At Close Quarters

by Gerald Seymour

  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

  & 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 t
he 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 w
e 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."