At Close Quarters

7

Holt walked gingerly down the staircase.

The carpet had had so much use that he thought his mother would not even have offered it to Oxfam. Most of the dull brass rods were loose. There were three oil paintings on the wall above the stairs just decipherable as Victorian military and all apparently smoked for years over a damp log fire. In the early morning light the house looked in even worse a state than it did by night.

But he had had a good sleep, and at least the sheets had been aired.

Peeping through a door at the back of the hall was an elderly woman in a housecoat. She had a headscarf over her hair and the sharp angles told him that she had slept in her curlers and not yet removed them.

"Good morning," Holt said. He did his best to sound cheerful.

She told him that she was Mrs Ferguson, that she kept house.

He hadn't seen her the night before. It had been a five-hour drive from Exmoor, and when they arrived there was hardly a light on in the place, and no food waiting, and no sign of a welcoming drink, even.

Martins had been true to form, hadn't talked all the way, having muttered right at the start that he wasn't going to go off half cock, that he would keep the mysteries until the morning. Better that way, that was Holt's opinion. He could be patient.

Away behind closed doors he could hear the muffle of Martins's voice, on the telephone.

"He'll be having his breakfast in fifteen minutes,''

Mrs Ferguson said. She seemed to reproach him, as if by coming downstairs he had caught her unprepared as if he should have stayed in his room until called.

Holt prised open the bolts on the front door and slipped the security chain. He could still hear Martins on the telephone. Thirteen minutes until breakfast. He had the impression that breakfast was like a parade. The lock on the door was a new expensive Chubb, and he had seen the fresh alarm wiring at the windows.

He stood on the front steps. He gazed around him The house was a tower at his back, faded red Surrey brick, probably sixty or seventy years old with rounded corners topped by farcical battlements. In front of him were lawns, uncut since the previous autumn, and daffodil swards and beds of daisies and rose bushes that had escaped a winter pruning. There was a clatter of pigeons in flight from the oak and beech and sycamre trees that fringed the grass. He heard the stampede escape of a squirrel in the overgrown rhododendrons that hid the curve of a shingle drive. Holt thought the garden could have been a paradise… A dog was charging towards him. Heavy shouldered, black and tan, ears swept back, a mouth of white teeth. Holt was good with dogs. There had always been dogs at home.

He stood his ground, he slapped his hand against his thigh, welcoming. He heard a bellow, a yelling for the dog to stop, stand, stay, come to heel. The dog kept on coming, stripping the distance across the grass. Holt recognised the markings and weight of the German Rottweiler. Round the corner of the house came an elderly man, built like his dog, hobbling in pursuit, and shouting his command, and being ignored.

The dog reached Holt. The dog sat in front of him and licked Holt's hand. The dog had dreamy pleasure in the wide mahogany eyes.

The man reached them. He was panting.

"You shouldn't be walking outside, not when her's out. Damn bastard spiteful she can be… "

He wasn't looking at the dog. The wet of the dog's tongue lapped the back of Holt's hand.

"… She's a trained guard dog."

"She's soft as a brush, a lovely dog. My name's Holt."

"I'm George, and you'd best not be taking liberties with her. Vicious, she can be."

Holt was scratching under the dog's chin. He could see the rank happiness in the eyes. Holt believed there must be method in the madness. A dog that was loving and called vicious, a garden that was beautiful and left to sink to ruin, a house that was magnificent and nearly splendid but was obviously not cared for. He could be patient, but, by God, he'd require some answers by the end.

"Breakfast, Holt." The shout from the doorway. He saw that Martins wore corduroy trousers and a Guernsey sweater.

"And keep that beast under control, George."

Holt walked away. He turned once, briefly, to see the dog watching him going. As he went through the front door, Martins battered him across the shoulders with forced camaraderie.

"Sleep all right? Fine place. You shouldn't just take yourself outside, you were lucky that George was there to control that bloody animal. Word of warning about breakfast, eat everything, she takes it personally if you leave a crumb or a quarter of an inch of bacon rind.

