Beside the chair on which were laid his outer clothes, the merchant had spread out two plastic bags of the sort that were used to carry agricultural fertiliser. On these empty bags he had laid all the working parts of the pump engine that brought up water from one of Khirbet Qanafar's three irrigation wells. He had dismantled the pump engine during the late afternoon and early evening, then he had eaten with the headman and the headman's sons. In the morning, after he had woken and washed and fed, he would begin to reassemble the pump engine. He knew the reassembly would take him many hours, perhaps most of the day. He knew that in the dusk of the following day he would still be at Khirbet Q a n a f a r . It was all as he had planned it. Crane would snipe at dusk. He slept easily, he was in position, as he had been told to be.
But how much longer, how many more years, could a university lecturer play the part of a merchant in spare parts for electrical engines and sleep in the bed of an enemy?
When he felt the softness of her body turn to cold, Abu Hamid rose to his feet.
The candle had gone, but the electricity supply was restored and light was thrown into the room from the alley way.
She lay at his feet. Only an awkwardness about the tilt of her throat and the lie of her head.
He went to the window. He edged the thin curtains aside. He saw the jeep parked at the end of the alley.
There was the auburn glow of the driver's cigarette.
He had been briefed on the plan for the attack against the Defence Ministry on Kaplan. They asked him for his life, and for the lives of the men who would travel with him. Of course, they would watch over him.
He lay on her bed. He smelled the perfume of the sheets and the pillows. He remembered the small, groping hands of the boy child she had placed with gentleness on his shoulder.
Heinrich Gunter was pushed down onto his hands and his knees. As he propelled himself forward over the rough rock floor he sensed the damp mustiness of the cave.
• * *
All according to Crane's bible. They moved through the lying up position then doubled back to circle it.
They settled. Away below them were the lights of the camp, and the chugging drive of the generator carried up to their high ground.
18
Flooding it with gold light, the dawn slipped over the rim of the far valley wall.
It was as if the valley exploded in brilliance, with the low beams of the sun's thrust catching the lines and colours of the Beqa'a. At dawn, at a few minutes before
»tx o'clock, the valley was a place of quiet beauty. The sun caught the clean geometric lines of the irrigation channels, it flowed over the delicate green shades of the early growth of barley and wheat, it bathed the rough strength of the grey yellow rock outcrops, it glinted on the red tile roofs of Khirbet Qanafar, it shone on the corrugated iron roofs of a commando camp. The sun laced onto the windscreen of a travelling car. The sun pushed down long shadows from the bodies of a flock of sheep driven by a child towards the uplands of the valley to the plateau where it would be cooler when the sun was high. The sun burnished the scrubbed whiteness of a flag that carried in its centre an outline of the Zionist state that was overpainted with crossed rifles with fixed bayonets.
And the sun, striking out, gave a shape to the conical tents of the camp.
The camp was no surprise, it was familiar from the aerial photographs.
There was the wire perimeter. There was the anti-tank ditch. There was the cluster of large sleeping tents.
There was the latrine screen. There were the holes in the ground of the air raid pits, and of the armoury.
There was the tent of the commander, set aside. There was the roof above the cooking area.
The generator had been switched off at the first surge of daylight, as if light were only needed as a protection against the dangers of the night. A complete silence at the tent camp. The only movement was the turn and wheel and casual stamp of the sentry at the entrance to the camp, and the hustling of the cook as he revived the fire after the night, and the drift towards the sun orb of the wavering smoke column, and the flag fluttering out the emblem of the Popular Front.
Above the camp, at a place where the steeper sides of the valley wall flattened out to offer a more gentle slope to the floor of the Beqa'a, the ancient ice age movements had left a gouged-out overhang of rock. The space under the lip of the protruding rock was shallow, not more than three feet deep, but the overhang ran some ten feet in length. The overhang was unremarkable. In the half mile or so to either side of this particular formation there were another nine similar devastations of the general line of the ground fall.
The overhang of rock was the place chosen by Crane for the final lying up position.
Crane asleep.
Holt on watch.
The sun lifted clear of the Jabal Aarbi on the east side of the Beqa'a. It was extraordinary for Holt how fast the cleanness of the light began to diffuse into haze. The sun was climbing. He tugged his watch out from under his tunic top, checked the time. Crane was sleeping well, like he needed to sleep. He would liked to have left Crane to sleep longer, to have the chance to rest the eye and to bring back strength into his muscles and calm into his mind. The watch was the taskmaster. He would be chewed out if he allowed Crane to sleep beyond his allotted time. He touched Crane's shoulder. Since they had reached the lying up position he had slept for an hour, and Crane had slept for an hour. But the sun was now up, and the camp was stirring. He could not think when they would next sleep.
Crane awoke.
God, and did he do it easily? For Holt it was a miracle of the world, Crane waking. A fast rub of the eye, half of a stifled yawn, a vicious scratch at the armpit, a scowl and a grin, and Crane was awake.
There were small figures moving from the tents, there was the first tinkle of a transistor radio playing music and travelling against the wind.
"Did you sleep all right?"
"I slept fine . . . what's moving?"
