In the same jeep, with the same silent driver, Abu Hamid escorted his two chosen recruits to the Yarmouq camp.
Both were 17 years old. All of the way back from Damascus the previous day he had considered which of his sixty he should proposition.
Mohammed was the most obvious choice because he was always the loudest to complain at the boredom of the training, to harangue his fellow recruits of time wasted when they should have been carrying the war into the Zionist state, he would eat, chew, choke on his words. The second, Ibrahim, had been brought to Abu Hamid's notice by the murmured accusation that he was a thief, that he pilfered the paltry possessions of his fellow recruits. Well, he could thieve to his content in the state of Israel. The choice had been made by Abu Hamid alone. He had found Fawzi gone when he had returned to the camp. Gone smuggling, the bastard, gone to organise the early summer cropping of the hashish fields, to gather his cut from the merchants who traded in transistor radios and Western liquor and fruit and vegetables out of the Beqa'a. He had seen both men separately in his tent. He had spoken to them of the glory of the struggle against Israel, and of the love of the Palestinian people for the heroism of their fighters, and of the money they would be paid when they returned. Both men, separately, had agreed. Easier for Abu Hamid than he could have dared expect. The exhortation and the bribe, good bedfellows, working well together. He had wondered if they were frightened, if they dreamed of death. He wondered if the one guessed that he had been chosen because he had made a bastard nuisance of himself in the tent camp, the other because he was whispered to be a thief.
Abu Hamid cared not at all what they knew.
The jeep was stopped at the entrances to the Yarmouq camp: the sentries radioed to Administration for an officer to come.
Abu Hamid whistled quietly to himself. He had the statistic in his head, their chance was one in 100. A one in 100 chance of his seeing them again.
It was the Brother who came to the gate. Abu Hamid saw the loose empty sleeve of the Brother's jacket. He told the Brother the names of the two men that he had brought, he watched as the Brother peered inside the jeep at the two men, weighing them. The Brother gave Abu Hamid two sealed envelopes, then politely asked Mohammed who was the boaster and Ibrahim who was the thief to come with him.
He watched them go. He watched the barrier lift for them, fall after them. He saw the camp swallow them.
He tore open the first envelope. The form carried the heading of the Central Bank of Syria. It told him the number of an account in which the sum of 5000 American dollars had been lodged in his name. His chortling laughter filled the front of the jeep. Abu Hamid owned nothing. He had no money, no things even that were his own. He felt his chest, his lungs expand with the excitement; his head sing. He ripped open the second envelope. A single sheet of paper, a handwritten address.
He pushed the form of the Central Bank of Syria into the breast pocket of his tunic and buttoned it down, he thrust the address into the driver's face. The driver shrugged, started the engine, turned the wheel.
When Abu Hamid looked back at the gate he could no longer see the backs of the Brother or of Mohammed and Ibrahim.
He was driven into the centre of Damascus.
The jeep driver seemed to pay no attention to traffic lights at Stop or to pedestrian crossings. Away from the wide streets, into the warren alleys of the old city. Past the great mosque, past the colonnade of the Roman builders, past the marble Christian shrine to John the Baptist. Through the narrow roads, weaving amongst the cymbal clashing sherbet sellers, past the stalls of spices and intricate worked jewellery, past the tables of the money changers, past the dark recesses of the cafes, inside the vast sprawl of the Souq al Hamadieh. Only military vehicles were allowed inside the tentacles of the souq lanes, and only a military vehicle would have had the authority to force a way through the slow shuffling morass of shoppers, traders. He supposed he could have bought a street, he thought he could have cleared a table of jewellery, a shop window of stereo equipment, a clothing store of suits, he had in his tunic breast pocket a bank order form from the Central Bank of Syria for 5ooo American dollars. He could have bought flowers for Margarethe, champagne for Margarethe. He could take her to restaurants, the best, and order a feast of mezza and the burgol dish of sweet boiled crushed wheat and the yalanji dish of aubergines stuffed with rice and the sambosik dish of meat rissole in light pastry and unleavened bread and as much arrack as they could drink before they fell.
He could buy her what she wanted, he could buy himself what he wanted. He had been paid for the success at the Oreanda in Yalta.
The driver stopped. He pointed. He pointed down an alley too narrow for the vehicle. He wrote on the paper beside the address a telephone number to call for transport back into the Beqa'a.
Abu Hamid ran. Shouldering, pushing, shoving his way through the throng.
He saw the opened door, the stone steps.
He ran up the steps. The wooden door faced him.
The handle turned, the door swung.
"Well done, sweet boy, well done for finding me."
His Margarethe, in front of him. Her fair hair flopped to her shoulders, her body sheathed in a dress of rich wine-coloured brocade. His Margarethe standing in the heart of a quiet oasis, in a room of cool air, standing in the centre of a faded deep sinking carpet, standing surrounded by hanging dark drapes and the heavy wood furniture, intricately carved. He thought it was the paradise that the Old Man of the Mountains had spoken of, the paradise of the Assassins.
"Wasn't I good to find it, wasn't I good to find such a place for us?"
No questions in his mind. No asking himself how a foreigner with only the handout crumbs from the table of the regime could find paradise, quiet, clean comfort, amongst the alleys of the souq. He was kissing her, feeling the warm moisture of her lips, scenting the hot skin of her neck, clutching the gentle curves of her buttocks then her breasts.
