At Close Quarters

17

It was a crisp, sharp night.

The heat of the day had dissipated into the rocky slopes. In the night there was a fresh wind that caught at the sweat that ran in rivers on the throat and chest of young Holt. The pace of the night march was no greater and no less than it had been on the two previous nights, but he sweated, as he thought, like a pig. The pace of the night march remained, give or take a few yards or a few minutes, at one mile in one hour. The going should have been easier because each man was lighter from the consumption of water, close to a half of the water had been used, but still he sweated in the cool of the night march. He felt as if, along with the perspiration, the strength oozed from his body. When they reached there, when they were on the high ground overlooking the tent camp, Holt thought he would be reduced to a wrung out rag. There were no more kicked stones, there were no cracked twig branches, there was no scuffling through sun crisped leaves. Each step was concentration, each short checked stride was care.

Crane was a shape ahead of him. It was a blurred shape that only came to life at the rally points when Crane stopped and squatted and Holt reached him to slump beside him. They did not speak at the first rally points of the night. They sat and allowed their leg muscles to soften and Holt let his mind wander from the concentration and care and exhaustion of the march.

There were no words, no whispers, because Holt did not have to be told that they were now deep behind the lines. It was all in his head, it had all been told him and was remembered. They were moving north on the hill slopes between the valley floor and the peaks of the Jabal al Barouk. On the Jabal al Barouk was a state-of-the-art Soviet-built complex of radar dishes and antennae manned by the Syrian air force. Sensitive country. The dishes and antennae were protected from surprise attack. Scattered round the air defence and signals listening equipment would be, according to Crane's bible text, the GS-13 divisional level surveillance radars operating from 50 kW power packs and with a twelve kilometre competence to detect personnel and a 25 kilometre range for seeing the movement of vehicles.

Moving on the slopes above the valley and below the installations on the summit of Jabal al Barouk, Crane led Holt in darted spurts as a sailor would tack before the wind. They changed the angle of their progress every fifty, sixty, yards, as if by that manoeuvre Crane believed he could throw the attention of a drowsing ground surveillance radar screen operator. Of course, it would have been faster to have moved lower down onto the gentler slopes of the valley sides, but Crane had explained at the last lying up position that further behind the Syrian positions the risk increased of blundering into mine fields, of drifting into the wadis where the anti-personnel mines would be set around the heavy pressure anti-armour concentrations. That night, on the marches between the rally points, Holt learned much.

He learned of the methods of evasion from the dishes of ground surveillance radar, and of the way in which the cover of the terrain could be used to prevent discovery of their progress at the hands of thermal imagery equipment. He learned of the hazard of a low flying aircraft, droning above them without even navigation lights, when Crane had plotted the aircraft's path and scuttled to get clear of its flight line in case it carried infra-red targetting screens.

They moved on. Holt could not assess the threat. He could only remember the warnings that had been given him in a gravel whisper before they had left the lying up position. They lurched from rally point to rally point. The exhaustion spread through Holt's legs, through his back, through his shoulders. His recovery in the short breaks at the rally points became steadily less restorative.

He understood why the exhaustion seeped through him… He was helpless… He was led on and on by a man with disease clawing at the retina of his right eye.

He was with a marksman who had taken a contract in order to finance a one in five chance operation to reverse the decline in the sight of the shooting eye. He himself was blind, his king's good eye was done for… and he had to live with it. In the first part of that night's march, up to the first rally point, he had felt a bursting anger towards Crane. The anger was gone, knocked away by the tiredness in his legs, the soreness of his feet. He felt a sort of sympathy. But it was bloody pointless, feeling sympathy for Crane. Sympathy was no salve for the disease in the retina.

They went west and high to bypass the village of Ain Zebde. They would climb to avoid the village town of Khirbet Qanafar. Beyond the glow of Khirbet Qanafar, two and a half miles ahead, they would come down the hill slope until they overlooked the tent camp.

It was late into the evening.

