At Close Quarters

15

When they had eaten, when they had wiped clean their canteens and stowed them again in their belt pouches, Crane talked.

His voice was always a whisper, low pitched. There were times that Holt interjected his questions and in the excitement of the communication he lost control of the pitch in his chords and then Crane would silently wag a finger to show his disapproval. But the disapproval was no longer the put down. It was as if young Holt had proved himself in Crane's eyes.

They sat back to back. With the food eaten the daytime sleeping was finished. Their heads were close, mouth to ear in close proximity. The debris of the food wrapping had been collected by Holt and put into the plastic bag reserved for rubbish. It would be dark in an hour, when it was dark they would wait a further hour to acclimatise their eyes and ears to the night, then they would move off.

Crane faced down into the gorge, and watched the main road leading into the Beqa'a. At their next lying up position they would be overlooking the valley. Holt's attention was on the steep slopes above and to the west, looking into the sun that would soon clip the summits on the Jabal Niha and the Jabal el Barouk that were six thousand feet above sea level.

They were for Holt moments of deep happiness.

Mostly he listened, mostly Crane talked, whispered.

Crane talked of sniper skills, and survival skills, and of map reading skills and of evasion skills? He took Holt through the route of the coming night march, his finger hovering over but never touching the map. He showed him the next LUP, and he showed him then the track they would follow for the third of the night marches, and where they would make the final LUP on the ground above the tent camp. He showed him by which way they would skirt the high village above the valley of Khirbet Qanafar, how they would be sandwiched between Khirbet Qanafar and the twin village of Kafraiya, he showed him where, above them on the Jabal el Barouk, was positioned the sensitive Syrian listening and radar post. He showed Holt, on the map, from where he would shoot, with the sun behind him, with the sun in the eyes of those in the camp.

Happiness for Holt, because he had won acceptance.

He was trusted.

"And you want him dead, Mr Crane?"

"Just a soldier, being paid to do what I'm told."

"Being paid a hell of a lot."

"A chicken shit price for what I'm doing."

"I'm not being paid," Holt said.

"Your problem, youngster."

"I saw your room back at base camp, I couldn't see what you'd spend your money on."

Crane smiled, expressionless, but there was a sharp glint in his eyes. "Too long to tell you about."

A curtain fell in that moment, then Crane's face moved. Holt saw the flicker of regret. He thought a scalpel had nudged a root nerve.

"Have you ever been paid before, to kill a man?"

"Just taken my army pay."

"Have you killed many men, Mr Crane?"

"Youngster, I don't notch them up… I do what I'm paid to do, I try to be good at what I'm paid for doing."

"Is it a few men, is it a lot of men, that you've killed?"

"Sort of between the two, youngster."

Holt watched him, watched the way he casually cleaned the dirt out from behind his nails, then abandoned that, began to use a toothpick in his mouth.

"Is it different, killing a man in battlefield conditions to killing a man that you've stalked, marked out?"

"To me, no."

"Do you think about the man you're going to kill at long range? Do you wonder about him, about whether he's guilty or he's innocent?"

"Not a lot."

"It would worry me sick."

"Let's hope you never have to worry yourself. Look at you, you're privileged, you're educated, you're smart, people like you don't get involved in this sort of dirt."

"This time I have."

"… most times people like you pay jerks to get these things done. Got me?"

"But don't you feel anything?"

"I kind of cover my feelings, that way they don't get to spit in your face."

"What's your future, Mr Crane?"

Again the quiet smile. "What's yours, youngster?"

Holt was watching a bird like an eagle soar towards the summits above him. A beautiful, magnificent bird.

He thought it must be from the family of eagles. No flap of the wings, just the drifting glide of power, freedom.

He grinned, "I suppose we get out of here?"

"Or I wouldn't have come. I don't buy one way tickets, I came and I aim to leave."

"I'll go back to England, then I have to make the big decision of where the next move is. I can stay in Foreign and Commonwealth, as if nothing had ever happened, as if Jane Canning hadn't existed. Or I can quit… I could walk out on them, I could teach, go into business.

Now, I don't know. Where I came from is rough, wild country. It's at peace. Nothing ever happens down there. In our village, if they knew I was in Lebanon, well, half of them wouldn't know where it was."

"You're lucky to have options," Crane said.

"What's your future?"

"I'm getting old for this rubbish."

The bird was brilliant against the fall of the sun. The light in the gorge behind him was greying. The bird was the size of the lofty buzzards that he knew from Exmoor.

