‘I asked you a question!’ he said. ‘How old are you? Eighteen, nineteen? You’re not very old, really, are you?
You’re just a child!’
The girl’s face went red. ‘I’m twenty, ‘she said angrily.
I’m not a child!’
‘You look like a child,’ Carl said. ‘You’re only two years older than my daughter. Why are you doing this?’
The girl laughed. She did not look at his eyes. ‘Why? You wouldn’t understand.’
‘I don’t think you understand what you are doing,’ Carl said. ‘None of the people in this plane has hurt you. We are all innocent. That man you killed – he wasn’t a spy, he was just an American businessman. You’ve never seen any of us before. Why do you want to kill us?’
The girl looked worried and angry. She pointed the gun at Carl’s head. ‘I don’t want to kill you,’ she said. ‘I want your government – your wife – to set our brothers free.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Carl, carefully. He watched the gun and the girl’s face, but he was not really afraid because he was still angry. He argued with the girl as though he was arguing with his daughter. ‘But remember what your brothers did. They tried to put a bomb on a plane. They wanted to kill innocent people like us. Why?’