Straight after, we'll talk business."

They took breakfast in a dining room that could have, probably once had, housed a full-size billiard table, but the flooring was linoleum and there were five small square tables each covered with a plastic cloth. Holt thought it was a civil service canteen, and the food was right for a canteen, and the coffee was worse. Martins said that the house had been bequeathed to the nation in 1947, and that since no one wanted it the Service had been lumbered. He said that it cost a small fortune to run and to heat. He said that Mrs Ferguson was the widow of a Special Operations Executive agent who had been parachuted into France just before the invasion, captured and shot. He said that George was a former serviceman, wounded by mine shrapnel in the Cyprus Emergency, and kept on by the Service as caretaker, gardener, driver, maintenance man. Holt wondered if Jane had ever been in a place like this.

Martins led the way across the hall and into a huge drawing room. The dustcovers were piled in the centre of the carpet, and the fire had not been cleared or laid again. Martins cursed. He lifted the pile of dust sheets, took them to the door, flung them out. At the fireplace he emptied the hod into the grate and then buried a fire lighter under the fresh coal, and lit it. When the smoke billowed across the room he cursed again and went back to the door and left it ajar.

"Typical of houses like this. You have to leave a door open if you want a fire, otherwise you're smoke gassed.

Why the Service has to put up with it defeats me… I imagine you're pretty cut up about Miss Canning."

They were there, the patient waiting was over.

Martins was bent over the fire, prodding with a grimed poker. Holt stood in the centre of the room and stared through the windows. He could see the dog slouching disconsolately towards a rose bed, then squatting.

"I've done a fair amount of thinking while I've been at home."

"You must have been devastated, only natural."

"I was at first, but I've come to terms with it. I'm going back to FCO. Life is for living, that's what Jane's mother said to me."

"I don't quite follow you."

"I'm going back to work, I'm going to try to put Yalta out of my m i n d… "

Martins was up from the fire, and the poker was left across the grate. Shock in his eyes, the colour flushing to his face.

"Your girl killed, shot down in cold blood, butchered in broad daylight, and you're talking about 'life is for living', I don't believe my ears."

"Don't sermonise me, Mr Martins. My feelings are in no way your business, not anyone's business but mine."

"Oh, very nice. Hardly dead, and you're talking about forgetting her, abandoning her memory… " There was a waft of contempt in Martins's voice, and a tinge that Holt saw of anxiety.

"She was my girl, I loved her and she is dead."

"And to be forgotten?"

"You're an arrogant bastard, Mister Martins. What I said is that I intend to go back to work, to go on with my life."

"Then, young Holt, you are a selfish little creep."

"If you brought me half way across England to this slum to insult me… "

"I'm merely astonished to hear this gutless crap from a young man who said of his girl's killer, 'I'd want him killed'."

"And what bloody option do I have?"

"That's more like it. That's the question I wanted to hear." Martins smiled quickly.

"What the hell can I do?"

"Much better." Martins heaved the air down into his chest, like a great weight had been lifted from him.

"You had me rather worried for a minute, young Holt.

You had me wondering whether there was an ounce of spunk left in your body."

"I don't see what more I can do for you," Holt said simply.

Martins spoke fast, as if unwilling to lose the moment.

"You are, of course, a signatory to the Official Secrets Act, you are aware that such a signature places upon you an oath of silence on all matters concerned with the work of the Service. Everything that I am about to tell you is covered by the terms of that Act, and violation by you of those terms would lead, as night follows day, to your appearing in closed court charged with offences under Section One of the Act."

Just as if he were falling, as if the ground opened under him, as if he could not help himself.

"What can I do?"

Far in the distance the dog was barking. Holt could see the leaping body and the snarling mouth, and George waving a stick at shoulder height, teasing the animal.

"You can help the man who murdered your girl to an early grave.. . "

The turmoil rocked in Holt's mind. She had been the girl with whom he had planned to spend his youth and his middle years and the last of his life.

