interruption. You will all stay here, sitting exactly where you are, until we tell you what to do.’
A voice, male, angry and American, asked from the middle of the auditorium, ‘Who are you and what the hell do you want?’ The Arab swayed back to the microphone he had just left, and with the contemptuous suavity of a diplomat, replied, ‘I am sorry, I am not taking questions at this juncture.’ Then, just to make sure he was not mistaken for a diplomat, he went on. ‘We are not people who believe in unnecessary violence. However, when I fired the shot into the ceiling to attract your attention, I had set this little catch here so that the gun only fires one shot at a time. If I change the catch’ – he did so while holding the weapon half-aloft like an arms instructor with an exceptionally ignorant class – ‘the gun will continue to fire until the magazine is empty. I hope that is clear.’
The Arab left the hall. People held hands; there were occasional sniffs and sobs, but mostly silence. Franklin glanced across to the far left of the auditorium at Tricia. His assistants were allowed to come to his lectures, though not to sit in direct line of sight – ‘Mustn’t start me thinking about the wrong thing.’ She didn’t appear frightened, more apprehensive about what the form was. Franklin wanted to say, ‘Look, this hasn’t happened to me before, it isn’t normal, I don’t know what to do,’ but settled instead for an indeterminate nod. After ten minutes of stiff-necked silence, an American woman in her mid-fifties stood up. Immediately one of the two visitors guarding the door shouted at her. She took no notice, just as she ignored the whispers and grabbing hand of her husband. She walked down the central aisle to the gunmen, stopped a couple of yards short and said in a clear, slow voice suppurating with panic, ‘I have to go to the goddam bathroom.’
The Arabs neither replied nor looked her in the eye. Instead, with a small gesture of their guns, they indicated as surely as such things can be that she was currently a large target and that any further advance would confirm the fact in an obvious andfinal way. She turned, walked back to her seat and began to cry. Another woman on the right of the hall immediately started sobbing. Franklin looked across at Tricia again, nodded, got to his feet, deliberately didn’t look at the two guards, and went across to the lectern. ‘As I was saying …’ He gave an authoritative cough and all eyes reverted to him. ‘I was saying that the Palace of Knossos was not by any means the first human settlement on the site. What we think of as the Minoan strata reach down to about seventeen feet, but below this there are signs of human habitation down to twenty-six feet or so. There was life where the palace was built for at least ten thousand years before the first stone was laid …’
It seemed normal to be lecturing again. It also felt as if some feathered cloak of leadership had been thrown over him. He decided to acknowledge this, glancingly at first. Did the guards understand English? Perhaps. Had they ever been to Knossos? Unlikely. So Franklin, while describing the council chamber at the palace, invented a large clay tablet which, he claimed, had probably hung over the gypsum throne. It read – he looked towards the Arabs at this point – ‘We are living in difficult times’. As he continued describing the site, he unearthed more tablets, many of which, as he now fearlessly began to point out, had a universal message. ‘We must above all not do anything rash’, one said. Another: ‘Empty threats are as useless as empty scabbards’. Another: ‘The tiger always waits before it springs’ (Hughes wondered briefly if Minoan Civilization knew about tigers). He was not sure how many of his audience had latched on to what he was doing, but there came an occasional assenting growl. In a curious way, he was also enjoying himself. He ended his tour of the
A voice, male, angry and American, asked from the middle of the auditorium, ‘Who are you and what the hell do you want?’ The Arab swayed back to the microphone he had just left, and with the contemptuous suavity of a diplomat, replied, ‘I am sorry, I am not taking questions at this juncture.’ Then, just to make sure he was not mistaken for a diplomat, he went on. ‘We are not people who believe in unnecessary violence. However, when I fired the shot into the ceiling to attract your attention, I had set this little catch here so that the gun only fires one shot at a time. If I change the catch’ – he did so while holding the weapon half-aloft like an arms instructor with an exceptionally ignorant class – ‘the gun will continue to fire until the magazine is empty. I hope that is clear.’
The Arab left the hall. People held hands; there were occasional sniffs and sobs, but mostly silence. Franklin glanced across to the far left of the auditorium at Tricia. His assistants were allowed to come to his lectures, though not to sit in direct line of sight – ‘Mustn’t start me thinking about the wrong thing.’ She didn’t appear frightened, more apprehensive about what the form was. Franklin wanted to say, ‘Look, this hasn’t happened to me before, it isn’t normal, I don’t know what to do,’ but settled instead for an indeterminate nod. After ten minutes of stiff-necked silence, an American woman in her mid-fifties stood up. Immediately one of the two visitors guarding the door shouted at her. She took no notice, just as she ignored the whispers and grabbing hand of her husband. She walked down the central aisle to the gunmen, stopped a couple of yards short and said in a clear, slow voice suppurating with panic, ‘I have to go to the goddam bathroom.’
The Arabs neither replied nor looked her in the eye. Instead, with a small gesture of their guns, they indicated as surely as such things can be that she was currently a large target and that any further advance would confirm the fact in an obvious andfinal way. She turned, walked back to her seat and began to cry. Another woman on the right of the hall immediately started sobbing. Franklin looked across at Tricia again, nodded, got to his feet, deliberately didn’t look at the two guards, and went across to the lectern. ‘As I was saying …’ He gave an authoritative cough and all eyes reverted to him. ‘I was saying that the Palace of Knossos was not by any means the first human settlement on the site. What we think of as the Minoan strata reach down to about seventeen feet, but below this there are signs of human habitation down to twenty-six feet or so. There was life where the palace was built for at least ten thousand years before the first stone was laid …’
It seemed normal to be lecturing again. It also felt as if some feathered cloak of leadership had been thrown over him. He decided to acknowledge this, glancingly at first. Did the guards understand English? Perhaps. Had they ever been to Knossos? Unlikely. So Franklin, while describing the council chamber at the palace, invented a large clay tablet which, he claimed, had probably hung over the gypsum throne. It read – he looked towards the Arabs at this point – ‘We are living in difficult times’. As he continued describing the site, he unearthed more tablets, many of which, as he now fearlessly began to point out, had a universal message. ‘We must above all not do anything rash’, one said. Another: ‘Empty threats are as useless as empty scabbards’. Another: ‘The tiger always waits before it springs’ (Hughes wondered briefly if Minoan Civilization knew about tigers). He was not sure how many of his audience had latched on to what he was doing, but there came an occasional assenting growl. In a curious way, he was also enjoying himself. He ended his tour of the
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