At Close Quarters

by Gerald Seymour

  "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.