They had slept in a hostel for soldiers in transit.
No explanations from Crane, and Holt was less bothered at the silences with each day he spent in the man's company. He was into the rhythm of tagging along, speaking when he was spoken to, following Crane's lead.
They had had fruit and cheese for breakfast. He thought his beard was beginning to come, slowly enough, but starting to appear something more than just a laziness away from the razor. When he had stood in front of the mirror, when he had taken his turn at the wash basin, when he had looked at himself, then he had wondered how Jane would have liked his beard… only a short thought, a thought that was cut before being answered because Crane had been behind him and told him to put away his toothpaste, told him to get used to life without a toothbrush. No explanation, just an instruction.
It beat him, why they could not stay in a hotel when they had all the expense money available to pay for a suite at the Hilton, why they had to sleep in a hostel at eight shekels a night.
He had reflected. His mind had cast back to the Crimea journey, to the field of the Light Brigade on which he would have walked with Ben Armitage.
"Ours not to reason why."
That was life with Noah Crane.
"Ours but to do and die."
Pray God that was not life with Noah Crane.
When he had finished his breakfast Crane stood and walked away from the table. He wouldn't wait for Holt to finish what he was eating. Holt stuffed two apples into his trouser pockets, grabbed a slice of cheese and followed him out. At a table in the hallway Crane put down his bank notes, and waited for his four shekels of change. No tip.
They walked. Crane said that Holt was missing his morning exercises, so they wouldn't take a bus. Holt was used now to Crane's stride, his cracking pace. They started from old Jewish Jerusalem, with the walls of the old city behind them and the golden semi orb of the Dome of the Rock. If he ever returned to London… of course he would… When he returned to London no-one would believe he had been in Jerusalem and never visited the old city, never walked the route of the Cross. And he was fitter. He could tell that, he was beginning to match Crane stride for stride. Away along wide streets, under gently leaved trees, over steep hills, and into new Jewish Jerusalem, through suburbs of villas constructed of clinically cut sand rock.
They were on the fringe of the city, they climbed the last hill.
They were overtaken by the tourist coaches as they approached the memorial.
"Yad Vashem, Holt," Crane said. "It's where we remember the six million of our people that the Hun slaughtered."
"History makes man complacent, doesn't get people forward. Take the Irish… "
"Don't give me university crap. Isaiah, 56, 5. 'Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.' We do remember what happened to our people. If we ever forget them then that will be the day that the same can happen to us."
"I don't believe history tells us… "
"Holt, six million of our people went to the gas chambers and the furnaces. They didn't fight, they lay down.
Because we remember what happened, today we will always fight, we will never lie down. I don't want a debate, I'm just telling you."
They went into the low ceilinged bunker that was the heart of the memorial. They stood at the rail, they looked down on the stone floor in which were carved out the names of the 21 largest concentration camps.
Further from the rail were fading wreaths, and near to the back wall of rough cut lava rocks there burned a flame. Holt was the tourist, he gazed around him, as if he stared at the Kremlin cupolas, or the arches of the Coliseum, or the Arc de Triomphe, or the Statue of Liberty. He turned back to see if Crane was ready to move on. He saw the gleam of a tear rolling on Noah Crane's cheek. He could not help himself, he stared blatantly. He read the names… Treblinka, Auschwitz, Dachau, Belsen, Lwow-Janowska, Chetmno… He stood behind Crane so that he should no longer intrude into the privacy of his vigil.
Abruptly Crane swung away, marched out into the sunlight. They walked quickly.
Crane leading, Holt following.
They walked through a garden parkland that was laid out in memory of Theodor Herzl, the originator of the concept of a Jewish state. They went past the young sprouting trees and bank beds of flowers, and down avenues of bright shrub bushes. When they had crossed the parkland, when they looked down the hillside, Holt saw the terraced rows of graves with their slab stone markers. He stood on the high ground, he left the neat chip stone paths to Noah Crane. It was a personal pilgrimage. For a long time he watched the slow lingering progress of Crane amongst the graves.
Holt brushed the flies from his forehead. He was being given a lesson, that he was aware of. He thought that Crane did nothing by chance.
At the far end of the graveyard, Noah Crane looked up, shouted to Holt, "They're all here, Holt, the high and mighty and the unknowns. Men from the Stern Gang, from the Liberation War of '48, Sinai, Six Days, Yom Kippur, Netanyahu who led the raid to Entebbe, Lebanon, all the men who've given their lives for our state. We value each one of them, whether he's a hero like Netanyahu, whether he's a spotty faced truck driver who went over a mine in Lebanon. Whatever happens to me in the Beqa'a they'll get me back here, that's the best thing I know."
"That's mawkish, Crane."
"Don't laugh at me. This isn't a country that's going soft. You know, Holt, in the President of Syria's office there is one painting, one only. The painting is of the Battle of Hattin. You ever heard of that battle, you with all your history? 'Course you haven't… At the Battle of Hattin the great Saladin whipped the arse off the Crusaders. The President of Syria aims to repeat the dose. He aims to put us to the sword, and the rest of us into the sea. Got it?"
