A record of total disappointment at home, and he had never once let it show, hadn't let his work suffer.
Holt and Crane into the Beqa'a, Percy Martins's last big one, by Jesus, he would not let the last big one go unnoticed on the nineteenth floor of Century.
He had a good record, nothing to be ashamed of, and less recognition for it than the man who sat behind the reception desk at Century. Meanwhile he was stuck in a kibbutz, where there was no fishing, where there was no access to a damn good mission going into Lebanon, Of course, he should have insisted that there was proper preparation of the ground rules before he ever left London. And no damned support from the station officer. The station officer's balls would be a decent enough target when he made it back to Century . . .
He had signed his bill, should have had a full bottle of Avdat but he had never gone over the top with expenses, he had strolled to the bar.
Percy Martins had never been able to understand why so many hotels dictated that drinking should be carried out in semi-darkness and to the accompaniment of loudspeaker music. There were Americans in the shadows, from the air-conditioned bus that had arrived in the afternoon. He preferred solitude to them. Blue rinse, check trousers and damn loud voices for both sexes.
The Americans had all the tables except one. Two men sat at the table, and bloody miserable they seemed to Martins because in front of each of them was a tall glass of fresh pressed orange juice. Not young and not old, the two men. Obvously Israelis. One wore an old leather jacket, scarred at the cuffs and elbows, the other wore a bleach scrubbed denim jacket. They were not talking; they looked straight ahead.
And there were the young Scandinavians. He knew they were Scandinavians, impossible language they were speaking, like English taped and played backwards. And drinking, and loud. All that Martins associated with Scandinavians.
There were four of them. He had the choice between several loud American women and their husbands, the teetotal Israelis, and four merry Scandinavians. They were at the bar, they were ordering another round. He assumed them to be UNIFIL. At the bar he nodded to them, made his presence known, then ordered himself a beer.
He had drunk half his beer, not made contact, when t he young man closest to him lurched backwards on the punchline of a joke, stumbled against Martins' elbow while he was sipping, spilled a mouthful down the laundered shirt.
It was the beginning of the conversation. Handkerchiefs out, apologies first in Norwegian and then English when Martins had spoken. Introductions.
He learned that the young man who had jogged him was Hendrik. He learned that Hendrik was with UNIFIL's NORBAT. He learned that Hendrik and his friends were allowed one evening a week in Kiryat Shmona.
He was rather pleased. A stained shirt was a cheap price to pay for introductions.
A replacement beer was called for by Hendrik.
"You are English, Mr Martin?"
"Martins. Yes, I am English . . . Cheers."
"Here for holiday?"
"You could say I am here for a holiday, Hendrik."
"For us it is not a holiday, you understand. No holiday in south Lebanon. What does an Englishman find for a holiday in Kiryat Shmona?"
"Just looking around, just general interest . . . Your glass is empty, you must allow me."
Martins clicked his fingers for the barman. Had he looked behind him, he would have seen that the two glasses of orange juice remained untouched, that the Israelis leaned forward, faces set in concentration. Four beers for the soldiers, a whisky and water for Martins.
"So how do you like it here, Hendrik, serving with the United Nations?"
"Are you a Jew?" 1
The young man's face close to his own. "Most certainly not."
"The Jews treat us like filth. They have so great an arrogance. They make many problems for us."
"Ah yes. Is that so?"
His whisky was less than half drunk, but the barman had reached for it, prompted by one of the soldiers. The glass was refilled.
"That's most civil of you. You were saying, Hendrik
"
"I was saying that the Jews make many problems for us."
"Not only for you, my boy," Martins said quietly, the first trace of a slur in his speech.
"Every day they violate the authority of the United Nations."
"Is that so?"
"Every single day they come into the U N I F I L area."
"Indeed? Do they indeed?"
"They come in and they make trouble, but it is us who have to mend the damage."
"Absolutely."
There was an appealing candour to the young man, Martins thought, compared to his own callow son, miserable little brat, without a polite word for his father.
"That's very decent of you . . . " The whisky glass was gone again. Percy Martins felt the warm careless glow in his body.
"They've always made trouble, the Jews. Since way back, since before you were born, my boy. Part of their nature. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not an anti-semite, never have been, but by God they tax my patience. They always have done, damn difficult people to do business with when you need co-operation."
"Business or holiday?"
Martins leaned forward, avuncular, confiding. "A little more business than holiday."
"What sort of business?"
Martins swayed, "Careful, my boy. Over your young head . . . "
He seldom drank in London. A pint in the pub or a quick Scotch when he slipped out of Century in the evening to get some fish and chips or a takeaway pizza before going back to work late. He kept no alcohol at home. If he left alcohol in the house it would be drunk by his wife, or by the boy when he was home from college. But this was a first class young man, with a good reading of events, a very level headed young man. God, why did they have to have that bloody music? And why did those bloody Americans have to address each other as though they were in the next state?