"And you can assist your country in an act of vengeance."

There had been no mention of Ben Armitage, no mention of an ambassador assassinated. But then the arm twist was on him, and Armitage was not personal to him.

The turmoil blasting him. He despised violence. He despised Jane's killer. But he had seen the eyes of the killer, he had seen the work of the gun of the killer.

"What are you asking of me?"

"That you join a team that will go into the Beqa'a valley in east Lebanon, that you identify Abu Hamid, the murderer of your girl."

"And then?"

" Then he is shot dead."

"And then we all just walk home?"

"You walk out."

"And that's possible?" Derision in Holt's voice, staring up into Martins's face, into the smoke cloud of the fire.

"If you've the courage."

"Who do I walk with and who fires the shot?"

"A man who is expert at crossing hostile territory, a man who is expert at sniping."

"One man?"

"So you're better off that way. He'd be better off alone, but you are the only man who saw the target. You have to go."

"Could it work?"

Martins waved at the billowing smoke. "We believe so."

"I'm a bloody puppet and you're a crude sod when it comes to manipulation."

"I knew I could depend on your help, Holt We'll have some coffee."

"I don't have the chance to say no."

"We'd be disappointed if you did… I'll make the coffee. He's a first class man that you'll be travelling with, quite excellent. He goes by the name of Noah Crane''

"Catarracta is the Latin word for 'waterfall'. Cataract is what you have in your right eye, it is an opacity of the crystalline lens of the eye. At your age it is not at all surprising that you display the early stages of what we call the senile cataract."

To the ophthalmic surgeon he was simply another patient. The examination was over. After the expla nation, a cheque would be written out at the reception desk. He knew the man was from overseas, he assumed that he was required for diagnosis, a second opinion, not for treatment.

The patient lay back in the padded examination chair.

He showed no emotion.

"In the cataract-affected eye there is a hardening and shrinking at the heart of the lens which in time will lead to the disintegration of the lens. The cataract itself will lead to a deterioration in your short sight. Now, Mr Crane, a cataract can be treated, but regrettably there looks like being another complication… "

They had been through the symptoms before the detail of the examination. Noah Crane had laconically described the frequency of the headaches while the viewing power of the eye was stretched, and the mul-tiplication of bright lights in the distant dark. He had said that he saw better at dusk.

"The complication behind the cataract is – and I would have to carry out a further examination to be certain – that the retina of your right eye is probably diseased. I don't beat about the bush with my patients.

Disease of the retina negates the type of successful surgery that we can carry out to remedy the cataract."

"How long do I have?"

"You have years of sight."

"How long do I have with my sight as it is?"

"You have no time. Your sight is already deteriorating. Everyone's is, of course, after a certain age. Mine is. Yours is. Without the problem of the retina I would say we could get you back to where you were a couple of years ago, but we have the retina, and that means your sight will gradually diminish… I should have qualified that. The affliction is purely in the right eye.

Your left eye is in excellent shape. Do you work indoors?"

''Outside,''

''Then you should not be unduly pessimistic. Outside you will be using your long sight, shortsightedness is not so important You should see a surgeon when you return home."

"I understand that there's a place in Houston… "

"But the American techniques of treatment are unproven. You could spend a great deal of money, Mr Crane, a huge sum, and have no guarantee of success."

The chair straightened to upright. Noah Crane sat for a moment with his head bowed and his hands clasped together. He could aim only with his right eye. He could not tell the ophthalmic surgeon that although he worked outside it was short range vision that mattered to him, was what his life depended on. No long range vision was required to peer into the magnification of the 'scope sight'. He climbed out of the chair, he walked out of the room.

So he knew. He had asked and he had been told. Time was slipping from him.