"Got it, Mr Crane."
"It's not my intention to end up here, Holt."
"Glad to hear it, Mr Crane."
"So you just remember each damned little thing that I tell you, each last damned little thing. You do just as I say, without question, no hesitation,"
Crane's voice boomed on the hillside. "That way I might just avoid the need of them cutting a hole for me
''Let's hope we can save them the trouble, Mr Crane."
Later, towards the end of the morning, with their kit, they were dropped off at the start point chosen by Noah Crane.
They were going walking in Samaria, north from Ramalleh towards Nablus, in the Occupied Territories.
Via a scrambled telephone link, Percy Martins reported progress to the Director General.
From Tork's office in the Tel Aviv embassy he spoke directly to the nineteenth floor at Century. By protocol he should have talked to Fenner. He hoped, fervently, that Fenner would hear he had bypassed him.
"Crane's taken the youngster for a few days into the Occupied Territories to get him thinking the right way, used to the equipment, used to the movement."
"And then they go?"
"They're going to be picked up near Nablus, they'll be taken to Kiryat Shmona, rest up for a few hours, then off."
"What state is the eye witness?"
"Holt's in a good state. He'll do well."
"How are they coming out?"
"They're going to have to walk out."
"Haven't you bent a few backs?"
"God knows, I've tried, but they're going to have to walk out."
"Anything new?"
"We have a fix on a training camp that is being run by Abu Hamid. We know exactly where to go for him."
"The Prime Minister wants it for Sylvester Armitage's memory. I want it for Jane Canning's memory.
I'm relying on you, Martins."
Martins, hired hand, third man on the Desk, first time running his own show, said defiantly, "You can depend on us, sir."
Crane was on watch, Holt drowsed.
For Holt, the night march with the laden backpack was the most exhausting experience of his life.
"They're going, Prime Minister, within a week."
"To bring me his head?"
"Regrettably not on a salver, but his head for all that." The Director General smiled.
"He's terribly lucky."
"Who is, Prime Minister?"
"This young man we've sent out there."
"The eye witness."
"Exactly, terribly lucky when so few people of his age have the chance afforded them of real adventure."
"Let us hope he appreciates his good fortune, Prime Minister."
"I have to tell you, I would be less than honest if I did not. I am already savouring the moment when I can recount this small epic to our friends in the States… "
"Forgive me, but they have a long road to walk."
"If I do not have the head of this Palestinian wretch, then most certainly I will have another head. It's your plan and your advice I'm taking."
The Director General smiled comfortably across the Downing Street sitting room.
"It was a very fine calculation then, Prime Minister, and in a number of particulars it is finer still."
The Prime Minister was gathering papers. The meeting was over. "His head or yours. Goodnight."
The second night out, and they had not been walking more than an hour and a half, and it was the third time that Holt had fallen, pulled over onto the rocks by the weight of his pack the moment he had lost his balance.
He heard the stones rumbling away on the hillside.
He could have cried in his frustration. He could hear the venom of Crane's swearing from in front.
Abu Hamid watched them coming.
He stood at the flap of his tent and studied the slow progress towards the camp of the girl who led the donkey, and behind it the crawling jeep. He could hear the soft cough of the jeep's engine as it idled. At that distance, even, more than half a mile, he knew that it was Fawzi's jeep.
She wore the floppy trousers of the Shi'as, and the short cotton skirt, and the full loose blouse, and the scarf tied tight over her head and then wrapped across her mouth to mask her face. She dressed in the clothes of a village girl of the Beqa'a. The jeep was a dozen paces behind her, but she made no effort to quicken her pace, or to move aside.
Abu Hamid sucked at a hardly ripe peach, swirling his tongue over the coarse surface of the stone. He knew that in the Beqa'a, under the eye of the Syrian army, under the control of the Syrian Intelligence agencies, nothing would happen by chance. He knew that it would not be by chance that a girl walked a donkey along the track that led only to the tent camp, and that the girl was followed by Fawzi's jeep. She was young, he was sure of that, he could see the smooth regular flow of her slim hips, the trousers and skirt could not hide the slender outline of the young body.
Abu Hamid took the peach stone from his mouth, threw it high into the coiled wire of the perimeter fence.
He called for the recruits to come forward, to break from their meal, to get off their haunches, make a formation. He lined them up, three untidy rows.
He turned to face the entrance to the camp.
Now the jeep accelerated and swung past the girl.
The donkey shied, and the girl held her course and seemed unaware of the jeep. She was lost for a moment in the dust thrown up by the jeep's wheels, and when she appeared again she still walked forward, light step, leading the donkey. Abu Hamid saw that the donkey had a pair of old leather pannier bags slung down on its flanks.