The city was a mysterious place of flickering headlights and of candle-thrown shadows.

Another power cut in Damascus. The cutting of the electricity supplies was more frequent that month, a cut that would last five hours and there was nothing remarkable in that. The traffic moved through a wraith like haze of exhaust fumes. The cafes were lit by the wavering flames of the candles. Abu Hamid saw that few of the cafes had lanterns lit. There was a shortage of oil for the power station, also a shortage of paraffin lor the public.

His mind was bent by the weight of detail forced upon him by the Brother. Through the afternoon, through the rvening, he had listened and attempted to absorb the attack plan against the Defence Ministry on Kaplan as described to him by the Brother. He had been allowed to write nothing down, everything he had been told had to be committed to memory. He knew the numbers of the men involved. He knew the fire power they would carry. He knew the harbour from Cyprus out of which he would sail, he knew the times of the tide changes that would dictate the time of sailing. He knew the speed at which the coastal tramp ship would travel. He knew of the diversionary tactic that had been planned to draw away the patrolling missile boats. He knew of the two closed vans that sympathisers would drive to the shore line at Palmahim, south of Tel Aviv. He knew of the driving time from the shore line to the buildings on Kaplan. He knew of the defences of the ministry complex.

Through the cacophony of the horns, through the darkened traffic lights, through the swirling crowds of the souq, the jeep pressed its way towards the alley.

The jeep shuddered to a halt. The headlights lit a drover who flailed at the back of a horse that refused to pull further a cart laden with vegetables. From the way the horse refused to ground its left front hoof, Abu Hamid thought the horse to be lame. The jeep driver was shouting at the drover. The drover was shouting at his horse. He slipped open his door. He slammed the door shut after him. He was gone into the night, into the flow of the crowds. He was no longer the Palestinian who had been chosen to sail onto the beach at Palmahim which was south of the city of Tel Aviv. He was no longer the man on whose forehead the spot of the martyr had been painted. He could have turned, he could have cut into the narrow lanes. He could have fled. He was a moth, the alley was the lamp, the woman was the light.

When he knocked at the door, she opened it to him.

She wore the loose dress of an Arab woman.

He saw the soft whiteness of the skin on her throat.

He saw the curved fullness of her breasts and of her hips.

He saw the hands that reached for his face in welcome.

She was Margarethe Anneliese Schultz.

At Wiesbaden in the Federal Republic of Germany, in the computerised records section of the Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz, the printout directly relating to her history, biography and activities would, on a continuous roll of paper, stretch to 235 inches. That part of the Federal Internal Security Office devoted in its work to the destruction of urban guerrilla movements inside the state was indeed familiar with Margarethe Anneliese Schultz.

She was now 33 years of age. She had been born the only daughter of a pastor serving a small community a few kilometres to the north of Munich. As an only daughter she had been a spoilt and privileged child.

Early in her life she had learned the art of winning her way either by tantrums or by sweet smiles. Within the budget of her parents' household her every whim had been granted.

Excellent grades in her final school examinations led to her admission as a student of social sciences to the Free University of West Berlin. Her father had a married cousin living in the city. Her father had believed that it would be a good thing for the young girl to continue her education away from home, while at the same time remaining under the eye of the family. It had been the summer of 1974 when Margarethe Anneliese Schultz had left home with her two suitcases to take a train to Frankfurt, and another train to West Berlin.

That late summer the Federal Republic recovered from the excesses brought on by victory in the World Cup soccer tournament, and awaited the death of a judge shot dead at his front door, and the death of Holger Meins from self-inflicted starvation, and the sentencing of Ulrike Meinhof.

From the day they waved their goodbye, as the long distance express train pulled away from the platform at Munich's Hauptbahnhof, Doktor and Frau Schultz had not set eyes on their beloved daughter. One letter only had been received by them, written a week after her arrival in West Berlin. Margarethe Anneliese Schultz had within a month of her arrival in West Berlin dropped out of her course, dropped into underground cover. She had been recruited into a cell of a Red Army faction that sought to revive the drive of armed insur-rection on behalf of an oppressed proletariat as first initiated by Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe and Gudrun Ensslin and Holger Meins.