"What does an old sniper do in his retirement?"

"Sits at the pavement cafes on Dizengoff, listens to all the talk, and has nothing to say. You can't boast about my work, my work never existed. An old sniper in retirement, youngster, is a lonely bastard."

"Come to England."

Crane snorted.

"Where I live, you'd like that."

"Leave it, Holt."

He persisted. "It would be fantastic for you." He smiled as he planned Crane's retirement. "You could work for the water people, a bailiff on the salmon runs.

You could be a gamekeeper. It's a huge park area, they need rangers for t h a t… "

"You're all right, youngster, but not all right enough to organise me."

"You'll have the money to set yourself up, you could buy… "

"The money's spoken for."

He searched for the bird, couldn't find the damned thing. His eyes raked the crest of the hill. He looked into the sun. He cursed. Eternal damnation in Noah Crane's bible was to look directly into light, self inflicted blindness.

Crane said, "It's a difficult walk tonight, youngster.

It's where we can hit Syrian regular army patrols, or Hezbollah, or just Shi'a village trash. Tonight it starts to get serious."

"I hear you, Mr Crane."

There was the start of a blister coming on his left heel, Holt didn't mention it, nor did he speak of the sores coming on his shoulders from the Bergen straps.

He started to change the rounds in the magazines for the Armalite.

Later, when it was fully dark, he would move away from the rock cleft and squat down, and then he would learn to wipe his backside with a smooth stone. Bloody well looking forward to that, wasn't he?

The deal was struck in the hallway of the house, not that Heinrich Gunter knew of this transaction.

Heinrich Gunter, banker from Europe with a fine apartment and a salary and pension scheme to match, lay tightly bound on the cellar floor below the hallway.

He knew he was in a cellar because almost as soon as he had been brought in from the street he had been bustled down a stairway. He was still blindfolded. His wrists were securely tied behind his back. There was lashed rope biting into the skin of his ankles. He had lost his spectacles when he had been hauled out of the taxi. His tongue could run on the chipped edge of his broken tooth, behind the swelling of his bruised lip.

In the hallway of the house, Gunter was sold on.

There was a gentle irony that amongst the men who regarded the United States of America as the Great Satan the currency of the transaction should be American dollars, cash.

For 25,000 American dollars, the Swiss banker became the property not of the freelancing adventurers who had kidnapped him, but of the Party of God, the Hezbollah.

The money was passed in a satchel, hands were shaken, kisses exchanged. Within a few minutes, the time taken to swill a bottle of flat, warm Pepsi-Cola, the cellar had been opened, and Gunter lifted without ceremony or consideration up the steps, into the street, down into the boot of a car.

He was in darkness, in terror, half choking on the exhaust fumes.

Because the information provided by the traveller moved raw and unprocessed by any other Intelligence officer direct to the desk of Major Said Hazan, the call that he made gave him pure satisfaction.

In the Syrian Arab Republic of today there are many competing Intelligence agencies. That, of course, was the intention of the President, that they should compete, that each should derive pleasure from a coup. It is the belief of the President that competing powers deny any single agency too great an influence. Too considerable an apparatus might threaten the stability of the President's regime. But the President had been a pilot, and in the Syrian Arab Republic of today the Intelligence gathering organisation of the Air Force ranks supreme.

Major Said Hazan used his second telephone. This telephone was the one with a scrambler device and gave him a secure line to the military headquarters at Chtaura on the west side of the Beqa'a.

"The interception of the girl with the donkey leads us to believe that the enemy has an agent free in the Beqa'a, also that this agent has frequent communications with a controller. An especial vigilance is required… "

He drew deeply on his cigarette. He smoked only American Marlboro that were brought to him, free of charge, by the toad Fawzi. Major Said Hazan thought of him as no better than a reptile to be squashed under foot because he had never faced combat. He brought Major Said Hazan cigarettes and much more in return for his licence to move backwards and forwards between Beirut, the Beqa'a and Damascus. The toad was a kept man, as much a harlot as his own foreign sweet pet.

"… We also have reason to believe that some 24 hours ago the enemy infiltrated a group from a checkpoint north west of Marjayoun into the NORBAT area between the villages of Blat and Kaoukaba. It is to be presumed that this group has gone through the NORBAT sector and will be moving towards the Beqa'a. Maximum effort is to be given to the interception of this group."