In the street he felt the bitter cut of the wind. The wind lashedfrom a side street into Wimpole Street. He wore light trousers and a light shirt that was open at the neck, and a light poplin anorak, Too many clothes for home in Kiryat Shmona at the base camp, not enough clothes for London in spring. In a small grip bag were all his possessions. A change of clothes, a wash bag, and a photograph in a leather wallet of his mother and her sister, and a small brown envelope. No other possessions, because everything else this man used was the property of the Israeli Defence Force.

He walked across central London, and then across the bridge to the railway station. He had seen his mother's sister, he had negotiated his price in the bare room on the third floor of Century, and the sight of his right eye was ebbing from him, he had no more business in London. He was ready to take the train.

The light was failing in the room, the shadows leaping from the fire. Percy Martins stood with his back to the flames.

"Crane being recruited was a master stroke You'll learn, Holt, that when the Service wants something it gets it. When the Service wants a man, it gets that man.

You're to be a team, a two-man team. Neither of you can fulfil your task without the other. Crane cannot identify our target without you, you cannot eliminate the assassin without Crane. Two men with one aim, that's the way it has to be."

Holt was less than six feet from Martins, taking what heat he could that was diverted around the flanks of Martins's legs. He wondered why the man spoke as if lecturing to a full briefing room.

"Noah Aaharon Crane is 48 years old. I expect that's a relief, eh? No worries about keeping up with an old timer like that. His father was a British soldier stationed in Palestine at the outbreak of the Second War, married locally, got himself killed in Normandy.

"By the time he was 18 he had spent his childhood in Israel, and his adolescence in the UK. He joined the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, that was 1959.

He served with the Regiment in Borneo and Aden and in Northern Ireland, he made it to sergeant and his records speak of a first-class soldier. But his mother died in 1971, and for reasons that are close to him, Crane left the British army, flew to Israel and joined up with what they call the Golani Brigade. The file indicates that he had a sense of guilt at not having visited his mother – who was Jerusalem born and bred – for many years during the last part of her life, that a sense of blame took him back to her country. As an infantry man he earned a glittering record after his induction into the IDF. He was with the Golani at the retaking of Mount Hermon in 1973, he was in Lebanon in '78, he was a member of the assault squad on the old Crusader castle of Beaufort in '82. He was good enough to be a regular, he was hardened by combat experience, but he seems to have next to no interest in promotion. In fact it is difficult to locate what interests outside the I D F he does have. His only living relative is his mother's sister, living somewhere in North London. He has never married.

He refuses leave. There are men like that in our army, every fighting machine throws them up. They are difficult, awkward men. In time of war they are a godsend, in time of peace they are arseholes for nuisance value… I'm digressing… after the capture from the Palestinians of the Beaufort castle, twelfth century in origin but an excellent artillery spotting position, a particularly bloody battle, Crane's unit was pushed north and east into the Beqa'a valley, and he stayed there. He stayed put. He became a fixture for three years of Israeli presence there. Some inspired staff man back at the Defence Ministry seemed to have it locked into his head that the Beqa's represents a hack door to Damascus, a way round the Golan Heights. By the time that Israel abandoned its positions and retreated, Noah Crane had inquired as much knowledge of that valley as any man in the I D F. It is our assessment that he, alone, can get into the Beqa'a, do a job of work, and get out."

"Is this sanctioned by government?"

"Official Secrets Act, Holt – sanctioned from on high."

"You said 'difficult' and 'awkward'."

"You'll cope."

Holt stood. "I never had a chance, did I?"

"Of course you didn't. You have become, Holt, an instrument of government policy."

"And if I was to say I was frightened?"

"Frightened? You ought to be grateful. It was the girl you were screwing that was shot, Holt. I'd have thought you'd have been jumping at the chance to get stuck in."

"I'll do it," Holt said.

"Don't make a big song and dance about it," Percy Martins smiled.

"I will go into the Beqa'a valley and I will identify a Palestinian terrorist so that he can be killed with the sanction of my government."

"We don't play fanfares round here."

"And when I come back I will scrape my knuckles raw on the end of your nose."

A wider smile from Percy Martins. "You do just that."