In a world of heady excitement she became a part of the small core of revolutionaries living in sympathisers' apartments, stretching her legs to the newest young man who carried a Firebird 9 mm Parabellum pistol, eating in restaurants on the proceeds of bank robberies, moving in stolen BMWs and Mercedes saloons.

Her parents had reported her missing to the Munich city police.

Eight months after she had left them, men of the

"P0P0", the political police, had called on the pastor. had interviewed him in the living room of his home, and after 35 minutes had left him in prayer on his knees and with the comfort of his wife.

The pastor's daughter was a bank robber. The pastor's sweet child had driven the getaway car from a robbery in which a policeman had been fatally shot.

The pastor's angel was on the list of those hunted by the political police, the criminal police and the security police.

Her induction had been through a working circle, photography. It had been her initial role to photograph targets for assassination, targets for bombing. Her hand was steady. Her photographs were crystal sharp in focus. The years passed. The Red Army faction slaughtered the high and the mighty of the state. The capitalist exploiters were cut down. Chief Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback, executed. Chief Executive of the Dresdner Bank Jurgen Ponto, executed. Military attache to the FRG embassy in Stockholm, Baron von Mirbach, executed. President of the Federation of Industries Hanns-Martin Schleyer, executed. The government stood firm. The killings did not win the freedom of the founding fathers and mothers of the movement. There was a week when despair became a plague. A Lufthansa holiday jet hijacked to Mogadishu in the African state of Somalia was retaken by the intervention of the Grenzschutz Gruppe Neun. The principal imprisoned activists hanged or shot themselves in their cells. The movement sagged under the failure of action and the loss of the star participants. Margarethe Anneliese Schultz, her face on the wanted posters, her name on the charge sheet of a Federal court, her future likely to be 20 years behind bars, drove into Switzerland, took a train to Italy, bought an airline ticket to Damascus.

She threw off the cause of the bovine proletariat of her homeland, she embraced the cause of the Palestinian people. She was careful with her favours, she dispensed them only where they could be of advantage to her.

She had sought out a protector, a man of such influence that she would not be repatriated to the maximum security women's prisons of West Germany.

He was a repulsive bastard, the major in Syrian Air Force Intelligence, but he had influence. She warmed his bed. She worked hard to please him. In obedience to the wishes of Major Said Hazan, she had, many months before, given herself to a young Palestinian fighter of the Popular Front.

The pendant hung at her neck.

The pendant was a sapphire held by a fastening crescent of diamonds.

The pendant hung at her neck from a gold chain of close, fine links.

He heard the words. The drooled words slipping from the rebuilt mouth of Major Said Hazan… "in the presence of the orphans of the Palestine revolution you pledged your loyalty to the struggle"… He heard the words that had been used to taunt him.

The chain that supported the pendant lay on the smooth skin of her throat.

She was kissing his mouth, and the lobes of his ears.

She told him of her love. The flatness of her stomach undulated against his groin. The warmth of her breasts drifted through the cotton of his shirt.

Abu Hamid, standing just inside the room, leaning hack against the closed door, hearing the muffled i aucous sounds of the souq, knew that he would kill the girl he had loved.

He was calm. He felt no fear. It was not as it had been when the woman who was a spy for the Israelis had gazed back in contempt into his face. It was as it had been when he had gone to seek out the man who had stolen his transistor radio. It was as it had been when he had eased himself up from the bench outside the Oreanda Hotel, when he had walked, filtering between the traffic, towards the hotel steps. As it had been when he had raised the assault rifle to confront the old man and the young woman pushing through the glass swing doors.

Major Said Hazan had played with him as a child.

The toy that had won him had been the breasts and the cleft of Margarethe Schultz. He held her in his arms.