"Starting to be shit-shower-shave time down there.
You know, Mr Crane, it's fantastic, us being here, them being there. I mean, it's what you said would happen, but until I was here perhaps I didn't ever quite believe it."
"You think too much, youngster, that's the problem of education."
"How's the eye?"
"Worry about yourself."
Holt heard the pitch of Crane's voice drop, he saw him turn away. Crane's tongue was rolling inside his cheeks, like he was cleaning his teeth with his tongue, like the action was a toothpaste substitute.
"What else is moving?"
"A boy over there with sheep, there . . . " Holt pointed to his right, through the scrim net that masked them.
"Bit of traffic on the road. Nothing else. When do I start looking?"
The binoculars were in Crane's Bergen. Crane shook his head. "Think about it, youngster. Where's the sun?
The sun's straight into us. You put the glasses up and you'll risk burning your eyes out, and you'll risk a lens flash. Neither's clever. You don't do any looking till the sun's a hell of a lot higher. Patience, youngster."
"Mr Crane . . . "
"Yeah."
"Mr Crane, what happened to the hostage?"
There was a tremor of annoyance across Crane'
mouth. "What's it to you?"
"I just wanted to know."
"Are you going to make a thing about it, are you going to puke over me?"
"What happened to him?"
Crane whispered, "There's a cave a quarter of a mile back, that's where they went. We passed about hundred yards higher. I'd say it's where they're going to hold him. Sometimes it's Beirut where they hold them, sometimes it's out in the Beqa'
... would be better in Beirut, won't be a hotel out here."
"Mr Crane . . . "
"Yeah."
"When we've sniped, when we're heading back . . . "
"No."
"Nothing we can do?"
"You want to get home, or you
want to die? I you want to go home you walk right past* the cave, 1
you want to die you call for tea and scones . . . Sorry youngster."
Holt hung his head, his words were a murmur, the wind in the scrim netting. "Seems dreadful to leave him."
"Heh, Alexander the Great came through here Nebuchadnezzar was here, the Romans had a go at it There were the Crusaders and the Turks and the Frenc and the Yanks and the Syrians, and my people had a try at it. Everyone's had a go at civilising this place, and Lebanon saw them all off. That's just fact, that's not education. And it's fact that you can't change things Holt, not on your little educated own. You can't change a damned thing . . . forget him."
"It's rotten to turn our backs on him."
Crane looked for a moment keenly at Holt, didn't speak. He untied the laces of his boots, then pulled the laces tighter through the eyes and made a double bow.
From a pouch in the Bergen he took a strip of chewing gum. He lifted the Armalite onto his lap. Holt watched him. Crane had his face against the netting and his eyes roved across the vista in front, down towards the camp.
Crane's hand settled on Holt's shoulder.
"You'll be all right, youngster."
Holt gagged. "What are you doing?"
"Scouting, going to find myself a hide further down."
"You said that where we'd be lying up would be 1,000
yards."
"I want six hundred," Crane said.
"Is it the eye?"
"I just want six hundred."
"Can't you do it at a thousand?"
"Leave it, Holt." Close to a snarl.
Holt shook his head, didn't believe it. According to Crane's bible there should be no movement by daylight.
According to Crane's text not even an idiot tried to move across open ground after dawn, before dusk.
According to Crane's chapter the team never split.
According to Crane's verse a thousand yards was best for the sniper. He couldn't argue. He stared at Crane.
It was as if his fear, wide eyed, softened Crane.
"I'm not gone long, an hour, may be a little more. In an hour you start to use the glasses... They're all shit down there, they can't see their assholes right now. On my own, just myself, a buzzard overhead won't see me.
I find the place at 600 yards, and I'm back. You spot the bastard for me, we mark him, we follow him, we get to know him. Late afternoon, sun's going down, sun's behind us, sun's into them, that's when I move again.
One shot at 600. I stay put, you stay put, till it's dark.
I come back for you, and we move out . . . Got it, youngster?"
"Got it, Mr Crane." There was a reed in Holt's voice, like he was a child, afraid to be alone.
The scrim netting was slowly lifted, and then Crane was gone. *
There was a crag boulder to the right of the overhang, and Holt saw the shape of Crane, his outline broken by the camouflage tabs, reach the boulder.
He did not see him afterwards.
Holt screwed his eyes tight. He peered down onto the desolate and featureless ground between himself and the tent camp and he could not find a movement. He could not credit that Noah Crane, on that landscape, had vanished.
Fawzi blinked in the sunlight. He stretched, he yawned, he pulled his trouser belt tighter.
He had slept well, heavily. The smile came to his face.
He had much to be cheerful about. He was casting aside the sleep, he was basking in the sunlight and the memory of the previous evening. Last year's harvest, well stored and well dried leaves, and well packed. Much to smile about, because there were five packages in the locked rear of his jeep and each package weighed 10 kilos, and each kilo was top quality.
The posting in the valley as liaison officer to the recruits' camp had this one salvation, constant access to the old and new marijuana crop. He had done well in the weeks that he had spent setting up the camp and then introducing it to these boys of the Popular Front.