With a swaggering step Fawzi walked towards Abu Hamid. His hands rose to grip Abu Hamid's shoulders, he kissed him on both cheeks. Abu Hamid smelled the lotion that crept to his nostrils. Fawzi clapped his hands for attention, played the big man. For Abu Hamid it shamed the Palestinian revolution that Fawzi and his clumsy conceit should have control of the recruits, of himself. He watched the girl and the donkey approach the camp entrance. Fawzi had his back to the girl and the donkey, as if their time had not yet come. Fawzi addressed the recruits.
"Fighters of the Palestine revolution, I have news for you of an epic attack by the Popular Front deep into enemy territory. A commando force of the Popular Front has travelled to the heart of the Zionist state, and in so doing has disproved the claim of the Zionists that their borders are secured. The target was the principal bus terminus in Tel Aviv. The attack was timed for last Sunday morning, at the moment when the maximum number of enemy soldiers would be boarding transport to return to their units. The Zionists, of course, have attempted to minimise the effectiveness of our commando strike by releasing ridiculously false figures of the casualties inflicted. Their lies will not deflect the truth. Forty-eight of their soldiers were killed, more than a hundred were wounded. The heroism of the commando knew no limitations. They carried out, our men, an attack of greater pain to the enemy than the successful assault by hand grenade at the Dung Gate in Jerusalem against a military parade. Fighters, I said to you that the heroism of the commando knew no limitations. I grovel in admiration at such heroism. The plan of the attack allowed for the commando to place a bomb on the Tel Aviv to Jerusalem bus. The bomb was fitted with a timing device that would permit the commando to leave the bus en route with the bomb left under a seat. That was not good enough, fighters, for this heroic commando. They feared that after they had left the bus that there would be a small chance of the discovery of the bomb that would negate the attack.
Such heroism, fighters… The commando was governed by total commitment to the cause of the Palestine revolution… They set the timer early. They stayed with the bomb until it exploded. By their selfless action they determined that there was no possibility of the bomb being discovered and rendered harmless. For the success of the revolution they gave their own lives.
Fighters, the strike force of the commando came from this camp. They were your brothers in arms. Fighters, Mohammed and Ibrahim were of your blood. They shared your hardships, they shared your food, they shared your tents. They were given the chance to wage total war against the enemy, against your enemy, they did not fail the cause of the Palestine revolution."
Abu Hamid stood numbed. The man who was an incessant pain in the arse was now a hero. The thief was now a martyr.
The girl with the donkey walked slowly through the entrance gap in the wire.
The recruits gazed awestruck at Fawzi. They had clung to each word he had spoken. As if each man yearned for himself the admiration now settled on Ibrahim and Mohammed.
The girl now stood beside Fawzi. She held loosely in her hand a length of rope that was fastened to the bridle.
The donkey was old and patient.
Fawzi looked to the girl with pleasure.
"Without great courage, without great bravery, the Palestine revolution will not be won. But we have the courage, we have the bravery, and so the victory of the revolution is inevitable. Look at her, fighters, look at her and rejoice in the courage and bravery of the revolution. She is sixteen years old, she is in the full flower of youth. She has no ambition other than to give her life, her breath, her spirit, to the revolution."
Abu Hamid stared at the girl. He could not tell whether she heard Fawzi. Her face was blank, her eyes were dead. He had seen men who habitually smoked the poppy, or dragged on cigarettes made from the marijuana crop, and their eyes, too, were dead, their faces were without expression. He could not say whether her love was for the revolution or whether it was for the poppy and the hashish fibre.
"This girl is going alone to the security zone. Without the support of comrades, with the help only of a fervent faith in the ultimate success of the revolution, she is going into the security zone with her donkey. The donkey is her friend. The donkey has been with her since she was a child at her mother's breast. In the bags carried by the donkey will be one hundred kilos of industrial dynamite. Do you understand me, fighters?
This girl will go to the checkpoint at the entrance to the security zone, where there are the Israeli surrogates of the fascist South Lebanese Army, and the Israelis with their personnel carriers, and the torturers of the Shin Bet. When she is amongst them she will fire the explosives. They will go to their hell, she to her paradise."
His eyes never left the girl. She was a wraith. What Abu Hamid could see of her face was dry and pale. He could not see fear, he could not see boredom. Could it be real? Could a girl have such love of martyrdom that she would lead a donkey laden with explosives amongst the enemy, that she would obliterate herself and her enemy? He knew of the Shi'a car bombers, the heroes who had ploughed their vehicles into the American embassy, and the French embassy and the Marine camp in Beirut. He knew of the car bomb that had been driven against the walls of the Shin Bet headquarters in Tyre during the enemy's occupation of the city. He knew that the cars approaching the security zone were treated with such suspicion that a better chance now existed for approaching close with a donkey or a mule or a pack horse. Could a girl have such little love of life?
"She is an example to us all. By seeing her, by knowing of her, we are honoured. She visits you in order that you may be encouraged by the memory of her bravery, when the time comes for you, yourselves, to go south and fight the enemy who denies you your rightful homeland. Show her your love, show her your admiration."
Abu Hamid raised his fist in the air. White knuckles, the fist punching.
