At Close Quarters

13

It started as a casual conversation.

At the airfield south of Kiryat Shmona there was a hut where helicopter passengers could wait, sit in comfortable rattan style chairs, for their flight. There was a steward dispensing orange juice, there was a radio tuned in to the army station, there were some pot flowers which had even been watered.

The pilot came into the hut to advise Major Zvi Dan that there would be a short delay before he could lift off with the major and the major's assistant.

"Up to your ears?" the major asked.

The pilot knew Zvi Dan. The pilot sometimes joked that he was a bus driver, that Zvi Dan travelled more often from Tel Aviv to Kiryat Shmona than any grandmother in search of her grandchildren.

"I'm down the queue for refuelling, for maintenance checks. Ahead of us are the choppers going tomorrow."

Because the pilot knew Zvi Dan, he knew also that the major worked in military Intelligence. He could talk freely.

"Where?"

"Big show up the road."

"I've been out of touch." Zvi Dan sipped at the plastic beaker of juice.

"Bombers are going up the road in the morning, we're down for rescue stand-by."

"So we're in the queue, and what's new? That's the old army motto, Hurry up and Wait."

Rebecca read her book, almost at the end, rapt attention.

"There's to be a big chopper force on rescue stand-by, it's a difficult target they're going for."

"How so?"

"The Beqa'a, not under the missile umbrella directly, but the fringe area. It's not the missile that's the problem, the target's just small, and for small targets they have to line up more carefully, all the usual gripes from the bombers."

"What's the target?"

The pilot leaned forward, said quietly. "We were told that they had good interrogation of one of those shit pigs that did the bus station – well, you'd know more of that than me, that it was all hocus them both being killed. Seems they came out of a training camp in the Beqa'a, that's where the bombers are going… "

Major Zvi Dan was rigid in his chair. His orange juice had spilled on his tunic.

"Heh, have I said something?"

He saw the major's back going out through the door.

Rebecca looked up, grimaced. She had not been listening. She went back to her book.

Major Zvi Dan, anger mad, pounded into the night.

He swung through the door of the airfield's flight operations room. He stomped to the chair of the flight operations officer. He pulled the chair round, swivelled it to face him.

"I am Major Zvi Dan, military Intelligence. I am an officer with an A level category of priority. On a classified matter of importance I demand an immediate take-off for Tel Aviv."

He cowed the flight operations officer into sub-mission.

He could barely believe it: two men had started to walk towards the Beqa'a, to walk towards a tent camp, to identify a target, to take out a terrorist, and the Air Force were planning to beat them there by two days and scatter the ground with cluster bombs. Right hand and left hand, light years apart. Why couldn't his bloody country put its bloody act together?

He stormed back into the hut. He limped up and down the floor space, pacing away his impatience.

The pilot came in. "You put a bomb under somebody, Major. We have clearance for lift-off in ten minutes."

It was the same rhythm of advance that Holt had learned during the hike in the Occupied Territories. But that had been only rehearsal. Different now. In the Occupied Territories Crane had hissed curses at him when he kicked loose stones, when he stood on dry wood, when he stumbled and stampeded away small scree rock. On his own now, wasn't he? Had to make do without help.

Not that he needed cursing when he scuffed a stone, he wanted to punch himself in frustration each time.

Holt knew that the pace that had been set was aimed to cover one mile in each hour. It had been dark at six, it would be light again at six. They had moved off an hour after darkness, they would reach their LUP an hour before dawn. He was unconsciously soaking up the jargon, a Lying Up Position had become LUP. Ten hours on the move, ten miles to cover. Stripped, Holt weighed 168 pounds. He carried a further 80 pounds' weight in his clothing, his Bergen and his belt. In addition he was ferrying the Model PM, because Crane had the Armalite. He remembered the race around the lawns of the house in England, when he carried nothing, when Crane had a backpack full of stones. Christ, there was a weight on his back, on his hips, on his arms.

The first hour he had kicked stones, the second hour fewer. They were in the third hour and he moved as Crane had shown him. His booted foot edged forward, found the ground, the ball of his foot rolled, tested. If the test was fine, if the stone held fast, then the weight followed. It was the rhythm of each pace, every footfall tested.

There was just the starlight for them to move under.

Crane was fifteen yards in front. It Was Holt's job to follow Crane's speed. Crane set the pace, Holt had to follow. Crane was an outline ahead of him, blurred at the edges by the hessian tabs on his body shape and on the bulk of his Bergen. All the time he had to be within sight of Crane, because Crane would not stop each few yards and turn to see if Holt kept contact.

