L ater, when Janet watched a recording of the solitary press conference, it was difficult for her to believe that she was the person smiling the smiles and saying the words, a self-effacing, modest woman refusing to accord herself any special attributes (what special attributes did she have, for Cod’s sake!) or make any particular claims. She took hardly any recollection at all from the conference room itself, a smoky, jostled, yelling chamber where she confronted more journalists and television cameras than ever before and subjected herself to an inquisition that went on for more than two hours: at the end her voice croaked with overuse and her eyes watered from the tobacco sting.
She talked of her ecstatic delight at John being freed. His apparent fortitude was staggering: he was suffering some deprivation but there were no indications of permanent physical or mental harm: yes, he had been tortured but not seriously: yes, she had always known that one day he would be freed; no, she’d never despaired: yes, she looked eagerly forward to their time together now: no, they had not yet fixed a date for the delayed wedding: yes, of course it was something they would have to arrange but ensuring John was fully recovered was the first priority: no, she did not know the details which had enabled the incursion force to go into Lebanon and get him out: yes, she knew of the international furor: yes, she thought the invasion was justified because the country itself appeared willing to allow gangsterism and terrorism to continue unchecked: yes, she worried desperately about other hostages still detained whose predicament might be worsened by what had happened, but hoped it would act as a warning to the gangs and groups holding these remaining hostages that they were vulnerable, and lead to other early releases: yes, she welcomed the decision and strength of America, which she sincerely thanked, in taking the decision to mount the rescue: no, she did not regret what she had attempted, nor the difficulties she had personally experienced, in coming here and doing what she’d done: yes (a pause here because she could not help it), she had occasionally behaved stupidly and had been lucky to escape unscathed: but yes, she would do it all again, if the outcome were the same as it was today.
After the conference Janet agreed to separate, individual television interviews with the four major American networks and then the English and the French and the German until at the end she was parroting her replies, dull-eyed and dull-eared, scarcely waiting for the predictable questions to be posed before going into her prepared and rehearsed and by now practically cliched answer.
She slumped in the back of the U.S. embassy car taking her back to the hotel, limp and wrung out, her mind hardly capable of sustaining a single thought and certainly not a continuous contemplation. Incredibly, there were still more cameramen and journalists at the Churchill. Janet pushed through them, refusing another questioning session, careless of the photographs being taken as she shuffled into the elevator to go up to her room.
There were call-back messages from her parents and Partington and Zarpas. Janet let herself drop backwards on to the bed, literally prostrated by the ordeal she had undergone, relegating everything to the following day.
The exhaustion from not sleeping at all the previous night overtook her but Janet did not lapse completely into sleep. It was a suspension, halfway between sleep and wakeful ness, a pleasantly lightheaded sensation: she wondered if this were what it was like to be a drug addict after a fix, suspended beyond the need to reason or worry or think, wrapped in the softest, thickest, most protective cotton wool. Everything had happened to her, so nothing else could, not any more: no more hurt to feel. No more pain, not more bruising. Safe, like she’d always wanted to be.
The telephone rang, distantly, but she ignored it. It stopped and rang again at once. Stopped and rang again. Stopped and rang again. And then again, worming its way into her semi-consciousness. She lifted it at last, without identifying herself, waiting for the caller to speak.
“I want to come up.”
“No.”
“We have to talk.”
“No.”
“You know we have to talk.”
“I said no.”
“Please!”
Janet couldn’t remember his pleading before. She remembered something else, though. We just didn’t see the curve until it was almost too late… everyone got their share. “What about?”
“You know what about.”
She had to know, completely. “Where?”
“Let me come up?”
We’ve had a wire in your hotel bedroom for weeks. Heard every sigh and groan. “No. Somewhere else.”
“You choose.”
Yes, thought Janet. She had to choose. At last. “Is your car here?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll use the emergency exit.”
Did Willsher and his men know about her use of the fire escape stairs? wondered Janet, as she pushed against the heavy locking bar and began to descend the stone steps. What Willsher knew-what anyone knew-didn’t matter any more.
Baxeter must have moved the Volkswagen because it was directly opposite the door through which she emerged. As she approached he leaned across as she always thought of him as doing and thrust the door open for her. Janet sat with her back partially against the door, determined to look directly at him.
“Do you want to drive around?” he said.
“I don’t mind.”
“It might be best.”
“I said I didn’t mind.”
Baxeter started the car and ground the gears like he normally did and Janet thought, why can’t I feel like I should feel! Why can’t I hate the bastard instead of feeling like I do about him! He took the road towards the mountains, the mountains where they’d first realized what was happening between them, and Janet recognized it at once. Unthinking or intentional?
Wanting to unsettle him Janet said: “The Americans know.”
“What!”
“About us, everything. Willsher told me today.”
Baxeter drove for several moments without responding. Then he said: “Shit!”
“That fits well enough a lot of what happened.”
“Everything worked out as it was planned,” Baxeter insisted, almost defiantly. “You got John back.”
“The psychologist thinks he’s going to be OK.”
“That’s good.”
“I’m waiting,” said Janet.