In front of him the desk was clear. His papers, and most particularly the plan of the Defence Ministry on Kaplan in Tel Aviv, were locked away in his safe. His evening was free for his sweet pet. The good fingers of his left hand toyed with the clip fastening of the leather box. He thought the pendant, the sapphire jewel and the diamond gems would be beautiful on the whiteness of her throat. The pendant had cost him nothing. There were many merchants in Damascus who sought the favour of Major Said Hazan.

"I would stress that both these matters have the highest priority. We shall be watching for results."

He saw nothing strange, nothing remotely amusing, in the fact that he handed down instructions for action to a full brigadier of the army. Major Said Hazan was Air Force Intelligence.

If the spy were caught and the incursion group intercepted it would be the triumph of Major Said Hazan.

If they were not caught it would be the failure of headquarters in the Beqa'a.

Now for his sweet pet, the only woman who did not stare at him, did not flinch.

They came back by truck.

Abu Hamid was the first off the tail board. As the chief instructor, he had the right to wash first.

He was filthy. The dust caked his face. His uniform denims were smeared black from handling the collapsed beams that had caught fire.

He had seen the results of air raids in Tyre, Sidon, Damour and in West Beirut, but that had been years before. Many years since he had stood in a line of men manhandling the sharp debris of fallen concrete. Many years since he had helped to manoeuvre the heavy chains of the cranes that alone could lift whole precast floors that had fallen in the blast of the high explosive.

They had been ten miles to the north. They had tunnelled into a ruin in the village of Majdel Aanjar.

Once the building had been a hotel; until that morning the building had been the sleeping quarters of a unit of the Popular Struggle Front. They had been amongst many, digging at the rubble, gently pulling out the bodies. There had been squads of the army with heavy lifting equipment, there had been the local people, there had been men of the Democratic Front and the Abu Moussa faction and from Sai'iqa. Those from the Democratic Front and the Abu Moussa faction and Sai'iqa had been trucked in as much to help in the recovery of the casualties as to witness the damage done by the air strike of the enemy.

When they had finished, when the light was failing, Abu Hamid had called his own recruits together. Force-fully lectured them on the barbarity of the Zionist oppressors, told them that their time would come when they would be privileged to strike back.

He was heading for his tent, he was shouting for the cook to bring him warm water, he was intent on dragging off his clothes. He rounded one of the bell tents.

He saw Fawzi sitting in front of the flaps of his own lent.

Abu Hamid said, "From what I saw you could have been sleeping in the bunker and you would not have been saved."

Fawzi said, "Tonight I sleep in our tent, the Zionist gesture has been made."

"It was horrific. Pieces of people… "

"We are lucky that our comrades martyred themselves, or it would have been us."

Abu Hamid said, "We are the more determined, we will never give up our struggle. Tell that to them in Damascus."

"Tell them yourself, hero, there is transport coming for you in the morning."

Inside his tent, Abu Hamid stripped off his filthy clothes. He stood naked. The galvanised bucket of warm water was brought into his tent. He thought of the orphan children. He thought of the mutilated bodies. He could not believe that he had ever hesitated through fear. He thought of his grandfather's home. He thought of the blood that would gush from a bayonet wound.

"I don't have any feelings for him," Holt said.

"For who?" Crane helped him to ease the weight of the Bergen high onto his shoulders.

"For Abu Hamid. I don't loathe him, and I don't feel pity for him."

"Better that way."

"If I'm going to help to kill him, then I should feel something."

"Feelings get in the way of efficiency," Crane said.

They moved out.

There was a faint light from the stars to guide them It was the boast of the technicians who worked in the small fortified listening post astride the top of the third highest peak of the Hermon range that they could eavesdrop the telephone call by the President of Syria from his office in Damascus to his mother, telling her when he would call to take a cup of lemon-scented tea with her.

The listening post of prefabricated cabins and heavy stone fort circles was 7,500 feet above sea level. In the Yom Kippur it had been captured. The girl technicians had been raped, slaughtered. The boy technicians had been mutilated, tortured, murdered. On the last day of the fighting, after a battle of intense ferocity, the listening post had been recaptured. The listening post was of immense strategic and tactical value to the military machine of Israel. Beneath its antennae was the most sophisticated electronic Intelligence gathering and signals equipment manufactured in the United States of America and in the state's own factories. The listening post was situated some 35 miles from Damascus, and some 40 miles from Chtaura on the western side of the Beqa'a alley.