A week before, before the hike into the Occupied Territories, Holt would not have credited that so much skill, so much care, would be involved in moving across ground at night.

It was indeed a rhythm.

It was the same rhythm from the moment they had crossed the road under the observation post, headed away.

Every 30 minutes they stopped. Holt would see Crane hold up his hand and then drift to the side off the line of march. A few moments of listening, looking into the darkness, with Crane and Holt sitting back to back, each covering a 180 degree arc of vision. No talking, no whispering, just the straining of the ears and the eyes.

In the Occupied Territories, Crane had told Holt that they should always be low down when they were listening, looking, seeking for information that they were followed or that there was movement ahead of them.

Crane had said that a dog or a cat had good vision at night because its low eye line permitted it to see most shapes against a skyline in silhouette. In the short moments when they were stopped, Crane would check his map, holding over it the lens of his Beta light, powered by tritium, giving him the small glow that was hidden from view, sufficient for him to see by.

During the third hour they crossed the Litani river.

Waist deep in fast water, going off rocks and climbing back onto rocks, so that they left no footprints in mud.

There were no roads, and Holt saw that Crane avoided even rough tracks that could have been used by the villagers of Qillaya that was across the river to the east, or Qotrani that was beyond the hill summit to the west.

It was strange to Holt how much he could see with the help only of starlight, something he had never thought to learn before. He supposed the trail they took might have been made by wild animals, perhaps an ibex herd, perhaps the run of the low bellied hyrax, perhaps the regular path of a scavenging hyena or a fox.

North of the narrow road between Qillaya and Qotrani, in the fourth hour, they were high above the Litani, traversing a steeply sloping rock face. On the slope face they moved sideways, crab-like. When they had to cross the upper lines of a side valley, Holt saw that Crane immediately changed direction as soon as they had been outlined. He had been told why they did not climb to the upper ridges of the hills, Crane had told him that the military were most likely to be on the high ground, basic officer training was to seek out the greatest vantage point. A hellish strain on Holt's leg muscles as he fought to hold his balance against the sway of the Bergen weight when they crabbed on the sloping, uneven ground.

By the fifth hour he was sagging down at the RP. The Rally Points, where they stopped for the few moments each half hour, seemed to him to be drifting further apart. He knew that was eyewash, he knew he was feeling the exhaustion of the night march. At the RPs he sat against Crane's shoulder, and had to be elbowed hard in the ribs to remind him that the stop at the RP was not for recovery, but for checking that the way ahead was clear, that the way behind was not compromised.

He was halfway through the first night, and there would be three nights of marching to get to the tent camp, and then there would be the stampede march back. God, and he was tired, and he was only halfway through the first night. He could hear his chest heaving, he could feel the gasping pant in his lungs. Silence from Crane, as though he were out for a stroll in the park…

Bloody man.

Rebecca drove from the Sde Dove airport on the north side of Tel Aviv, across the city.

Major Zvi Dan sat beside her, still angry, silent. The streets were fully lit. Bright shop windows, pavement crowds, cafes packed. The anger corroded him. The old and the young strolling the streets, examining the windows, laughing and joking and singing, and two men not quite a hundred miles to the north were struggling in the darkness through rivers, over rock slopes, further and deeper into the territory of the enemy. The logic was gone from his mind, blown away by his temper.

He wouldn't have said that he wanted the citizens of Tel Aviv to hot tail it to the synagogues and offer prayers, nor that they should shut their mouths, shut off their music, tiptoe down Dizengoff, but it fuelled his anger to see so many who knew so little, cared less.

She dropped him on Kaplan, outside the David Gate of the ministry. She said something to him about what time she would arrive in the morning, but he didn't hear her. He ran, as fast as his imitation leg would allow him, towards the barrier and the night sentries. And he couldn't find his pass… and his pass wasn't in his breastpocket. .. and his pass was in his bloody hip pocket. He could have been the Prime Minister, could have been the Chief of Staff, he would not have entered the David Gate if he had not found his pass in his wallet in his hip pocket.

He was allowed through. They didn't hurry themselves. It was the way of sentries, little men with power, that they never scrambled themselves for a man who was hurrying.

He headed for the wing building occupied by the IAF staff.

