At Close Quarters

18

Flooding it with gold light, the dawn slipped over the rim of the far valley wall.

It was as if the valley exploded in brilliance, with the low beams of the sun's thrust catching the lines and colours of the Beqa'a. At dawn, at a few minutes before »tx o'clock, the valley was a place of quiet beauty. The sun caught the clean geometric lines of the irrigation channels, it flowed over the delicate green shades of the early growth of barley and wheat, it bathed the rough strength of the grey yellow rock outcrops, it glinted on the red tile roofs of Khirbet Qanafar, it shone on the corrugated iron roofs of a commando camp. The sun laced onto the windscreen of a travelling car. The sun pushed down long shadows from the bodies of a flock of sheep driven by a child towards the uplands of the valley to the plateau where it would be cooler when the sun was high. The sun burnished the scrubbed whiteness of a flag that carried in its centre an outline of the Zionist state that was overpainted with crossed rifles with fixed bayonets.

And the sun, striking out, gave a shape to the conical tents of the camp.

The camp was no surprise, it was familiar from the aerial photographs.

There was the wire perimeter. There was the anti-tank ditch. There was the cluster of large sleeping tents.

There was the latrine screen. There were the holes in the ground of the air raid pits, and of the armoury.

There was the tent of the commander, set aside. There was the roof above the cooking area.

The generator had been switched off at the first surge of daylight, as if light were only needed as a protection against the dangers of the night. A complete silence at the tent camp. The only movement was the turn and wheel and casual stamp of the sentry at the entrance to the camp, and the hustling of the cook as he revived the fire after the night, and the drift towards the sun orb of the wavering smoke column, and the flag fluttering out the emblem of the Popular Front.

Above the camp, at a place where the steeper sides of the valley wall flattened out to offer a more gentle slope to the floor of the Beqa'a, the ancient ice age movements had left a gouged-out overhang of rock. The space under the lip of the protruding rock was shallow, not more than three feet deep, but the overhang ran some ten feet in length. The overhang was unremarkable. In the half mile or so to either side of this particular formation there were another nine similar devastations of the general line of the ground fall.

The overhang of rock was the place chosen by Crane for the final lying up position.

Crane asleep.

Holt on watch.

The sun lifted clear of the Jabal Aarbi on the east side of the Beqa'a. It was extraordinary for Holt how fast the cleanness of the light began to diffuse into haze. The sun was climbing. He tugged his watch out from under his tunic top, checked the time. Crane was sleeping well, like he needed to sleep. He would liked to have left Crane to sleep longer, to have the chance to rest the eye and to bring back strength into his muscles and calm into his mind. The watch was the taskmaster. He would be chewed out if he allowed Crane to sleep beyond his allotted time. He touched Crane's shoulder. Since they had reached the lying up position he had slept for an hour, and Crane had slept for an hour. But the sun was now up, and the camp was stirring. He could not think when they would next sleep.

Crane awoke.

God, and did he do it easily? For Holt it was a miracle of the world, Crane waking. A fast rub of the eye, half of a stifled yawn, a vicious scratch at the armpit, a scowl and a grin, and Crane was awake.

There were small figures moving from the tents, there was the first tinkle of a transistor radio playing music and travelling against the wind.

"Did you sleep all right?"

"I slept fine… what's moving?"

"Starting to be shit-shower-shave time down there.

You know, Mr Crane, it's fantastic, us being here, them being there. I mean, it's what you said would happen, but until I was here perhaps I didn't ever quite believe it."

"You think too much, youngster, that's the problem of education."

"How's the eye?"

"Worry about yourself."

Holt heard the pitch of Crane's voice drop, he saw him turn away. Crane's tongue was rolling inside his cheeks, like he was cleaning his teeth with his tongue, like the action was a toothpaste substitute.

"What else is moving?"

"A boy over there with sheep, there… " Holt pointed to his right, through the scrim net that masked them.

"Bit of traffic on the road. Nothing else. When do I start looking?"

The binoculars were in Crane's Bergen. Crane shook his head. "Think about it, youngster. Where's the sun?