The Hermon range marked the north eastern extremity of Israelite conquests under the leadership of Moses and Joshua. The eyes of Moses, the ears of Joshua, that was how the present-day technicians regarded their steepling antennae towers concreted into the bed rock of the mountain top.

The problem lay not with the interception of telephone and radio messages from Damascus to military headquarters at Chtaura, more in the analysis and evaluation, carried on far behind the lines inside the state of Israel, of the mass two-way traffic.

In full flow, untreated data swarmed from Damascus and the Beqa'a to the radials of the antennae before the computers of the Defence Ministry on Kaplan attempted to make sense from the jargon of coded radio messages, scrambled telephone conversations.

Some communications received by the eyes of Moses and the ears of Joshua were more complicated in their deciphering than others. A telephone call from Damascus to Chtaura via a scrambled link offered small scope for interpretation. But radio messages fanning out from Chtaura to battalion-sized commando units stationed at Rachaiya and Qaraaoun and Aitanit gave easier work to the computers.

The orders coming from Chtaura to Rachaiya and Qaraaoun and Aitanit made plain to the local commanders that their origin was Damascus. The orders were acted upon.

That night, patrols were intensified, road blocks were strengthened.

It had been the intention of Major Zvi Dan to work late in his office, to delve into the small hillock of paper that had built up on his desk while he had been in Kiryat Shmona.

Behind him was a wasted day. He had failed to beat off the lethargy that had clamped down on him after the tension of his early morning battle to have the airstrike diverted. He was slow with his work, but he would work through the night, and then return to Kiryat Shmona in the morning. The girl, Rebecca, had gone home.

Sometimes when she was gone he felt as crippled by her absence as he was crippled by the loss of his leg. He read for the third time the evaluation by the Central Intelligence Agency, newly arrived, of a preliminary debrief of a Palestinian captured in northern Italy. Israel for so long had stood alone in the front line of the war against international terrorism that it amused him to notice how the Western nations were now queuing to demonstrate their virility.

He could remember the carping response of those same nations when the IAF had intercepted a Libyan registered Gulfstream executive jet en route from Tripoli to Damascus. Intelligence had believed Abu Nidal to be aboard. The previous month the jackals of Abu Nidal had killed and wounded 135 civilians at the check-in counters at the airports of Rome and Vienna.

Those Western countries had issued their sanc-timonious disapproval because the intelligence had been ill founded. He could recall numerous instances of public criticism from the government of the United Kingdom for Israeli retaliatory strikes, yet now they had men slogging into the Beqa'a… Of course it had been bluff. He would never have resigned. Of course he would just have gone back to his desk and started to work again, had the jets hit the tent camp. He knew no life other than the life of defending his country – had he been a Christian – and he had many friends who were Christians – then he would have said that that was the cross he had to bear.

He wondered if the Americans had the guts to stand in the front line. He thought of the thousands, tens of thousands, of American citizens living abroad who would be placed at risk when a Palestinian went on trial in Washington, went to death row, went to interminable lawyers' conferences, went to the electric chair.

There was a light knock on his door.

He started. He had been far away.

He was handed a folded single sheet of teleprinter paper.

The door closed.

He read the paper.

He felt it like a blow to his stomach, like the blast that had carried away his leg.

He reached for his telephone, he dialled.

"Hello, This is Zvi. You should come to my office straightaway.."

He heard the station officer wavering, there were people for dinner, could it wait until tomorrow.

"It is not a matter for the telephone, and you should come here immediately."

Men from the Shin Bet watched the Norwegian leave his company headquarters. He was clearly visible to them through the 'scope of the night sight. They saw that he had changed from his uniform fatigues into civilian dress. In a white T-shirt and pale yellow slacks, the young man showed up well in the green wash of the lens. They watched him, with three others, climb into a UNIFIL-marked jeep and head south towards the Israeli border.

The car took side lanes to skirt Syrian army road blocks on the highway leaving Beirut. From a post that was jammed sturdily through the top gap in the front window flew the flag of Hezbollah. On a white cloth had been painted the word "Allah", but the second "1" had been transformed to the shape of a Kalashnikov rifle.

The car used a rutted, deserted road and climbed, twisted, towards the mountains to the east.

The station officer read the teleprinter sheet. At home the local wine had been flowing free. His suit jacket was on the back of the chair. He took off his tie, loosened his collar.