He smelled the cleanness of her hair and the dry pleasure of her body.

"I love you, brave boy."

"As you love him?" Abu Hamid murmured from the pit of his throat.

"I love you for your courage, brave boy."

She arched her head upwards, she stretched to kiss his forehead. Her neck was pulled taut. The pendant seemed to him to dance on her skin, and the candlelight caught the kingfisher brilliance of the sapphire and flashed upon the wealth of the diamonds.

"As you love him?"

He held the back of her head in his left hand, the fingers tight into the looseness of her hair. He held the back of her neck in his right hand, the fingers twined into the slender strength of the chain.

"I love only you, brave boy."

She had not looked into his face. She had not seen his eyes. She had not seen the smile curve at his lips. He thought of her cheeks against the reconstructed atrocity that was the face of Major Said Hazan. He thought of the fingerless hand groping to the smoothness of the skin of her thighs.

The fingers of his left hand that were tight in her hair jerked Margarethe Schultz's head back. He saw the shock sweep into her eyes. With his right hand he tore the pendant from her throat, snapping the chain clasp on her neck. He bent her head down so that it was lower than the level of his waist, so that she could see only his feet. In front of her, between her bare feet, between his boots, he dropped the pendant. He stamped on the sapphire, on the diamonds of the crescent. He thought of how she had shamed him from taking money, how she had burnt the letter from the Central Bank of Syria.

She had taken a pendant of sapphire and diamonds, she had taken the body of Major Said Hazan. He ground with his heel into the carpet. He heard the wincing gasp of her breath as he moved his foot aside, forced her head lower so that she could see the shattered pendant.

She had taken the love of Abu Hamid. She had taken his pledge that he would go into Israel, take the war into Israel, take his death into Israel.

When he pulled her head up, when she could look into his face, she spat.

She snarled, "You are scum… You are not even a good fuck, not even as good as him… "

He saw her eyes bulging towards him. He saw the blue sheen at her lips. He saw her fingers scrabble to hold his wrists. He saw her tongue jumping from her mouth.

When he let go of her throat, when she slid to the carpet, he crouched over her.

He could hear the choking of his tears. He lay across her. He could feel the wetness of her skin where his tears fell.

Percy Martins was on his bed.

It was hours since he had walked around the bare room. He had only had to walk round once to understand the nature of his confinement. Behind the curtains over the windows he had found the metal bars. He had noted that there was no light through the keyhole of the door. He had heard the coughing of a man in the corridor.

He was on his bed.

He was close to sleep when he was roused into alertness by the muffle of voices behind the door. He heard the rasp of the turning key. He sat upright on his bed.

It was the girl, Zvi Dan's assistant, Rebecca. She carried a mug of tea. He could see that it was freshly made, that it steamed in her hand. She passed him the mug.

"That's uncommonly civil of you."

"It is nothing."

"Why?"

"I thought you had been kicked, I thought they were queuing to kick you again. There were plenty of them in line to kick you."

"People like to kick a fool, when a fool is down."

Martins drank the tea, scalded the roof of his mouth.

"Kicking you does not help Holt."

He gazed into her face.

"I suppose it's stupid to ask, but there hasn't been any news?"

"There could only be news from the Syrian radio.

We are monitoring their transmissions, there has been nothing on their radio."

Martins slumped back onto his bed. "The waiting, it's so bloody awful, waiting for news of catastrophe, and for the inevitability of disgrace."

"What are your feelings for Holt?"

"He's one of the finest young men I've ever met, and I never got round to telling him."

She turned away, went out through the door. He heard the key turn. He lay in the darkness and sipped at the hot sweetness of the tea.

With three men to escort him Heinrich Gunter stumbled, tripped through the darkness over the rough ground on the slope of the hillside.

He was handcuffed to one man.

He had been given back his shoes, but they rubbed and calloused his feet and it was more years than he could remember since he had last worn lace up shoes without socks. He had been given back his shoes, but they had retained his shirt and his suit jacket and his trousers. He wore his vest and his underpants that now smelled and over his shoulder was draped a coarse cloth blanket.