Late afternoon came, and the crowds of the capital's workers were streaming towards the rail termini and the bus stops and the Underground platforms. It was the time of day when the Director General usually slipped anonymously into the Whitehall entrance of the Cabinet office to take the discreet tunnel to Downing Street.

The Prime Minister read the list. "Arson attempt on Israeli Tourist Office, Fateh responsible. Failed assassination attempt on Iraqi ambassador, Fateh responsible. Gun attack on El Al bus with fatalities, Wadia Haddad group responsible. Letter bomb sent to Iraqi embassy, source unknown. Iraqi arrested while carrying explosives and on way to IRA link-up, source unknown. Own goal as bomb explodes at hotel, Wadia Haddad group responsible. Shooting of Israeli ambassador, Abu Nidal responsible. Arson at Jewish Club, source unknown. Bomb explodes near Bank Leumi of Israel, source unknown. Bomb explodes near Marks

amp; Spencer's main branch, source unknown. Thwarted attempt to buy sophisticated military sabotage equipment, P F L P General Command responsible. Bomb explodes at Jewish-owned travel business, source unknown. Interception of explosives courier, Abu Nidal responsible. Attempt to place live bomb on El Al jet liner, Syrian Air Force Intelligence responsible… It's a truly sickening list."

"That's just Arab terrorism in London, Prime Minister, in the last several years. On top of that we should add attacks on British nationals abroad – the machine gun attack on the women and children of our servicemen in Cyprus – grenade attacks on hotels used by British tourists in Greece – that's a whole other list, which ends with the deaths of the ambassador and Miss Canning."

"Sir Sylvester Armitage was a fine man, a great servant of his country."

"Whose death should be avenged."

The Prime Minister hesitated. The suggestion had been made, but the decision was the Prime Minister's alone.

"It can be done.?''

"A small surgical operation into the Beqa'a valley?

Yes, it can be done."

''How many men?"

"Just two A Jewish Briton who is familiar with the ground, skilled in covert work and a marksman, he will travel with young Holt who will identify the target."

"So few?" the Prime Minister murmured. "Would there be Israeli assistance?"

"Inside Israel, yes. Inside Lebanon, we would assume that also yes." The Director General stood at his full height, avuncular and confident. "But it would be our show, Prime Minister."

"Against the man who pulled the trigger on our ambassador?"

"Indeed that very man We would be acting in the very theatre where others talk about acting. We would not be scattering bombs over an international city in the hope they might find a target. We would be going for one man with whom we have a known score to settle."

"A marksman and a spotter," the Prime Minister mused. "Would they get out?"

"We've chosen the best possible soldier for the job."

The decision to be taken alone. The memory of sitting in a country church, hearing the tears of Armitage's granddaughter, of watching a coffin carried along the aisle, bedecked with spring flowers. The memory of many outrages, of television news clips of broken shop fronts, of blood smears on inner London pavements, of bodyguards crammed into armour-plated limousines.

"Bring me his head," the Prime Minister snapped.

The curtains were drawn, the fire smouldered.

Holt sat on a sofa. The light in the room was low as two of the five bulbs in the ceiling formation were dead.

Percy Martins was saying, "The Yanks cannot actually put this sort of operation together. You don't believe me? Well, I'll tell you. Their Special Forces have an annual budget of over a billion dollars, can you imagine that much money spent on one division-sized unit? No good, though. They have the Delta Force, and the helicopter Task Force 168, and the Air Force Special Operations Wing, but they're no damned good. They're more interested in saucy cap badges and expenses. Do you know that when they wanted to drop a squad on a hijacked liner in the Mediterranean, the Pentagon had to give permission for half the squad to leave United States' territory, and why? Because the squad was under investigation for fiddling expenses. Their kit doesn't work. They're too late on the scene. The Germans are fine, up to a point, but at Mogadishu when they stormed an airliner it was Britons who can-opened the plane for them and chucked in the stun grenades. When the Italians have a problem they get on the phone pretty damn quick and call up help from us… "

Holt wondered how Martins had ever made it into the Secret Intelligence Service. He thought he'd be better employed running the social calendar for an Ex-Servicemen's Club.

