession, separating myself into both sinner and priest.

The obscenities of the society I seek to destroy are definite, while the beauty which I may destroy with them is unknown and unlimited. A statement of the obvious. Preserve the blossom and your insecticide destroys the bees. Control the flooding and you pollute the estuary. We can never foresee the appalling damage done by long-range good intentions and I suspect that the Cosmic Purpose cannot foresee it either, that it is in fact a Cosmic Experimenter.