And how his leg hurt him when he tried to run Into the building, another check on his pass Up the stairs and into the access corridor used by night duty staff, one more check on his pass… along the corridor and into the fluorescent lit room that was the war management section of the Israeli Air Force. A big, quiet room, where the men and the women on duty spoke in soft whispers, where the radios were turned down, where the teleprinters purred out their paper messages.

A room flanked by huge wall maps, and dominated in the centre by the operational console table. It was from this room that the long range voice contact had been kept with the Hercules transporters flying the slow lonely mission of rescue to Entebbe, and from this room also that the F16s had been guided the thousands of miles to and from their strikes against the Palestine Liberation Organisation headquarters in Tunis and the Iraqi nuclear OSIRAK reactor outside Baghdad. Those who worked in this room believed themselves to be an elite back-up force to the elite arm of Israel's retaliatory strike capability. Those who worked in the room looked first with puzzlement, then amusement, at the hobbling army major making his entry.

It was a room of great calmness. Low key calmness was the strength of the men and women who supported the combat pilots. Major Zvi Dan had abandoned calmness. He was dirty, he was tired, his hair was dishevelled.

All eyes were on him.

A girl officer, wearing lieutenant's insignia on her shoulder flaps, glided from a chair to intercept him.

"I need to see, immediately, the duty brigadier."

Major Zvi Dan breathed hard. In no condition, not with the imitation leg.

"In connection with what, Major?"

"In connection with a classified matter."

"Believe it or not, Major, all of us who work in here have a degree of security clearance."

There was a tiny surf of laughter behind her. She was a pretty girl, auburn hair gathered high onto the crown of her head, a tight battledress blouse, a skirt that was almost a mini, and short white socks, carefully folded over.

"Please immediately arrange for me to see the duty brigadier."

"He is sleeping."

"Then you must wake him up," Zvi Dan growled.

"Regulations require t h a t… "

Zvi Dan lowered over her. "Young lady, I was fighting for this God-forgotten country before you were old enough to wipe your own tiny butt. So spare me your regulations and go at once and wake him."

This last he bellowed at her, and she did. She spat dislike at him through her eyes first, but she went and woke the duty brigadier.

He was in poor humour. He was a tired, pale man, with grey uncombed hair and a lisp in his voice.

"Major, I do eighteen hours on duty on a night shift.

During that time I take two hours' rest. My staff know that I am to be disturbed from that rest only on a matter of the highest importance. What is that matter?"

"You have a strike tomorrow against a Popular Front camp in the Beqa'a, located at 35.45 longitude and 33.38 latitude."

"We have."

"It has to be cancelled."

"On whose say?"

"Mine."

"The strike was authorised by the Chief of Staff."

"Then he didn't know what he was doing."

"Tell me more, Major."

"That camp must not be attacked."

"What is it? Do we have prisoners there?"

"No."

The duty brigadier gazed shrewdly at Major Zvi Dan, as if his annoyance was gone, as if now he were amused at the puzzle.

"Do we have a ground mission going in – which the Chief of Staff does not know about?"

"There is a mission. The Chief of Staff would not be aware of the fine detail."

"To that camp?"

"There is a mission in progress against that camp."

"An IDF mission?"

"No."

"Fascinating So, who can that be? The Americans, the doughnut boys?"

"The British."

"So the British have gone walking in the Beqa'a, have they? How many of them?"

"Two."

"Two British are in the Beqa'a. What have they gone to do, to pick grapefruit…?"

"There is nothing in this matter that should amuse you." Major Zvi Dan stared coldly for a long time into the face of the duty brigadier. The coldness came from the freshness of his memory. Two men battleclad, their heavyweight Bergen packs, their bearded dark, creamed faces, their killing weapons. "In liaison with our Military Intelligence section, the British have two men walking into the Beqa'a to get above that camp, to identify the assassin of their ambassador to the Soviet Union, to shoot that man."

"It is the policy of Israel, Major, the policy of the country that pays your wage, to hit the source fount of terrorism. From that camp an attack was launched against your country. It is expected and demanded of us that we strike back."

"You scatter a few bombs about, you may inflict casualties, you may not."

"It is expected of us."

"You will break up the camp. You will destroy a real chance of the killing of a single man whose death is important. Send that attack tomorrow morning and you ensure that two days later a brave pair of men will arrive at their target position to find nothing to fire upon.

Brigadier, how many times do you kill the people you want killed, for all the Phantoms, all the bomb weight?"

"Thank you, Major."

"Which means?"