"Long live the Palestine Revolution."
The recruits shouted their answer, echoed his words.
"All glory to the martyrs of the Palestine Revolution." "
The cheering soared.
"Strength to the enemies of the state of Zion."
"Courage for the fighters whose cause is just."
The girl did not smile. Slowly she rolled her head so that she gazed flatly at each and every one of the recruits who yelled their support of her. She turned. She seemed to speak a word into the ear of the donkey. She stood for a moment in profile to Abu Hamid. He saw the bulge, he saw the weight forward and low on her stomach. He knew she was pregnant. She led the donkey away and out of the camp. The recruits cheered her all the way, but she never looked back.
Abu Hamid dismissed the recruits and they stood silently at the camp gate as the girl and the donkey became small figures on the rough track.
Fawzi beamed. He walked to Abu Hamid.
"She is to go through all the villages between here and the security zone. It has a great effect on the villagers, just as she has made a great impression on your men. When she has made her attack, a film of her will be shown on the television, it is already made."
"Is she…?"
"Drugged? You surprise me, Abu Hamid… She is a fighter, she is like yourself."
Fawzi drove away in his jeep. He caught up the girl and her donkey before they reached the tarmac road.
When he strained his eyes, Abu Hamid could see them. A girl and a donkey, and just behind them the jeep of the Syrian army.
They worked hard at their training that morning. No back-chat, only studied concentration. They worked at the lesson of the platoon in attack on a hillside against a defended position, with the support of. 50 calibre machine guns and RPG-7 launchers.
That morning Abu Hamid did not find the need to repeat any part of his teaching.
Holt drank his water. It was a new discipline to him, to ration himself. He must have looked with obvious longing at his water bottle, because he was aware of the smear of amusement at Noah Crane's mouth.
The merchant braked, slowed his Mercedes.
Ahead of him, down the straight road running from north to south under the east slope of the Beqa'a valley, was a column of Syrian army trucks. The trucks, more than a dozen of them, he estimated, had pulled across onto the hard shoulder of the road. He came forward slowly. Always his way to pass a military convoy slowly, so that he could see what the convoy carried. And always better to go slowly past the Syrian military, with the window wound down the better to hear any shouted instructions – they would only shout once, they would shout and if their shout was ignored they would shoot.
There was a jeep stopped at the head of the convoy, and he saw a very fat young lieutenant talking, arm waving, to another officer. Heh, who was he, Menachem, to laugh at the grossness of a young soldier?
The merchant weighed on the scales some nineteen stone… He saw a young girl leading a donkey.
The girl and her donkey were at the far end of the convoy, coming past it. He drove onto the same hard shoulder, he switched off his engine. No one looked at him. He listened but there was no shouted instruction.
The canvas roofing of the lorries had been rolled down.
He saw that they carried troops. A dozen lorries could carry two companies of infantry, the mental arithmetic was second nature to the merchant. The troops crowded to the sides of the lorry and watched the girl and her donkey come alongside them, move forward. Faintly, he could hear the shouting voice of the gross young lieutenant who had gone from the side of the officer and now offered explanation to the soldiers. As the girl led her donkey past each truck, so the soldiers cheered her.
Deep in his mind where the truth of his existence was hidden, the merchant swore. He recognised the signs, and it would be two days before he was again in a position to make a drop. A long time ago he had been offered a radio. He had declined, he had said he would not be able to learn how to use it, and anyway he had known that a signal sent to Israel was a signal sent also to the men of Syrian Intelligence. He preferred the dead letter.
The bomber would be paraded through the Beqa'a.
The bomber would be used to jolt the commitment of the young. He could see that the bomber was herself scarcely more than a child.
The merchant, Menachem, saw his controller, Major Zvi Dan, rarely. Never more than twice a year. The last time, smuggled by the IDF through the night across the border, he had talked to Zvi Dan about the bombers.
The bomber was just a slip of a girl. He could piece together what Zvi Dan had told him, late and over whisky, about the bombers.
"You know, Menny, the IRISHBAT found a car bomb in their sector, abandoned. They made it safe, and then they looked to see why it was abandoned. You know why, Menny? It was abandoned because it had run out of petrol… " The merchant could remember how they had laughed, hurting their stomachs laughing.
"They are not all suicide people, we had one who came up to the checkpoint and surrendered, and said that the girl who was with him had already run away. Do you know with another, Menny, the bastard Syrians gave him a flak jacket to wear and they told him that way he would survive the explosion of his own car, and in the car was more than 150 kilos of explosive. More recently, they have taken to a remote firing. The bomber goes to the checkpoint, but the detonation is remote, from a command signal, from a man who is hidden perhaps a kilometre away. That is because they know that not every recruit wishes to hurry to martyrdom. We have learned, Menny, that the bombers are not so much fanatics, as simple disturbed kids. There was one who was with child and did not dare face her father, there was a boy who had quarrelled with his father and run away, there was one whose father was accused by the Syrian military of crimes and who volunteered to save his father from gaol. Believe me, Menny, they are not all Khomeini fanatics. Most are sick kids. We know, we have captured eleven of the last sixteen sent to the security zone. I tell you what is the saddest thing. They make a film of the kids, and they show it on the television, and they make great heroes of the kids. There is a village in the security zone where live the parents of a boy who drove the car for one of the big Beirut bombs, and now it is like his home is a tourist attraction, and his father is a celebrity, and the kid's picture is everywhere on the walls. Heh, Menny, what sort of cretin takes a holiday in south Lebanon? Only a Jew, if the discount is good." More laughter, more whisky. A conversation of many months back.