The news was bursting in him. He stood away from her. He beamed in pride. He pulled the form from the Central Bank of Syria from his pocket.
"A piece of paper…"
"Read the paper."
He saw the moment of confusion, then the spread of concentration, then the drift of disbelief.
"For what?"
" I t i s f i v e thousand dollars, f o r m e. "
"For what?"
"For what I have done."
"It's a joke, yes? What have you done?"
"Not a joke, it is real. It is for me. It is the paper of the Central Bank of Syria."
"You have not done anything, sweet boy. You are a revolutionary soldier… why is this given to you?"
Abu Hamid stood his full height. He looked up, into the eyeline of Margarethe Schultz. He said sternly, "For what I have done this is the reward of the Syrian government."
She blinked, she did not understand. "You have done nothing. You came to Syria, you lived in a camp. You went to the Crimea, you were one of many, you came back. Now you are in a camp in Lebanon. What in that history is worth five thousand dollars?"
"It is payment for what I have done for the Syrians."
"Sweet boy, you are a fighter of the Palestine revolution, not an errand kid of the Syrians."
"You insult me. I am not an 'errand kid'."
"Hamid, what did you do for the Syrians?"
She was close to him, she stroked the hair of his neck.
"Hamid, what did you do?"
"I cannot…"
"Damn you, what did you do?"
"Don't make…"
"What?"
It came in a blurted torrent. "In the Crimea I killed the ambassador of Britain, I killed also one of his aides…"
"For that they pay you?"
"For that they reward me."
She stood straight, contemptuous. He saw the heave of her breasts under the brocade of her dress.
"Which is more important to you, the revolution for Palestine, or dollars earned as a hireling?"
He said meekly, "I was going to buy things for you, good things."
"I fuck you, sweet boy, because I believe in you I have found a purity of revolution."
He handed her the bank order for five thousand American dollars. He watched as she made a pencil thin spiral of it, as she took from the table a box of matches, as she lit the flame, as she burned the wealth he could barely dream of.
"You are not a hireling, sweet boy. In the purity of fire is the strength of the struggle of the Palestinian people."
She lifted her dress, pulled it higher, ever higher. She showed him the spindle of her ankles, and her knees, and the whiteness of her thighs, and the darkness of her groin, and the width of her belly, and the operation scar, and the weight of her breasts. She was naked under her dress. She threw the dress behind her.
She took him to her bed. She took the clothes from his body, kneeling over him, dominating. She straddled his waist.
When he had entered her, he told her of the woman who had been a spy, the woman he had shot. As he told her of the killing, she pounded over him, squealing.
Later, when he rested on the bed, when she had gone to the bathroom to sluice between her legs, he would reflect what her ardour for the clean struggle, the pure revolution, had cost him.
Abu Hamid lay on his side on the bed. If an Arab girl had burned five thousand American dollars he would have killed her. He worshipped this European. Could not understand her, her love of his revolution, but could worship her. And she had waited for him, he thought she was a dream of pleasure.
Her soft voice in his ear. "Will they hunt you?"
"Who?"
"The English whose ambassador you killed, the Israelis whose spy you killed."
"In Damascus, in the Beqa'a, how can they?"
"You will not be for ever in the Beqa'a. You will take the battle of the Palestinian revolution into Israel."
If he told her of his fear, then he would lose her, he would be the assassin dismissed from paradise. He lied his courage.
"I believe in the inevitability of victory."
She kissed his throat, and the hairs of his chest. With her tongue she circled the crow's foot scar on his upper left cheek.
He was a good looking boy, blond sun-bleached hair, a wind tanned face. The uniform looked well on him.
He wore jauntily the sky-blue beret of a soldier on United Nations duty, and his shoulder flash denoted that he was a private soldier of
NORBAT.
He was Hendrik Olaffson. He was 23 years old. He was a nothing member of the Norwegian Battalion serving with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. He had been eight months with NORBAT in the north eastern sector of the U N I F I L command.
Intellectually he was a nothing person, militarily he was a nothing person. To Major Said Hazan he was a jewel. Only to Major Said Hazan was Hendrik Olaffson any different to the thousands of private soldiers making up the U N I F I L force from France, Ireland, Ghana, Fiji and Nepal, men stationed in a buffer zone separating southern Lebanon from northern Israel.
At the NORBAT checkpoint on the Rachaiya to Has-baiya road, it was usual for the U N I F I L troopers to talk to the travellers as they searched the cars for explosives and weapons. The common language of conversation was English, and it was unusual for the troopers to find a traveller who spoke English as well as they did themselves. From a first conversation four months earlier had come the promise of a small quantity of treated marijuana. Enough for one joint each for Hendrik Olaffson and the two soldiers who shared the next night sentry duty with him. The traveller was regularly on that road, the conversations were frequent, the marijuana became plentiful.
In due course Major Said Hazan, who received a report each two weeks from the traveller, had learned of the political views of Hendrik Olaffson. One quiet day at the road block the traveller had heard the gushed hatreds of Hendrik Olaffson. The hatreds were for Jews.
