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 t
han 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 fa
thers 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."
At Close Quarters Page 16