"That I shall wake the Chief of the Air Staff. Where will you be?"

He wrote on his notepad his extension number. He tore the page off, handed it to the duty brigadier.

"All night."

"I make no promises, I merely pass the problem higher."

The quiet returned to the room.

All of them, at their desks and their consoles and tables and maps, watched with the duty brigadier the flapping swing door, and heard the uneven diminishing footfall.

The girl officer asked, "What do we owe the British, sir, with their arms embargo, their criticism of us?"

The duty brigadier said, "The British were going to hang my brother in 1947 when he was in the Irgun.

They reprieved him 48 hours before he was to go to the hangman. I was a small boy then The first people that I learned to hate were the British soldiers, who had captured and tortured my brother, and twenty years later I was a guest at their staff college, the staff college of the Royal Air Force. We owe them only what is best for us, and that decision mercifully is not mine."

In the small night hours, Major Zvi Dan's head lay on his hands that were spread on his desk.

The telephone was close beside him, and stayed silent.

The end of the seventh hour of the first night march, the time of the fourteenth rest moment at a rally point.

Above them, aloft on the steep slope, were the lights of the village of Meidoun. At the previous rally point Crane had shown the marking of the village on the map, used the Beta light for Holt to see it, and then Crane had shaken his head, as though the place was bad news.

Holt knew that already Crane had broken one of his bible laws. The bible according to the prophet Crane stated that they should not pass within a thousand yards of a village. But no damned option. They had been moving on the slope below the village and above the Litani where it ran fast in a narrow gorge. They were sandwiched. It was a bastard place, and the rules were broken. On the far side of the gorge Holt could follow the movement of headlights snaking on the road, going north. To the west was a Shi'a village, below them was the rushing river. To the east was the main military road.

Holt heard a stone fall. He heard a stone dislodged below him. After the long silence of the walk in the night his hearing was clearer than he had ever known.

He froze. Crane, beside him, had half risen. Crane was now a bent statue. There were the sounds of more stones slipping on the slope below. Crane showed Holt the palm of his hand, the gesture that he should not move.

There were the sounds of a young shrill whistling voice, and then the sharp bark of a dog. The whistling and the barking and the falling stones were closer.

Crane's hand was on Holt's shoulder, urging him down, down until his face ate at the cool dust of the rock slope.

God, was this where it ended? Not a third of the way in, not eight miles from the jump-off. Pray God that it didn't end because a village kid had gone after rabbits with his dog down to the scrub at the side of the Litani river. He tried to control the pace of his breathing.

Breathing was another of the chapters of Crane's bible.

Everything was down to control of breathing, keeping it regular, keeping it smooth, swallowing it down. He smelled the boy first, then he saw him.

The smell was of urine and animal fodder. It was a fecund sweet smell. No cigarette taste in his mouth, nor the cloy of toothpaste, nor the scent of soap on his face.

He could smell the boy clearly moments before he saw him.

At first the boy was a shadow shape. The boy materialised as a wraith out of the darkness below, but coming fast, climbing easily on a steep pathway running down from the village to the river gorge. It was the moment it could all end. A shout would have been heard in the village, a scream would have roused the village. A fear yell would have brought the men of the village running, scrambling for their weapons. And there was the dog.

The dog was close to the heels of the boy, skipping after him then stopping to sniff or lift a hind leg, then catching the boy. He knew that each village was an arsenal.

Each village community would have automatic rifles and rocket propelled grenade launchers and machine guns. He wondered if Crane had his hand on the whip-cord handle of his knife. He could follow the line of the boy's climb, he saw that the boy with the dog at his heels would pass less than a dozen yards from them. He tried to slow his breathing, tried to master the battering heave of his heartbeat.

The boy was level with them, no break in his pace.

The boy was unaware of them. Long seconds in the life of young Holt. Didn't want to look, didn't want to see.

Had closed his eyes. Didn't want to know the moment of discovery if that were to be their fate. If Crane knifed the boy then the boy would be missed and searched for, and when he was found then the trail of his killers would be tracked. The rock that seemed to penetrate into the flesh of his groin grew sharper, more cutting with each moment that he lay prone on it. He was against Crane's body and there was not the slightest flicker of movement. His bladder seemed to have filled to aching point. There was the first whisper of cramp behind his knee. There was a dried leaf teasing at his nostril. He wanted to pee, wanted to jerk his leg straight, wanted to sneeze, and if he wet himself or moved his leg or sneezed then the mission was gone before it had begun.