" S h i t… "

He did not concern himself with the demand for

"especial vigilance" for a spy in the Beqa'a. He read over and over the order for "maximum attention is to be given to the interception of this group".

"… So bloody soon."

"For Crane it would be natural to assume that the enemy is alert." Major Zvi Dan hesitated. "But he has Holt."

"And the boy's green. I shall have to tell them in Century… "

"Tell them also that there is nothing you can do, nothing we can do."

It would be two hours before the station officer returned, sobered, to his guests.

His message, sent in code from his embassy office, reported the probability, based on intercepted Syrian army transmissions, that the mission of Noah Crane and Holt was compromised.

He thought that he had made a fool of himself at the fish pond.

The first fish was exciting, the second fish was interesting, the following 34 fish were simply boring. If he had not pulled out the pellet-fattened trout then they would have used a net for the job.

But time had been killed, and it had been made plain to him that he was denied access to the Intelligence section at the Kiryat Shmona base, and that news – whatever it might be – would reach Tel Aviv first.

He had taken a bath. He had put on a clean shirt and retrieved his trousers, pressed, from under the mattress of his bed. Percy Martins had smoothed his hair with his pair of brushes.

Dinner in the dining room. Trout, of course. A half a bottle of white Avdat to rinse away the tang of the artificially fed rainbow.

Before dinner and after dinner he had tried to ring the station officer. No answer from his direct line at the embassy. No help from the switchboard. Inconceivable to him that the station officer would not have left a contact number at the embassy's switchboard, but the operator denied there was such a number. He walked to the bar. He could read the conspiracy, those bastards at Century in league with that supercilious creep, Tork, a mile off. They had shut him out. Actually it was criminal, the way that a man of his dedication to the Service and his experience was treated. The Service was changing, the recruitment of creatures like Fenner and Anstruther, and their promotion over him, that showed how much the Service had veered off course.

Good work he had put in over the long years of his time in the Service. He had had his coups, and damn all recognition. He reckoned that his coups, their full extent, had been kept from the Director General… if the Director General only knew the half of it, Percy Martins would have been running the Middle East Desk long since, sitting in Anstruther's chair, kicking the arse off Fenner. He would have bet half of his pension that the Director General had never been told that he had crowned his Amman posting with, as near as dammit, a prediction that the Popular Front were about to launch a hijack fiesta. In his three years in Cyprus he had actually gone to his opposite number at the American shop, warned him of the personal danger to the ambassador, all there in his report – he bet the Director General had never been told, certainly never been reminded when the ambassador had been shot dead. First categ-oric and specific news of the Israeli nuke programme out of Dimona, that had been his climax on a Tel Aviv tour – he hadn't had the credit, the credit had gone to the Yanks. God, and he had made sacrifices for the Service. Sacrifices that started with his marriage, followed with his son. He hadn't complained, not when he was given his postings, not when his wife had said she wasn't going Married Accompanied, not when his son had grown up treating him like an unwanted stranger.

A record of total disappointment at home, and he had never once let it show, hadn't let his work suffer.

Holt and Crane into the Beqa'a, Percy Martins's last big one, by Jesus, he would not let the last big one go unnoticed on the nineteenth floor of Century.

He had a good record, nothing to be ashamed of, and less recognition for it than the man who sat behind the reception desk at Century. Meanwhile he was stuck in a kibbutz, where there was no fishing, where there was no access to a damn good mission going into Lebanon, Of course, he should have insisted that there was proper preparation of the ground rules before he ever left London. And no damned support from the station officer. The station officer's balls would be a decent enough target when he made it back to Century…

He had signed his bill, should have had a full bottle of Avdat but he had never gone over the top with expenses, he had strolled to the bar.

Percy Martins had never been able to understand why so many hotels dictated that drinking should be carried out in semi-darkness and to the accompaniment of loudspeaker music. There were Americans in the shadows, from the air-conditioned bus that had arrived in the afternoon. He preferred solitude to them. Blue rinse, check trousers and damn loud voices for both sexes.

The Americans had all the tables except one. Two men sat at the table, and bloody miserable they seemed to Martins because in front of each of them was a tall glass of fresh pressed orange juice. Not young and not old, the two men. Obvously Israelis. One wore an old leather jacket, scarred at the cuffs and elbows, the other wore a bleach scrubbed denim jacket. They were not talking; they looked straight ahead.

And there were the young Scandinavians. He knew they were Scandinavians, impossible language they were speaking, like English taped and played backwards. And drinking, and loud. All that Martins associated with Scandinavians.