His money was in dollars. Cash dollars, bank notes. For dollars an understanding could be negotiated with the customs officials at the airport. His dollars in cash, less the price of the understanding, could be carried in his hip pocket and in his wallet, to the cities of Rome and Paris and Athens. They were the holy cities he would make his pilgrimage to, when the creep Hamid had gone with the chosen ten to Damascus for the final preparation before the flight to Cyprus and the sea journey to the shoreline of Israel.
Much to be cheerful about, and the most cheering matter for Lieutenant Fawzi was that this would be his last day and his last night in the suffocating tedium of the Beqa'a.
There was a queue of recruits waiting to be served by the cook. He ordered an omelette, three eggs. He said that he wanted coffee. He went back to his tent, pulled out a chair from inside, waited for his food to be brought to him.
The smoke, pungent from the dew damp wood, played across his nostrils.
He held the binoculars as Crane had taught him. His thumb and his forefinger gripped the far end of each lens, and the outstretched palms of his hands shielded the polished glass from the sun.
Holt had stopped looking for Crane. He lay on his stomach, quite still, only allowing his head to move fractionally as he raked over the faces of the magnified figures moving lethargically between the tents.
He had covered the line in front of the cooking area, and the line in front of the latrine screen. He had followed the men as they emerged from their tents, until they ducked back into them.
He could not believe that he had looked with the power of the binoculars into the face of Abu Hamid and had not known him. He had seen no man with a crow's foot scar on his cheek. He had seen no man walk with the rolling gait of Abu Hamid crossing the street in front of the Oreanda Hotel. He could remember the long sitting wait on the hard bench in the corridor leading to the cell block of the police station in Tel Aviv.
He could remember the beating given freely to the bomber. What if the man had lied . . . What if the man had lied to save his skin from the fists and the boots . . .
The doubts crawled in him.
What if he had travelled to the Beqa'a and Abu Hamid was not at the camp? What if he had travelled to the Beqa'a and could not recognise Abu Hamid?
For the fourth time he started his search at the southern perimeter wire of the camp, and traversed north, searching for the face, and doubting.
He had laid her body on the bed.
He covered her body with the sheet and then the bed cover. He pulled the sheet high enough to obscure the bruising at her throat.
He had taken a flower from the vase by the window, a rose. He laid the flower on the bed cover across her breast.
He closed the door behind him. He walked down the steep steps and out into the noise and crush of the alley.
He walked very straight, he walked with the purpose of a young commander who had accepted a mission of leading an assault squad against the Defence Ministry on Kaplan.
Abu Hamid climbed into the passenger seat of the jeep.
Holt set the binoculars down on the rock dirt beside his hands. The valley shimmered in the heat below him.
The sun burned a whiteness from the tent tops, and flickered at those strands of the wire that were not rusted. Nothing wrong with the binoculars, he had seen the dart of the rats at the bottom of the wire. He was learning the life of the camp. The men were sitting in a half circle, swatting off the flies, watching a hugely fat young man demonstrate the stripping down and the reassembling of a machine gun. He could not see all of their faces, not at this moment, but he had checked each of the faces before they had sat down, and he had checked the face of the uniformed instructor. It had been a desperation to see if there was a crow's foot scar on the left upper cheek of the instructor, a last throw.
The cook was on his knees blowing at the fire. Only the cook and a sentry at the entrance to the camp and a man asleep in a chair by his tent were not involved in the class session. He had com
e so far with Crane, three nights' march, a squashed-in lifetime, and Abu Hamid was not there. His head and his body ached and his whole heart sank in despair.
Major Zvi Dan went into the hushed badly-lit room that housed the communications centre.
He closed the door gently behind him.
It was a world where no voice was raised, where none of the men or women in uniform moved other than at a studied pace. The room was an empire of electronics.
There was the purr of the teleprinters and the greenwash screens of the visual display units and the faint whisper of the recording equipment. Because of the nature of events, because Crane and Holt had walked into the Beqa'a, transmissions from the Syrian military that were intercepted by the antennae of Hermon would be relayed to the communications centre at Kiryat Shmona.
In a lowered voice he asked the communications captain if there was any information he should have.
There was nothing.
Major Zvi Dan tore a sheet from the small notepad that he carried in his tunic breast pocket. On the paper was written the figures identifying an ultra high frequency radio channel. He asked that from the middle of the day that frequency should be continuously monitored.
Still he watched the camp. He played through in his mind what Crane would say to him, how he would reply.
Definitely he's not there . . . Maybe he's a bit changed
. . . If he was there I'd know him . . . If he had a beard
. . . ? I'd know him ...
Nothing further to look for at the camp. The men were at the machine gun still, three at a time, practising what they had learned. Mr Crane would have been disgusted. The fire in the cooking area was out, and the cook fellow was washing stainless steel dishes, and the sentry walked backwards and forwards across the road track to the camp looking as though he were asleep. The camp had nothing for him.
With the binoculars he tried to find Crane.
Couldn't find him, just as he could not find the man he'd come so far to see killed.
Holt was desolated, he had never been so alone.
At Close Quarters Page 33