The sun's straight into us. You put the glasses up and you'll risk burning your eyes out, and you'll risk a lens flash. Neither's clever. You don't do any looking till the sun's a hell of a lot higher. Patience, youngster."

"Mr Crane… "

"Yeah."

"Mr Crane, what happened to the hostage?"

There was a tremor of annoyance across Crane' mouth. "What's it to you?"

"I just wanted to know."

"Are you going to make a thing about it, are you going to puke over me?"

"What happened to him?"

Crane whispered, "There's a cave a quarter of a mile back, that's where they went. We passed about hundred yards higher. I'd say it's where they're going to hold him. Sometimes it's Beirut where they hold them, sometimes it's out in the Beqa'

… would be better in Beirut, won't be a hotel out here."

"Mr Crane… "

"Yeah."

"When we've sniped, when we're heading back… "

"No."

"Nothing we can do?"

"You want to get home, or you want to die? I you want to go home you walk right past* the cave, 1 you want to die you call for tea and scones… Sorry youngster."

Holt hung his head, his words were a murmur, the wind in the scrim netting. "Seems dreadful to leave him."

"Heh, Alexander the Great came through here Nebuchadnezzar was here, the Romans had a go at it There were the Crusaders and the Turks and the Frenc and the Yanks and the Syrians, and my people had a try at it. Everyone's had a go at civilising this place, and Lebanon saw them all off. That's just fact, that's not education. And it's fact that you can't change things Holt, not on your little educated own. You can't change a damned thing… forget him."

"It's rotten to turn our backs on him."

Crane looked for a moment keenly at Holt, didn't speak. He untied the laces of his boots, then pulled the laces tighter through the eyes and made a double bow.

From a pouch in the Bergen he took a strip of chewing gum. He lifted the Armalite onto his lap. Holt watched him. Crane had his face against the netting and his eyes roved across the vista in front, down towards the camp.

Crane's hand settled on Holt's shoulder.

"You'll be all right, youngster."

Holt gagged. "What are you doing?"

"Scouting, going to find myself a hide further down."

"You said that where we'd be lying up would be 1,000 yards."

"I want six hundred," Crane said.

"Is it the eye?"

"I just want six hundred."

"Can't you do it at a thousand?"

"Leave it, Holt." Close to a snarl.

Holt shook his head, didn't believe it. According to Crane's bible there should be no movement by daylight.

According to Crane's text not even an idiot tried to move across open ground after dawn, before dusk.

According to Crane's chapter the team never split.

According to Crane's verse a thousand yards was best for the sniper. He couldn't argue. He stared at Crane.

It was as if his fear, wide eyed, softened Crane.

"I'm not gone long, an hour, may be a little more. In an hour you start to use the glasses… They're all shit down there, they can't see their assholes right now. On my own, just myself, a buzzard overhead won't see me.

I find the place at 600 yards, and I'm back. You spot the bastard for me, we mark him, we follow him, we get to know him. Late afternoon, sun's going down, sun's behind us, sun's into them, that's when I move again.

One shot at 600. I stay put, you stay put, till it's dark.

I come back for you, and we move out… Got it, youngster?"

"Got it, Mr Crane." There was a reed in Holt's voice, like he was a child, afraid to be alone.

The scrim netting was slowly lifted, and then Crane was gone.*

There was a crag boulder to the right of the overhang, and Holt saw the shape of Crane, his outline broken by the camouflage tabs, reach the boulder.

He did not see him afterwards.

Holt screwed his eyes tight. He peered down onto the desolate and featureless ground between himself and the tent camp and he could not find a movement. He could not credit that Noah Crane, on that landscape, had vanished.

Fawzi blinked in the sunlight. He stretched, he yawned, he pulled his trouser belt tighter.

He had slept well, heavily. The smile came to his face.

He had much to be cheerful about. He was casting aside the sleep, he was basking in the sunlight and the memory of the previous evening. Last year's harvest, well stored and well dried leaves, and well packed. Much to smile about, because there were five packages in the locked rear of his jeep and each package weighed 10 kilos, and each kilo was top quality.