There were four of them. He had the choice between several loud American women and their husbands, the teetotal Israelis, and four merry Scandinavians. They were at the bar, they were ordering another round. He assumed them to be UNIFIL. At the bar he nodded to them, made his presence known, then ordered himself a beer.

He had drunk half his beer, not made contact, when t he young man closest to him lurched backwards on the punchline of a joke, stumbled against Martins' elbow while he was sipping, spilled a mouthful down the laundered shirt.

It was the beginning of the conversation. Handkerchiefs out, apologies first in Norwegian and then English when Martins had spoken. Introductions.

He learned that the young man who had jogged him was Hendrik. He learned that Hendrik was with UNIFIL's NORBAT. He learned that Hendrik and his friends were allowed one evening a week in Kiryat Shmona.

He was rather pleased. A stained shirt was a cheap price to pay for introductions.

A replacement beer was called for by Hendrik.

"You are English, Mr Martin?"

"Martins. Yes, I am English… Cheers."

"Here for holiday?"

"You could say I am here for a holiday, Hendrik."

"For us it is not a holiday, you understand. No holiday in south Lebanon. What does an Englishman find for a holiday in Kiryat Shmona?"

"Just looking around, just general interest… Your glass is empty, you must allow me."

Martins clicked his fingers for the barman. Had he looked behind him, he would have seen that the two glasses of orange juice remained untouched, that the Israelis leaned forward, faces set in concentration. Four beers for the soldiers, a whisky and water for Martins.

"So how do you like it here, Hendrik, serving with the United Nations?"

"Are you a Jew?" 1

The young man's face close to his own. "Most certainly not."

"The Jews treat us like filth. They have so great an arrogance. They make many problems for us."

"Ah yes. Is that so?"

His whisky was less than half drunk, but the barman had reached for it, prompted by one of the soldiers. The glass was refilled.

"That's most civil of you. You were saying, Hendrik

"

"I was saying that the Jews make many problems for us."

"Not only for you, my boy," Martins said quietly, the first trace of a slur in his speech.

"Every day they violate the authority of the United Nations."

"Is that so?"

"Every single day they come into the U N I F I L area."

"Indeed? Do they indeed?"

"They come in and they make trouble, but it is us who have to mend the damage."

"Absolutely."

There was an appealing candour to the young man, Martins thought, compared to his own callow son, miserable little brat, without a polite word for his father.

"That's very decent of you… " The whisky glass was gone again. Percy Martins felt the warm careless glow in his body.

"They've always made trouble, the Jews. Since way back, since before you were born, my boy. Part of their nature. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not an anti-semite, never have been, but by God they tax my patience. They always have done, damn difficult people to do business with when you need co-operation."

"Business or holiday?"

Martins leaned forward, avuncular, confiding. "A little more business than holiday."

"What sort of business?"

Martins swayed, "Careful, my boy. Over your young head… "

He seldom drank in London. A pint in the pub or a quick Scotch when he slipped out of Century in the evening to get some fish and chips or a takeaway pizza before going back to work late. He kept no alcohol at home. If he left alcohol in the house it would be drunk by his wife, or by the boy when he was home from college. But this was a first class young man, with a good reading of events, a very level headed young man. God, why did they have to have that bloody music? And why did those bloody Americans have to address each other as though they were in the next state?

"Like last night."

"Sorry, my boy, what was last night?"

"They sent an infiltration team through our lines… "

Martins reeled back. "How did you know about that?"

He was close to losing his footing. He hung on the edge of the bar.

"They sent an infiltration team through last night."

Martins shouted. "I bloody heard you, don't repeat yourself. I asked you a question. How did you bloody know what happened last night?"

He was not aware that his raised voice had quietened the Americans. He did not see the man behind him, the one who wore the leather jacket, slide from his chair, go fast for the door.

"Why do you shout?"

"Because I want an answer, my boy."

"To what, an answer?"

"How you knew about an infiltration team moving off last night."

"Does it concern you?"

"Your answer, I want it."

His vision was blurred. He could not register the curious concentrated interest of the boy Hendrik.

"An Englishman, on holiday – why does an infiltration concern him?"

"It bloody well concerns me, how you knew."

"You are drunk, mister."

In front of him the young man turned away, as if no longer interested. Martins caught at the white T-shirt, spun him round.

"How did you know about the infiltration last night?"