The hatreds went far back beyond the life of Hendrik Olaffson, to the early life of his father. The grandfather of Hendrik Olaffson had been on the personal staff of Major Vidkun Quisling, puppet ruler of Norway during the years of German occupation. In the last days, as the Wehrmacht had retreated, the grandfather of Hendrik Olaffson had taken his own life, shot himself, spared a post war tribunal the job of sentencing him. The father of Hendrik Olaffson had been brought up as a despised, fatherless child in Oslo and had died young, consumptive and without the will to live. Many years ago.
Too many years for any stigma to survive on Hendrik Olaffson's record. But the boy burned with what he believed to be the injustice that ruined his family. All this had been vouchsafed to the Arab traveller at the road block.
He drove a three-ton Bedford lorry, painted white, marked with the sign of UNIFIL. He drove the lorry from the Lebanese side of the security zone that was patrolled by the IDF and their surrogates, the Christian South Lebanese Army, through the zone and into Israel.
A U N I F I L lorry was not searched.
He drove the lorry from the NORBAT area to collect 15 soldiers from his country's contingent who had been enjoying four days' rest and recreation in Tel Aviv. On the way south, in darkness close to Herzilya which was a northern suburb of the coastal city, Hendrik Olaffson dropped off the two recruits who had been selected by Abu Hamid. They had travelled in the back of the lorry hidden behind packing cases.
Of course Hendrik Olaffson was a jewel to Major Said Hazan. The major believed he had found the crack in his enemy's armour, a crack he could exploit.
When they ran from the road, into the night, when they watched the disappearing tail lights of the white lorry, it was Ibrahim who led, Mohammed who held the strap of the grip bag.
"Your man isn't the great communicator, our man hasn't much to say for himself. They're an odd pair of birds," the station officer said.
Major Zvi Dan shrugged. "Whether they can talk to each other is hardly important. What matters is whether they listen to each other. What is critical is that they have respect for each other."
"When I saw them at the hotel yesterday, and the day before, the impression I had is hardly one of respect.
Our man's very quiet, like he's out of his depth and doesn't know how to get into shallow water. Crane speaks to him like he would to a child."
"Respect is difficult when the one has so little to contribute."
The station officer glanced down at his watch. "This Percy Martins will be here soon, he's a crochety old wretch… the word from London is that he was damn near on bended knee to the Director to get this trip…
He's bringing Crane."
"And your young man?"
"That pleasure must still await you, Crane's sent him to the beach for a week, and told him he'd kick his arse if he got sunburn."
"Mr Fenner is not coming to grace your mission with his presence?"
"Staying in London, sadly." The station officer did not expand, did not feel the need to explore the grubby departmental laundry with his friend.
The girl soldier who did the typing and filing in the outer office put her head around the door. Dark flowing hair, sallow skin, tight khaki blouse. The station officer wondered how elderly crippled Zvi Dan attracted such talent. "Martins has arrived," she said languidly.
Holt lay on the beach.
There was a hotel towel over his legs, draped up to the swimming trunks he had bought at the hotel shop.
He wore a shirt, with the sleeves down. He checked the time every half an hour, so that he could be certain that he kept to the schedule Noah Crane had given him. Half an hour with his skin exposed lying on his back, half an hour with his skin covered lying on his back. Half an hour with his skin exposed lying on his stomach, half an hour with his skin covered lying on his stomach.
It was the third morning. He was settling to the routine.
The first morning he had been allowed to stay put in his bed. The last two mornings his alarm call had gone off beside his head at 5.30. Breakfast was tea, toast. Out onto the beach, a lone figure working at sit-ups, push-ups and squat thrusts, and then repeated sprints, and then the endurance run. However bad the endurance run had been on the soft grass of the country house, it was hell's times worse on the dry sand of the beach.
Exposure to the sun all morning, then a salad and cold meat lunch, and then the repetition of the exercises in the full heat, and then recovery on the beach. A final repeat of the exercises as the sun was dipping. After that, the time was his own, that's what Crane had said.
So young Holt had stayed the daylight hours on the beach in front of the row of tower block hotels.
But he had started to walk the streets of Tel Aviv in the evenings, after he had showered the sand and the sweat off his body, before he was due to attend dinner with Crane and Martins.
He thought Tel Aviv ugly and fascinating.
Perhaps there had never been time at the country house for him to consider what he would find there, but nothing about it was as he had expected. He had walked the length of the seafront promenade, past and beyond the hotels, past and beyond the fortified American embassy, past the scorched grass of Clore Park, he had tramped to the old Arab town of Yafo. He had walked down Ben Yehuda, past the small jewellery shops and the shops that sold antique Arab furniture. He had walked back on Dizengoff, past the plastic-fronted pavement cafes. He thought it was a country of beautiful children, and a country of olive green uniforms and draped Galil and Uzi weapons. That the state was not yet 40 years old was apparent to Holt from the ram-shackle development of building, fast and unlovely construction. Dusty dry streets, unmended pavings, peeling plaster on the squat blocks of apartments. He thought he understood. Why build for the future when your country is targeted by long range Scud missiles, when your country is nine, ten, eleven minutes' flying time away from hostile air bases, when your country is flanked by enemy armies equipped with the most modern of tanks, artillery and helicopters?
When he worked at his exercises, when he walked the streets, then his mind was occupied. When he lay on his back or his stomach on the beach, when he lay on his bed after supper, then his mind swam with the character of Noah Crane.
He hated to think of the man. He had tried with eagerness, with humour, with achievement to break into the shell defence of Noah Crane. God, had he failed.
