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gush of startled yellow, he watched Cale’s slip of paper disappear in a swirl of blue water as he obeyed the man and flushed.
    Instead of moving back to his seat, he decided to risk getting a sight of Pauline, maybe even speaking brief words with her. For it seemed the hijackers were in unchallenged command now, as they weren’t when Hasni first ordered him forward. He wanted to share this observation with his wife, to give comfort and be comforted.
    McCloud turned right toward the rear of the plane and came through a curtain. A stocky man in a sports shirt and jeans and a sort of cricketing sweater blocked his path. This must be, McCloud concluded from the automatic weapon the young man held in his hands, one of the brothers —Musa, temporarily down from upstairs. “Back, back,” Musa yelled.
    â€œI want to visit my wife,” he said. McCloud felt tears prick his eyelids. “Please. My wife is back there. I want to tell her everything will be all right. Have some compassion.”
    â€œYou’ve had a chance to start the compassion. All you damn fools up there. You’ve had a chance to set the tone,” said stocky Musa. He spoke with a Midlands British accent and smiled ironically but without too much enmity. “You should let her travel with you. I thought only the unwashed Arabs did such things to their wives.”
    â€œIt was a mix-up,” McCloud began to explain.
    â€œDon’t worry,” said the young man. “I’m a Christian just like you. Orthodox. We treat our women like shit, too. Back, back, or I’ll shoot you. What do I care for your sodding little marriage?”
    A small yelp escaped a middle-aged couple in the window seats who were listening to this exchange. He saw in their faces an unfeigned shock at the idea that there were people who could so brutally deny an appeal to do with marriage.
    Musa pushed him from behind with the metal handle of the weapon. Such hard edges! From the door of the first-class compartment Musa yelled in Arabic at Yusuf, abusing him for being too relaxed.
    Yusuf seemed to reply good-naturedly. Then he spoke in English to the passengers. “My brother Musa is ready to shoot dead anyone who tries to go out.” He gave a shrug, again a sporting man’s, a skirt chaser’s shrug. “That’s the way it is.” He walked down the aisle toward McCloud. “Sir, from now on you will need to piss and shit in a corner, in full view. Your lavatory rights are canceled.”
    But Yusuf sounded so friendly about it, McCloud was left with a basis for hoping this was as severe as they’d be on him.
    The lights were dimmed. Taliq announced from the flight deck that passengers should take some rest while he and his brothers of the Arab Youth Popular Socialist Front examined their passports. There was actually, McCloud thought, a quotient of paternal care in his voice.
    McCloud noticed that Tom Gullagara did not settle to sleep. He sat upright, as if to have a solid think. Occasionally he rolled a thin cigarette and smoked it. Tobacco, which the Barramatjara had encountered as a gift from cattlemen and governments, which had kept them captive in their reservation and soothed them and served as their wages when they worked livestock on the great stations! Now Tom smoked the first skinny stockman’s cigarette, the first bush durry, of his life as a hostage.

CHAPTER THREE:
    Searching Out the Guilty
    Few seemed to sleep, McCloud noticed, but all—even Cale/Bennett—seemed passive in the cabin. McCloud knew that in the version of this plane which they carried in their heads, there was a grenade on the flight deck above and Plastique in the hold below. People were sandwiched by these threats, and Yusuf strolled the aisle with an air of easy knowledge of how most of them breathed shallowly for fear of acting as a trigger.
    Secretly watching him around the edge of his seat, McCloud saw the young hijacker, as