"Take your hands off me."

"How did you know…?"

There was quick movement. As though the Norwegians were suddenly bored with the elderly Briton.

Martins's shout still hung in the air as they pushed past him, away from the bar, out through the swing door.

The music played was ragtime.

The man sitting at the table behind abandoned the two orange juices, hurried out through the door to drag his colleague off the telephone.

There was the sound of the U N I F I L transport roaring to life in the car park.

"What did he say, Hendrik, that pissed fart?"

Hendrik Olaffson drove. "Heh, thanks for pulling the asshole off me."

"What was it about?"

He spoke slowly. "He was English. He said he was a tourist, but he did not dress like a tourist and there is no tourism here, that is the first. Then the second, he went stupid when I said that the Israelis had infiltrated through our sector last night. He said, 'How did you know about an infiltration team last night?', those were his words."

A voice from the darkness in the back of the jeep.

"Hendrik, is it possible that the British have pushed an infiltration group through our sector, going north?"

"Into the Beqa'a? It would be madness."

"Madness, yes. But worth much weed, Hendrik… "

They were laughing, full of good humour.

They were waved through the checkpoint at Metulla.

In the foyer of the guest house of the Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, the receptionist passed the man who wore the frayed leather jacket her guest book. Her finger pointed to the name and the signature of Percy Martins, British passport, government servant.

They were moving on an animal track. He thought it could be a goat track. There were wild goat loose on Exmoor and Holt knew their smell. He reckoned it was a regular track. It was the fifth hour of the night march and the old moon was up, in the last quarter which was the best time for night infiltration according to Crane's bible. Maximum safe light for them to move under, and it was a hell of a job for Holt to follow the track. Would have been impossible for him if he had not had the guiding wraith of Crane ahead. Damned if he could figure how Crane could have been able to identify the animal track from the high-up aerial photographs.

The fifth hour, and the march was now going well.

Two hours back it had not been good, they had scampered across the tarmac road in their path. A bad bit, the road, because they had had to lie up for quarter of an hour before moving into the open, and in the waiting Holt had felt the fear pangs. Gone now, the fear, gone because the road was behind them and below them. The hillside was steep, and much of the time Holt walked crab style going sideways, because that was the easiest way with the weight of the Bergen. The Bergen should have been easier. He was a gallon of water down, ten pounds weight down, didn't seem to make any difference. He was feeling good and the blister hadn't worsened, and he thought he could live with the sores under the backpack straps. He was the son of a pro-fessional man, he had been to private school, he was a graduate in Modern History, he had been accepted via the "fast stream" into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. And no bloody way any of that had fitted him for crab walking along a hillside in south Lebanon, no bloody way it would help him if the blister on his heel burst, if the sores on his shoulders went raw.

He thought he was beginning to move by instinct. He thought he was getting into the rhythm of the march.

He tried to think of his girl. So hard to see his girl in his mind, because his mind was taken up with footfall, and lying up positions, and water rations, and watching and following Crane up ahead. The old goat on an old goat track… Hard to think of Jane. It seemed to him like a betrayal of her memory, of his reason for being there. She was just a flicker in his mind, like the bulb going in a striplight. The good times with Jane, they didn't have anything to do with changing the ammunition twice a day in the magazines, nor with squatting in the lee of a rock after dark using smooth stones to wipe his backside, nor with cleaning his teeth with a pick because paste left a smell signature, nor with carrying a Model FM long range sniper rifle that gave one chance, one shot. He could feel his Jane. She could be against his skin, like the pain of the pack straps was against his skin, like the heel of his right chukka boot was against his skin, he could feel her, but he could not see her.

Each time he tried to see her then he reckoned it was the girl, Rebecca, that he saw.

He didn't know whether Crane had quickened his pace, or whether he himself was slowing. Feeling Jane's body against his skin, seeing Rebecca's body against his skin. That was a bastard, like he was selling his Jane short.

He was struggling to keep pace with Crane, he was struggling to see the soft face, lips, throat, eyes of his girls.

He kicked the stone.

The track was not more than foot wide. There was a sloping black abyss to his right. His left hand was held out to steady himself against the rock slope soaring above him.

He had gone straight through the stone. He had not paused, he had not tested the ground under his leading foot. He had begun to move by instinct.

The loose stone rolled.

The stone slid off the track.

The stone seemed to laugh at him. The stone fell from the track, and bounced below, and disturbed more stones. More stones falling and bouncing and being disturbed.