They were on the central plain now, in heavy darkness, away from any street or village lights. Baxeter coasted the car into the side of the road but didn’t look at her when he stopped. He said, simply: “It was an exchange.”
“The twelve extra men?”
Despite the darkness she was aware of his nodding. Baxeter said: “You know what it’s like in Beirut, faction fighting faction, gang fighting gang. The Shia group holding John were warring with a group holding twelve of our people… people we had to get safely back: Israel always gets its people back. You know that…”
Entebbe, remembered Janet. She said: “What was the deal?”
“We got our soldiers, the Shias got Americans delivered up to them, on a plate…”
“I can’t believe you did that!” said Janet, incredulous. Why not? Weren’t these people-all of them-capable of anything!
“Your arrival, all the publicity, was the way to do it. The idea was to leak information sufficiently accurate to persuade the Americans to go at a time and on a day when they would be expected. In return we got our hostages.”
“You knowingly set the Americans up!”
“ Appeared to,” qualified Baxeter. “Half an hour before the Americans landed we broadcast as supposed Shias exchanging last minute information on the wavelength we knew the Americans were monitoring. So they were warned well in advance. It was really the Shias who got ambushed.”
Janet was staggered by the matter-of-fact cynicism. Everyone got their share, she thought once more. “John!” said Janet, in abrupt awareness. “There was no need under that arrangement with the Shias for John to be actually gotten out!”
Baxeter looked at her at last: it was difficult for her properly to discern his features. “The Americans had to be successful, to mitigate any bad feeling between us if they discovered what was really happening. Which you tell me they have.”
“If the Americans hadn’t reached Kantari, you’d have got John out?”
Baxeter nodded again. “But it wasn’t necessary. The American assault was brilliant: they did it.”
“If you’d had to rescue John he would have been handed over at the embassy where we were, in Beirut? On the hill at Yarzy?” persisted Janet, in growing comprehension.
“Yes,” Baxeter confirmed.
“But not by a group of Israelis?”
“No.”
“That’s why I was allowed along!” Janet said. “You didn’t agree to my coming! You needed me, if the American assault didn’t work!”
“It was an insurance,” the Israeli conceded.
“Oh, you are!” Janet said. “You are a bastard.”
“Everything had to be covered,” Baxeter said.
At last, Janet thought: the complete, ugly, nasty, opportunistic truth at last. “Willsher said you conned me,” reflected Janet, distantly. “I never guessed how completely…” Her voice becoming harder, she demanded: “How much did you laugh at me? How much did everyone laugh at me?”
“No one laughed at you,” Baxeter insisted. “It wasn’t like that.”
“I deserve to be laughed at,” Janet said, reflective again. “I must have been the best comedy act in years!”
“I haven’t lied-I haven’t conned-about one thing,” Baxeter said.
“There wouldn’t be any advantage left for you now, would there?” she accepted, bitterly.
“Stay!” Baxeter said.
“No,” Janet said at once.
Baxeter held his hands out, another pleading gesture. “OK!” he said. “Go to America. Be with John for a while. But you’ll come back: we both know you’ll come back.”
“No,” she said again. Where did the determination-a determination she didn’t feel-come from?
Baxeter did not speak for a long time. Then he said: “Don’t you love me?”
“That isn’t it.”
“That’s all it can be: all it needs to be.”
“That’s making it too simple.”
“John more then?”
“I won’t answer that.”
“You love me!” he shouted.
“Yes.” How could she say that, admit the truth, and feel nothing?
“Then why!”
“I don’t need that: not a feeling of love. I need to feel safe. With John I feel safe. I always have. I could never feel safe, with you.”
“That doesn’t make sense!”
“It doesn’t have to, not to you. All it has to do is make sense to me.”
“You’ll come back,” he said again. “I know you’ll come back.”
J anet visited Sheridan every day, as she’d promised, and was amazed at his visible improvement. By the time of their joint press conference, the gauntness had gone from his face and he’d overcome the tendency to lose concentration, turning inwardly upon himself. The media gathering was still strictly controlled, however. Sheridan gave only a brief description of the brutality during his imprisonment, refusing to elaborate too much because of the distress it might cause relatives and friends of hostages still held in Lebanon. The focus anyway was upon them both. All the questions about their hopes and their marriage that had been put to Janet were repeated and for over an hour they strolled in the embassy grounds, hand in hand and arm in arm and embracing, for the benefit of the camermen.
They were driven directly from the embassy to the airport. On the plane a curtained alcove had been arranged in the first class section, to give them some privacy. The steward offered champagne even before takeoff and they accepted.
“Here’s to us,” toasted Sheridan and Janet replied: “Here’s to us.”
“No more upsets,” promised Sheridan, as the plane climbed, banked over the island, then set its course. “From now on it’s just us, never apart. We’re going to be so happy, darling.”
“I know we are,” said Janet. “So happy.” It had been naive of her to have expected Baxeter to attend the press conference, but she’d hoped he would. She’d wanted very much to see him, just once more. That’s all, though: just once more. She wouldn’t come back: although she might want to, she definitely wouldn’t come back.