There were times, in the loneliness of his subterfuge life, that the merchant doubted his own sanity. There were times when his mind ached for a return to the buoyant, carefree students on the campus in the Negev desert. He saw the girl leading the donkey. Zvi Dan had told him that the men of Syrian Intelligence scoured the villages of the Beqa'a for kids who would drive a car bomb, for kids who would lead a donkey bomb. He thought that the girl and the donkey and the heavy bags slung on the rib cage of the beast were an abomination.
One day he would go back to his students… on a day when there were no more donkey bombs, no more car bombs, Menachem would go back to his lecture room.
Whatever he saw, whatever its importance, he would not break his routine. It would be two days before he could report the coming threat to a road block leading into the security zone.
She had passed the parked lorries. He could hear the shuffle of her feet, the clip of the donkey's hooves. He saw the sweating lieutenant amble towards his jeep. For the soldiers the parade was over.
He saw the face of the girl, devoid of expression.
He shouted through his opened window.
"God is great."
They were high above the village. Crane had pointed to it on his map, 'Aqraba. Holt watched through binoculars as the kids launched their rocks and Molotovs at the troops. It was like something he had seen on the television from Northern Ireland. From their vantage point, Holt not daring to move for fear of Crane's criticism, they watched a day-long battle between the kids and the soldiers, fought in a village square that was wreathed in tear smoke, and in the alleys behind the mosque. Sometimes, when the fight went against the soldiers, Holt heard Crane's chuckle. Sometimes, when the soldiers caught a youth and battered him with their rifle butts, Holt ground his teeth.
He heard the voice in the corridor, and the clatter of feet.
Martins tidied the newspaper. He had been through yesterday's Times, and the Herald Tribune, and that day's Jerusalem Post. Read them all from cover to cover, right down to the cost of a ten-year lease on a two bedroomed flat in West Kensington, to the discounts available in a jewellery store's winding up sale in Paris, to the price of a second hand Subaru car in Beer Sheba.
He was nagged by frustration. Martins could recognise that he was the outsider, he was an intrusion in the smooth dealings between Tork, station officer in Tel Aviv, and his local contacts.
He tidied his paper. He scraped out the debris from the bowl of his pipe into the saucer of the coffee cup that he had been given three hours before. He ignored the No Smoking sign stuck onto a window of the station officer's room.
The door opened. Martins saw the station officer blink as the smoke caught his eyes. Sod him… The station officer tugged in with him a shallow long wooden box, olive green. No greeting, not as yet. The station officer's priority was to get to the window, shove it open, then to the air conditioner, switch it off.
"Been able to occupy yourself?" the station officer asked curtly.
"I've passed the time. What have you brought?"
"A rifle."
Martins tried to smile. "A present for the Ayatollah and the Mullahs?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Just a joke."
"Actually it is the rifle for Crane."
"We brought Crane's rifle out from England – rather a lot of paperwork."
"It wasn't the rifle he wanted."
"Why didn't the bloody man say what he wanted? He test fired the Parker Hale, he didn't complain."
"Perhaps you never asked him what he wanted.
Perhaps you just told him what he was getting."
"The man's impossible."
"Just doesn't waste time arguing. What he would have told you he wanted if he had been asked was a model PM from Accuracy International, small firm down in Hampshire."
"How did it get here?"
"Israelis picked it up yesterday, shipped it out in their DipCorps bag to save time, avoid the export licence. I collected it this morning."
Martins puffed, "That makes me look a complete fool."
The station officer asked, "Would you like some more coffee?"
"There are more important things than coffee. If it has not escaped you, I am in charge… Damn it, man, I didn't know you were smuggling a rifle out of the UK, I don't know where Holt and Crane are, I don't know when the jump off is, I have not been given access to the latest intelligence on the camp."
"Unfortunate."
"Meaning?"
"You're going to have to live with it."
"I'm a senior man in London, Tork… "
"And this is Israel. Sorry… Decision taking is in Crane's hands, and stays there. Crane will decide on the jump off, on the route. He will make the decisions because he is going to be in the Beqa'a, and we are not, for which in all sincerity I thank God."
"You and I are going to have to get one or two things straight."
The station officer glanced up, heard the rasp in the voice. He thought a man who wore a three piece suit in the heat of Israel to be a fearful ass.
"As I understand it, Mr Martins, you got the job, were sent out here, because there were no decisions to be taken – sorry."