The posting in the valley as liaison officer to the recruits' camp had this one salvation, constant access to the old and new marijuana crop. He had done well in the weeks that he had spent setting up the camp and then introducing it to these boys of the Popular Front.

His money was in dollars. Cash dollars, bank notes. For dollars an understanding could be negotiated with the customs officials at the airport. His dollars in cash, less the price of the understanding, could be carried in his hip pocket and in his wallet, to the cities of Rome and Paris and Athens. They were the holy cities he would make his pilgrimage to, when the creep Hamid had gone with the chosen ten to Damascus for the final preparation before the flight to Cyprus and the sea journey to the shoreline of Israel.

Much to be cheerful about, and the most cheering matter for Lieutenant Fawzi was that this would be his last day and his last night in the suffocating tedium of the Beqa'a.

There was a queue of recruits waiting to be served by the cook. He ordered an omelette, three eggs. He said that he wanted coffee. He went back to his tent, pulled out a chair from inside, waited for his food to be brought to him.

The smoke, pungent from the dew damp wood, played across his nostrils.

He held the binoculars as Crane had taught him. His thumb and his forefinger gripped the far end of each lens, and the outstretched palms of his hands shielded the polished glass from the sun.

Holt had stopped looking for Crane. He lay on his stomach, quite still, only allowing his head to move fractionally as he raked over the faces of the magnified figures moving lethargically between the tents.

He had covered the line in front of the cooking area, and the line in front of the latrine screen. He had followed the men as they emerged from their tents, until they ducked back into them.

He could not believe that he had looked with the power of the binoculars into the face of Abu Hamid and had not known him. He had seen no man with a crow's foot scar on his cheek. He had seen no man walk with the rolling gait of Abu Hamid crossing the street in front of the Oreanda Hotel. He could remember the long sitting wait on the hard bench in the corridor leading to the cell block of the police station in Tel Aviv.

He could remember the beating given freely to the bomber. What if the man had lied… What if the man had lied to save his skin from the fists and the boots…

The doubts crawled in him.

What if he had travelled to the Beqa'a and Abu Hamid was not at the camp? What if he had travelled to the Beqa'a and could not recognise Abu Hamid?

For the fourth time he started his search at the southern perimeter wire of the camp, and traversed north, searching for the face, and doubting.

He had laid her body on the bed.

He covered her body with the sheet and then the bed cover. He pulled the sheet high enough to obscure the bruising at her throat.

He had taken a flower from the vase by the window, a rose. He laid the flower on the bed cover across her breast.

He closed the door behind him. He walked down the steep steps and out into the noise and crush of the alley.

He walked very straight, he walked with the purpose of a young commander who had accepted a mission of leading an assault squad against the Defence Ministry on Kaplan.

Abu Hamid climbed into the passenger seat of the jeep.

Holt set the binoculars down on the rock dirt beside his hands. The valley shimmered in the heat below him.

The sun burned a whiteness from the tent tops, and flickered at those strands of the wire that were not rusted. Nothing wrong with the binoculars, he had seen the dart of the rats at the bottom of the wire. He was learning the life of the camp. The men were sitting in a half circle, swatting off the flies, watching a hugely fat young man demonstrate the stripping down and the reassembling of a machine gun. He could not see all of their faces, not at this moment, but he had checked each of the faces before they had sat down, and he had checked the face of the uniformed instructor. It had been a desperation to see if there was a crow's foot scar on the left upper cheek of the instructor, a last throw.

The cook was on his knees blowing at the fire. Only the cook and a sentry at the entrance to the camp and a man asleep in a chair by his tent were not involved in the class session. He had come so far with Crane, three nights' march, a squashed-in lifetime, and Abu Hamid was not there. His head and his body ached and his whole heart sank in despair.

Major Zvi Dan went into the hushed badly-lit room that housed the communications centre.

He closed the door gently behind him.

It was a world where no voice was raised, where none of the men or women in uniform moved other than at a studied pace. The room was an empire of electronics.