"I find the attitude of the Israeli Defence Force quite incredible," Percy Martins said.
"Not incredible, entirely logical," Zvi Dan said quietly.
"This ground was all covered in my report, Mr Martins," the station officer repeated soothingly.
"It is most certainly not logical that the Israeli Defence Force will offer no facilities for extracting Crane and Holt."
"Mr Martins, if we wished to make an incursion into the Beqa'a we would do so. It is you who wish to do so."
"There has to be a plan for the extraction of these two men in the event of difficulties. They have to be able to call by radio for help."
"Israeli lives, Mr Martins, will not be put at risk for a mission that is not ours."
"Then I will go higher in the chain than you, Major Dan."
"Of course, you are free to do so. But may I offer you a warning, Mr Martins? Create too many waves and there's a possibility that the co-operation already offered you will be reduced… but you must decide for yourself."
"Dammit, man, would you turn your back on them, would you see them die out there?"
Percy Martins took the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit jacket. It did not seem strange to him that he wore a suit of light green tweed plus matching waistcoat with the room temperature close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It was one of perhaps six more or less indistinguishable suits that he always wore, winter and spring and summer and autumn, except on Sundays. There was a watch chain across the buttons of the waistcoat, given him by his mother after his father's death, and the timepiece was more than sixty years old and kept good time if it was wound each morning. He mopped the perspiration from his forehead. He disapproved of the designer safari suit in which Tork was dressed, and he disapproved more of the lack of support he was getting from his colleague.
His career in the Service had been a lifetime of struggle.
His response to all obstacles was to lower his head and raise his voice. There was not one colleague in Century who could level against him the accusation of subtlety.
"I have to believe, Mr Martins, that the hazards of a mission into the Beqa'a were fully evaluated."
The station officer saw Percy Martins blanche. He saw the tongue flick across the lips.
"We must have back-up."
The station officer had been long enough away from Century to recognise the signs. He felt as if he had eavesdropped a conversation on the upper floor of Century. Naturally, the Israelis would jump to the bidding of the men from the Secret Intelligence Service.
Take it for granted that the Israelis would be grateful to help in every possible way.
"I think that what the major is trying to say, Mr Martins, is.. . "
"I know bloody well what he's trying to say. He's trying to say that two men would be left to rot because the Israeli Defence Force is not prepared to get off its backside and help."
Major Zvi Dan said, "Mr Martins, allow me to share with you two facts of life in this region. First, for years Israel has pleaded with Western governments to take action against international terrorism, and for years we have been rebuffed. Now, you are in our eyes a Johnny-come-lately, and you expect after years of rejecting our advice that we will suddenly leap in the air at your conversion and applaud you. We think of ourselves first, ourselves second, ourselves third, it is what you have trained us to do. Second fact: in Lebanon in the last five years we have lost close to one thousand men killed. If our population were translated to that of the United States then we would have lost more men killed in five years than died from enemy action in the whole of the Vietnam war that was of double the duration. If our population were that of the United Kingdom, then we would have lost, killed, some 17,000 soldiers. How many have you lost in Northern Ireland, four hundred? I think not. How many were killed in the South Atlantic, 350? Not more. Mr Martins, had you lost 17,000 servicemen in Northern Ireland, in the South Atlantic, would you rush to involve your men in further adventures that would end in no advantage to your own country? I think not, Mr Martins."
Percy Martins sat straight backed.
"In the event of a crisis the abandonment of those two men would be contemptible."
"Not as contemptible as the appeasement of terrorism that has for years been the policy of your government, of the governments of the United States, of France, of Germany, of Greece. We have offered and already given considerable co-operation. You should make the best of what you have."
There was the scrape of the chair under Percy Martins. He was red-faced from the heat, flushed from the put-down. He stood, turned on his heel. No hand shakes, no farewells. He strode out of the room.
A long silence and then the major said, "Before he leaves, I should see Noah Crane."
The station officer reached for his hand, clasped it, shook it in thanks.
They took a bus through the snail slow raucous rush hour of the late afternoon. She clung to him to avoid being pitched over in the jerking progress of the bus.
They raised eyes. Margarethe was the only woman on the bus, and a white woman at that. Her Arabic was uncertain, good enough for her pith comment about the coming role of women in a socialist democracy to be heard, good enough to check the blatancy of the gaze she was subjected to when her hands were held behind Abu Hamid's neck.
She had been coy. She had not told him where she was taking him. It was three days after he had found her in the shaded room above the alley in the Souq al Hamadieh. It was the first time in three days that he had left the room, the first time in three days that he had dressed, the first time in three days that he had moved more than a dozen paces from the dishevelled bed.
He was returning to the Beqa'a in the morning.
She released her hands from his neck. She pecked at his cheek. She horrified the men on the bus. He loved her for it. He kissed her. He offended the passengers and gloated. He showed, in public, for all to see, his love for a woman, for an infidel.
They stepped off the bus.
A dark wide street. High walls to the sides of the dirt walkway along the road. He did not know where they were. She held his hand. She led him briskly.
The gate was of thin iron sheet, nailed to a frame, too high for Abu Hamid to see over. She pulled at a length of string that he had not seen and a bell clanked. A long pause, and the gate was scraped open.