"Fenner told you that…? Well, you've got a nasty surprise coming to you. Control of this mission has been entrusted to me by the Director General, and I mean control. And one more thing: there is more to the work of the Service than the analyses that you fill your day in writing. I've read some of your stuff – 15 pages on the future of the Coalition here, eight pages on the prospect of a right wing backlash, 21 pages on future settlements on the West Bank, all the sort of crap that Fenner wants, the sort of gibberish that keeps Anstruther h a p p y. "
"I am sorry if my material is too complex for you, Mr Martins."
"You can think of it as complex if you wish, Tork, but you'd better get it into your head that this mission into the Beqa'a is of infinitely greater importance to the interests of the United Kingdom than the trivia with which you spend your days, and if this goes wrong, for your lack of co-operation, I'll have you gutted," Martins said.
The station officer peered down at him. Twice in the last week his wife had asked him whether they were not duty bound to invite Mr Martins, out from London, to their flat for dinner. Twice the station officer had told his wife to forget it, leave the man to his hotel room.
The station officer fancied he could hear the boast chat in London on the upper floors of Century. Problems, why should there be problems? Difficulties? Difficulties only existed to be overcome. A good show, a super big show.
As if it was a gesture of defiance, Martins shovelled tobacco from his pouch and into the bowl of his pipe.
"I'm going to be in Kiryat Shmona."
"What for?"
"Because I'm bloody well responsible."
"Once they're over the frontier, once they've gone there's nothing you can do."
"I have to be somewhere, and that's where I mean to be," said Martins.
The station officer considered the alternative. He thought of having him fretting in his office for the next week, perhaps longer.
"I'll take you up."
Rebecca was the personal assistant to the major. She had been with him for more than two years. Major Zvi Dan liked to say, when he introduced her, that she was his eyes and his ears, that she alone understood the mysteries of the now computerised filing system. She was blessed also, he claimed, with an elephantine memory. At the end of each working day he would share with her his thoughts, his new found information, and they would be stored electronically in the computer and mentally in her head.
Rebecca sat in the front passenger seat of the pick-up truck. She was out of uniform. She wore jeans and a blouse of brilliant orange. First she had smoothed her nails with a manicure stick, now she painted them purple, fingers and toes.
Rebecca was a fixture in Major Zvi Dan's life. Perhaps he relied too greatly on her, on her memory and her organising skills. She bullied him – not that he complained other than to her face. She made him go to the doctor at Defence when his leg stump ached intolerably, she forced him to eat when the work load bowed him down, she came once a week to his bachelor flat, high and overlooking the Ramat Gan quarter, to collect his dirty clothes and take them to a launderette.
They had been parked at the side of the Nablus to Jenin road for a little more than an hour.
Rebecca glanced up occasionally from her concentration to amuse herself at the growing anxiety of Major Zvi Dan. The major paced around the pick-up.
He looked down at his watch. He fingered the automatic pistol that was tucked into the belt of his slacks. With binoculars he studied the pale rock strewn hills, and the small terraced fields from which the stones had been lifted to make walls.
She heard the snort of Major Zvi Dan's exasperation.
When they had first stopped, he had told her that within five minutes they would be making the ren-dezvous with Crane and the English boy. Five minutes drifting into more than an hour. He was cursing quietly, he was staring up the road, he was searching for the approach of two small and distant figures.
"You should get something done about those eyes, Major."
She heard the voice. She swung her head. Major Zvi Dan was rooted, peering down the rough hill slope that fell from the road. Small rocks only, low and hardy scrub bushes. She watched the head of the major tilt and twist as he tried to find the source. She could see no hiding place.
"Crane?" Major Zvi Dan shouted. "Get the hell up here."
The ground seemed to rise. The figure seemed to materialise. Where there was dung grey rock there was a standing man.
"You need to get them looked at, Major."
She laughed out loud.
"Move yourself, Holt."
A second figure appeared. They stood together some fifteen yards from the road, level with the pick-up.
They were in uniform, their skins were dirt smeared.
"I am a busy man, Crane. I have better things to do."
Crane came forward.
"You should meet Holt, Major."
Major Zvi Dan stared Holt up and down. "How's he done?"
"Acceptable."
"Is he good enough to go?"
"The first day he'd have had us identified three times. Second day once, third day once. He's just been under your glasses for an hour, that makes him acceptable."
"Get in the back," the major said coldly.
Rebecca watched. She saw that Crane carried his back pack easily, like it was a part of his body, along with the rifle with the elongated telescopic sight. She saw that the younger man came more slowly, as if the back pack were a burden, as if he had never before carried an Armalite rifle.
"What's your time table, Crane?"
"Shit and shower first, long sleep. Tomorrow, aerial photographs and maps, pack the kit. Move tomorrow night."
She watched Crane climb easily into the open back of the truck, slinging his backpack ahead of him, she saw the young man struggle to scramble aboard and get no help.
The Mercedes was clean, the merchant carried the code in his head.