"… When my Director General was on the phone just now he was really chortling. A dog with two bones."

"Is that all you care about?"

"Showing that we can do a job well, yes, I do care about that."

"So you can crow to the Americans, is that why I'm being chucked into Lebanon?"

"You're not being chucked, you volunteered. In case we misunderstand each other, young man… " Martins was striding the carpet, talking to the ceiling gloom and the cobwebs that were beyond the reach of Mrs Ferguson's feather duster… "In case we don't follow each other, let us be clear on something. You have been fortunate enough to have been chosen to carry out an operation of infinitely greater importance to your country's needs than anything you would have achieved in years of a career in the Diplomatic Service. Instead of a lifetime on your butt concocting reports that will have appeared better written and a month earlier in half of our daily newspapers, you are going to do something. You are going to achieve something about which you will be justly proud for the rest of your life."

There was the growl of a car engine. There was the scrape of the tyres on gravel. Holt heard the bellow bark of the dog.

He stood and went to the window. He pulled the curtain back. He saw the taxi pull up under the front floodlighting that beamed off the porch roof. The passenger must have passed his money inside the taxi, because when he climbed from the back the taxi drove away.

It was obvious to him that he was looking at the man called Noah Crane. He could be clearly seen in the light from the roof. He was a fleshless man. Skin on bone, physically nondescript, rounded shoulders, a cavern for a chest, and spindly arms. The wind flattened his cotton trousers and showed the narrow contours of his leg muscles. Cropped hair in a pepperpot mixture of brown and grey stubble, and below were hollow cheeks.

Leather tanned skin over a jutting thin jaw lay tight on a beaked nose.

Holt watched as Noah Crane made no move towards the front door but gazed instead over the black shadow gardens, assimilating his whereabouts. The front door opened. The dog came out fast, and Holt could hear George yelling for it to stay, stop, stand. The dog went straight to Crane. Holt heard George shout a warning that the dog could be evil. The dog was on its back, and Crane crouched beside it. The dog had its four saucer paws in the air, and Crane was scratching the soft hair of its stomach. Crane picked up his grip bag and came evenly, not hurrying himself, up the porch steps, and the dog was licking his hand.

That was the truth for Holt. The dog recognised authority. When he came away from the window, Holt realised that he was alone, that Martins had left the room, gone to the hall to meet Crane. The dog had found the power and authority of the man. It was the moment when young Holt knew into what pit he had fallen, how deep was the pit, how steep Were the sides.

It was the moment that young Holt knew he stared at the face of a killer. It was the moment that young Holt knew the dangers, the hazards of the Beqa'a. He thought that Crane was unlike any man he had seen before. Something easy and untroubled about the way that Crane had walked up the old flagstone steps of the porch. He remembered how he had mounted those steps himself, in trepidation, anxious to please, fearful of what awaited him. Crane had come up the steps like a hangman, like an untroubled executioner.

God, but he was so frightened…

"Don't be childish, Holt."

The squeak of the swinging door.

The light flooding in from the hall.

"Holt, I'd like you to meet Noah Crane," Martins said.

Holt stood his ground, incapable of moving. He was taller than Crane, and he probably carried a stone and a half more in weight. He felt he was a beef bullock under market examination. Crane looked at him, head to toe. Holt wore a paor of well-creased slacks and a clean white shirt and a tie and a quiet check sports jacket, his shoes were cleaned. He felt like a schoolboy going for a first Job. Crane wore dirty running shoes, his shirt was open three buttons from the neck.

Expressionless eyes. Crane turned to Percy Martins.

Martins stood beside him, playing the cattle market auctioneer.

"That's him?"

"That's young Holt, Mr Crane."

"Any military time?"

"No, he hasn't been in the armed services."

"Any survival training?"

