The Munich Dilemma
by Sinbad

Chapter 8

Roger Taylor was mildly surprised to receive a phone call from his son during the working day, but he had no sense of alarm when he took the call. Imagining that he would be asked for permission to go to the cinema or something similar, he greeted his son, but then listened in silence while Ricky told him the events of the afternoon and asked him to come and get them from the police station. Apparently the police weren't prepared to drive them home.

By the time he put the phone down he was a little stunned. He remembered very clearly the episode five years previously when they'd been ultimately foiled by Kamille Blumfeld, after chasing her and her victim to the ancient city of Petra in the Jordanian desert. And now she might have turned up again, this time as a man. No wonder the security services were reacting in force, a known terrorist on campus during the Olympics had potential for being a very big disaster. And now Ricky and Chris were involved, and Bettina too.

He picked up the phone. “Can you get me through on a secure line to Mr Cholmondeley Farquharson at the British Foreign Office, please? He may be known there as Lord Beaulieu.” He pronounced the name, correctly, as 'Chumley Farkerson' and it was only a minute before his extension rang and he found Mr Farquharson on the other end of the line. He demanded to know what the situation was, how this terrorist came to be moving about freely in such a sensitive area and why the German police weren't prevented from turning up at the scene with brightly marked police cars and blue flashing lights. He allowed some of the anger to show in his voice.

He was on the phone for a long time. He spoke briefly a few times, but mostly he listened. Then when he put the phone down, he left his office, put his head around the door of his secretary's office and announced that he was leaving early and that he was going to pick up his son from the police station. And a moment later he poked his head around again. “Would you ask Stefan to bring the Council car around? I think this is an occasion that warrants use of the the official vehicle.”

By the time Roger had reached ground level, the car, a big black Jaguar, was waiting at the roadside. And he was whisked smoothly through the city traffic, first to the police station, and then to Bettina's house and finally to his own home. He thanked Stefan the chauffeur before waving him off and going indoors to explain to his wife what was happening.

The police had told them all repeatedly that their involvement was now at an end, so there was nothing for any of them to do but sit at home. In the attempt at getting on with their lives, they played Monopoly. None of them really felt like it, and they packed it in unfinished after an hour. The boys went to bed early, exhausted, but weren't able to sleep. They lay in the dark talking until the early hours of the morning.

When dawn arrived, Ricky and Chris were deep asleep, despite the fact that the curtains in their bedroom were drawn back so the sun streamed into the room. Roger and Sophie were both up, Roger was bustling around in the kitchen making himself a cereal breakfast and listening to the news on the radio. His hand stopped dead, clutching the box of cereal which continued to pour flakes into his bowl until it overflowed and he distractedly stood the box on the table, when he heard the news headline.

Translated from the German, this is what the the newsreader announced: “Police were called to the Olympic Village for the second time in twenty-four hours, in the early part of this morning, after the Israeli Embassy in Bonn received an anonymous phone call in which the caller claimed that the entire Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and would be released in exchange for a number of political prisoners held in Israel. So far the accuracy of this is unconfirmed, but police have cordoned off the area of the competitors' accommodation area and tightened security throughout the Olympic village. Our reporter, Hans Oberdorf, is at the scene.”

Roger didn't wait to hear what Herr Oberdorf had to say. He bounded upstairs and into the boys' room.

“Chris, Ricky. Wake up. It's happened! You were right. A terrorist incident, right in the Olympic Village. Come on down and I'll put the TV on.” Roger turned to go back downstairs, turned again to check the boys were getting up and found neither had stirred. He went over to Roger's bed and shook his shoulder. His son grunted and settled deeper under the covers. He pulled the covers right off him and the boy, still apparently fast asleep, curled into a foetal ball. “Roger!” he shouted, and shook him by both shoulders roughly. One eye opened, and then the other, and Ricky peered blearily up at his father's looming form. “Wha..?”

“Get up and come downstairs. There's something you've got to see on TV. Now. See if you can wake Sleeping Beauty over there, and both of you get yourselves down to the living room as quick as you can.”

Roger left the room, and Ricky took a moment to digest the instruction. His father had never woken him like that before, so something out of the ordinary was up. He remembered their adventure the previous day. He swung himself out of bed and stumped across the room to wake his friend, which he did by the simple expedient of pinching him on underside of his exposed forearm.

“Ow!” yelled Chris. “What did you do that for?”

“You have to get up and go downstairs. Dad says there's something on TV we have to see. I think it'll be something to do with yesterday. Come on, get up!”

They both pulled dressing gowns on and shuffled down the carpeted stairs two flights to the big comfortable lounge room, where Roger was already glued to the television, listening carefully to a talking head on the screen. Ricky and Chris tried to follow the German, wishing Bettina was there.

As far as they could make out, the Israeli team were all huddled in one of the apartments of the block, an apartment, presumably much like the one Geoff Talbott was using, designed for just two people. There were thought to be three terrorists, heavily armed, holding them there and negotiations had already begun, around the demand of the terrorists for the release of no less than two hundred and thirty-four Arab and non-Israeli prisoners in Israel, as well as Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, two German terrorists held in German prison.

It was all a lot to take in. It was Chris who raised the first objection, saying that the group of men he'd been watching for so long and which included the man they'd known as Kamille Blumfeld, was eight people, so it didn't seem likely there were only three terrorists. They were just beginning to discuss this when the doorbell rang.

