At Close Quarters

by Gerald Seymour

  "I'm not sorry."

  "If you had been born an Israeli you would have been in the army."

  "Not my quarrel."

  "You may not think it your quarrel, but when you walk from here, when you walk away from our protection, then every man and woman and child in the villages and towns of the Beqa'a would hate you if they knew of you. Would you believe me if I told you, Holt, that in the Beqa'a they do not acknowledge the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners . . . ?"

  Holt grimaced, he liked the man. "I believe you."

  "I am so very serious. It is a place without conventions. There would be no officers to safeguard you. Your life would be worthless after the sport of torturing you."

  Holt said softly, "I'm scared enough, no need to make it worse."

  "I do not try to frighten you, I try only to stress that you should follow Noah, exactly follow him. Noah is a marksman, he is a sniper. Do you know that in your own army for many years sniping was frowned on? It was not quite right, it was even dirty. Examine the job of the sniper. He shoots first against an officer. When does he shoot the officer? He kills the officer when he goes for his morning defecation. The officer is dead, his men are leaderless, and they dare not leave their trench for the call of nature. They make their mess in their trench, which is not good, Holt, for their morale. The sniper is hated by his enemy, he is prized by his own forces who are behind him. Often they are far behind him, where they cannot be of assistance to him. It is a peculiar and particular man who fights far beyond help.

  Your Mr Crane, who has never accepted a medal, is peculiar and particular. Follow him."

  Holt sat on his backside as far as he could be from the vision slits. For as long as he could avoid it, he wanted to see no more of a battlefield where the enemy was a young girl, and her arsenal was a donkey.

  The aircraft was late.

  The aircraft was at the end of its flying life. At every stopover it required comprehensive maintenance testing. The aircraft was elderly because that way the premiums paid to Lloyds of London by Middle East Airlines for comprehensive insurance cover could be kept to a reasonable figure.

  The aircraft landed from Paris in the middle of the afternoon. It had come in over the sea, the view of Beirut had been minimal in the heat haze.

  He was Heinrich Gunter, the passenger who was eager to be free of the passport queue in the bullet-pocked airport terminal.

  He was 45 years old, and this was the thirty-ninth visit he had made to Beirut since the shooting and shelling had started in 1976.

  He was a middle-management employee of the Credit Bank of Zurich, and he was personally responsible for the administration of many millions of United States dollars invested with his bank by wealthy, quiet-living Lebanese entrepreneurs.

  He was married, with three children, and he had told his wife that morning that Beirut was fine if you had the right contacts, made the correct arrangements.

  He was expecting to be met. He was not to know that the airport road had been closed for three hours, that a rising of tension between men of the Druze militia and of the Shi'a Amal militia had prevented his agent from getting to the airport to meet him.

  He hurried away from the passport control. He col- 1

  lected his one suitcase that was adequate for a two day stay, maximum. He moved through the frequently j repaired glass doors at the airport's main entrance. He j could not see his agent.

  After waiting for 25 minutes, Heinrich Gunter agreed j with a persistent taxi driver that he would pay the fare asked, in hard currency. He was told that the driver knew a safe way, avoiding the area of tension, to the hotel into which he was booked. It was already a long day. A row with his wife over his breakfast because he was going to Beirut, an argument at Zurich airport because the Swissair flight was overbooked and he was a late arrival, drinks in the airport bar at Charles de Gaulle because Middle East Airlines was leaving late, more drinks on the flight because he was going to Beirut.

  It had been a long day, and he had been drinking, and he took the taxi.

  Heinrich Gunter never really saw what happened. In the back seat of the taxi Heinrich Gunter lolled back, the whisky miniatures of the Paris airport and the Middle East Airlines first class cabin had taken a gentle and gradual toll.

  By the time that his eyes opened, the taxi had been waved down to the side of the road, the back door had been wrenched open, a hand had grabbed for the sleeve of his jacket. The first thing he clearly saw was the barrel of a rifle half a dozen inches from his chest. The first thing he felt was himself being propelled out of the car.