There was the purr of the teleprinters and the greenwash screens of the visual display units and the faint whisper of the recording equipment. Because of the nature of events, because Crane and Holt had walked into the Beqa'a, transmissions from the Syrian military that were intercepted by the antennae of Hermon would be relayed to the communications centre at Kiryat Shmona.

In a lowered voice he asked the communications captain if there was any information he should have.

There was nothing.

Major Zvi Dan tore a sheet from the small notepad that he carried in his tunic breast pocket. On the paper was written the figures identifying an ultra high frequency radio channel. He asked that from the middle of the day that frequency should be continuously monitored.

Still he watched the camp. He played through in his mind what Crane would say to him, how he would reply.

Definitely he's not there… Maybe he's a bit changed

… If he was there I'd know him… If he had a beard

…? I'd know him…

Nothing further to look for at the camp. The men were at the machine gun still, three at a time, practising what they had learned. Mr Crane would have been disgusted. The fire in the cooking area was out, and the cook fellow was washing stainless steel dishes, and the sentry walked backwards and forwards across the road track to the camp looking as though he were asleep. The camp had nothing for him.

With the binoculars he tried to find Crane.

Couldn't find him, just as he could not find the man he'd come so far to see killed.

Holt was desolated, he had never been so alone.

"If there is no one else to whom you will communicate your information, then you have to wait."

The traveller settled deeper into the comfort of the armchair. The outer office was cool, pleasantly furn ished. He had walnuts in a bag, their shells already cracked. "My information is only for Major Said Hazan."

The clerk did not trouble to hide his contempt. The man stank, was dressed like a peasant. His shoes had brought the street dirt onto the carpet.

"He has gone to a meeting, I do not have a time for his return."

"Then I shall wait."

The pieces of walnut shell flaked to the carpet. The traveller made no attempt to retrieve them. He chewed happily on the crisp interior.

Holt saw the dust plume spitting from behind the wheels of the jeep. He reached for the binoculars. He saw the markings above the jeep's engine, presumably Syrian army. He saw that a single passenger sat beside the driver.

His sight became a blur. Holt's head slashed sideways, away from the road view, away from the jeep. The magnified vision leaped from the roadway to the camp, from the tents to the camp entrance, from the sentry to the cook.

The cook had come out of the camp. He had skirted the wire. The cook now climbed the slope on the west side of the camp. Holt could see that he was scavenging.

In the hugeness of the binoculars' tunnel vision the cook seemed about to step into the overhang of rock. Holt could see that he whistled to himself. He watched him smile, pleased, because he had found a length of dried wood. He watched him tuck the length of wood under his arm and climb again. He watched him, slowly and unhurried, hunting for more wood, and climbing the slope.

Holt did not know where Noah Crane hid.

At the entrance to the camp Abu Hamid jumped clear of the jeep and strode through the gap in the wire. The jeep reversed away.

He saw Fawzi's lesson. He thought that Fawzi would have messed his trousers if he had ever been called on to fire a heavy machine gun in combat. His throat was dry. He walked to the cooking area. He saw the dead fire. No coffee warming. High on the hill slope above the camp he saw the cook foraging for wood.

The vision of the binoculars roved.

The cook had an armful of wood, so much now that he had wavered twice as if uncertain whether more was needed.

The open falling ground was devoid of cover except for long-dead trees lying strewn and ossified. The sun had burnt the bark from them.

The deep clumsily-dug ditch.

Refuse bags and the sheets of discarded newspaper, trapped on the coiled wire. The men were all sitting, bored and listless, no longer attentive to the gesturing officer in front of his class.

The new arrival…

The new man in the camp walked to stand behind the sitting instructor, listened for a few moments, turned away.

The binoculars followed him.

Something in the stride, something in the bearing.

The twin eyepieces were rammed against Holt's eyebrows and cheekbones. He had seen the right side of the face, he had seen the full of the face, he had seen the short curled hair at the back of the head.

The new man now seemed to walk aimlessly. A tent floated in front of him. Holt swore.

The man reappeared, doubling back, smoking Left side of the face.

Holt could hardly hold the binoculars steady. Breath coming in pants, hands trembling. He gulped the air down into his lungs. He forced the air down into his throat, breathing as a sniper would, winning control of his body. Crane's bible, breathing critical.