Roger opened the door to three men in dark suits, each with a briefcase in one hand. From behind Roger the boys could tell immediately these were Englishmen. Their clothes, the bowler hats two of them wore, their manner, all betrayed that these were Brits. And when Roger beckoned them inside and he had to back down the corridor ahead of the first of the visitors who was very fat so that there was no way Roger could have stepped aside to let him pass. And as he arrived in the living room where the boys were standing, they recognised Mr Farquharson himself, all the way from the Foreign office. He must have travelled through the night.

The big man was clearly grateful to settle into an armchair, which creaked a little under his weight, and he introduced his two colleagues from the counter-terrorism section of the Foreign Office as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, before relenting and giving their proper names. Ricky remembered Tweedledum and Tweedledee as fat schoolboys in the illustrations of the Lewis Carroll book, whereas the only fat person present was Farquharson himself. Ricky thought it was a bit off that a man of Mr Farquharson's size should give his two colleagues nicknames which implied that they were fat when they weren't.

Everyone started talking at once and Mr Farquarson took charge of the situation by waving a hand up and down petulantly until they all went quiet.

“Now,” he began, “let's start at the beginning. Ricky, I think it was you who first spotted Kamille?”

And Ricky told the story. Chris took over to tell the bit about following the group of suspects, and he took care to explain that there were eight of them including Kamille, and to describe them as best he could. He took care to explain Bettina's part in the story, and Mr Farquharson asked Roger if he could arrange for Bettina to join them. He went off to make some phone calls and Ricky conntinued his story.

Mr Farquharson was particularly interested in the boys' earlier experience leaving the Olympic village to watch the hockey match, and then returning, and the haphazard nature of the security.

“None of the security staff on the Olympic site are armed. The decision was made that the German authorities wanted delegates to feel welcomed and to have a light touch to the security arrangements. That seems to have been taken a little far, judging by your experience, and it's certainly backfired on them now. Still, it's easy to be wise after the event.”

He went quiet for a moment, gazing out of the window vacantly. No-one spoke since they all thought he hadn't finished. And sure enough, he continued:

“I fear that there will be a lot of criticism of the way the German authorities have prepared for the Olympics, and I worry that they may now over-react to try to convince the rest of the world that they can handle the situation. They would do better to ask for help from other countries but I doubt they'll do that. I want you remember something, though, boys. Remember it for the rest of your lives. Whether things go well from now on or go badly, there will be plenty of people who blame the German government, or its police force, or the Olympic committee, or the Israeli government, for this incident. All of them are wrong. We mustn't ever lose sight of the fact that the blame lies squarely with the terrorists. Nothing ever excuses terrorism. Nothing. Will you remember that?”

The boys both nodded. Ricky had a question to ask. “Who really is Kamille? What do you know about her?”

“There's not much I can tell you, I'm afraid. She went to ground after disappearing in Jordan and there's been nothing on the radar ever since. I have my own theory, which this tends to support. I think she's actually a man, a man who can pass for a woman. That's not actually all that difficult for some men. The walk and the voice are the give-aways, that and stubble on the chin. But a fair-haired man with a soft voice, a light beard and good skin can fool anyone if he's clever and gets the movements right. His morning bathroom routine would give him away, so he'd have to keep his distance to that extent, but I think the man you know as Kamille had been doing that for years by the time you came across him. He carried out his terrorist operations as a woman, and then faded into the background afterwards as a man. A clever ruse and very effective. The woman was less likely to be suspected, for some reason, although many of the world's most feared terrorists are now women, and her strength would come as a surprise to a would-be assailant. And the man is a handsome fellow and was able to seduce women like your Maureen to help him, even to go against every moral that they stood for in doing so. He's quite a fellow.

“Unfortunately we still know next to nothing about him. He's been very discreet, very cautious, and has never featured in the reports that are circulated among the world's anti-terrorism agencies. Kamille, on the other hand, warrants a thick file in the records of the Americans, the Brits, the Israelis, the Jordanians, the Egyptians and even the Indians. I don't know at this stage what the Germans may have on her. That's something to check, Harris.”

The younger man he addressed made a note.

Farquharson called out without turning: “Mr Taylor, may we trespass on your hospitality? I'd like to use your house as my headquarters. I'm not here officially, you understand, and it would be best if I'm not seen around the Consulate.”

Roger turned to his wife and they discussed something quietly.

“This house is not by any means spacious but if you're prepared to rough it we'll be honoured to have you. It'll mean a little re-arrangement, and if you'll come with me boys, I'll need your help. Come on!”

Roger led the boys upstairs and Sophie busied herself offering the guests something to eat. They accepted a snack, a toasted sandwich, and she went upstairs to the kitchen to get it ready.

Roger and the boys transferred all the boys' things into the other bedroom, the guest room. This room just had one bed but it was a double bed. The boys looked at it in alarm but said nothing. Back in the room they'd just vacated, they made the two beds up with fresh sheets while Roger retrieved a camp bed from the basement storeroom, and set it up between the other two beds. He couldn't help a wry smile as he imagined Chomondeley Farquharson settling his weight onto the camp bed and it collapsing under him. Mr Farquharson would have to be allocated one of the other beds, which apart from being sturdier were also a good bit wider than the camp bed.

Once they were satisfied that they had the room presentable they left it and went down to tell the men that their room was ready. The two younger men, Harris and his colleague, went out to the car that they'd left parked outside and unloaded three suitcases, two small ones and one very big one with Farquharson engraved on a metal plate beside the handle, and took them upstairs. If they were dismayed to discover that they were all three to share a room, they didn't show it. At least, thought Ricky, they weren't going to have to share a double bed.