  He lurched to the pavement. He was grabbed under each arm and rushed down an alley way. He had seen a flash of two slimly built young men, each wearing a cotton imitation of a balaclava face mask, each carrying a rifle. In the alley a length of cloth was wrapped around his lace, covering his eyes. He was kicked hard in the leg, the back of his head was cudgelled with the butt of a rifle.

  There was no fight in Heinrich Gunter as he was dragged away.

  He knew what had happened to him. He was sobbing as his shoes scuffed the surface of the alley way. He had not even shouted for help. He knew he was beyond help.

  Fawzi showed his papers to the NORBAT sentry. The papers identified him as a Lebanese dentist.

  He drove out of the U N I F I L sector. The checking by the sentry of his car had not been thorough. A thorough check would have discovered the dirtied overalls in which he had lain on the hillside a mile and a half from the road block. It would also have discovered a powerful pair of East German binoculars. Had the car been stripped to its panels, then the sentry would have unearthed the radio controlled command detonator that would have fired the explosives in the pannier bags slung against the donkey's sides.

  He went fast, angrily.

  He had seen weeks of manipulation destroyed by a long range marksman.

  He had failure to report to Major Said Hazan.

  He had seen the girl as a gem, and her long triumphant journey had been ended several hundred yards short of her target. Fawzi could taste the humiliation.

  Percy Martins wrote his occupation as "government servant", and the reason for his visit as "vacation", when he filled in the registration form at the guest house.

  He had not been asked where he wanted to stay. He had been driven from the army camp at Kiryat Shmona to the Kibbutz Kfar Giladi. He was not that disappointed. He was greeted at the reception desk as a VI P.

  His bag was carried. He was treated with respect. The guest house, six stories high, set in flowering gardens, appealed to him.

  He was given his key.

  "I was wondering," he said to the raven haired, raven eyebrowed, receptionist, "would there be any fishing in these parts? Would one be able to hire a rod?"

  Percy Martins was nothing if not a pragmatist. He understood that his marriage was in terminal collapse, that his relationship with his son was as good as finished.

  He could look clear-headed at his career, twice passed over for promotion to Deputy or In Charge of the Middle East desk. But he was no longer wounded by setbacks. He could cope with his home life. He could live with what to other men would have been humiliation in the office. He could endure the taciturn Holt and the imperious Israelis. That is what he told himself. He said to himself, Sod the lot of them. He would bloody well go fishing.

  "I would have thought there would be some trout in those nice little streams running down from Mount Hermon. Now trout isn't what I usually go for - I'm a pike man actually. I don't suppose you know about pike. If you're into trout then you would regard pike as something akin to vermin. You'll see what you can find out for me, of course you will. You're very kind."

  With his key in his hand he trudged up the stairs to his second floor room. He imagined himself ushering young Holt into the Director General's office, and of standing quietly at the back of the room. Very well done indeed, Percy. We are all proud of you.

  He sat down on the bed. He unbu
ttoned the front of his waistcoat. He loosened his tie. Sod the lot of them.

  He held his head in his hands. Unseen, alone, close to tears.

  There was a crushed ball of paper on the pile carpet beside the chair of Major Said Hazan. It was the clean sheet of paper he had crumpled with all the strength of his fist when the telephone call had informed him that the girl and her bomb had not reached target.

  He had given his instructions. On the evening television news broadcast, transmitted by the Syrian state station, a statement would be made by the girl. She would talk of her commitment to a Lebanon free of Israeli terror, and of her commitment to the Syrian cause and the Palestine revolution. And then the news reader would give factual information of the heavy casualties inflicted on the IDF and their surrogate SLA by the sacrificial heroism of the girl.