He heard the growl of the dog.

The boy was above them, going quickly. The boy called for the dog to catch him.

Holt fractionally opened his eyes. The dog was two, three yards from them. The dog was thin as a rake, brindle brown he reckoned, and back on its haunches in defence, and growling at Crane.

The boy threw a stone, and called louder for the dog.

The growl was a rumble of suspicion. His bladder was bursting, cramp pain spreading, his sneeze rising.

The dog yelped. The second stone thrown by the boy hit it square in the neck.

The boy raised his voice to shout for the dog to come.

He heard the sounds going away. He heard the sounds of the boy and his dog dwindling away up the hillside path. He lay on his face. He felt only exhaustion, he felt too tired to know relief.

He felt Crane's hand on his shoulder pulling at him to get upright.

Crane's mouth was at his ear, a near silent whisper,

"We've time to make up."

"Did I do all right?"

"That wasn't militia, not soldiers, just a kid. That was nothing."

Crane rose to his feet, headed away. Holt let him go fifteen paces then took his own first step.

He remembered the words of the song, mouthed them silently to himself,

"'Wish me luck, as you wave me goodbye, Wish me luck, wish me luck, wish me luck… ' "

And he seemed to hear her voice.

"Don't be childish, Holt."

He thought that he hated himself. He could have seen the boy knifed to death. He had never seen the face of the boy, he did not know the name of the boy. He was totally ignorant of the boy, and he could have cheered if Crane had felt the need to slide his short-bladed knife into the stomach of the boy, if Crane had drawn the sharp steel across the throat of the boy. If the boy had turned off the path, if the boy had come to see why his dog growled, then Holt would have cheered the boy's murder. As if a sea change had passed through him, as if he were no longer the man who had complained to Noah Crane about the torture of a Palestinian. He was dirtied in his soul.

He could remember, like yesterday, when he was ten years old, three days past his tenth birthday, and he had been walking with a holiday friend beside the river that ran close to his home. He had found a fox with a hind leg held by the thin cutting wire of a rabbit snare. There had been a blood smear around the wire, a little above the joint of the hind leg of the dog fox where the wire had worked deep through the fur and skin. Below the wire the hind leg hung at a silly angle. He had known, and he was only three days past his tenth birthday, that the dog fox was beyond saving because the leg was impossibly damaged. And he could not have freed it anyway because the dog fox snarled its teeth at him and at his friend, and would have bitten either of them if they had come close enough to release the other end of the wire from the hazel stump around which it was wound. They had taken smoothed rocks from the river shore, and they had thrown them at the fox until they had stunned it, could approach it, and with more stones they had battered the fox to death. All the time that he had killed the fox he had cried out loud. He could still remember how he had cried, childlike, in his bedroom that night. And now he could have cheered if the boy had been knifed.

He followed Crane. More of the Crane bible. He kept his eyeline to the right of Crane so that the moving shape was in the periphery of his vision. Crane had said that that way he would see better.

He was learning. He was changing.

Every late spring and every late autumn the ambassador of the United States entertained the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to dinner in the splendour of the official residence in London's Regent's Park. For those two evenings of the year the lights blazed, the drink flowed, the hospitality was warm. It was the style of these two evenings that the Prime Minister would attend in the company of selected Cabinet ministers with responsibilities particularly affecting relationships

"across the drain", along with principal industrialists with commercial links to the United States. On the American side a secretary of state would make the flight across the Atlantic. They were social occasions primar-ily, but permitted the free exchange of ideas and views.

A warm damp night. A fog rising from the park's grasslands. The mist outside was thickened in the drive-way by the exhaust fumes of the chauffeur-driven cars.

The night air was rich with good humour, noisy with guests making their farewells.

The Prime Minister warmly shook the hand of the ambassador.

"A wonderful evening, as always."

"A good night for a celebration, Prime Minister."

Below the steps the Branch men surrounded the Prime Minister's car, the lit interior beckoned. There was the warble of the radio link in the police back-up car. If there was a weakness in the make up of the evening it was that the ambassador and the Prime Minister had sat at dinner at opposite ends of the table, had barely exchanged words.

"You have the advantage over me, what is there in particular to celebrate?"

"An American triumph in the war against terrorism.

We're very proud, I've wanted to tell you all evening."

"What triumph?"

