The white telephone on his desk buzzed and he picked up the receiver to take a call from his chief engineer at their operational base in Senlis. Within sixty seconds of picking up the receiver, he had reached inside his desk, taken out a Winston cigarette, placed it between his lips, and was now holding the flame of his gold Dupont lighter to the end. During the night, someone had stolen all three Pumas.

I sat in the pilot’s seat of the Illushyn, and ran my eyes systematically over the controls. Up until three days ago, the largest aircraft I had ever flown was a twin-engined Piper Aztec, and now I was at the helm of an aircraft that was a Russian copy of a VC 10.

For the past three days, I had done nothing but take off, circuit and land a VC 10 at the British Airways training school; take off, circuit, land, until I was sick to the back teeth of doing it; take off, circuit, land until I could do it, do it all, without asking one single question. Right now, I was glad of those last three days, damned glad.

I checked the altimeter, the airspeed, and the rest of the instruments, took the control column in my left hand, and with my right hand, reached out and switched off the automatic pilot. A voice behind me suddenly bellowed through the intercom in Russian. I didn’t speak a great deal of Russian, but I knew enough to understand what the voice was saying. It was saying ‘Who the hell are you?’

I replied, in the best Russian I could muster. ‘Your plane is in the hands of the Israeli Freedom Front. Remain calm and nothing will happen to you; attempt to come through this door, and everyone on this aircraft will die.’ I knew there was no way they could get through the door. It had been designed to keep out the most determined of hijackers. The Stechkin pistol that the security guard doubtlessly carried, would in no way be capable of penetrating either the door or its bolts. I switched off the intercom, leaving them to stew.

Ten miles out over the North Sea, I looked carefully at the radar screen, and scanned the clear sky with my eyes. Then I started a long banking turn to the right and the English Channel. I was going to have to keep a sharp eye out. I had no flight plan filed for the course I was flying, and, moreover, I was heading up the Channel and straight across one of the world’s busiest air corridors.