"There's nothing like that on his record."

"Any current fitness work?

"Not since he came back from Moscow, not that I know of."

"Any reason to take him other than the face?"

"He saw Abu Hamid, Mr Crane, that's why he's travelling."

"Any leverage put on him?"

"It was his girl friend who was killed, he didn't need persuading."

"Any briefing given him on the Beqa'a?"

"I thought it best to wait until you joined us."

The accent was London. Not the sharp whip of east, but more the whine of west London. Crane spoke to Martins from the side of his mouth, but all the time his eyes stayed locked on Holt. Crane came close to Holt.

Close enough for Holt to see the old mosquito scars under the hair on his cheeks, close enough for Holt to smell the burger sauce on his breath, close enough for Holt to feel the coldness of his eyes.

It came from down by the side of Crane's thigh, no backlift, without warning. A short arm punch with the closed fist up into Holt's solar plexus. The fist pounded into Holt's jacket, into his shirt, into his vest, into his stomach. Gasping for breath, sinking towards the carpet.

Holt was on his knees.

"Nothing personal," Crane said. "But your stomach wall is flab."

Holt thought he was going to throw up. His eyes were closed tight shut. He could hear their voices.

"If he's not fit he's useless to me on the way in, useless on the way out."

'We'll get him doing some exercises."

"Too right."

Holt used the arm of a chair to push himself back to his feet. He forced his hands away from his stomach.

He was swallowing to control the nausea. He blinked to keep the tears from his eyes.

"I don't apologise, Holt. If I have a passenger then I don't succeed. If I don't succeed you'll be dead, I just might be dead with you."

"I won't be a passenger," Holt croaked.

Major Zvi Dan waved the station officer to a chair. Pig hot in the room with the table fan burned out.

The walk from his car into the building, and then the trek down the corridors had brought the first sweat drops to the station officer's forehead.

"I'm sorry, but again they say they will not."

"Shit."

"I explained that the request for reconsideration came from the Director General of SIS – I knew what the answer would be. That's the Israeli way. We make decisions and we stick with them."

The station officer bit at his lip. "I think I knew that would be the answer."

"Before they make you their errand boy, have they any idea in London of what would be involved, logistically, in a helicopter pick-up deep in the Beqa'a?"

"Probably not."

" Then you should tell them."

The station officer reached for his notepad from his briefcase, he took a ballpoint from his shirt pocket.

"Fire at me."

"First, what is involved in a pick-up where there are no missiles, where there is only small arms fire. You will have stirred a hornet's nest the moment the killing is made. A similar situation last year – we lost a Phantom over the hills close to Sidon. We had a pilot on the ground with his electronics giving us his position. By fixed wing and by Cobra helicopters we put down a curtain of bombs and cannon fire around him, through which no human being could move. We did that for ninety minutes until it was dark. Phantoms coming in relays, gunships overhead the whole time. Do I have to tell you how many aircraft, how many 'copters that involved? Overhead we had a command aircraft the entire time. When we had night cover we flew in a Cobra to pick up the pilot, with more Cobras creating a sanitised corridor through which it could fly. At the pick-up there was no time to land, the pilot had to reach for the landing skids, hold onto them while he was lifted off and flown to safety. That is what's involved when there's no missile umbrella."

"They'll get it in London." The station officer was writing, grim faced.

"But in the Beqa'a you are under the missile umbrella.

The Beqa'a is protected by the SA-2 Guideline for high altitude intruders, by the S A-8 Gecko for medium altitude intruders, by the SA-9 Gaskin for low level. If you put a helicopter in when there is a state of high alert, then you must also put in aircraft to protect it.

Those aircraft in turn must be kept safe from the missiles. For that degree of protection you have to be prepared to assault the missile sites.

"In 1982 we destroyed the missile sites in the Beqa'a.