He saw the man's left hand raised to his face. He saw the finger peck at a place on the left cheek. He saw the hand drop.

Holt saw the crow's foot scar.

The breath shuddered out of his chest.

The vision of the binoculars bounced. The tunnel of sight bounced, fell. He had seen the crow's foot scar.

The shadow pit of the well of the scar, four lines of the scar spreading away from the dark centre.

The cook…

The cook still coming up the hill, bending here and there for a piece of wood, carefree.

Abu Hamid…

Seen beside the other men in the camp, Holt thought Abu Hamid was taller than he had remembered him, and thinner, and his hair was longer and falling to the olive green collar of his fatigue top. All doubt was gone.

He felt a huge surge of exhilaration – and he recognised it, a sudden, sharper, stronger fright. But Noah Crane and young Holt had done it, they had walked into the bloody awful Beqa'a valley, and they had found him.

They had him at close quarters, had traced him behind the lines, on the other side of the hill. And where the hell was Noah Crane?

The cook…

The cook had set down his gathered bundle, and come higher. He would collect another armful and then go back for the first. The cook meandered on the hill side, searching.

Abu Hamid…

Abu Hamid walked amongst the tents. To Holt he seemed a man without purpose. Sometimes he would insinuate himself close to the officer who lectured the young soldiers. Sometimes he would turn and walk away as if the lecture bored him. He flitted, he was aimless. Holt, in his mind, saw Jane and the ambassador.

He saw the blood rivers on the steps of the hotel. He saw the white pallor of death on her face, on his face.

He wondered if there was indeed a sweetness in revenge, or whether it would merely be a substitute, saccharine dose… He knew the excitement at the discovery of Abu Hamid, he could not imagine whether he would find pleasure, fruit, satisfaction in Abu Hamid dead. He had never hurt a human being in his life, not even at school, not even in a playground fight. No answers.

The cook…

As if struck by an electric shock, the cook jerked backwards, scattering the branches of wood behind him.

Crane appearing, seeming to thrust himself up from under the feet of the cook. Holt saw everything. The tunnel of his binoculars was filled with the cook trying to heave himself backwards, with Crane rising and groping and grasping for him. The cook screamed, a shrill, carrying scream. The scream winnowed over the hillside. The scream was clear to Holt who was four hundred yards from the cook, to the tent camp that was six hundred yards from the cook. Holt heard the rising cadence of the scream. He saw the flash of the blade.

He saw the body of Crane merge with the body of the cook. He heard the scream cut, snuffed out.

Fawzi's words had been lost. The recruits had first stiffened, swung, then jacknifed to their feet. They had seen the cook on the hillside, seen him try to twist away, break into flight. They had seen the assailant. They had heard the death of the scream. Abu Hamid charged from in front of his own tent towards the class, towards the DShKM heavy machine gun.

Holt lay on his stomach pressing his body as far as he could back into the recess of the rock overhang. He saw the brightness of the blade, and he saw the cook crumple to his knees, then slide to his face. He realised at once the enormity of it. Their cover was gone. He was hiding, but Crane had no hiding place. He thought the cook might even have stepped on Crane, he thought the cook had been close enough to Crane to have actually put his boot onto the back of Crane's camouflaged head or the back of Crane's camouflaged body.

Holt watched Crane. The hugeness of the tunnel vision seemed to give him an intimacy with Crane who was four hundred yards further down the hillside. He believed he could see the turmoil of decision in Crane's features. Crane looked back down the hillside, down the slope towards the tent camp. Holt followed his eye line, flashed the tunnel view of the binoculars towards the tent camp. The recruits were streaming towards the entrance between the coiled wire. Back to Crane. Holt saw the hands of Noah Crane fumbling at his waist, then he saw him crouch. Sharp movements now, decision taken, mind made. Crane back onto his feet.

Holt saw that he no longer wore his belt. He peered again to be sure. Crane no longer carried his belt on his waist. According to Crane's bible the belt was never taken from the body, not to sleep, not to defecate. Crane no longer wore his belt. Crane had his back to Holt. He gazed up high onto the hillside as if his eyeline was a half a mile higher than the rock overhang, as if his eyeline was far to the south.