  The truth, and this was clearly recognised by Major Said Hazan, was an irrelevance. The northern boundary of the security zone was a closed area, there would be no independent witnesses. More of the Arab world would believe the claim of the Syrian state station than would believe the denial put out by the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation. The message would go on the air-waves that a young Muslim girl of exemplary purity had given her life in the struggle against the Zionist brutes -

  she had been photographed with care by the camera, her pregnancy would not be seen. It was the estimate of Major Said Hazan that a car bomb or a donkey bomb had more effect on the anxious sheiks and emirs and sultans of the oil wealthy Gulf than any other lever for the extraction of funds. Great truth in the ancient Arab proverb, The enemy of my friend is my enemy, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. His country needed the funds of the Gulf. The route to those funds was through constant, daring attacks against Israel carried out by the young vanguard of the Arab peoples.

  The truth might be an irrelevance, but he hated to know that the bomb had been stopped short of its target. The crushed, crumpled paper lay beside his feet.

  He reached for the telephone. There were some who came to his office who marvelled to find four telephones on the table beside his desk. A joke had once been made that he had only two ears, two hands. A poor joke, because his ears had been burned away, leaving only stumps, and the fingers of his right hand had been amputated. One telephone gave him access by direct line to the desk of the brigadier general commanding Air Force Intelligence. A second telephone gave him scrambled communication with military headquarters at Chtaura in the Beqa'a valley. A third telephone gave him an outside line, the fourth put him into the exchange system of Air Force Intelligence. He lifted the third telephone.

  He dialled.

  He spoke with silk. "Is it you?... A thousand apologies, I have been away, and since I have been back just meetings, more meetings. Too long away from you . . .

  How was he, my pet?... How was his spirit? How was his resolution?... My pet, you would lift the organ of the dead . . . Excellent. I will see you, my pet, as soon as I can turn away this cursed load of work. Goodbye, my pet."

  There had been the knock at his door which caused him to ring off. He loved to hear her guttural foreign voice. He loved to linger with his thoughts on the smooth clean curves of her flesh . . .

  He called for his visitor to enter.

  Major Said Hazan stretched out his left hand in greeting.

  "My Brother, you are most welcome . . . "

  For an hour he talked with this military commander of the Popular Front over the plans for an attack on the Defence Ministry complex in Tel Aviv. That section which housed the rooms of the Military Intelligence wing was ringed in red ink. They discussed the method of infiltration, and leaned towards a seaborne landing, and they pondered over the sort of man who might have the elan, the resolution, to lead such a mission.

  After an hour Major Said Hazan had quite overcome his sharp fury at the failure of the girl and her bomb at the checkpoint in the security zone.

  Far behind them, far from sight, came the dulled reports of the artillery, and far ahead of them there was the brilliance of the flares bursting and then falling to spread their white light against the darkness.

  Holt tugged at the Bergen's straps, wriggled for greater comfort. They were outside the observation post.

  Crane said, "I told you not to look at them."

  Crane had his back to the flares.

  "And you haven't told me what they're for."

  "I'm not a bloody tourist guide."

  "Why are they firing flares, Mr Crane?"

  "Because you're looking at the flares you're losing the ability to see in darkness. We have to pass through a chunk of NORBAT ground, so we are putting flares up for illumination between NORBAT positions and where we're walking, we're burning out their night vision equipment. Got it?"

  "Would have helped if you had told me in the first place."

  "Piss off, youngster."

  "Let's get this show on the road, then."

  They hugged each other. A brief moment. Arms around each other, and the belt kit sticking into the other's stomach, and the weapons digging at each other's rib cages, and the weight of the Bergen packs swaying them.

  They were two shadows.

  The stars were just up. The moon would be over them at midnight, an old moon in the last quarter.

  They crossed the road beneath the observation post.

  They headed into the darkness, away from the road, away from the slow falling flares.

  They were gone from the safety of the security zone.

  Nothing in his mind except concentration on his fool fall and the faint shape walking in front of him. Nothing of Jane who had been his love through his life before, nor of the girl who had been his comfort the night before, nor of the leaders and the generals, nor of his country. Only the care of where he laid his boot, and his watch on Noah Crane ahead.

  13

  It started as a casual conversation.