She led him forward. They passed through a gloomy courtyard. She had no word for the old man who had pulled back the gate for her. She walked as though she belonged. They climbed a shallow flight of steps, the door ahead was ajar.
Through the doorway, into a cool hallway, on and down a dim lit corridor, into a long room. His shadow, her shadow, were spreadeagled away down the length of the room. He saw the blurred shape of a robed woman coming towards him, and the woman took the hands of Margarethe in greeting and kissed her cheeks.
He saw the lines of tiny cot beds that were against the walls on both sides of the long room. His vision of the room cleared. He saw the cot beds, he saw the sleeping heads of the children. Margarethe had slipped from his side. She moved with the woman, deep in whispered conversation, Margarethe using her flimsy Arabic in short pidgin sentences; they paused only in their talk to tuck down the sheets that covered the children, to wipe perspiration from the brow of a child with a handkerchief. He looked down on the faces of the nearest children, took note of the gentle heave of their breathing, of their peace.
From the far end of the room she summoned him.
Without thinking he walked silently, on the balls of his feet.
A child coughed, the woman in the robe slid away from Margarethe, went to the child.
Margarethe said, "It is where I work, it is the new place that I work."
"Who are the children?"
"They are orphans."
He saw the robed woman lift the child from the cot and hug it against her chest to stifle the coughing fit.
"Why did you bring me?"
"They are the orphans of the Palestine revolution."
He looked into her eyes. "Tell me."
"They are the future of Palestine. They were orphaned by the Israelis, or by the Christian fascists, or by the Shi'a militias. They are the children of the revolution. Do you understand?"
"What should I understand?"
He saw the woman return the child to the cot bed, and smooth the sheet across its body.
"Understand the truth. The truth is these children.
These children lost their parents at the hand of the enemies of Palestine. These children are truth, they have more truth than the baubles that can be bought with five thousand American dollars…"
He closed his eyes. He saw the flame crawling the length of the spiral of paper.
"What do you want of me?"
"That you should not be corrupted."
He saw the radiance in her face, he saw the adoration for the great struggle to which she was not bound by blood.
"You want me dead," he heard himself say.
"The man that I love will not be a hireling who kills for five thousand American dollars."
"You know what is Israel?"
"The man that I love will have no fear of sacrifice."
"To go to fight in Israel is to go to die in Israel."
"The man that these children will love will have only a fear of cowardice."
"To go to Israel is to be slaughtered, to be dragged dead in front of their photographers."
"These are the children of the revolution, they are the children of the fallen. They must have fathers, Hamid, their fathers must be the fighters in the struggle for Palestine."
"Have I not done enough?"
"I Want you to be worth my love, and worth the love of these children."
She took his hand. He felt the softness of her fingers on his. She shamed him. .''I promise.
"What doyou promise, sweet boy?"
"I promise that I will go to Israel, that I will kill Jews."
She kissed his lips. She held his hand and walked him again down the room, past the long rows of sleeping children.
They settled to sleep in a grove of eucalyptus trees near to the north bank of the Hayarkon river. They were at the very edge of the Tel Aviv city mass.
They had eaten the last of their food on the move, as they made their way through Herzilya and Ramat Ha-Sharon.
They had the map of the streets. They would start early in the morning. They had decided it would take them more than an hour and a half to walk from where they were to the bus station off Levinsky on the far side of the city.
With the food gone, the grip bag contained only the three kilos of plastic explosive, plus the detonator and the wiring and the timer. As they lay under the ripple rustle of the trees, Mohammed and Ibrahim talked in whispers of what they would do with the money they would be paid, what they would buy in the stores of Damascus when they returned.
A light wind brought the scent of oleanders in bloom and the rumble of the lorry traffic in from the street.
They were sitting near to the door of the dormitory room, their backs against the wall.
Margarethe said, "When I am here I am at peace."
Abu Hamid said, "I have no knowledge of peace."
Lying on her lap, huddled against her breast was a girl child who had vomited milk. On his shoulder, his hand gently tapping its back, was a boy child now quietened from crying.
They were in darkness. The shaded nightlight was at the far end of the room.
"When you were like them, was there no peace?"
He whispered, "There was no peace in the tent camps. When I was like them there were only the camps for refugees, for my people who had fled from the Israeli."
"But you had what they do not have, you had the love of your mother."
"Who struggled to survive with a family in a tent."
"What is the future of these little ones, my sweet boy?"
"Their future is to fight. They have no other future."
"What do you remember of when you were a child?"
He grimaced. "I can remember the hunger. I can remember the drills to get us to run fast to the ditches so we would be safe if their aircraft came."
She watched the boy child's fingers clutch and free and clutch again at the collar of Abu Hamid's tunic.
She asked, "You surely do not regret being a fighter?"
"I do not regret it, but I never had the chance to be otherwise. So, there are Palestinians who have gone to the Gulf and to Saudi and to Pakistan and to Libya, and they work for the people there. I do not have that chance.
Margarethe, I can write only my name. I can read a little, very little… I tell you that in honesty. I cannot go to Bahrain or Tripoli to work as a clerk. There is no employment for a clerk who can read very little. There were not schools at the tent camps which taught reading and writing and making arithmetic. We were taught about the Israelis, and we were shown how to run to the air raid shelters. .. "
She saw the boy child's fingers grasping at his lips and his nose. He made no attempt to push the boy child's fingers away.