Holt heard Crane's shout. Crane's hands were at his mouth, cupped to amplify his shout. Crane bellowed towards a place on the hillside. Holt thought that Crane shouted in Hebrew, that he called a warning.

Crane started to run at an angle on the hillside.

More understanding, but then a child could have understood.

They were young, the pursuers. They were fast on the hillside. They were swarming amongst the rock outcrops, over the broken ground. He was taking them away. His warning was a deception, he was leading them away from Holt.

There was the first ranging burst from the machine gun. Three, four rounds. There was the first red light of a sighting tracer bullet.

Holt could not take his vision, his magnified gaze, away from Crane. The pursuers, teenagers, half the age of Crane, must gain, would gain, on the quarry. A second burst, a second flailing flight of tracer. Holt could no longer see Crane's face, could see only the heaving shake of his back as he ran, away from Holt, ran for his life. Holt saw the puff pecks of the bullets striking rock and scree and stone.

Crane sagged. He stumbled, he fell. He rose again.

Out aloud, Abu Hamid shouted his triumph.

Three, four round bursts of 12.7 mm ammunition.

Aimed bursts from a tripod. Muzzle velocity nine hundred yards a second. He had seen his target go down, rise again, collapse, rise again. He had his hit.

Holt saw Crane go forward.

He seemed to hobble. He was ducking and weaving as he went, but slower, each step deeper into pain. He understood. The vixen's loyalty to her cub. A scarred, world weary, bitchy old vixen giving life to a wet-behind the-ears cub. The gunfire had stopped. No more shooting. Holt could see that the pursuers were now too close to Crane to make it either safe or necessary to fire again.

The pursuers bounded over the diminishing ground, hunted down their man. He heard Crane shout again, make another pretence at a warning to phantom men in a position ahead of him.

Holt saw the cave mouth.

Holt saw the first head, shoulders, appear at the mouth of the cave. The mouth of the cave was a hundred yards ahead of Crane's line. It was the edge of Holt's vision. It was the place that was half masked from him.

Four men came out of the cave's mouth. One man wore only the grey whiteness of underpants upon the pink whiteness of his body. Chaos on the hillside, chaos for Crane who was wounded, chaos for three men of the Hezbollah who were discovered and flushed out, chaos for a hostage prisoner. The three men ran. The hostage prisoner stood alone. The gap between Crane and his pursuers narrowed.

Holt watched. Crane was engulfed.

He let the binoculars fall from his eyes.

His head drooped, down into the dirt floor of the rock overhang.

The tears misted his eyes, ran bitter to his lips.

Crane was dragged down the hillside. The hostage prisoner was escorted after him.

A moment when the lights seemed to go out, when hope was lost.

The argument was ferocious.

"I wounded him, my shooting. My boys captured him. I should take him."

"You've work here."

Abu Hamid and Lieutenant Fawzi face to face.

"It was us who caught him… "

"Me who will take the Jew… "

"You want to take the credit from us."

"You have men to choose, you have a mission to perform. You will stay."

"So that you will take the credit."

"So that you can prepare your mission."

In the hand of Fawzi was the dog tag ripped from the neck of the prisoner, kept safe in Fawzi's hand just as the prisoner would be safe in Fawzi's possession.

"I should take him to Damascus."

"I order you to stay here. You will perform your duty."

Fawzi walked away. He went to the knot of recruits that had gathered round the prisoner. He shouldered aside the man kicking the prisoner. He thought that by now they would all have had their turn with the boot.

He saw the blood seeping from the knee of the prisoner.

He saw the mouth twisted to stifle an agony. He told the recruits that the prisoner should not again be kicked.

He went to his tent. He knew enough of the English language that was common between them to receive the garbled thanks of the hostage prisoner.

He sat at the table that was set between his bed and the bed used by Abu Hamid. He switched on the battery power for the radio. He waited. When the lights glowed, when he had transmission power, he broadcast his success to Damascus.