In the darkness of early night, before the stars were up, the merchant had lifted the bonnet of the car and loosened a battery cable.
He was a little off the main road. He was parked above the sparse lights of the village of Qillaya.
It was a routine for him. If he had been bounced by a Syrian patrol or by a group of Shi'a militia, or by a band of the Hezbollah, then he would have had the explanation that his car's engine was broken, that he could not put it right in the darkness.
He wrote his message, a jumble of numerals on a scrap of paper.
He had to walk some fifty yards from the car to the angle of the road. There was always danger in these moments, on the approach to a dead letter drop. He could take every precaution during his travelling, during his halts, but the moment of maximum danger was unavoidable. If the dead letter drop was compromised he was gone. He was breathing hard. On the angle of the road was a rain ditch, cut to prevent the tarmacadam surface being eroded during the spring floods when the higher snows melted. In the ditch was a rusted, holed petrol drum. He left his messages in the drum, he received his messages from the drum. He was not more than 2000 yards from the U N I F I L zone, there was a checkpoint of NORBAT 2000 yards down the main road. He was eleven miles from the Good Fence, the Israeli frontier. He was a few minutes' walk, a few minutes' drive, from the sanctuary of the NORBAT checkpoint, from the safety of his country's frontier.
It was always the worst time for him, when he was within touch of sanctuary, safety, when he was short moments from turning his back on the checkpoint and the Good Fence and starting the drive back into the Beqa'a.
He had the paper in his hand. The merchant bent over the drum, searched for the hole into which he would place his coded report of the progress south through the valley of a girl with a donkey bomb.
The torch light flooded his face.
He thought he was losing his bowels.
He could see nothing behind, around, the blinding beam of the torch.
He waited for the shot.
The urine was driving from his bladder.
"It's Zvi, Menny. Heh, I am sorry."
The torch light went out. The merchant stood his ground, could see nothing.
There was an arm around his shoulder, stifling the trembling of his body.
"I think you pissed yourself. Heh, I am truly sorry.
There was someone who had to see your face."
The merchant saw the shadow looming behind the shape of his friend, but the shadow came no closer.
The merchant whispered, "Couldn't you have used a night sight?"
"He wanted clear light on your face, it was important… "
For ten minutes the merchant and Zvi Dan sat by the rain ditch. The merchant made his report in incisive detail. Zvi Dan gave his instructions, handed over the package.
The merchant went back to his car. First he collected an old pair of slacks from the boot and quickly changed into them, then he refastened the battery cable. He drove back to the main road and then on to the village of Yohmor where he would spend the night. In the morning he would advise the elders of the village on the spare parts they needed to buy for the repair of their communal generator, and how much those parts would cost.
Holt started up in his chair. He had been dozing. He was brought back to life by the thud of the boots on the plank slats of the verandah. God, and was he lucky to have dozed. Percy Martins was still in full flow and the station officer seemed to suffer from a private agony, and the girl was reading a Hebrew romance with a lurid cover.
The verandah was outside the officers' canteen at the army base. There were pots of flowers, and a jungle of vine leaves overhead, and there was coffee and Coca-Cola to drink if anyone could be bothered to go inside to the counter to get it for himself.
The girl was reading the book and ignoring Martins like Jane had been able to do when they were in his or her London flat and he was watching the cricket on television. The station officer hadn't quite the nerve to turn his back on the reminiscing. Martins was remem bering his time in Cyprus, spook on the staff of Government House, recommending his old strategies for application in the Occupied Territories.
Holt looked behind him, turned in his chair. He could see that both the major and Crane were still wet from face washing, and he could see that it had been a fast job because there were still smears of dark camouflage cream under the ear lobes and down at the base of their throats.
Crane said, "Long day tomorrow, H o l t… "
Martins said, "Pleased you've returned from wherever, Major. Something I'd like sorted out. I am informed I have to sleep in an hotel. I would have thought you could put me up on camp."
Major Zvi Dan said, "Not possible."
The girl, Rebecca said, "Do you like cocoa?"
Holt said, "Ages since I've had it. Quite."
Crane said, "Get to your bed, Holt. Now."
The station officer said, "I'm off early in the morning, back to Tel Aviv, I'll be gone before you've surfaced
… Give it your best effort. Look forward to welcoming you back. Holt. Sergeant."
Holt stood and shook the station officer's hand, a damp hand and a limp grip. Crane wandered off towards the counter in search of food.
Percy Martins drummed his fingers on the table. "I would like to discuss the matter of my accommodation further."
The girl, Rebecca, was back in her book. Holt saw the mud dirt on the major's boots.
"Goodnight all," Holt said.
He went to the room they had allocated him. A white painted cubicle, with a bed and a table and a chair, and three hangers on a nail behind the door. He didn't bother to wash, and he wasn't allowed to use toothpaste.
He peeled off his jogging shoes and his shirt and trousers. He switched off the light, flopped on the bed.