To achieve that we had to do the following. We had to launch drones to fly where we thought the missiles were positioned, the drones have reflectors that make them show on the radar like full-sized piloted aircraft. When the Syrians switched on their radar fully and prepared the missiles, that was disclosed by the EC 135, a con-verted Boeing airliner, and the E2C Hawkeye. When we had exactly located the missile sites and had confused them with electronic jamming, then we hit them from the air with the Maverick missile, and the Walleye bomb that goes to the source of the missile's energy unit…

It was a big operation. You follow me? All that had to be done. On top of all that we were also obliged to fight off the Syrian interceptors. It was quite a battle… "

"I hear you."

"My friend, that is what is involved. That is what we have had to consider when you made a request for an airborne pick-up in the Beqa'a."

"No helicopter l i f t… "

"How could there be? It is not even our operation."

"Then they have to walk out."

"Our marksman and your eye witness, and the hornet's nest stirred Do you think in London that they appreciate the teeth of the Beqa'a?"

"Too late whether they do or don't, they're committed."

From a drawer in his desk Major Zvi Dan took a single plate-sized photograph. He told the station officer that the small pale patches in the magnified heart of the photograph were the tents of what was believed to be a Popular Front training camp for raw recruits. He went to his wall map and read off the co-ordinates for the position of the camp.

"We believe that is where you will find your man. It is a long way to walk to, a long way to walk back from."

The station officer dropped his notebook back into his case. He leaned over. "Crane is your soldier."

"He is seconded to you. He is paid by you. It is your operation."

The station officer thanked his friend for the photograph.

"I'll pass it on. Thank you, Tork."

"I thought you should know immediately, Mr Fenner. They'll be on their own in Lebanon."

They talked on a secure line. Henry Fenner, Number Two on the Middle East Desk at Century, and Graham Tork, station officer in Tel Aviv.

"I'll pass it on, but it's not my concern."

"Aren't you running this, Mr Fenner?"

"I am not. The Old Man's given it to Percy Martins."

"Is that a joke…? He must be ready for going out to grass."

"I tell you, frankly, I'm not that sorry, not after what you've told me. And did you know that Hereford turned it down flat? For your ears, Mr Anstruther agrees with me, it's a no-no-hoper. My advice, meant kindly, is keep your distance. If Martins is going down the plug, where he should have gone years ago, make sure you don't go with him. 'Bye, Tork."

"Thank you, Mr Fenner."

In his office in the embassy, the station officer replaced his telephone. What a wonderful world…

Anstruther and Fenner, high fliers on the Middle East Desk, giving him the nod and the wink. He had met Percy Martins on his last journey to London, thought he must have come out of the ark. He thanked the good Lord that he was posted abroad, that he didn't go each morning to a desk at Century.

He wondered if the young man, Holt, knew the half of it, and hoped to God that he did not.

It was the crisp snap voice that woke Mrs Ferguson.

She stirred in her bed. Her eyes clearing, she peered at her alarm clock on the table beside her. It was 22 minutes past six o'clock, it was eight minutes before her alarm would ring.

She had good hearing, she could hear the words.

"At your age a fit soldier can do 50 sit-ups a minute, you managed ten. On your push-ups a fit man can do 30, you did eight. On your squat-thrusts you need to do 25, you got to six… "

She gathered her dressing gown around her shoulders, stiffly levered herself off the bed. She went to the window.

"You'll get fit and quick, or you're a burden to me…

She saw Holt, wearing vest and underpants, lying spreadeagled on the terrace, his chest heaving. Mr Crane was standing over him and holding a stop watch.

"Now you do sprints, three times 40 metres."

She half hid her face behind the curtain. She saw Holt attempt to sprint between the edge of the terrace and the nearest rose bed, running like a drunk or a cripple, but running, not giving up.

"I reckon round this lawn six times is a mile and a half. If you do it in anything around eleven minutes that's excellent, anything over sixteen minutes is not good enough… Get on with i t… "

Holt was still running by the time Mrs Ferguson had washed and dressed and applied the thin pencil of lipstick, still on his feet, still moving forward.