He stood statue still. The vertigo seemed to pull at him, as if trying to topple the weight of the Bergen pack down into the abyss, after the tumbling stones.

Snap out of it, Holt. Get a grip, Holt. No room in his mind for his girl, any girl. No room for pack strap sores, nor heel blisters. Get yourself bloody well together, Holt. He jerked his foot forward. He rolled the sole of his boot on the ground of the track ahead. Tested it, eased onto it. First stone he had kicked all night. Crane hadn't stopped for him. Crane's shadow shape was smaller, moving away.

All the time the echoing beat of the stones skipping, plummeting, racing, below him.

He was into his stride again when the flare went up.

A thump from below and behind. A white light point soaring… Crane's bible. Trip wire ground level flare, freeze into tree shape and sink ever so slow. High level flare, drop face down like there's no tomorrow.

The moment before the flare burst into brilliance, Holt was on his face, on his stomach, on his knees.

The flare when it burst seemed to struggle against gravity. It hung high. A wash of growing light on the hillside. The epicentre was behind him, but he could sense the light bathing his hands and the outline of his body and his back, and niggling into his eyes. He lay quite still. Ahead of him he could see the exposed soles of Crane's boots.

The flare fell, died.

There was a hiss from Crane. Holt saw the fast movement of Crane's arm, urging him forward. He was half upright, and Crane was moving. He was trying to push back the weight of the Bergen holding him down, and the weight of the Model PM, and the weight of his belt kit.

Crane gone. Blackness where there had been light.

Should have bloody closed his eyes. Shouldn't have let the light into his eyes.

The second flare was fired.

Holt dropped. Eyes closed now, squeezed tight.

Trying to do what Crane had told him, trying to follow verse and chapter of Crane's bible. Nothing over his ears, his hearing was sharp, uncluttered. He heard the voices below. No bloody idea how far below. Voices, but no words.

When the light no longer hurt his eyes he looked ahead. The flare was about to ground. The path ahead was clear. He could not see Crane.

There were two more flares.

There were bursts of machine gun fire against the hillside. The strike of the tracer red rounds on the hillside seemed to Holt to have no pattern, like it was random firing. He had grown to know the jargon. He reckoned it was prophylactic firing. He wondered to hell whether they had thermal imagery sights, whether they had passive night goggles. There was movement below him. He thought he heard the sounds of men moving in the darkness, scrambling on the slopes. He could hear the voices again. Christ, he was alone. His decision, alone, to move or to stay frozen. His decision, whether to reckon he was invisible to the men below so that he could move, whether the firing had been to flush him out into the view of the TI sights and the PN goggles.

Hellishly alone. He could not crawl, if he crawled he would make the noise of an elephant. If he were to move he had to get to his feet, he had to walk upright, slowly, weighing each step.

He lay on his face. He thought of how greatly he depended on the taciturn goading that he had from Crane. He pulled himself up. He listened to the voices and the movements on the hillside. The thought in his mind was of being alone on the hillside, of being discovered, of being apart at that moment from Noah Crane.

The aloneness drove him forward.

There was no more shooting. There were no more flares. The voices faded, the footfalls died.

He tried to remember how far it would be to the next halt position. He tried to recall the map that Crane had shown him before they had moved off. They were now in the sixth hour. Holt had not taken much notice of the map, didn't have to, because he had Crane to lead him.

Alone, Holt resumed his night march.

It might have been five minutes later, it might have been half an hour, he found Crane sitting astride the animal track.

He could have kissed him.

Crane whispered, "Syrian regular army patrol."

Holt spoke into Crane's ear. "Routine?"

"They're not usually out at night. Usually tucked up, holding their peckers."

"Why would they have been out?"

"You're the educated one, youngster."

"Were they waiting for us?"

"You went to university."

Holt hissed, "Tell me."

"Just not certain that one kicked stone was it, but waiting."

"Are we blown?"

Holt saw, in the fragile moonlight, Crane's smile without humour. "They're behind us, there's only one sensible way to go."

They moved off.

He was unaware of his shoulder sores and of his heel blister. Holt was aware only of each single, individual footfall.

They bypassed the sleeping village of Aitanit, and the silent village of Bab Maraa, they climbed high to avoid the village of Saghbine where dogs broke the quiet of the night.

Below him to the east was the moon-draped flatness of the floor of the Beqa'a valley. Holt thought of the valley as a noose.