He had slept fourteen hours the night before, and he was still tired. The day had been divided in two. There had been the kit part of the day, and there had been the route planning part of the day. He didn't think it was from choice, he assumed it was from necessity, but at least Crane had talked to him, at him. Down the corridor was Crane's room, and next door to that the kit was laid out for packing in the morning. Crane had talked to him, at him, when they were with the Intelligence guys, when they were looking at the aerial photographs that footprinted the Beqa'a.
He heard the knock at the door.
He didn't have the time to reply. The door opened.
He saw the silhouette of the girl against the lit corridor. He saw that she carried a mug, steaming.
Holt laughed out loud, "Not the bloody cocoa?"
She laughed back at him. The curtains were thin, and when she kicked the door shut behind her, the floodlights outside streamed through. He could see that she was laughing.
"It's the best thing to make you sleep."
"You're very kind."
"And you are going to Lebanon tomorrow, so you need to sleep." She sat on the bed. She wore a deep cut green blouse, and a full skirt.
He thought her laughter was an effort. He thought she had sad eyes, and there were care lines on the edge of her mouth. He took the mug from her, held it in both hands, sipped at the thick stirred cocoa. He had not had cocoa since before he went to boarding school, since his mother used to make it for him on cold winter evenings when he was a small boy.
Holt tried to smile. "It's supposed to be a secret, me going into Lebanon tomorrow."
"My husband was in Lebanon. He went with the first push, and then he went back again in the last year of our occupation. After the first time he was a changed man. He was very bitter when he came home to me. Before he went he used to play the saxophone in a small jazz band where we lived. He never played after he came back. He was an architect, my husband. There were many casualties in his unit, tanks. I used to wonder what an architect, a saxophone player, was doing driving a tank in Lebanon. My husband said that when the IDF first went into Lebanon they were welcomed by the Shi'a people, the people in the villages threw perfumed rice at the tanks, by the time they left that first time they were hated by the same Shi'as. The mines were in the roads, the snipers were in the trees. He was called up again for Lebanon in '85, just before the retreat started. The leaders, the generals, of course they didn't call it a retreat, they called it a redeployment. He used to write to me. The letters were pitiful. He used to say he would never go back again, that he would go to prison rather than serve another tour in Lebanon. He used to say that the basic rule of survival was to assume the worst, at every moment, to shoot first. Lebanon bru-talised him. A week before he was due to come out, from the second tour, he wrote to me. He wrote that they had painted on their tank the words, 'When I die I will go to Heaven, I have already been through Hell.'
He was killed the day after. He was shot by a village boy near Joub Jannine. They knew it was a village boy because they caught him in their follow up search, he was 13 years old. He was 13 years old and through hate he shot my saxophone player, my husband. That is Lebanon, Holt."
"I am sorry."
"It is the way of life for us. We are Jews, we are condemned to a permanent perdition of warfare."
"I'm sorry, but my viewpoint is from a long way away. I'm not trying to be an impertinent outsider, but I think you've brought much of it on yourselves. Again, I'm sorry, but that's what I feel."
"When you go into Lebanon you will be part of us.
There is no escape from that."
"You know my quarrel, why I go?"
"I've been told. Your leaders, your generals, want a man killed. They need you for assistance at the execution."
"The man killed the girl I loved," Holt said. He raised the cocoa mug to his mouth. The cocoa spilled from his lips, dribbled down onto his new found tan from the beach at Tel Aviv.
"Do you go into Lebanon for the girl that you loved, or for your leaders and your generals?"
Holt shook his head. He said softly, "I don't know."
"Better you go for your girl."
"Did he love you, your husband, when he died?"
"He wrote in his letters that he loved me."
"My girl, she snapped at me, the last words that she spoke. We were quarrelling… Can you see what that means? The last time we spoke, the last memory I have of her, is of argument. That's a hell of a weight to carry."
"Close your eyes, Holt."
His back was against the pillow that was propped up against the wall. His eyes closed. He felt her movement on the bed. He felt the softness of her lips on his cheek.
He felt the moisture of her lips on his mouth. He felt the gentleness of her fingers on the bones of his shoulder.
"My husband, Holt, my saxophone player, he used to write to me from Lebanon that the feel of my mouth and my hands and my body was the only sanity that he knew."
With the palms of his hands he reached to the smooth angles where her cheeks came down to her throat. He kissed her, as if with desperation.
"Remember only her love, Holt. Make her love your talisman."
The memories were a rip tide. Walking with Jane in the sunshine of spring on the moorland hills. Sitting with Jane in the darkness of a London cinema. Lying with Jane in the wet warmth of her bed.
His eyes were tight shut. He moved aside in the bed.
He heard her peeling away her blouse, pushing off her shoes, dropping down her skirt. He felt the lovely comfort of her against his body.
He cried out, "It doesn't help her, cannot help her, killing him."
"Until he is dead you have no rest. Her memory will only be torment. Love me, Holt, love me as you would have loved her. Love me so that you can better remember her when you are in Lebanon."
When he woke, she was gone.
As if she had never been there. As if he had dreamed of Jane.