Where they had left the car, his photograph had been taken. All very quick, and he had hardly been aware of the process. The hood had been snatched up from over his face, the light had blasted him. Time for him to identify the gun barrel that had been the sharp pain under his chin, and the face mask of the one who held a camera level with his eyes. Two workings of the camera, and the flash, and the hood retrieving the darkness and falling. The taking of his photograph had disturbed him. As if the photograph brought him back towards a world that he understood, a world of ransom demands and bribery, and of newspaper headlines and radio bulletins, and of the government in Bonn, and of the helplessness of the world that he knew. The taking of the photograph had forced his mind to his family, his wife and his children, and his home. Forced him to think of his wife sitting numb in their home and of th dazed confusion of his children.

It was easier for him when he was in their world, not his own, when he lived the existence of his captors Their world was the gun barrel and the handcuffs, taking a hooded hostage across the rough sloping ground below the Jabal al Barouk.

Crane froze.

Holt, behind him, had taken three more steps before he registered Crane's stillness.

Crane held the palm of his hand outstretched, fingers splayed, behind his back, so that Holt could see the warning to stop.

It was the fifth hour of the night march. Holt was dead on his feet. The moon, falling into the last quarter, threw a silver light on them.

Crane, very slowly, sunk to his knees and haunches.

A gentle movement, taking an age to go down.

Holt followed him. The Bergen straps cut into his shoulders. Pure, blessed relief, to sink low and not to have to jar the Bergen on his back.

Crane turned his head, his hand flicked the gesture for Holt to come forward.

Holt sensed the anxiety growing in his body. When Crane had first stopped he had been walking as an automaton, no care other than not to disturb a loose stone or tread on a dried branch. Gone from him, the sole concentration on his footfall. He came forward, he strained his eyes into the grey-black stillness ahead, he saw nothing. He found that his hands were locked tight on the stock of the Model PM and the bloody thing was not even loaded and the flash eliminator at the end of the barrel was still covered with the dirt-stained condom. Hell of a great deal of use young Holt would be in defending the position.. . He was close to Crane, crouched as he moved, close enough for Crane to reach back and with strength force him lower.

Crane had him down, pushed Holt so that he lay full length on the narrow track.

Holt heard the stone roll ahead of them. A terrible quiet was in him, the breath stifled in his throat. A stone was kicked ahead of him. They shared the path. So bloody near to the tent camp, and they shared the track.

Crane was reaching for his belt, hand moving at glacier speed.

They shared the bloody path. All the tracks in south Lebanon, all the trails running on the hill slopes of the west side of the Beqa'a, and they, by God, shared it.

Holt breathed out, tried to control himself, tried not to pant.

He heard the voices, clear, as if they were beside him.

Words that he did not understand, a foreign language, but a message of anger.

He could see nothing, but the voices carried in the night quiet.

A guttural accent, speaking English, seeking communication.

"I cannot see, I cannot know what I hit."

"More careful."

"But I cannot see… "

Holt heard the impact of a kick. He heard the gasp, muffled, then the sob.

"I cannot see to walk."

A noise ahead as if a weight were dragged, and new voices, Arabic, urging greater pace. Holt did not understand the words, knew the meaning.

Crane had the pocket night sight to his eye. He rarely used it. Crane's bible said that reliance on a night sight was dangerous, hard to switch back and forth between a night sight and natural night vision. They were making as much noise ahead as Holt had conjured up on the first of the night march tests in the Occupied Territories – so bloody long ago, back in the time before history books Holt thought the man who complained, who could not see, might be German or Austrian or Swiss German.

There was a stampede of stones away from the path, and the sound of another kicking, and the sound of another whimper. He thought they were moving faster, he thought the noises moved away.

Holt waited on Crane.

He heard the call of a hyena above. He heard the barking of a dog behind and below from among the village lights of Ain Zebde. He waited on Crane.