"We have an Air Force base at Vicenza in northern Italy. Two nights ago our base security, American personnel, picked up a Lebanese male on the perimeter fence. He was in a hide and checking out the wire security with a PNV pocket 'scope. Sorry, that's Passive Night Vision. Our guys whipped him straight inside, straight into the guard house."

The Branch men fidgeted. Other guests stood respectfully out of earshot and in line to offer their thanks.

"What do the Italians say?"

"There's the beauty of it. About now my colleague down in Rome will be informing the Italians that our captive is currently on a USAF transporter and heading Stateside. No messing this time. But I'm jumping… I haven't got to the choice part."

The guest line grew. The Prime Minister's driver switched off the engine of the Rover.

"The choice part is this… T W A flight 840, Rome to Athens in the spring of '86, an explosion at 15,000 feet takes a hunk out of the fuselage through which four passengers are sucked. Three of those four are American citizens. The source of the explosion was under a seat occupied by a Lebanese woman who had hidden the explosives before getting off in Rome. Okay, you're with me? Choice bit. That woman boarded at Cairo for the leg to Rome. She was seen off by a male, tagged as Palestinian, we have his description, we have his finger marks on the ticket stubs left at Cairo T W A check-in.

We have him as the organiser, and the woman just as the courier. That man is one and the same as the joker on the fence at Vicenza. The prints match. That bastard is up in a big bird right now, Prime Minister, he's going to Andrews base then a tight little military cell. That's why you can join me in celebration."

"Remarkable," the Prime Minister said softly.

"You'll remember what the President said. He said to these swines, 'You can run, but you cannot hide'. That's what we're proving. It's the first time we're able to put deeds to words, make action out of talk. We reckon this to be the turning point in the war against international terrorism. You're not cold, Prime Minister…?"

"Not cold."

"It's the first time this has happened, and it's the first time that counts. Sam leads the way, Sam is first in, that's our celebration."

"A fine stroke of luck," the Prime Minister said distantly.

"In this game you earn your luck. Look, we've known for a year this man was in and out of Lebanon, in Damascus or in the Beqa'a valley. We went through all the military evaluations about getting a force into the Beqa'a to drop him there. Can't be done, no way. The Beqa'a would swallow a marine division, that was our best advice, and even if we got in we'd never get out."

"You're very well informed."

"Secondhand, my number three here was in Beirut previously… we would have faced the risk of prisoners being paraded through Damascus, hell of a mess. Going into Lebanon wasn't on that's diversion. It's being the first that matters. Prime Minister, not at your expense of course, but we're feeling very comfortable at this moment, very bullish. You see, what really matters is not just confronting these people, it's putting them into court. Assassination is small beer when set against the full rigour of a court of law."

The Prime Minister smiled congratulation, and walked away down the steps to the car. The engine coughed, the doors slammed shut. The car pulled away, trailed by the back-up.

The Prime Minister's age showed, the tiredness of office and responsibility. There was a long sigh of weariness.

"Inform my office to have the Director General stand by. I'll be calling him from Downing Street as soon as I get there."

The Prime Minister sagged back in the seat. The Branch man in the front passenger seat relayed the instruction.

"What have you to do?" the private secretary asked quietly.

"I just have to cancel something. Nothing for you to worry about."

He had been dreaming of the fish he would catch, in the sleeping recesses of his mind was the recollection of the conversation he had had in the guest house bar with a tractor driver from the Kibbutz Kfar Giladi. Not a fast river to fish in, but a fish farm pond, not flies nor lures for bait, but worms from a compost heap. And to hell with tradition. Percy Martins dreamed of tight lines… until the bell exploded in his ear, like a big rainbow jumping.

He groped, he found the light. He lifted the telephone.

"Martins."

"Is that a secure line?"

"No."

" D G here."

"God… good evening, sir."

"Good morning, Percy. Our friends, where are they?"

"Gone."

"Can you reach them?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Martins sat straight up in his bed. "Because sir, they have no, ah, telephone. As it is they are carrying in excess of eighty pounds weight. I would hazard, sir, that you or I could barely lift eighty pounds weight, let alone walk a long way with it."

"Thank you, Percy. That's all the detail I need. Just confirm for me that you've some means of communicating with them in case you wanted them back in a hurry."

"That's not on, sir. In fact it's quite out of the question. We've no means at all."

"Thank you, Percy. Keep up the good work. And goodbye."

Martins replaced the telephone. He switched off his light.