"… and if we have not succeeded in our lifetimes in freeing our homeland from the Israelis, then these little ones also must be taught to be fighters. We cannot turn our back on what has happened to us."
"You said two hours ago that you had done enough."
"Do you try to make me ashamed?"
"You are a fighter, that is why you have my love."
The boy child's fingers had found the small well hole of the crow's foot scar. There was a gurgle of pleasure.
He suppressed the memory of the stinging pain as the artillery shell shrapnel had nicked across his left upper cheek, the memory of the last days of the retreating battle for West Beirut.
"It is all I know. I know nothing of being a clerk."
Major Said Hazan made up a rough bed of blankets on the leather sofa in his office, then undressed.
When he had folded his clothes, when he stood in his singlet and shorts, he went to the Japanese radio behind his desk and tuned to the VHF frequency of the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation. He smoked another cigarette. He searched his way through the file on his desk, the file that obsessed him. He listened to the news broadcast in the English language. It was a powerful radio, it guaranteed good reception.
The radio, in his opinion, broadcast a news bulletin of irrelevant crap. It said that "orthodox" Jews in Jeru salem had again been stoning bus shelters that carried advertisements showing women in bathing suits. The pipe line feeding the Negev irrigation system from the Sea of Galilee had closed down because of shortage of water. The triumph of a rabbi who had come up with the solution of self-propelled tractors to work on the Golan Heights during the fallow year when the Commandment dictated that a farming Jew should not work his fields. The rate of inflation. The public squabbling between Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. New figures showing the decline of young people seeking a kibbutz life. The performance of a Tel Aviv basket-ball team in New York… But the bulletin pleased him.
If the recruits had been taken he would have heard it on the radio. The IBC was always quick to report explosions, arrests. If they had been taken it would have been on the radio that evening. He switched off the radio and lay on the sofa.
Major Said Hazan laughed and the shiny skin on his face buckled in his mirth. His own secret, his own reason to laugh. The secret of the timer was shared only between himself and the technician in the basement technical laboratory of the Air Force Intelligence wing.
Not shared with the Brother of the Popular Front, not shared with the cattle who had been brought from the Beqa'a. The cattle believed the timer was set for 45 minutes, the cattle believed they would be off the bus at the Latrun Monastery and that the explosion would follow when they were legging it hard to Ramalleh, cross country into the Occupied Territories. The setting of the timer was the secret he shared only with his technician.
When his laughter subsided, he concentrated on the file.
The first page of the file showed in detail a plan of the layout of buildings of the Defence Ministry on Kaplan.
Major Said Hazan was half in love with the file.
He was in singlet and running shorts and track shoes, and washing his stubbled face when the telephone rang in the bedroom. He wiped his eyes. Water splattered on the tile floor. The telephone yelled for him.
It was not yet a beard, just a dark rash over his colouring face.
He picked up the telephone.
"Holt?"
Crane's gravel voice in Holt's ear. "Get your clothes on, get downstairs."
"What's the panic?"
"We're going out."
"Where?"
"Travelling."
"What do I need?"
"Just yourself, dressed."
"For how long?"
"A few days."
"For God's sake, Crane, you could have told me last night…"
"You're wasting time, get down."
He heard the purr of the telephone. He slammed his receiver down. He chucked on his trousers and a shirt.
Holt steamed. He had had dinner with the monosyllabic Crane and Percy Martins. Crane had hardly spoken beyond asking for the salt to be passed him, and sugar for his coffee. Martins had been bottling some private anger. Nobody had told Holt anything.
He ran down the service stairs and strode into the hotel foyer.
Up to Crane who was standing by the glass front looking out, bored, onto the street.
"Will you start treating me like a bloody partner?"
Crane grinned at him. "Come on."
They walked past the hotel's taxi rank. They walked all the way to the bus station. Crane had the decency to say that a walk would do Holt good if he was missing this morning's work-out. Crane set a fierce pace. That was his way. Three times Holt tried to batter his complaint into Crane's ear, three times he was ignored.
It was a dingy corner of the city. Noisy, crowded, dirty, impoverished. And this was the new bus station.
Holt wondered what the old one had looked like. Sunday morning, military travel day. To Holt, it seemed that a full half of Israel's conscript army was on the move.
Young men and young women, all in uniform, all with their kit, most with their weapons, rejoining their units after the weekend. Crane moved fluently through the crowds, through the queues, as though he belonged, and Holt trailed behind him.
There were buses to Ashkelon and Beer Sheba and Netanya and Haifa and Kiryat Shmona and Beat Shean.
Buses to all over the country. Buses to get the army back to work. So what the hell happened if the enemy came marching in at a weekend? Holt caught Crane, grabbed his arm.
"So where are we going?"
"Jerusalem, first."
"Why don't you tell me what we're doing?"
"Surprise is good for the human juices."
"Why don't we drive?"
"Because I like going by bus."
"When do we start being a partnership?"
"When I start telling you where you're going you'll start messing your pants."
Crane grinned, shook himself free.
He pointed to a queue. He told Holt to stand there.
Holt stood in the queue. It stretched ahead of him.
He was wondering whether they would get two seats when the driver deigned to open the door of the single decker bus. There were soldiers in front of him, men, women, there was a woman with four small children, two in her arms, there was an elderly couple arguing briskly.
There were two young men.