Holt watched.

The body of the cook was carried down the hillside on a stretcher made of rifle slings and the wood he had been collecting, and along with the body was the Armalite rifle that Crane had carried. A second search party had scoured the cave and brought down to the camp boxes of food and weapons and bedding.

Holt saw all that. He was undisturbed. The recruits of the Popular Front had no interest in that part of the hillside where Holt lay under the rock overhang and the screen of scrim netting.

Holt watched the camp. He could see Crane lying prone on the earth, he could see the blood on his legs.

He could see the rifles that covered Crane's every pain spasm.

They had not found Crane's belt. The belt lay amongst the rocks, deep amongst them, at the place where Crane had begun his decoy flight. Holt tried to memorise the place, tried to recall each detail of Crane's movement so that he could remember that exact place where Crane had crouched to conceal his belt.

Major Said Hazan swivelled his chair so that his back was to the traveller, so that he faced the wall map. He studied the two red-headed pins that he had set into his map. It was Major Said Hazan's style to repeat each piece of information given him so that there should be no possible error, no missed inflection, no false interpretation.

"And the information came from an Englishman?"

"An Englishman of middle years, staying at the guest house of the Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, and he said, 'How did you know about the infiltration last night?' That is what he said."

"And that 'last night', that was the night that Olaffson said the Israelis had fired flares to blind the night equipment?"

"That is correct, Major."

He spoke to himself, he ignored the traveller. He stared at the red-headed pin that marked the unsub-stantiated interception.

"Why are the British going into the Beqa'a?"

The traveller shrugged. Fragments of walnut tumbled from his clothes to the white pile of the carpet.

"A wretch such as I, Major, how could I know?"

He needed to think. He required moments of contemplation. Major Said Hazan was denied the moments.

A sharp tap at the door. A bustling entrance from his clerk, a sheet of paper handed to him. He studied it. He seemed no longer to see the traveller. He reached for a telephone. He demanded that the Jew prisoner be brought to Damascus by Air Force helicopter. He demanded that the Jew prisoner be brought to the custody of Air Force Intelligence. To win his demands he invoked the authority, and the fear of that authority, of that building in which he worked.

Major Zvi Dan rocked on his feet. He stood in the middle of the communications centre. He held loose in his hand the report of the intercepted traffic. For the third time he read the message, as if in the frequency of the reading he might find a straw. No comfort, nothing to cling to.

"INTERCEPT.

TRANSMISSION TIME:

1 0 – 4 7 HOURS LOCAL.

TRAFFIC ORIGINATED:

PFLP TRAINING CAMP, NR KHIRBET QANAFAR, BEQA'A.

TRAFFIC DESTINATION:

AFI HQ, DAMASCUS.

CODE:

2 N D SERIES, AFI.

MESSAGE:

ISRAELI SERVICEMAN CAR RYING IDENTIFICATION OF NOAH CRANE, REL: J E W, I / D NO: 478391, CAPTURED WHILE ON SURVEILLANCE OF CAMP, WOUNDED. IN SAME OPERATION, LINK UNCERTAIN, FRG NATIONAL HEINRICH GUNTER, HOSTAGE, FREED, UNHURT. SEARCH OF AREA INTO WHICH CRANE FLEEING FAILED TO FIND REMAINDER OF I N F I L TRATION PARTY. REQUEST EYE BRING TO DAMASCUS. SIGNED, FAWZI (L T).

No comfort, no straw, each reading worse than the last. The communications officer came quietly to his side. He asked, "The frequency we are to monitor – we are still to monitor it?"

"Yes," Major Zvi Dan said.

He went outside. He went into the bright sunlight.

Midday and the sun swirling off the dust of the parade area, and off the tin roofing of the huts, and off the armour plate of the personnel carriers. From the troops' quarters he heard the cheerful playing of music from the Forces' station. He passed beside the verandah outside the canteen. He knew that Rebecca watched him, but he could not bring himself to speak to her. His face would have told her.

He was familiar with disaster. His work often travelled in tandem with catastrophe. Many times he had known the pain and the catastrophe of losing a field agent. The hurt was never more manageable for being familiar.