"Like last night."
"Sorry, my boy, what was last night?"
"They sent an infiltration team through our lines . . . "
Martins reeled back. "How did you know about that?"
He was close to losing his footing. He hung on the edge of the bar.
"They sent an infiltration team through last night."
Martins shouted. "I bloody heard you, don't repeat yourself. I asked you a question. How did you bloody know what happened last night?"
He was not aware that his raised voice had quietened the Americans. He did not see the man behind him, the one who wore the leather jacket, slide from his chair, go fast for the door.
"Why do you shout?"
"Because I want an answer, my boy."
"To what, an answer?"
"How you knew about an infiltration team moving off last night."
"Does it concern you?"
"Your answer, I want it."
His vision was blurred. He could not register the curious concentrated interest of the boy Hendrik.
"An Englishman, on holiday - why does an infiltration concern him?"
"It bloody well concerns me, how you knew."
"You are drunk, mister."
In front of him the young man turned away, as if no longer interested. Martins caught at the white T-shirt, spun him round.
"How did you know about the infiltration last night?"
"Take your hands off me."
"How did you know ...?"
There was quick movement. As though the Norwegians were suddenly bored with the elderly Briton.
Martins's shout still hung in the air as they pushed past him, away from the bar, out through the swing door.
The music played was ragtime.
The man sitting at the table behind abandoned the two orange juices, hurried out through the door to drag his colleague off the telephone.
There was the sound of the U N I F I L transport roaring to life in the car park.
"What did he say, Hendrik, that pissed fart?"
Hendrik Olaffson drov
e. "Heh, thanks for pulling the asshole off me."
"What was it about?"
He spoke slowly. "He was English. He said he was a tourist, but he did not dress like a tourist and there is no tourism here, that is the first. Then the second, he went stupid when I said that the Israelis had infiltrated through our sector last night. He said, 'How did you know about an infiltration team last night?', those were his words."
A voice from the darkness in the back of the jeep.
"Hendrik, is it possible that the British have pushed an infiltration group through our sector, going north?"
"Into the Beqa'a? It would be madness."
"Madness, yes. But worth much weed, Hendrik . . . "
They were laughing, full of good humour.
They were waved through the checkpoint at Metulla.
In the foyer of the guest house of the Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, the receptionist passed the man who wore the frayed leather jacket her guest book. Her finger pointed to the name and the signature of Percy Martins, British passport, government servant.
They were moving on an animal track. He thought it could be a goat track. There were wild goat loose on Exmoor and Holt knew their smell. He reckoned it was a regular track. It was the fifth hour of the night march and the old moon was up, in the last quarter which was the best time for night infiltration according to Crane's bible. Maximum safe light for them to move under, and it was a hell of a job for Holt to follow the track. Would have been impossible for him if he had not had the guiding wraith of Crane ahead. Damned if he could figure how Crane could have been able to identify the animal track from the high-up aerial photographs.
The fifth hour, and the march was now going well.
Two hours back it had not been good, they had scampered across the tarmac road in their path. A bad bit, the road, because they had had to lie up for quarter of an hour before moving into the open, and in the waiting Holt had felt the fear pangs. Gone now, the fear, gone because the road was behind them and below them. The hillside was steep, and much of the time Holt walked crab style going sideways, because that was the easiest way with the weight of the Bergen. The Bergen should have been easier. He was a gallon of water down, ten pounds weight down, didn't seem to make any difference. He was feeling good and the blister hadn't worsened, and he thought he could live with the sores under the backpack straps. He was the son of a pro-fessional man, he had been to private school, he was a graduate in Modern History, he had been accepted via the "fast stream" into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. And no bloody way any of that had fitted him for crab walking along a hillside in south Lebanon, no bloody way it would help him if the blister on his heel burst, if the sores on his shoulders went raw.
He thought he was beginning to move by instinct. He thought he was getting into the rhythm of the march.
He tried to think of his girl. So hard to see his girl in his mind, because his mind was taken up with footfall, and lying up positions, and water rations, and watching and following Crane up ahead. The old goat on an old goat track . . . Hard to think of Jane. It seemed to him like a betrayal of her memory, of his reason for being there. She was just a flicker in his mind, like the bulb going in a striplight. The good times with Jane, they didn't have anything to do with changing the ammunition twice a day in the magazines, nor with squatting in the lee of a rock after dark using smooth stones to wipe his backside, nor with cleaning his teeth with a pick because paste left a smell signature, nor with carrying a Model FM long range sniper rifle that gave one chance, one shot. He could feel his Jane. She could be against his skin, like the pain of the pack straps was against his skin, like the heel of his right chukka boot was against his skin, he could feel her, but he could not see her.
Each time he tried to see her then he reckoned it was the girl, Rebecca, that he saw.