There were two young men who looked, moved, seemed different. Holt could not say how they looked, moved, seemed different. He was the stranger… Light chocolate skins, but then the Arabic Jews had light chocolate skins… Long dank curly hair, but then there were Arabic Jews of that age who would be in their last year of school, or who had some exemption from the military… Nervous movements, anxious glances over the shoulder, snapped whispers to each other.. . looking, moving, seeming different. And then the queue started to move, and the soldiers were surging and the woman was shouting for her stray children, and the elderly couple were bickering away their lives.
Alone in the queue, Holt saw two young men who looked, moved, seemed different.
He was a stranger. He took nothing for granted. He saw nothing as ordinary.
He watched. He was edging forward. He just knew that he would reach the steps into the bus, the driver, and Crane would not be back with the tickets. Holt moved a little out of the queue, so that he could watch for Crane more easily, so that he could shout to him to hurry. He was only half a step out of the queue. It gave him sight of one of the young men with his hand in a cheap grip bag, fiddling. He saw the frown of concentration on the forehead of one of the young men, and he saw the strain of the other young man who bent close to his friend. He saw that the two had their hands in the bag. Relief on their faces, hands out of the bag. He saw their hands clasp together, as if a bond was sealed, as if a mountain were climbed.
He was alone beside the bus, alone he saw them.
The taller of them slipped away. The shorter climbed the narrow steps onto the bus. Holt was looking for Crane – wretched man, as if the man enjoyed making Holt sweat… Holt saw the taller of the two young men standing at the ice cream kiosk. The one moment frantic because of something in a grip bag, the next moment buying ice cream. .. Crane walking unhurriedly back from the ticket booth, Holt waving for him to hurry.
He saw the taller man skipping across the road from the kiosk towards the bus.
The queue was formed alongside an all-weather shelter. A stout graffiti-covered brick wall masked the windows of the bus from Holt. He was buggered if he were going to stand like an obedient dog waiting on Crane. Holt was moving towards Crane…
He felt the hot wind. He heard the roar of the fire wind. He was off his feet, flying. Could not get his feet to the ground, could not control his body, mind, arms.
Moving above the road, moving towards the ice cream kiosk. He could see the kiosk, he could see the taller man with the ice creams splattering across his chest. He felt the snap cudgel blow of the bricks at the back of his legs. He heard the thunder blast of the explosion.
Holt careered into the taller man, hit him full in the body, smashed against the splattered ice cream cones.
Eyes closed. The knowledge of fire, the certainty of calamity. Ears blasted, ringing from the hammer strike of plastic explosive.
The body was under him. The body of the taller man was writhing.
Holt did not understand. Explosion, fire, demolition, he knew all that. He did understand that the taller man on whom he lay had wriggled clear of his belt a short double edged knife. Could not comprehend, why the taller man on whom he lay held the double edged knife and slashed at him. All so bloody mad. Mad that he had flown, that he could not control his legs, that debris lay around them, that the taller man slashed at him with the bright blade of a knife. The knife was at full arm stretch. The taller man screamed in words that Holt did not know.
He saw the knife closing on him. He saw the old dirty running shoe. He saw the knife part from the fist, clatter away. He saw the tail end swing of Crane's kick.
Holt blurted, "His friend took the bag. He went to get an ice cream. He tried to knife me."
The breath was crushed out of Holt's chest. Crane had smother dived onto him. He was gasping for air.
He felt himself pushed aside, rolled away, and Crane had twisted the taller man onto his stomach and hooked an arm behind the back, held it, denying the taller man any freedom of movement. Holt saw the spittle in the mouth of the taller man and heard the frothing words that he did not understand.
Again the staccato explanation from Holt. "There were two of them in the queue. They had a bag. One climbed onto the bus, the other went for ice creams. I was just picked up, I was chucked across the road. I hit him, fell on him. He pulled the knife on me."
"Bastard terrorist," Crane said, a whistle in his teeth.
"Arab bastard terrorist."
Holt looked into Crane's face. It was the eyes that held him. Merciless eyes. As if the anger of Crane had killed their life; ruthless eyes.
"He was shouting in Arabic at you," Crane said.
Crane moved fast. Holt left to fend for himself. Crane moving with the Arab propelled in front of him by the arm lock, and Holt crawling to his feet and struggling to follow. Crane driving the Arab forward as if his only concern was to get clear of the bus station. Holt thought he would be sick. His foot kicked against a severed leg.
He stepped over the body trunk of the elderly woman who had been arguing with her elderly husband, he recognised the shredded remnant of her dress. His shoe slid in a river of blood slime, and he careered sideways to avoid a young girl soldier who dragged herself across the road on her elbows and her knees, and who tried with her hands to staunch the blood flow.
There was the cut of the screams in the air, and the first shrill pulse of the sirens.
Holt lurched, staggered after Crane and the Arab.
They were going against the tide surge of shoppers, shop keepers, taxi drivers, passengers from other queues who ran towards the smoking skeleton of the Jerusalem bus.
A police car swung a corner, tyres howling. Crane put himself into the road in front of it, forced it to stop.
All so fast. Crane jabbering at the driver and his crew man and wrenching open the rear door and dragging the Arab inside after him, then reaching out to pull Holt aboard. The door slammed shut.
The police car reversed, turned, sped away. Holt smelled the fear scent of the Arab who was squashed against him, pressed between himself and Crane.