He went into the building block. He walked to the sentry who lolled in his chair outside the door. He gestured for the door to be opened. Percy Martins sat on the bed. Major Zvi Dan saw the dulled scowl of Martins's welcome. He passed the sheet of paper to the Englishman. He let the Englishman hold the sheet of paper, as if for authenticity, then he translated line by line from the Hebrew.

"God… "

"You had the right to know."

"Holt, what about Holt?"

"He is alone."

"What can we do for him?"

"He is beyond our reach."

"He's just a boy."

"Then he should never have been sent."

"Can he not be helped?"

"If it were Crane who were free, if it were Holt who was taken, then there is perhaps something we could do for Crane, something; but he would have to do much for himself. I doubt if it works on the other side of the coin."

Percy Martins's hands covered his face. His voice was muffled through the thickness of his fingers.

"Is it because of what I did?"

"I have no means of knowing."

"What will they do to Crane?"

"Torture him."

"Will he talk?"

"How would you respond to torture, skilled torture, Mr Martins? Put on your shoes, please."

"Where are you taking me?"

There was a cold, rueful smile on Major Zvi Dan's face. "London will want to know what has happened.

They will want to set in train whatever machinery they can to minimise the damage."

He took Martins to an office with a secure telephone.

He dialled for him the number of the station officer at the embassy in Tel Aviv.

In a dust storm the helicopter of the Syrian Air Force took off from beside the camp. The power of the rotors, thrashing for lift, buffeted the tents, scattered the refuse that clung to the coiled wire on the perimeter.

Heinrich Gunter now wore the tunic and trousers of a recruit of the Popular Front. Clothes he had been given, explanations none. He could not comprehend how his escape from his captors had come about. He thought his freedom had been gained by the man who lay on the floor of the helicopter. The man was dressed in military clothes that were indented with camouflage tabs, and his leg was badly wounded and no-one had attempted to dress the wound, and he was handcuffed to the bulkhead and he was covered by the handgun of the Syrian officer who had boarded the helicopter at the camp. He saw that the man he believed had brought about his freedom bit hard at his bottom lip as though he were suffused in pain, as if he would not show his captor his pain, as if he refused to cry out, gasp.

Through the portholes of the Gazelle helicopter, Gunter saw laid out beneath him the bright and tranquil breadth of the Beqa'a valley.

They clapped, the men and the boys, and the women from behind their face scarves trilled their appreciation.

There was the drone of the working generator, there was the splash of water lifted from great depths and now free to run in the dug channels.

The merchant grinned and bowed to receive the congratulations.

The merchant was asked by the headman of Khirbet Qanafar to take food at his table, to share the midday meal. He was pleased to accept. He fancied he could smell the cooking of partridge. He was pleased to accept because it suited him to stay at the village town of Khirbet Qanafar until last light.

The merchant had heard the shooting perhaps two miles north up the valley. News came that a Jew had been captured, that a hostage prisoner had been freed.

Only one man captured… In his long years in Lebanon he was practised in deceit, he could guard his emotions.

He would be honoured to take food with the headman, and with the headman's sons.

He had done it as he thought Crane would have done it.

When the sun was behind him at last Holt crawled out of the fragile cover of the net and down the hillside.

He thought that he had been moving for a little more than an hour. Flat on his stomach, stomach ground against the earth and sun-scorched rock, he had gone the four hundred yards from the lying up position to the place where Crane had killed the cook.

The blood was there. The blood reinforced the truth.

The truth was the capture and the throwing through the hatch door of the military helicopter of Noah Crane.

He could hear the shouting and the triumph from the camp. Singing and the yelling of slogans, voices competing one with another. Then he found Crane's belt. It was wedged down between two small rocks and half buried by a trailing network of undergrowth.

Crane had left his belt on purpose. Crane's bible, do nothing without a reason.

Slowly, with great care, each movement weighed and considered, young Holt began the stomach crawl back towards the lying up position, and the heat shimmered over him, and the sun burned through the cotton of his tunic top.

As Crane himself would have done it.