  At the airfield south of Kiryat Shmona there was a hut where helicopter passengers could wait, sit in comfortable rattan style chairs, for their flight. There was a steward dispensing orange juice, there was a radio tuned in to the army station, there were some pot flowers which had even been watered.

  The pilot came into the hut to advise Major Zvi Dan that there would be a short delay before he could lift off with the major and the major's assistant.

  "Up to your ears?" the major asked.

  The pilot knew Zvi Dan. The pilot sometimes joked that he was a bus driver, that Zvi Dan travelled more often from Tel Aviv to Kiryat Shmona than any grandmother in search of her grandchildren.

  "I'm down the queue for refuelling, for maintenance checks. Ahead of us are the choppers going tomorrow."

  Because the pilot knew Zvi Dan, he knew also that the major worked in military Intelligence. He could talk freely.

  "Where?"

  "Big show up the road."

  "I've been out of touch." Zvi Dan sipped at the plastic beaker of juice.

  "Bombers are going up the road in the morning, we're down for rescue stand-by."

  "So we're in the queue, and what's new? That's the old army motto, Hurry up and Wait."

  Rebecca read her book, almost at the end, rapt attention.

  "There's to be a big chopper force on rescue stand-by, it's a difficult target they're going for."

  "How so?"

  "The Beqa'a, not under the missile umbrella directly, but the fringe area. It's not the missile that's the problem, the target's just small, and for small targets they have to line up more carefully, all the usual gripes from the bombers."

  "What's the target?"

  The pilot leaned forward, said quietly. "We were told that they had good interrogation of one of those shit pigs that did the bus station - well, you'd know more of that than me, that it was all hocus them both being killed. Seems they came out of a training camp in the Beqa'a, that's where the bombers are going . . . "

  Major Zvi Dan was rigid in his chair. His orange juice had spilled on his tunic.

  "H
eh, have I said something?"

  He saw the major's back going out through the door.

  Rebecca looked up, grimaced. She had not been listening. She went back to her book.

  Major Zvi Dan, anger mad, pounded into the night.

  He swung through the door of the airfield's flight operations room. He stomped to the chair of the flight operations officer. He pulled the chair round, swivelled it to face him.

  "I am Major Zvi Dan, military Intelligence. I am an officer with an A level category of priority. On a classified matter of importance I demand an immediate take-off for Tel Aviv."

  He cowed the flight operations officer into sub-mission.

  He could barely believe it: two men had started to walk towards the Beqa'a, to walk towards a tent camp, to identify a target, to take out a terrorist, and the Air Force were planning to beat them there by two days and scatter the ground with cluster bombs. Right hand and left hand, light years apart. Why couldn't his bloody country put its bloody act together?

  He stormed back into the hut. He limped up and down the floor space, pacing away his impatience.

  The pilot came in. "You put a bomb under somebody, Major. We have clearance for lift-off in ten minutes."

  It was the same rhythm of advance that Holt had learned during the hike in the Occupied Territories. But that had been only rehearsal. Different now. In the Occupied Territories Crane had hissed curses at him when he kicked loose stones, when he stood on dry wood, when he stumbled and stampeded away small scree rock. On his own now, wasn't he? Had to make do without help.

  Not that he needed cursing when he scuffed a stone, he wanted to punch himself in frustration each time.

  Holt knew that the pace that had been set was aimed to cover one mile in each hour. It had been dark at six, it would be light again at six. They had moved off an hour after darkness, they would reach their LUP an hour before dawn. He was unconsciously soaking up the jargon, a Lying Up Position had become LUP. Ten hours on the move, ten miles to cover. Stripped, Holt weighed 168 pounds. He carried a further 80 pounds'

  weight in his clothing, his Bergen and his belt. In addition he was ferrying the Model PM, because Crane had the Armalite. He remembered the race around the lawns of the house in England, when he carried nothing, when Crane had a backpack full of stones. Christ, there was a weight on his back, on his hips, on his arms.