"Tell me I did well, Crane."
"Nothing to boast about."
"I did well."
"You did what any Israeli would have done. Nothing more, nothing less."
They had left him in the corridor that led down to the cell block. He had been there for more than three hours.
He was ignored. He sat on a hard wooden bench and leaned exhausted back against the painted white brick-work of the corridor walls.
Through all the three hours a procession of men passed up and down the corridor. There were soldiers, officers with badges of rank on their shoulders, there were senior policemen in uniform, there were inves-tigators of the Shin Bet in casual civilian dress. He was never spoken to. He was brought no coffee, no tea. The heavy wooden door with the deep key setting and the small peep hole was left empty. Holt heard the questioning, and he heard the thumping and the beating, and he heard the screams and the whimpering of the Arab. The screams were occasional, the whimpering was all the time. Holt could recognise the battering of the fists and the boots, could find images for those sounds.
Crane came out of the cell block.
Holt stood. "I have to say, Mr Crane, that whatever was done at the bus station I do not approve of the torture of prisoners… "
Crane stared at Holt. "There are five dead, two of them children. There are 51 injured, of whom eight are critical."
"You win against these people by a rule of law, not a rule of the jungle."
"Is the need for a rule of law taking you into the Beqa'a?"
"Abu Hamid in the Beqa'a is beyond the law, this man is in the custody of the law."
"Neat, and pathetic. Whether or not you'll be alive in two weeks' time may well have depended on the thrashing that Arab shitface is getting right now."
"How?"
"I fancy coffee."
"How?"
"Because we've kicked him and belted him and he talked to us. Abu Hamid selected him for the mission.
He was a Popular Front recruit at a camp run by Abu Hamid. Considering the state of his hands he's drawn us a damn good layout of the camp and he's done us quite a good map of where the camp is. Fair exchange for handing out a thrashing, don't you think, knowing where to find Abu Hamid in the Beqa'a?"
"I just meant…"
"Close it down, Holt. I don't think I fancy walking into Lebanon with you bleeding a damn great trail of your sensitivities."
"I hear you," Holt said.
A police car drove them back to the bus station.
The building was Beit Sokolov, on the far side of the road and down the hill on Kaplan from the Defence Ministry complex.
The chief military spokesman was a barrel-chested bustling man, wearing his uniform well, showing his para wings on his chest. He strode into the briefing room.
He walked to the dais. His entry quietened them. He faced his audience. They sat below him, pencils and pens poised over the blank sheets of their notepads.
They were the military correspondents of the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation and Maariv and Yediot and the Jerusalem Post, and the bureau chiefs of the American and European broadcasting networks, and the senior men of the foreign news agencies. He checked around him. He was satisfied there were no microphones to pick up his words.
"Gentlemen, on a matter of the greatest importance to us, a matter directly affecting the security of the state, we demand your co-operation. Concerning the terrorist bomb explosion in the New Central bus station this morning, you will be handed our statement at the end of this informal briefing. The statement will say that two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organisation were involved in the planting of the bomb, and that both died in the explosion. Your reporters may, in conversation with eye witnesses, bring back stories of one terrorist being arrested and driven away from the scene of the explosion. We demand that that information does not appear. It is of the uttermost importance that the terrorist leaders who despatched these two men do not know that we are currently interrogating one survivor.
A matter of life and death, gentlemen. Any attempt to smuggle information concerning this survivor past the censors, out of the state, will lead to prosecution and harshest penalties of the law. Questions…"
The bureau chief of the Columbia Broadcasting Systems drawled, "Have we gotten involved in another bus ride cover-up?"
The military spokesman had anticipated the question.
Four years before, four Arabs from the Gaza Strip had hijacked a crowded bus in southern Israel, and threatened to kill the passengers if 25 Palestinians were not released from Israeli gaols. The bus had been stopped, and stormed. Two Arabs had died in the military intervention, two others had been seen being led away into the darkness at the side of the road by the Shin Bet. In a field, out of sight, these two were bludgeoned to death. Senior officials of Shin Bet were subsequently granted immunity from prosecution, and resigned.
"The move is temporary. There will be no cover-up because the survivor is alive. Within a month he will be charged with murder and will appear in open court.
Questions…"
The senior Tel Aviv-based reporter of the Reuters news agency asked, "Will we ever be told what it is that is a matter of life and death?"
"Who can tell?"
The briefing was concluded.
Within fifteen minutes the IBC had broadcast the news that according to the military spokesman it had now been ascertained that two Arabs, thought to be the bombing team, had died in the explosion.
Because of the deformity of his features it was difficult for the other officers in the room to ascertain the feelings of Major Said Hazan.
The major had pulled his chair away from his desk.
He was bent over his radio set, listening intently, as he had been for every one of the news broadcasts from Israel that morning.
He switched off the radio. He resumed the course of the meeting. He knew the scale of the casualties. He knew the fate of the two recruits. He knew that the trail of evidence to the Yarmouq camp on the outskirts of Damascus was cut.
More martyrs for the folklore of the Palestine revolution, more casualties for the enemy that was Israel.
The station officer rang Major Zvi Dan immediately after the news broadcast.
"I just want, again, to express my gratitude. If they had known there was a survivor…"
"… They would have moved the camp, the contact would have been lost. We have given you the chance, we hope you can use it."