Methodically, as was his way, Crane replaced the pocket night sight in the pouch on his belt.

"It's a European," Crane whispered.

"What's a European doing…?"

"God, didn't you learn adding at school? There are three hoods with a European prisoner on our track. A European, with a bag over his head, who cannot see where he's going, with Arabs, that adds to the movement of a hostage."

"A hostage… " Holt repeated the word, seemed to be in awe of the word.

"Moving a hostage on my bloody route." A savageness in Crane's whisper.

"What do we do?"

"Keep going, have to."

"Why, have to?"

"Because, youngster, we have a schedule. We have an appointment. We have to move behind them, and move at their pace. I don't have the time to lie up. And I'm better keeping them in sight, I'm better knowing where they are."

"A hostage?"

"That's what I said."

"Definitely a hostage?"

"He's tied to one of them. He's got a European accent.

He's short of trousers, just a blanket over him. We're in an area of Syrian control, so they move him at night They'll be from Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah, they don't trust the shit Syrians any more than I do… Don't kick any bloody stone, youngster."

Carefully, with so much care, Holt pushed himself upright. He stood. All the time he could hear the fading sounds of movement ahead. He let Crane move off, get the fifteen paces in front. He struggled to ease the pressure of the straps on his shoulder.

Best foot forward, on a shared path.

He could not help himself. He should have concentrated solely on each footfall. There should have been nothing else in his mind, no chaff, no clutter, nothing other than the weight of the ball of his foot testing for the loose stone, for the dried branch, for the crisped leaf.

The chaff and the clutter in his mind were the thoughts of love and vengeance.

He had told his girl, his Jane Canning who was the personal assistant to the military attache, that he loved her. A long time ago, he had told his girl that he loved her. His girl was ashes, he did not even know where the parents of his girl had scattered her ashes. Too distant from them to know whether they had taken her ashes to a sea shore or taken them to a heathland of heather flowers or taken them to the serenity of a woodland. His girl was ashes, gone, dust, earth. So many things that he could remember of her. Meeting in the canteen at the School of East European and Slavonic Studies and thinking she was stunning. Waiting for her when she was late and the tryst was the pavement outside the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square and hoping to God that she hadn't stood him up. Coming to her own bachelor girl flat, with a bunch of freesias and a bottle of Beaujolais and wondering whether he would get back to his own place before the end of the weekend. Holding her and kissing her when she had told him that she had landed Moscow for a posting, and wasn't it marvellous because he was headed there in a few weeks' time, and cursing that for those few weeks he would be without her and she would be without him. Scowling at her because she had put him down for ever and ever, amen, in the corridor of the Oreanda Hotel in Yalta…

"Don't be childish, Holt."

He had told his minder, his Mr Martins who worked the Middle East Desk of the Secret Intelligence Service, that he wanted vengeance. Bloody light years ago. He would know the man that they called Abu Hamid the moment that he could focus the lenses of the binoculars upon him. No doubt. He had seen the man they called Abu Hamid for nine, ten seconds. He didn't believe he would ever forget the face and the crow's foot scar.

Bloody light years ago he had wanted vengeance, he had told Martins that he wanted the eye and the tooth, both.

He thought that his desire for vengeance was sapped, he thought that he had simply never had the guts to walk away from Mr Martins in England, to walk away from Mr Crane in Israel. He thought that he was on the west slopes of the Beqa'a because he had never had the guts to turn his back on something as primitive as vengeance. He thought that he would in no way benefit from the sniping of Abu Hamid. He knew that nothing would change for Jane, nor for her parents either, even if they would ever know. And would anything change for him?

"I'd want him killed."

They were at the seventh rally point of the night.

It was where Crane had told him they would spend the few minutes of rest. An exact man was Crane, each rally point reached on time, the perfect instrument of vengeance.

Holt huddled against Crane. The wind caught at the sweat running on his body and chilled him.

"Can I talk?"

"Whisper, youngster."