He could not find again for his mind the pleasure of an arching rod. He thought of two men struggling through the night, moving further from safety, and he was damned pleased those two men carried no radio transmitter/receiver, were beyond recall.

Slowly, like a cat beside a fireplace that is minutely disturbed, Major Zvi Dan opened his eyes. He looked from just above his hands across the room.

The girl, Rebecca, sat on the one easy chair in the room, a new book was in her hands.

"Message?"

She shook her head.

He grimaced. "There is nothing more I can do. If I go higher then I antagonise."

"You have to wait. Coffee?"

He moved his hand, declined. They would not be drinking coffee, Noah Crane and Holt who were heading towards the Beqa'a.

"If they hit the tent camp, I quit. If they bomb that camp, they'll have my resignation."

She looked at him curiously, "Why does it matter to you?"

"Because… because… " Major Zvi Dan rubbed hard to clear his eyes of sleep. He coughed at the phlegm in his throat. "Because. .. because of that boy, because of Holt. He shouldn't be there, he is not equipped to be there. It would be a crime if we screwed up their effort."

He let his head fall back to his hands. His eyes closed.

Beside him the telephone stayed silent.

"Prime Minister, they cannot be recalled because they have no radio transmitter/receiver. Each of them, without a radio transmitter/receiver, is carrying in excess of eighty pounds weight. I would hazard that you or I could barely lift eighty pounds weight, let alone walk across country with it."

The Prime Minister sat in a thick dressing gown before the dead fire in the private sitting room. The Director General had lit his pipe, was careless of the smoke clouds he gusted around the small room.

"They are not carrying a radio because a radio and reserve batteries would have increased each man's weight burden by at least 10 pounds. In addition, radio transmissions, however carefully disguised, alert an enemy… Am I permitted to ask you what has under-mined your enthusiasm for this mission?"

The Prime Minister fumbled for words, stumbled in tiredness. The conversation with the American ambassador was reported. The Prime Minister slumped in the chair.

"I want them called back."

"And you cannot have what you want."

Four o'clock in the morning. The chimes of Big Ben carried on the squalling wind, bending around the great quiet buildings of Whitehall.

"I was talked into something that I should never have allowed myself to accept."

"We are an independent country, we are not beholden to the opinions of the United States of America."

"I was beguiled into something idiotic, by you."

"You told me that then you would claim my head."

The Director General had no fear of the head of government. A wintry smile. "Would it be your head you are nervous for?"

"That's impertinent."

"Prime Minister, it would distress me to think that the sole reason for your authorising this mission was to enable you to brag to our cousins over the water."

"You have made me a hostage."

"To what?"

"To the fortune, the fate, of these two men. Think of ill think if they are captured, think if they are paraded through Damascus, think what the Syrian regime can make of that, think of the humiliation for us."

The Director General stabbed the air with his pipe item. "You listen to me. This is nothing to do with point scoring over our American allies, with boasting to the Oval Office… Listen to me. Your ambassador was assassinated. That would be enough, enough to justify much more destructive a response than this mission, but Miss Jane Canning was one of mine. Miss Jane Canning too was murdered. I do not tolerate the murder of one of mine. The arm of my vengeance reaches to the other side of the hill, reaches to the throat of a wretched man who was stupid enough to murder Miss Jane Canning. Do you hear me, Prime Minister?"

He towered above the Prime Minister. He glowered into the face of the Prime Minister. He sucked at his pipe. He reached for his matches.

"How soon will I know?"

"Whether it is Abu Hamid's head that is on a salver, whether it is my head or yours?" The Director General chuckled. "Three or four days."

He let himself out. The Prime Minister thought the door closing on his back was like the awakening from a nightmare.

Exactly an hour before dawn they reached the first lying up position.

The LUP had been chosen by Crane from the aerial photographs. The photographs of this stretch of upper ground high over the Litani and the village of Yohmor had shown no sign of troop tracks, nor of grazing herds.

There was a mass of large, jagged wind- and snow-fractured rocks.

They went past the LUP, moved on another two hundred yards and then looped back in a cautious circle.

According to Crane's bible, the way to make certain that they were not followed.

Amongst the rocks Crane helped Holt to ease off the Bergen. For an hour they sat back to back, alert, listening and watching.

Crane whispered, "I suppose you think you've earned some sleep."

Holt was too tired to punch him, too exhausted to laugh.

The dawn came fast, a spreading wash of grey over the rough ridges of Jabal bir ed Dahr. A new morning in Lebanon.