He didn't know whether Crane had quickened his pace, or whether he himself was slowing. Feeling Jane's body against his skin, seeing Rebecca's body against his skin. That was a bastard, like he was selling his Jane short.
He was struggling to keep pace with Crane, he was struggling to see the soft face, lips, throat, eyes of his girls.
He kicked the stone.
The track was not more than foot wide. There was a sloping black abyss to his right. His left hand was held out to steady himself against the rock slope soaring above him.
He had gone straight through the stone. He had not paused, he had not tested the ground under his leading foot. He had begun to move by instinct.
The loose stone rolled.
The stone slid off the track.
The stone seemed to laugh at him. The stone fell from the track, and bounced below, and disturbed more stones. More stones falling and bouncing and being disturbed.
He stood statue still. The vertigo seemed to pull at him, as if trying to topple the weight of the Bergen pack down into the abyss, after the tumbling stones.
Snap out of it, Holt. Get a grip, Holt. No room in his mind for his girl, any girl. No room for pack strap sores, nor heel blisters. Get yourself bloody well together, Holt. He jerked his foot forward. He rolled the sole of his boot on the ground of the track ahead. Tested it, eased onto it. First stone he had kicked all night. Crane hadn't stopped for him. Crane's shadow shape was smaller, moving away.
All the time the echoing beat of the stones skipping, plummeting, racing, below him.
He was into his stride again when the flare went up.
A thump from below and behind. A white light point soaring . . . Crane's bible. Trip wire ground level flare, freeze into tree shape and sink ever so slow. High level flare, drop face down like there's no tomorrow.
The moment before the flare burst into brilliance, Holt was on his face, on his stomach, on his knees.
The flare when it burst seemed to struggle against gravity. It hung high. A wash of growing light on the hillside. The epicentre was behind him, but he could sense the light bathing his hands and the outline of his body and his back, and niggling into his eyes. He lay quite still. Ahead of him he could see the exposed soles of Crane's boots.
The flare fell, died.
There was a hiss from Crane. Holt saw the fast movement of Crane's arm, urging him forward. He was half upright, and Crane was moving. He was trying to push back the weight of the Bergen holding him down, and the weight of the Model PM, and the weight of his belt kit.
Crane gone. Blackness where there had been light.
Should have bloody closed his eyes. Shouldn't have let the light into his eyes.
The second flare was fired.
Holt dropped. Eyes closed now, squeezed tight.
Trying to do what Crane had told him, trying to follow verse and chapter of Crane's bible. Nothing over his ears, his hearing was sharp, uncluttered. He heard the voices below. No bloody idea how far below. Voices, but no words.
When the light no longer hurt his eyes he looked ahead. The flare was about to ground. The path ahead was clear. He could not see Crane.
There were two more flares.
There were bursts of machine gun fire against the hillside. The strike of the tracer red rounds on the hillside seemed to Holt to have no pattern, like it was random firing. He had grown to know the jargon. He reckoned it was prophylactic firing. He wondered to hell whether they had thermal imagery sights, whether they had passive night goggles. There was movement below him. He thought he heard the sounds of men moving in the darkness, scrambling on the slopes. He could hear the voices again. Christ, he was alone. His decision, alone, to move or to stay frozen. His decision, whether to reckon he was invisible to the men below so that he could move, whether the firing had been to flush him out into the view of the TI sights and the PN
goggles.
Hellishly alone. He could not crawl, if he crawled he would make the noise of an elephant. If he were to move he had to get to his feet, he had to walk upright, slowly, weighing each step.
He lay on his face. He thought of how greatly he depended on the taciturn go
ading that he had from Crane. He pulled himself up. He listened to the voices and the movements on the hillside. The thought in his mind was of being alone on the hillside, of being discovered, of being apart at that moment from Noah Crane.
The aloneness drove him forward.
There was no more shooting. There were no more flares. The voices faded, the footfalls died.
He tried to remember how far it would be to the next halt position. He tried to recall the map that Crane had shown him before they had moved off. They were now in the sixth hour. Holt had not taken much notice of the map, didn't have to, because he had Crane to lead him.
Alone, Holt resumed his night march.
It might have been five minutes later, it might have been half an hour, he found Crane sitting astride the animal track.
He could have kissed him.
Crane whispered, "Syrian regular army patrol."
Holt spoke into Crane's ear. "Routine?"
"They're not usually out at night. Usually tucked up, holding their peckers."
"Why would they have been out?"
"You're the educated one, youngster."
"Were they waiting for us?"
"You went to university."
Holt hissed, "Tell me."
"Just not certain that one kicked stone was it, but waiting."
"Are we blown?"
Holt saw, in the fragile moonlight, Crane's smile without humour. "They're behind us, there's only one sensible way to go."
At Close Quarters Page 28