"Where are they?"

"Ahead, perhaps a quarter of a mile."

"And it's a hostage?"

"What I reckon."

Holt swallowed hard. He caught at the sleeve of Crane's tunic shirt.

"He's more valuable."

"Riddles, youngster."

' 'A hostage is more valuable than sniping Abu Hamid."

"You know what you're saying?"

"There is more value in bringing back a hostage alive than in leaving Abu Hamid dead behind us."

"I didn't hear that." Crane tugged his sleeve clear.

"To bring back a hostage alive, that is a genuine act of mercy."

"Then you're forgetting something, youngster."

"I am not forgetting a fellow human being in danger."

"Forgetting something big."

"What is bigger than rescuing a man from that sort of hell?"

"Your promise, that's what you're forgetting."

"A hostage is alive, a hostage is an innocent…"

Crane turned away, his voice was soft and cut the edge of the night wind. "I gave my word, youngster. I don't play skittles with a promise."

"A hostage is worth saving. Is Abu Hamid worth killing?"

"I gave my promise. Pity you don't see that that's important."

"They aren't worth it, the people who've got your promise."

"Time to move."

"A hostage's freedom is worth more than your promise."

"I said it was time to move."

Holt stood.

"If I ever get out of this I'll hate you, Mr Crane, for abandoning a hostage."

"If you ever get out of this, youngster, it'll be because of my promise… Just stop pissing in the wind."

Crane searched the ground ahead with the pocket night sight. They moved off. The gap between them materialised. Holt could hear the distant sounds ahead of the progress of a hostage and his captors. To the east of them, below them, was the village town of Khirbet Qanafar. They went quiet, traversing the slope side of the valley wall. When they next stopped they would be at the lying up position overlooking the tent camp.

In the village town of Khirbet Qanafar the merchant lay on a rope bed and snored away the night hours.

Many years before, when he had first forsaken his lecture classes at Beer Sheba and moved into his clandestine life in Lebanon, he had found sleep hard to come by, he had felt the persistent fear of discovery. No longer; he slept well covered by a blanket that he fancied had come from the headman's own bed.

Beside the chair on which were laid his outer clothes, the merchant had spread out two plastic bags of the sort that were used to carry agricultural fertiliser. On these empty bags he had laid all the working parts of the pump engine that brought up water from one of Khirbet Qanafar's three irrigation wells. He had dismantled the pump engine during the late afternoon and early evening, then he had eaten with the headman and the headman's sons. In the morning, after he had woken and washed and fed, he would begin to reassemble the pump engine. He knew the reassembly would take him many hours, perhaps most of the day. He knew that in the dusk of the following day he would still be at Khirbet Q a n a f a r. It was all as he had planned it. Crane would snipe at dusk. He slept easily, he was in position, as he had been told to be.

But how much longer, how many more years, could a university lecturer play the part of a merchant in spare parts for electrical engines and sleep in the bed of an enemy?

When he felt the softness of her body turn to cold, Abu Hamid rose to his feet.

The candle had gone, but the electricity supply was restored and light was thrown into the room from the alley way.

She lay at his feet. Only an awkwardness about the tilt of her throat and the lie of her head.

He went to the window. He edged the thin curtains aside. He saw the jeep parked at the end of the alley.

There was the auburn glow of the driver's cigarette.

He had been briefed on the plan for the attack against the Defence Ministry on Kaplan. They asked him for his life, and for the lives of the men who would travel with him. Of course, they would watch over him.

He lay on her bed. He smelled the perfume of the sheets and the pillows. He remembered the small, groping hands of the boy child she had placed with gentleness on his shoulder.

Heinrich Gunter was pushed down onto his hands and his knees. As he propelled himself forward over the rough rock floor he sensed the damp mustiness of the cave.

All according to Crane's bible. They moved through the lying up position then doubled back to circle it.

They settled. Away below them were the lights of the camp, and the chugging drive of the generator carried up to their high ground.